Rajat Jain

Rajat is a Gurgaon based corporate leader turned startup enthusiast who is on the social journey of creating India’s leading open architecture mentoring platform for deserving startups, to get early stage business support. A IITDelhi and IIM Ahmedabad alumni, he founded PadUp Ventures in 2015 along with his partner Pankaj Thakar, who is a technology startup expert, from MIT and Harvard. PadUp is focussed on providing deep mentoring services to early-stage tech startups to help them survive and scale, to drive INNOVATION and create value.
After a 30+ years career in Corporate India in leadership roles, Rajat is also now a Non-Executive Independent Director on several Boards including Aditya Birla Finance, Fino Payments Bank, Droom Technologies and Mahindra Holidays. He is also a trustee on the Board of the well known Make a wish Foundation, as well as Braj Foundation, an NGO focussed on environment and water conservation and an Advisor to the E&H Foundation, working for the education and health of underprivileged kids in Uttar Pradesh.
In his corporate career, he has worked in the FMCG, media & entertainment, technology and telecom sectors in India, both at young stage companies and MNCs like Unilever, Sony, Walt Disney and Xerox. His last roles were MD of Xerox India and MD of Disney India before he started his social journey in 2015. His key areas of expertise include distribution and sales, understanding consumers across various spaces, mentoring and working with teams and building and growing businesses that revolve around services & brands.