Sameer Penakalapati
Ceipal CEO | Entrepreneur

Sameer Penakalapati is a serial entrepreneur who is dedicated to advising and investing in technology startups, specifically in the HR & AI space. In the past 10 years, Sameer has founded and acquired over six companies, including a staffing firm, multiple SaaS platforms, and a digital marketing agency, serving thousands of customers around the world.

Sameer’s key interests include talent acquisition, talent engagement, and total talent management. As a regular contributor of thought leadership pieces to HR publications, Sameer was recently inducted into the Forbes HR Council.

To date, Sameer has received numerous awards and recognitions for his work, including accolades from Inc500/5000, Rochester top 100, Deloitte Fast 500, Forbes Best Startup Employers, USPAACC, SIA Fastest Growing Companies, and others. Sameer also takes an active approach to Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives, contributing to philanthropic activities in the US and India focused on children’s education and youth development.

Code Cubit
Investor | Entrepreneur

Code is a Founder and Managing Director of Mistral Venture Partners – an early stage venture capital firm with offices in Ottawa, Ontario and Palo Alto, California. Code has more than 25 years of experience as a company founder, operating executive and investor. As a venture capital and private investor, Code has invested in more than 50 technology companies across North America.

Jason Tagler
Board of Directors

Jason is a Managing Partner of Camden Partners and joined the firm in 2005. He leads growth equity investments in enterprise software and technology-enabled services companies. Jason currently serves on the boards of MeetingPlay, Harver, RedPoint Global, RocketDocs, Viventium, and Volly.

His previous investments and board roles include Steelwedge Software (acquired by E2poen), Prolexic Technologies(acquired by Akamai for $415 million), Ranir (acquired by Perrigo for $750 million), Catalyte, and IncentOne (acquired by Welltok).

Jason started his career developing software at Price Waterhouse Consulting in New York City and at a financial technology company in San Francisco. He also worked in technology investment banking while at Robertson Stephens (San Francisco) and Alliant Partners (Palo Alto).

Jason earned both a B.S. in Applied Economics and an M.B.A from Cornell University. He is a CFA charter holder.

Jit Sinha
Co-Founder | RESOLVE

Jit Sinha co-founded Resolve Growth Partners in 2018. Prior to Resolve, Jit spent 10 years executing growth equity investments as a General Partner at JMI Equity.

Jit served as a Board Director for companies including AppNeta, Avecto, Axeda, Businessolver, Compusearch, Ellucian, Empathica, Rsam, Schoology, and Vocus. Jit was also a Board observer for Gemcom Software and Yello. Prior to JMI, Jit was a Principal at Bain Capital Ventures (BCV) where he was a Board Director or observer of dynaTrace, Network Intelligence, SolarWinds and VMLogix. Prior to BCV, Jit was a Director-Business Development at a BCV-backed portfolio company DataSynapse, and a management consultant at Monitor Company.

Jit lives in the Baltimore area. He is the current Board chair of KIPP Baltimore, a college-preparatory public charter school serving over 1,500 children and 900 alumni. He is also active with several organizations supporting strategic philanthropy in India. Jit received a BS in Economics and a BA in Sociology, cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania.

Dennis Farkos
President & Chief Financial Officer

Dennis Farkos is an experienced early- and growth-stage financial executive with more than 23 years of proven ability to drive results through incisive analysis, cross-functional teamwork, and timely execution. Most recently, Farkos joined Ceipal to serve as its Chief Financial Officer.

Prior to joining Ceipal, Dennis served as the Chief Financial Officer of Panopto for over a decade.  Panopto develops award-winning video content management software. During his tenure, he assisted the founder CEO and an original group of tier 1 investors grow Panopto from a startup to a profitable, professionally managed SaaS software company. Revenues grew 10X and the company had more than 10M global users, offices in five countries, a 95% Gross Retention Rate, an NPS score of 70+, and an award-winning culture. Farkos led the sale of the business to a private equity investor in 2020 at >5X ARR.

Prior to Panopto, Dennis served as Chief Financial Officer for Carnegie Innovations, a partnership formed with Carnegie Mellon University to commercialize its IP portfolio. One of the successful results of his work with the portfolio was Acrobatiq, named the country’s #1 edtech venture at ASU-GSV and the first-ever higher-ed investment made by the Gates Foundation.

Dennis also served as Senior Vice President, CFO and Treasurer of Confluence, a leader in financial technology for asset managers. While there, he conceived a predictable recurring revenue model that allowed Confluence’s revenues to grow rapidly from less than $1m to over $35m annually, and enabling the firm to become the recognized global leader in financial data consolidation and automation. In 2006, Farkos was instrumental in closing the recapitalization of the company by Polaris Ventures at $114 million—a record for a private company in Pittsburgh at that time.  As a result of his efforts on this transaction and in the years leading up to it, Farkos was voted 2006 CFO of the Year by the Pittsburgh Business Times.

Aneel Potluri
Chief Operations Officer

Aneel has over 17 years of experience in the IT industry in both operational and executive management roles. His knowledge in finance, M&A, and operational excellence are well recognized. Aneel provides knowledge in various aspects of federal government contracting.

