Sanjeev Shukla’s passion for business and social entrepreneurship led him to start Sanmita. As the founder & CEO, he is at the helm of all operations at Sanmita. However, Sanmita is not his first business venture. His past ventures have included Infobyte, which grew to become the largest distributor of Zenith Computers in Northern India. The company grew by more than 100% every year under his leadership. In 2000, Sanjeev moved to the United States to establish a subsidiary of Infobyte.
Sanjeev’s management philosophy is simple and focused towards people. He believes that “each individual has tremendous potential” and judges people on three criteria: honesty, willingness to work and ability to be trained.
Sanjeev is passionate about getting knowledge and passing it on to others. Had he not pursued a career path in business, he would have liked to be a teacher. In fact, one of his future ambitions is to open schools which will use the web to enable people in remote villages in India to access quality education.
Ask him about his hobby and he will answer “business.” This probably explains his dual MBA from Cornell University and Queen's School of Business. Sanjeev believes that “doing business gives people the flexibility to do many things and the freedom to experiment with their ideas. It enables people to execute a personal mission at a much faster pace.” Sanjeev is an avid consumer of leading business publications such as Harvard Business Review, McKinsey Quarterly and Knowledge@Wharton.
Sanjeev commits himself 100% to his goals, “Whatever I do, I do it to the best of my ability.” This dedication towards his work was evident on a trip to Serbia, where he helped local farmers improve their business. Despite language barriers, in a short span of two weeks, he was able to analyze the key issues and find simple solutions that addressed the farmers' business needs. Sanjeev does not believe that language itself should be a barrier to helping people address their problems. According to him, it is the intent that matters.
Sanjeev brings this passion and commitment to his clients and team at Sanmita. His past experiences and deep knowledge of IT, finance and business lend him the edge to lead Sanmita on the path to success.
Renée is one of the newest members to the Sanmita team. She works as an assistant to the CEO, Sanjeev Shukla, in the Ithaca, NY office. Her duties also include project management, communication management and business development. She graduated from the Park School of Communications at Ithaca College in May 2009. Before joining Sanmita she managed Benchwarmers Restaurant & Bar and worked as a freelance communications consultant with KGolan Communications, LLC. With KGolan Communications, Renée specifically worked on developing brand identity and web solutions for an Atlantic-based non-profit, Safe Haven 4 Pets. She was very excited to continue her career by working at a company with a passion for helping educational institutions and non-profit organizations achieve their goals through web-based solutions.
When she is out of the office, Renée enjoys being at home playing with her adorable kittens, Boudicca and Kilowog, as well as knitting, biking, painting, and baking. Don't ask her for her oatmeal ranger cookie recipe; it's a delicious secret!
Sanmita welcomed Aaron Sabatine, a web developer, to the team in May. Immediately after joining the Sanmita ranks, Aaron threw himself into working on the VideoSight demo-site, which is a new product we're offering at Sanmita.
Aaron is a recent graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology where he majored in Information Technology and minored in Philosophy. However, web programming soon became his main focus. He completed a six month internship with CJF Wholesale, Inc. and worked as a web developer for the Center for Campus Life while finishing his degree. Although studies, internships and work have kept him busy for the last few years, he's still had time to pursue other interests. His passion for developing new technologies also increased his interest in video games. He's a dedicated Steeler's fan and also enjoys watching mixed martial arts. On his bookshelf you'll find works by J.R.R. Tolkien, Mark Twain and Jack London. Sitting beside that same bookshelf you'll probably find his guitar. Not only does Aaron enjoy making music, he also enjoys writing about it as a contributing author to the website metalreviews.com.
Sunil Ambekar is the newest member of the team, taking up the role of Director of Operations at our new office in Pleasanton, California. He is a highly qualified IT professional with over 12 years experience in IT management, project management, software development, and business intelligence initiatives. He will be spearheading our latest business venture in Enterprise Performance Management (EPN). EPN enables institutions, such as Cornell University, to monitor their financial and overall performance levels as well as to forecast future performance.
Formerly, Sunil worked as a Senior Manager at eCycle Inc., a business management service company, as well as at ICIM, a global IT service company. He played key roles in those companies' success. Sanmita is grateful to add his experience managing teams locally and globally to deliver quality projects. Sunil also brings a wealth of technological expertise to our team.
Theodore, or Ted as we like to call him, is our lead CommonSpot consultant. He has over five years experience in developing mission critical web sites and web applications. Ted holds a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University. He held 2nd rank in national physics competition in his high school class.
Dan Danowski is a part of the web design team at Sanmita. He has been designing websites since his early days at Hartwick College, where as a geology student he stumbled into web design quite by accident. His professors at college were working on creating an environmental software package. Dan breathed life into their idea by designing and programming the software. While Dan had some experience with design owing to his aptitude and interest in art, programming was a territory completely unknown to him. He learned programming and has not looked back. Since then he has worked on several web projects for the Geology Department at Hartwick College, the Lab of Ornithology at Cornell University and the Center for Materials Research at Cornell University. While working at Sanmita, he has also developed advanced skills in CommonSpot and ColdFusion.
Besides web design Dan is interested in politics and sports. In fact, American football is his favorite sport and as a native of New York, the Giants are of course his favorite team. Dan is also an avid runner and has participated in four marathons including Anchorage, New York city, Philadelphia and the Marine Corps run in Washington D.C.
Dan enjoys reading fantasy fiction. Some of his favorite works include The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan and all the Harry Potter books. However, more recently he has had little time to spend on such activities as most of his spare time is now spent playing with his 14 month old baby. In addition, Dan is also in the midst of another change. This native of New York, who has never lived outside of New York State, is in the process of moving to Northern Ireland. While Dan is excited about the move, he is also learning and adapting to a new culture. We wish him the best in a new country.
Sanjeev is our branding and identity consultant. He specializes in developing branding strategy for offline and online channels.