Rajesh Rao, CEO

Rajesh Rao is the founder and CEO of Dhruva Interactive, India’s oldest & most respected Games Company. Rajesh is recognized worldwide as a pioneer of gaming in India. In his bestselling book on globalization “The World is Flat”, Tom Friedman describes Rajesh as one of the most dynamic entrepreneurs he met in India and used Rajesh and Dhruva as a metaphor to explain ‘triple convergence’ – how a young entrepreneur and his startup from India plugged into the global games industry by leveraging the new forces of globalization that are ‘flattening’ the world.

Rajesh is also active in promoting and growing the game industry in India. He is on the advisory committees of leading trade bodies such as NASSCOM and FICCI for driving the games agenda. He is part of National Institute of Design’s advisory group for Toy and Game Design. He is a founding member of iGita, Indian Games Industry and Trade Association. He is frequently invited to speak at international events and conferences and has been invited as a speaker at Stanford University, as part of a lecture series organized by the US – Asia Technology Center.

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Mukund Rao, Studio Head

Just after getting his MBA done from one of India's top business management schools, Mukund decided to jump the traditional career path for pursuing his passion of becoming an artist in the games industry. 9 years since then, he is one of India's most accomplished technical artists and also heads the Art Studio at Dhruva Interactive, the most reputed game developer in India. Mukund's strength is his ability to blend domain knowledge and management skills to get his team to deliver on the most challenging assignments. His successful deliveries include 330 man-months over 9 months for one of the leading game racing franchises today. He gets stuff done.

Oh and no, he's not related to Rajesh Rao even though they have the same surname

Raju Patil, Director of Operations

Raju heads the overall operations at Dhruva. He is an Engineering Graduate in Computer science and has more than 15 years of work experience and over 12 of experience in Gaming industry, spearheading various projects for various platforms such as mobile gaming, web games and casual games. Raju has contributed in various capacities - Project Manager, Product Manager, Director on the management board. He has been with Dhruva for more than a decade and is the first employee of the company– Raju has a strong foundation in multimedia, software engineering, project management and overseeing production and delivery of products. He has contributed in various roles in Dhruva’s products development, multimedia and internet domain. With the birth of Dhruva Mobile Games Studio in 2003, he has delivered more than 15 mobile titles including Maria Sharapova Tennis, Cricinfo Genie, Slyder, Pat Cash Pro Tennis, Cricinfo Trivia champ and Charlie Chaplin games. In 2008, Raju deservedly became the director of operations for Dhruva Interactive.

Ajit Pillai, CFO

Ajit is CFO at Dhruva Interactive. Ajit has over 20 years experience in his domain, having spent over 10 years in various accounts and finance positions in the construction and steel sectors before joining Dhruva in 1999. As Dhruva’s CFO he oversees all finance, banking and accounts functions as well as ensuring all statutory compliances. Ajit is a commerce graduate and has trained to be a Chartered Accountant.