Professional bio

Chetan (Chet) Manikantan

CURRENT ROLE

BD at Marinade Finance

LIFELONG MOTTO

Progress through Innovation

Chetan Manikantan known amongst his friends as 'chet', is an artist, software engineer, inventor and a serial entrepreneur.  

He currently works as Business Development Consultant at Marinade.finance.

In the past, he co-founded a WEB 3 Layer 1 venture, Tengu which was acquired by FutureFuel (getcandidlly.com). 

He also co-founded GuruG, later acquired by the Indian Government to become the national teacher platform, Diksha. Diksha serves over 15 million teachers and 150 million students across India and is one of the pre-eminent building blocks of India Stack, the revolutionary project of unified software platform and digital goods to bring India's population into the digital age.

Chetan also served as the Global Entrepreneur in Residence at UMass, Boston. In this role, he provided teaching assistance to professors, and lectures, mentorship, and guidance to the students of various disciplines. 

After being discouraged from becoming an Indian air force pilot, and not having enough money to become a professional racecar driver, Chetan decided against a Fast and Furious life. Instead, he combined his artistic talent with his engineering skills to become a tech-entrepreneur. He figured that the only way to realize his dreams would be to use his imagination, creativity and technical skills to build a profitable business venture that offers socio-economic benefits and real value to people around the world. 

Chetan obtained his electronics engineering degree from BIT Bangalore, where he served as the President of the student body. In this role, he championed many path-breaking initiatives including the first inter-collegiate science, arts, cultural, literary and technology festival. His engineering thesis project for the Indian defense company 'Bharat Electronics Limited' was to build a high-security encryption tool. Post graduation, he worked at Microsoft in software engineering and business development roles.

After his time at Microsoft, Chetan co- founded several successful start-ups. In these roles, he has been responsible for technological innovation as well as high-growth sales. At Echrome, Chetan and his team built prepaid energy meters and a cryptographic signing tool for software licensing including a hardware-lock. At SinformatiX, he signed an exclusive multi-year partnership valued at over $20M with Pitney-Bowes for the APAC region. At mySpark Technologies, he successfully closed over $5M in sales and built a pipeline of over $10M in just the first year of operation in India. In 2012, Chetan co-founded Guru-G, a software company that has pioneered education in the developing world. Guru-G has received numerous awards and wide recognition, chief among them being ‘The Best Start-Up of India’ award granted by the Indian Government’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry at the Start-Up India event in 2016. 

In 2014, Chetan founded a non-profit organization called Klatsch, a collective that blends art, design and innovation. Klatsch brings artists, designers, and innovators together to improve public space apathy in India through artistic interventions and unique design ideas. It has seen a lot of success in a very short span of time. With over 2000 members, the collective has executed over a dozen successful projects in partnership with organizations such as Amnesty International, the Goethe Institute, Numa, Bangalore Metro and the India Foundation for Arts, among others.

Chetan has regularly contributed to mainstream news media, appearing in The Times of India's expert column on artistic interventions in public spaces, and as a guest speaker at various radio talk shows both in India and in the USA. Chetan has volunteered educating slum-dwelling children with essential life skills and vocational training through various organizations in India. He also represented the state of Massachusetts as part of a delegation including Noble Laureate Eric Masken to participate in the Global Fintech Summit held across 5 cities in China.

He loves hiking, theatre acting, writing, music, playing tennis. soccer, painting, and reading books on history, philosophy, sociology, psychology and politics.

2020-2023

2016-2018

Aegis Gaming Studios (StonkLeague)

WEB 3 GAMING infra

Tengu Inc

Fintech

Tengu is a Web 3 Layer 1 project along with a decentralized consumer credit data and ratings platform using non-traditional variables to serve the un-banked / under-banked users in the US. (news) (more)

ACQUIRED by fururefuel (getcandidly.com) in 2018

2014-2016

CornerTable Inc

FOOD-TECH 

CornerTable is a fully automated sales and marketing platform for restaurants. (more)

PIVOTED

2012-2014

Guru-G Learning Labs

EDTECH

Guru-G is the world's first gamified and intelligent platform for in-class teaching, teacher training and teacher certification. (news) (more) (international recognition)

Over 2000 schools currently use the platform 

Winner of India's Best Startup Award. (video)

ACQUIRED BY GOVERNMENT OF INDIA (https://diksha.gov.in)

2010-2012

mySpark Technologies Inc

IOT/HARDWARE

MySpark Technologies built innovative touch-screen tablets and specialized software for the education market. The mySpark Education Platform provides students and schools with affordable hardware and scalable software that integrates with existing campus learning systems. (news) (more)

PIVOTED

2006-2009

2004-2006

SinformatiX Technologies 

PLM/BPM/CCM/software consulting

SinformatiX built a strong practice in Product Lifecycle Management,  Customer Communication Management and Content Management domains. Sinformatix built a 'solution innovation center' for Pitney-Bowes catering to the entire South East and South Asian region. (news)

INACTIVE

Echrome Embedded Services

EMBEDDED systems and TECHNOLOGIES

Cryptographic signing-tool for software licensing. Hardware-lock. Electronic energy meter(projects in India and Nigeria). India's first fully automatic electronic display system for public transportation(projects in India). 

EXITED