Andreas Sohmen-Pao , Non-Executive Chairman Andreas is the Non-Executive Chairman of the Alpha Ori Board. He is also the Chairman of BW Group Limited and Singapore Maritime Foundation. He is a member of the Singapore National Parks Board and a Non-Executive Director of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra. He has previously worked at Goldman Sachs International in London and served as a director of the London P&I Club, the HSBC, the MPA and The Esplanade Co. Ltd. He holds an honours degree in Oriental Studies Oxford University in England and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Capt. Katsuya Abe San, Board Member Capt. Katsuya Abe San is President of Nissen Kaiun, the largest private shipowners in Japan with more than 200 vessels. He began his career with Mitsui O.S.K Lines, Ltd and later acquired a license of Captain. His maritime career spans over four decades. He is a graduate of the Yuge National College of Maritime Technology, Japan.

Capt. Rajesh Unni , Co-CEO Capt. Unni is the Co-CEO and a board member of the Alpha Ori Group. In a career spanning 25+ years in the shipping industry, he has served in various capacities across countries. He is driven by a vision to transform the maritime industry through technology and innovation. Passionate about social initiatives, he plays an active role in the National CSR committee in Confederation of Indian Industries as well as engagements with Ashoka- Innovators for Public. He is a Class 1 Master Mariner from the LBS College of Advanced Maritime Studies & Research, Mumbai.

Bala Sankaran , Co-CEOBala is a business strategy, operations, and technology executive with expertise in the digital media industry specializing in go to market sales & business development functions. Previously, he was Vice President- Global Sales, Marketing Operations & Learning at Twitter. Prior to Twitter, Bala spent 6 years doing various management roles in sales, sales operations & ad agency business development functions at Google in NYC. Bala honed his operations & strategy expertise working as a management consultant with McKinsey & Company. Bala has also spent 10 years working onboard chemical, crude & product tankers, the last 4 years of it as a Chief Engineer. Bala holds a Marine Engineering degree from MERI, Calcutta and a Master of Business Administration from Wharton School.

Dr. Padmanabhan Seshaiyer , Board Member Padhu is a tenured Professor of Mathematical Sciences at George Mason University and serves as the Director of the STEM Accelerator Program in the College of Science as well as the Director of COMPLETE (Center for Outreach in Mathematics Professional Learning and Educational Technology) at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. His interests are in computational mathematics, scientific computing, computational bio mechanics and STEM education. He is the recipient of President’s excellence award, highest award for teaching, twice. He serves on VA-STEM learning network, Lego Education Advisory Panel, Maths counts board, US National council for Mathematics to name a few. He runs multiple Global STEM projects. He holds Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Maryland (1998), MSc of Science (Honors) in Mathematics and Bachelor of Engineering (Honors) in Electrical & Electronics Eng, BITS, Pilani.

Caesar Sengupta , Board AdvisorCaesar is the Vice President and Head of product management in Google, Singapore. He serves on the board of IMDA (Infocomm Media Development Authority), Singapore guiding their work and helping chart the growth of Singapore’s infocomm media industry. He holds an MBA from University of Pennsylvania – The Wharton School and has a Master of Science (MS) in Computer Science from Stanford University.

Sam Jha , Chief Product OfficerSam is a business and technology executive in mobile software industry specializing in devices, platform, applications and services. He has managed P&L of various cutting edge technology businesses including AGPS, IoT, OS platform, Computational camera, Computer Vision and Machine Learning. Recently, Sam led Qualcomm’s business unit for Advanced Software Technologies on Snapdragon chipsets. Prior to his role at Qualcomm, he held various product management and business development roles at Sprint Inc. and Nextel Communications Inc. in mobile handset and machine to machine (M2M) divisions. Sam started his career as an engineer in mercantile marine and served to become Assistant Chief Engineer on oil tankers. Sam has completed the executive business administration program (PLD) from Harvard Business School. He holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering from DMET in India and, an MBA from The College of William and Mary (Raymond A Mason School of Business) in the USA.

Biju Nair , Chief Technology Officer Biju is a technology professional with more than 25 years of experience. He has been spearheading advanced product engineering development for ThinkPalm Technologies and his interests span across development, quality assurance and engineering operation functions. His extensive international experience has enabled him to manage globally distributed organizations as part of the senior management teams at Fortune companies, including major telecom product companies like Cisco & Brocade. He has also led business units as VP/General Manager of businesses at Ruckus Wireless taking new products to market with P&L ownership. He is based out of California and spearheading the Alpha Ori Group activities across the technology and products spectrum.

Sanjeev Namath , Chief Business Officer Sanjeev is a Business and Marine Technical executive with 28+ years in maritime ranging from serving as Chief Engineer on Merchant Marine fleet to heading the New Projects and R&D team for a leading Ship management company. Sanjeev has undergone Postgraduate program from IIT Kharagpur in Marine Operations & Management and comes with vast experience in Classification Society and in innovative projects such as construction of membrane LNG Carriers, Performance Analysis of vessels, studies on improving operational efficiency of vessels. In the recent past, he was involved in design & construction of 3 gas carriers in Korean yards which were equipped with cutting edge technology in energy efficiency and were the test beds for SMARTShip systems developed & installed by Alpha Ori.