Hari T N

Author, Angel Investor, Arkam, Fundamentum, Bigbasket

Hari is an engineer/MBA from IIT Madras and IIM Calcutta.

He wears different hats: Author, Angel Investor, Advisor to Founders/VCs, Mentor at Start-up Accelerators, Columnist, and CHRO Bigbasket, among others.

He spent the first 14 years of his career at Tata Steel. Of this the first 11 years were spent in engineering roles (shop floor, design, project management, construction, procurement, and planning). The next three years were in the area of Human Capital helping restructure the company to cope with post-liberalization challenges.

Hari spent the last 19 odd years as part of leadership teams of high growth startups in domains as varied as business process outsourcing, information technology, financial services, consumer internet and e-commerce. Each of these startups saw successful exits (Daksh was acquired by IBM, Virtusa went public on NASDAQ, Amba Research was acquired by Moody’s, TaxiForSure was acquired by Ola, and Tata have taken a controlling stake at Bigbasket). At each of these startups, Hari has been a part of the Management Team and played a key role in shaping their growth and exit.

In the last 6 years, in addition to his CHRO role at Bigbasket, Hari has played an active role in shaping the startup ecosystem in the country and is respected as a thought leader and an influencer. He straddles the entire startup ecosystem (from being an angel investor, mentor at multiple startup accelerators, and advisor to early and late stage VC funds, besides being a sought after sounding board and mentor by scores of entrepreneurs). LinkedIn identified him as one of India’s top voices for three years in a row (2016, 2017, and 2018). He has also been a part of many national and international lists of influencers.

He has been a prolific author and has authored 7 books so far. Each of these books has been a category leader. From ‘Saying No to Jugaad – The Making of Bigbasket’ to ‘From Pony to Unicorn – Scaling a Startup Sustainably’, many of his books have been bestsellers and have provided insights and playbooks to hundreds of founders.