"Nothing Is More Powerful Than An Idea Whose Time Has Come"
-Victor Hugo
Founded by Asheesh Chanda and Vineeth Narasimhan in 2016; what started as an ambitious idea sketched out on a black-board, is now present and thriving in three countries.
Today Kristal.AI is operational in India, Singapore, and Hong Kong, and has clients across Asia, Middle East, and the Americas. We are committed to providing the best investment strategies to our investors and building a community of portfolio managers, affiliated partners, and investors. Our diverse team of financial advisors, researchers, and market experts takes a unique yet holistic approach to our clients’ needs and works hard to achieve their goals.
Additionally, we are the humble recipient of numerous accolades, awards, and recognition across the three countries. Our goal is to get progressively better and offer you a service that is truly a unique blend of continuous innovation and financial expertise.
Today, we are more than a tech platform or a financial advisor. We are the ones who bring the ‘intelligence’ into intelligent investing.
We have raised our seed round of funding from IDG Ventures India. Click Here to know more.
Meet Our
Leadership Team
Asheesh Chanda is the Founder and CEO of Kristal.AI. He has 15+ years of experience in the financial industry. Prior to Kristal.AI, Asheesh was managing KrisCapital, a global macro hedge fund. Previously, he spent 8 years at JP Morgan Chase heading South and South-East Asia. He has also worked with BNP Paribas as a Vice President of Institutional Sales and Structuring, and at Citibank overseeing FX and Fixed Income Structuring. Asheesh is an alumnus of IIM Bangalore and IIT Delhi. He has held several accomplishments during his studies including holding an All India Rank of 51 in IIT Entrance examination, and is an Indian National Math and Physics Olympiad Scholar.
Vineeth Narasimhan is the Co-founder and CTO at Kristal.AI. He manages web and mobile product development, analytics/ machine learning, UX and Cloud solution. He has 14+ years of experience in Product Management, delivering cloud and mobile solutions. Prior to Kristal.AI, he helped built MaaS360 into a leading Mobile Management solution which was later acquired by IBM. Previously, he was working with Cognizant Technology Solutions as a Senior Business Analyst. Vineeth is an alumnus of IIM Calcutta where he was the gold medallist, and of IIT Delhi holding a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science.
Vineeth Narasimhan is the Co-founder and CTO at Kristal.AI. He manages web and mobile product development, analytics/ machine learning, UX and Cloud solution. He has 14+ years of experience in Product Management, delivering cloud and mobile solutions. Prior to Kristal.AI, he helped built MaaS360 into a leading Mobile Management solution which was later acquired by IBM. Previously he was working with Cognizant Technology Solutions as a Senior Business Analyst. Vineeth is an alumnus of IIM Calcutta where he was the gold medalist, and of IIT Delhi holding a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science.
Vivek Mohindra is the Co-founder and Chief Responsible Officer, Hong Kong, at Kristal.AI. He has over 20 years of experience in banking, specializing in income trading in Asia, managing between USD 200 to 500 Mn of assets. He has previously served as an Executive Director of Credit Trading at Natxis, and as an Executive Director at UBS. Previously, he was working as a Director at Merril Lynch, and as a Vice-President at CitiBank. Vivek is an alumnus of IIM Ahmedabad and Shri Ram College of Commerce, Delhi.
Arun Pai is the Chief Kristals Officer at Kristal.AI, overseeing trading strategies on the platform. In addition, he is responsible for the Singapore division – spearheading business development efforts along with onboarding Kristal Sponsors on to the platform. Prior to Kristal.AI, he spent a decade in the Investment Banking industry (Options Trading desk in the Capital Markets Division) as a VP in Nomura. He started his career with Lehman Brothers in New York, eventually overseeing Singapore and Hong Kong. An alumnus of Georgia Institute of Technology, he graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering.
Arun Pai is the Chief Kristals Officer at Kristal.AI, overseeing trading strategies on the platform. In addition, he is responsible for the Singapore division – spearheading business development efforts along with onboarding Kristal Sponsors on to the platform. Prior to Kristal.AI, he spent a decade in the Investment Banking industry (Options Trading desk in the Capital Markets Division) as a VP in Nomura. He started his career with Lehman Brothers in New York, eventually overseeing Singapore and Hong Kong. An alumnus of Georgia Institute of Technology, he graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering.
Srinivas Handadi was among the early team members at Kristal.AI who created the technology backend. An experienced Software Engineering professional with over 13 years of experience, prior to joining Kristal.AI, he had led the OS X device management solution at Fiberlink, an IBM Company. He had also created an analytics and recommendations platform at Ibibo. His prior experiences include GupShup and Yahoo. Srinivas holds an M.Sc in Economics and B.E in Computer Science from Birla Institute of Technology, Pilani (BITS Pilani Campus).
Thomas Meichl heads Kristal.AI’s Financial Advisory and Analyst team. He has over 25+ years of experience as a trader, portfolio manager, and operational risk manager in the banking and finance industry. Before joining Kristal.AI, Thomas spent a little over a decade as an Executive Director at J.P. Morgan where he overlooked Credit Portfolio Trading. He has worked with Landesbank Baden-Württemberg, Bank of Austria, HVB Asset Management, Erste Invest-Consult Gmbh in various capacities in his career. For a brief while, he also served as the Founder of Square Feeds Pte Ltd., a company providing a sustainable and CO2 friendly solution to food waste.
Thomas Meichl heads Kristal.AI’s Financial Advisory and Analyst team. He has over 25+ years of experience as a trader, portfolio manager and operational risk manager in the banking and finance industry. Before joining Kristal.AI, Thomas spent a little over a decade as an Executive Director at J.P. Morgan where he overlooked Credit Portfolio Trading. He has worked with Landesbank Baden-Württemberg, Bank of Austria, HVB Asset Management, Erste Invest-Consult Gmbh in various capacities in his career. For a brief while, he also served as the Founder of Square Feeds Pte Ltd., a company providing a sustainable and CO2 friendly solution to food waste.
Vivek Jayaswal heads Kristal.AI’s AI and ML wing. His academic background includes a Bachelor’s in Computer Engineering, two Master’s degrees in Applied Science & Business Administration, and a Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Sydney, Australia. He has over two dozen publications in high dimensional data analysis with topics ranging from prediction of survival time to semi-supervised learning and network analysis. Vivek has worked in IT and Biotechnology sectors, in addition to academia, across four countries – India, Japan, US, and Australia. Prior to joining Kristal.AI, he built and led the Computational Biology group at a biopharmaceutical research centre in Bangalore, India.