Amar Chadipirala
Chief Technology Officer

Amar has a flair for looking into the future. He joined Ceipal in 2011, where he was tasked with building an internal database of the most sought-after profiles in the market. Little did anyone realize, this database would evolve into one of the most versatile and efficient HCM systems available on the market today. Now with three offices globally, Ceipal has managed to make its mark in the HCM market. Amar, known for his congenial demeanor, plays a key role in molding Ceipal to its full potential.

Andy Weiss
Chief Marketing Officer

Andy Weiss is a global marketing leader who drives growth by combining well-crafted brand storytelling with high-converting demand generation.

His data-driven marketing approach led to one of the first paid search ads on Google, the introduction of a mobile app before we ever called them apps and a viral product launch that married hot dogs and Facebook.

Andy’s marketing career includes a familiar array of international B2B SaaS and B2C brands, including Linxup, Ungerboeck, Apollo Education Group, Oscar Mayer, Sprint, Comcast, State Farm, AOL, Hyatt Hotels, and Walgreens along with a cast of challengers who are upstarts in their respective industries.

Andy holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a BA from the University of Notre Dame.

Subhash Potturi
Vice President of Sales & Strategy

“We do not wait for the ‘right’ opportunities, we create them!”

Subhash has a wealth of diverse industry experiences starting with the Corporate Sales & Marketing departments of Bharti Airtel, India’s largest Telecom giant, as part of their coveted “Young Leaders” program. He then worked as the Business Head of MySmartprice.com, an e-commerce startup in the price comparison space. Moving onto the hospitality industry, Subhash worked with OYO Rooms, India’s largest chain of branded hotels, to help them setup their Flagship Hotels Business from scratch.

Subhash joined Ceipal in early 2017 as Vice President – Sales, Strategy & Operations. He is currently running the show from our Indian RND office. He is driving Ceipal to evolve into the Global market segment leader in the HCM solutions space. Full of enterprising spirit, Subhash is inculcating the same spirit within his team and molding them into future go-getters. Shouldering the responsibility of taking Ceipal to the next level, the team under his tutelage is taking the challenge head-on.

Born and raised in Hyderabad, India, Subhash went on to complete his undergrad from the prestigious IIT (Indian Institute of Technology), Kharagpur. Adding management expertise to his engineering aptitude, he completed his MBA from the country’s most illustrious management institute, IIM Ahmedabad.

Sairam Manuthur
SVP & CISO

Sairam Manuthur has over 25 years of experience in design, implementation, audits, and assessments related to data privacy, data security, software security compliance, and business continuity. Sairam worked for 14 years in Xerox Business Services managing information security audits and assessments, process audits and GRC implementations globally.

He is a certified lead auditor and implementer for ISO 27001, BS 10012, and CSRM, CSSBB, CSM. He has proven expertise in providing solutions in the areas of Information Security, GRC, BCM (BCP/DR), System Certifications, Audits & Design, Developing Security Policies, Standards and Procedures, Systems and Network Security technologies, IT Infrastructure, Application Security, Data Security & Privacy and possesses a thorough understanding of Information Security Standards/Frameworks like ISO-27001/27002, BS 10012, GDPR, PCI-DSS, HIPAA, ITIL/ISO 20000, COBIT 5, SOC2 & 3, NIST.

Sairam has worked in various sectors such as IT/ITES, Transportation, Insurance, and Health Care, and holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in engineering from Mysore University.

Raghav Nookala
Vice President of Customer Success & Digital Transformation

Raghav has proven leadership experience in driving high performance teams to deliver a broad range of domestic, international and global clients with effective business solutions. He comes in with about 28 years of manufacturing and consulting experience working on projects spanning 5 continents. Raghav was also responsible for establishing several practices and was part of several successful implementations throughout his career.

Raghav is an interesting blend of business and technology and is a frequent speaker in leadership forums to help businesses realize their digital transformation journey. He loves building innovative solutions to real world problems.

Major Sagarika
Director of Human Resources

Major Sagarika is an Indian Armed Forces veteran with a rich and diverse experience of 16+ years in HR functions and strategic HR Business partnering.

She has worked in the IT and ITES industries and carries in-depth expertise in people and process management. She brings in rich experience of handling scale, diversity, and growth at different tangents of the organization’s life cycle. She was commissioned as an Army communication (Corps of Signals) officer at Officers Training Academy (Chennai), one of the toughest training academies in Asia, which inculcates the highest standards of Discipline and Integrity. She is also certified in Management from IIM Indore, one of the premier Management Institutes in India. She has worked with Genpact, Conduent Business Services India LLP (Erstwhile Xerox). She is adept in building consensus across levels and managing organizational change efficiently.

Christina Miller
Controller

Christina is a CPA with over 15 years of experience in corporate accounting ranging from general ledger accounting, ASC606 revenue recognition, and accounts payable and receivable, to purchase accounting, system integrations, financial reporting, and more, specifically working in SaaS for over seven years. Christina received an MBA after completing her undergraduate degree and is constantly looking to learn. She is excited to be a part of the Ceipal team!