Executive Team
Nagesh Challa
Founder and Board Chairman
Nagesh Challa is co-founder and Board Chairman of Ecrio. Prior to Ecrio, he founded Nexcom Technology Inc., a Silicon Valley start-up that pioneered the concept of mass storage for mobile devices. Mr. Challa assembled and managed a team of 30 professionals and negotiated several license agreements with large global OEM's. He successfully sold Nexcom to ISSI (Nasdaq:ISSI) in December 1997. During his 20 year career, he held various engineering and management positions with National Semiconductor, Exel Microelectronics and Catalyst Semiconductor. Mr. Challa received a BS in Physics from Andhra University, India, an MS in Physics from Western Michigan University, and was a graduate student at Purdue University pursuing his Ph.D. before starting his career in the Silicon Valley. He has been granted 21 patents in semiconductors, software and mobile technologies.
Tad Bogdan
President and Chief Executive Officer
Tad Bogdan is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Ecrio. At Sun, Mr. Bogdan rose through sales, field training and marketing to manage the Javasoft Strategic Accounts team that drove Java's successful move into smart cards and J2ME. More recently, he championed new solutions that would come to dominate their respective markets during his tenure as SVP of Sales at Brodia, an online digital wallet company; SVP of Business Development at Mobileway (later Mobile 365), a mobile messaging and marketing firm acquired in 2006 by Sybase (NYSE: SY); VP Worldwide Sales and Business Development for ActivIdentity (NASDAQ: ACTI); and his latest success as founder/CEO for MultiMode, a communication platform acquired by global messaging provider Clickatell. Mr. Bogdan holds a BS in theoretical mathematics from Tulane University.
Michel Gannage
Founder, Vice President of Business Development
Michel Gannage, VP Business Development and co-founder of Ecrio, manages all of Ecrio's OEM and ODM relationships and partnerships in the mobile wireless arena, including overall sales strategy. He is directly responsible for key customers and strategic partners and is actively involved in product planning. Michel Gannage started his career in Silicon Valley in 1981 when he joined Intel as a Data Communications Engineer. He then held various engineering and management positions with Catalyst Semiconductor and Exel Microelectronics. Most recently, he co-founded Nexcom Technology Inc. with Nagesh Challa and served as Vice President of Engineering. At Nexcom, Mr. Gannage developed the Serial Flash product line and MediaStick product, and managed the system development for Flash Data Storage in the form of SIM cards. He also directed the development of Flash-based Media Storage solutions for consumer wireless devices. Mr. Gannage received an engineering degree from Ecole Centrale de Paris, an MS in EECS from Princeton University, and holds 9 patents.
Rao Gobburu
Founder, Chief Technology Officer
Rao Gobburu, VP Engineering and Ecrio co-founder, is responsible for technology, product development and engineering. He participates actively in product planning, and establishes and manages relationships with offshore development partners. Mr. Gobburu is an industry veteran in the areas of information appliances and microcontrollers. Prior to founding Ecrio, Mr. Gobburu co-founded Silicon Works Inc., a startup aimed at Connected Information Appliances, where he developed fully functional Motorola DragonBall based handheld PDA/Information Appliances. Earlier, he managed the single chip X86 microcontrollers and PCMCIA controller business for Vadem. Prior to Vadem, Mr. Gobburu was employed by Tritech Microelectronics, where he defined and developed chipset solutions for pen computing. He started his career at National Semiconductor in 1981 in the Microcontroller group. Mr. Gobburu holds a B.E in Electrical Engineering from MS University, Baroda, India and an MS degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Florida. He holds 4 patents.
Vikram Karmarkar
Vice President of Technology Strategy & Alliances
Vikram Karmarkar, VP of Technology Strategy & Alliances, establishes key technology and product alliances with wireless infrastructure partners. Dr. Karmarkar was one of the founding R&D members of HCL (now HCL Technologies). After moving to AT&T Bell Labs, he pioneered the application of robust design techniques to optimize high-reliability SS7 message switching systems. Also at Bell Labs, he led the development team for the industry's first carrier-grade LDAP internet directory product. At Lucent Technologies, as Director of IP Networking Products, he was a member of the team that launched the company's first multi-gigabit IP Switch product. Most recently, within Lucent Technologies' wireless business unit, Dr. Karmarkar served successive roles as Director of Mobility Customer (UMTS) Solutions; Director of the Wireless Competency Center in Milan, Italy; and Director of UMTS and GPRS Applications and Services. He holds a B.Tech degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Iowa, specializing in fault-tolerant packet switching systems.
