Two Indian Americans join Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship at Harvard

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Indian Americans Ajay Agarwal and Samir Kaul, among 18, have been named to the inaugural group of Rock Venture Capital Partners of the Harvard Business School’s Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship and will be providing in-person mentoring to the school’s student entrepreneurs, according to a press release.

According to the press release, Agarwal is the managing director of Bain Capital Ventures in Palo Alto, California, where his work focuses on early stage software, mobile, and internet investing; he received his MBA in 1995.

According to Bain Capital Ventures’ website, he joined the company in 2003 and prior to that he was an early employee at Trilogy, where as head of sales and marketing he grew annual revenues to $300 million; before that he was a consultant with the Los Angeles office of McKinsey & Company.

Agarwal has a BS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University and an MBA from Harvard Business School, which he received in 1995, according to Bain Capital Ventures’ website.

According to Bain Capital Ventures’ website, he also holds a patent for the “Method and Apparatus of Configuration Solutions” and was named to the Forbes Midas List of Top 100 Venture Capital Investors in 2012 and 2013.

Agarwal also serves as the National Board Chair for BUILD, a not-for-profit dedicated to helping underprivileged high school students attend college, according to Bain Capital Ventures’ website.

According to the press release, Kaul is a cofounding general partner at Khosla Ventures in the San Francisco Bay area, where he focuses primarily on renewable energy, clean technologies, food and health, Samir Kaul and life sciences investing.

According to Khosla Ventures’ website, Kaul holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Michigan and also studied biochemistry at the University of Maryland with a concentration in gene regulation and expression; he also holds an MBA from Harvard University which he received in 2002.

Khosla is also an active philanthropist and has been a longstanding member of the leadership committee of the Tipping Point Community as well as being a board member at the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital and a Forbes Midas List member, according to Khosla Ventures’ website.

“The Rock VC Partner Program brings leading managing and general partners from the top early stage VC firms to Harvard Business School to build relationships with student founders. We are delighted to have these outstanding venture capitalists share their wisdom and insights with student entrepreneurs. Thanks to this program, HBS students will have unprecedented access to feedback from top investors regarding their ideas, testing plans, fund-raising activities, and more,” Jodi Gernon, the Director of the Rock Center, said in the press release.

According to the press release, the Rock Center for Entrepreneurship supports faculty and their research in the field of entrepreneurial management along with helping students and alumni, create ventures in the realms of for-profit and social enterprise and brings leading managing and general partners from the top early stage VC firms to Harvard Business School to build relationships with student founders.