Board & Advisors
JULIE KLAFF
Julie has been at Origami since 2014. She focuses on analyzing, structuring, and executing complex transactions for Origami. Julie’s responsibilities include fund management, investment prospect and relationship generation, deal execution, and capital raising. She serves on the Firm’s Investment Committee and Management Committee. Prior to joining Origami, Julie spent several years in the private funds group at Sidley Austin LLP, a leading global law firm. She focused on advising clients in the structuring, operations, and investments of private equity funds, hedge funds, and funds of funds.
Outside of Origami, Julie is active as a Board Member of Camp for All Kids, facilitating racial diversity by sending kids from under-served communities to overnight summer camp, providing a safe environment fostering fellowship and socio-emotional development.
Julie holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Human Development from Cornell University and her JD, cum laude, from Harvard Law School.
Shivani Bhasin Sachdeva
Shivani has helped shape strategy at various companies at both the startup stage and growth stage through board level involvement and been instrumental in generating superior returns for her investors. Shivani is an MBA from Wharton and a BA from Mount Holyoke College (Massachusetts) and is a frequent speaker at multiple domestic and international conferences on private equity including the Indian Venture Capital Association, AVCJ, and SuperReturn in Europe.
RON HEINZ
Building upon an extensive technology operating career, Ron founded Signal Peak Ventures in 2006 and remained a General Partner managing the firm’s legacy assets. Prior to forming Signal Peak, Ron was the CEO of both Helius (acquired by Hughes Network Systems) and Phobos (acquired by SonicWALL). He drove the commercialization efforts that led to successful exits for both companies. Earlier in his career, Ron spent 12 years with Novell, Inc where he was SVP of Worldwide Sales and Marketing.
Outside of work, Ron enjoys a wide variety of sport-related activities and appreciates spending time with his wife and four adult children with their growing families. In addition, he is active in supporting the advancement of parochial and charter school secondary education in the US.
Ron holds a BS from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, an MBA from American University, and a Master’s Certificate from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
RAJU REDDY
Raju previously was the Founder and CEO of Sierra Atlantic, a company that grew to be a best-in-class global services company over a period of 17 years under his leadership and was consistently ranked amongst the best managed companies. Sierra Atlantic was acquired by Hitachi Consulting in December 2010. Prior to founding Sierra Atlantic in 1993, he spent 10 years at Intel in software development, marketing, and general management.
Raju is actively engaged in the community and serves in leadership roles in various non-profits and enjoys working with young entrepreneurs in a mentorship role. He currently serves on the Board of India Community center in Milpitas, California and is the Chairman of BITSAA Intl, the alumni body of India’s #1 private University, BITS Pilani. Prior to this, he served as a member of the Board of Trustees for Puente, a Wharton School non-profit program which helps under privileged communities worldwide gain access to technology. He also co-founded SIPA (Silicon Valley Indian Professional Association) in 1987 and was instrumental in starting the TiE Chapter in Hyderabad, India.
Raju holds a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from BITS Pilani and a Master of Science degree in computer science from Virginia Tech.
RAHUL CHANDRA
Rahul is one of the earliest members of the venture capital fraternity in India. In 1997, as the first employee for Walden International’s India focused venture fund, he has worked closely with the second wave of IT services companies like Mindtree (Public), Techspan (Headstrong acquired by Genpact) and Sierra Atlantic (acquired by Hitachi). From 2000 to 2005 based in the Silicon Valley with Walden’s Palo Alto office, he invested in startups in the areas of Communications, Storage and Security.
He has invested in more than 30 early-to-mid-stage companies such as Mindtree, Ikanos(IKAN), e4e Inc and Techspan (Headstrong). Prior to Walden, he worked in the Capital Markets Group at Lazard India, and in the Primary Market Department at the Securities Exchange Board of India.
Rahul has an MBA from University of California, Berkeley and graduated from Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani in 1993.
Sumit Jain
Sumit brings nearly 15 years of operational, advisory and investment experience to his role. Prior to SA Cap Advisory Sumit served on the boards of 15+ portfolio companies as primary board member or observer including AI startups such as Edge Networks, Embibe and Vernacular.ai. While at Kalaari, he played a key role in sourcing and executing 7 investments across 2 funds and supported 3 exits from the portfolio. Earlier, while at HSBC, Sumit advised multiple clients on cross-border and domestic M&As and JVs and was associated with capital markets and leveraged buyout transactions in his role as an Associate with the Investment Banking division. He started his career at BG Group India as a Business Analyst and worked across group companies in telecom, E&P and gas distribution.
Sumit holds an engineering degree from IIT Kharagpur and an MBA from IIM Calcutta.
VISHAL GUPTA
Vishal is an IIT Bombay (Electrical Engineering) graduate and a specialist in biometric security systems. His ideation in fingerprint imaging led to the development of the core technology behind Herald Logic, a company he founded in 2000. The company showed record 220% CAGR, spreading to Singapore, Australia and UK.
Vishal is also an active participant in physics activities with the IAPT (Indian Association of Physics Teachers) and NSEP (National Standard Examination in Physics), he is amongst the top 1% in the country in physics.
Vishal is an active sports person, a keen blogger on information security solutions and an intrepid speaker at various information security forum.
ABHIJIT TANNU
A technology architect at heart and an entrepreneur by his calling, he was also the Founder, Director & CTO at Herald Logic, the company he set up along with Vishal Gupta and others. In the past decade, Herald Logic has become a leading name in optimizing Sales Force and Channel effectiveness for Financial and Pharmaceutical companies.
In his 15-year experience, of which 8 have been as Head of Technology and Product Management, Abhijit has managed large turnkey projects, design & development and quality assurance, besides driving technology and innovations. In earlier positions, at Patni Computer Systems, Abhijit managed some of the largest projects and was involved in all aspects of delivery. He has also worked at Larsen & Toubro handling large turnkey projects.
Abhijit is an inventor of a technology product – IntelliPush – which is a rule-based engine which collects data from various sources, analyses it and performs actions as previously defined by the user.
Abhijit holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Chemical Engineering from IIT, Kharagpur.
Product Management, Product Architecture, building product teams and trekking are his passions.