Krishnakumar Narayanan
Vice President of Engineering
Krishnakumar Narayanan joined the company in 1999 and now directs the Ecrio engineering team. He also manages off-shore teams responsible for development, product engineering and technical support. Mr. Narayanan has over 22 years of industrial experience in software development and product delivery in the areas of mobile communications, systems programming, computer graphics and image processing. Prior to joining Ecrio, he developed software and firmware for an intelligent server monitoring device at Mirapoint, Inc. At Silicon Graphics, he led a team of engineers in the mid-range graphics workstations group. Mr. Narayanan started his career as a principal engineer at Digital Equipment Corporation, designing advanced graphics and image processing algorithms for hardware based graphics accelerators. He holds a B.S degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India, and a Ph.D in Computer Science from Louisiana State University.
Michael Grubbs
Vice President of Products
Mike Grubbs has over 25 years of leadership experience in mobile information and communications, personal computing, and consumer electronics. He is Vice President of Products at Ecrio where he leads product management, product marketing, and the solution partner program. Prior to Ecrio, Mr. Grubbs led the Client Product and Devices Solutions Services organizations for Openwave Systems, which were responsible for shipping client software to over 1.5 billion mobile devices and end-to-end device solution services for over 25 mobile operators worldwide. Prior to Openwave, he held senior positions at Gateway, Compaq Computer, AST Research, and Tandy Corporation. Past accomplishments include team leadership for breakthrough products including the first notebook computer, pre-internet on-line service software for PC's and handheld devices, first Multimedia PC and Convergence PC, and the first mobile phone access to consumer email services. Mr. Grubbs' past industry positions include chair/board roles for the Communications & Information Technology Division of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA); Multimedia Board, Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association (CEMA); and many more. He earned a BS from the University of Wyoming and MBA from Texas Christian University.
Mr. Ted Goldstein
Chief Strategy Officer
Ted Goldstein is focused on new business opportunities for Ecrio and is charged with creating the application ecosystem strategy and execution. Mr. Goldstein is an innovator in smart phone and computer application development environments, electronic commerce, network security and smart card technologies. As former Vice President of Development Technologies at Apple Computer, Mr. Goldstein was responsible for developer tools for Apple's Intel and iPhone products. During his time as Chief Java Commerce Officer at Sun Microsystems, Mr. Goldstein championed Java's success in early Internet banking and electronic commerce by spearheading the engineering and standards development of the Java Electronic Commerce Framework, and Java Card, the most popular smart card platform with 98% market share. Mr. Goldstein was formerly the CTO and Vice President of Engineering at Brodia and the Vice President of Business and Technology at ActivCard. Before Sun, Mr. Goldstein was an innovator in object-technology at the famous Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, where he was a cofounder and member of the managing team that spun off ParcPlace Systems, the inventors of the Smalltalk system. Mr. Goldstein holds a bachelor degree in Computer and Information Science and is in the Bioinformatics PhD program at the University of California at Santa Cruz. He holds nine patents related to C++, Java, and E-commerce.
Richard Banks
Vice President of Sales, Communications, North America
Richard Banks is VP Sales, Communications, North America for Ecrio. Mr. Banks is responsible for the development of sales channels for Ecrio’s Real Time Communications platform in North America; contributes sales support for ODM’s; and extends sales campaigns to Mobile Network Operators, leveraging Ecrio’s position as the IMS Client market leader. Prior to joining Ecrio, Mr. Banks served as VP of Sales at Online Insight and Director of North American Sales at SmartTrust, where his focus on a modular product-line mix delivered proven results, exceeding business model projections from mobile operator customers. His career also includes global account sales responsibility at Quintus (Avaya), as well as executive sales positions with Clarify and Intergraph Corporation. Mr. Banks is a member of the Mobile Payments Committee of the Financial Services Technology Consortium and is also a member of the Wireless Technology Forum. He received his BS from Florida State University.
Lina Martin
Vice President of Finance
Lina Martin, VP Finance, manages all aspects of finance, accounting, and operations for the company. Other duties include overseeing facilities, human resources, and office management functions. Ms. Martin also plays a vital role in fund-raising activities, including recent significant investments by Aplix, CSK, JAIC, Nomura Securities, NTT DoCoMo and Visa. She works closely with Mr. Challa and the board of directors on analysis for budgets, cash flow, and operating results. Prior to Ecrio, Ms. Martin served as Corporate Controller for gForce Systems and Decisive Technology. She also served in various finance/accounting capacities with Micro Focus, Varian Associates, and Capcom U.S.A. She holds a B.B.A. in Accounting from Iowa State University and pursued graduate studies (MBA program) at Drake University.