Mr. Thekkethala is an Asian-American entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist with over twenty-five years of experience in financing and leading global technology companies. During his career, he was the Founding Managing Partner of early-stage US venture capital funds and the Founder and CEO of private and public technology companies in the US.
He is the co-founder of Learn for Life (LFL) Foundation, a non-profit organization, focused on educating disadvantaged children in developing communities using holistic and online education models. He is passionate about children's education as a catalyst to change lives and uplift communities.
He is also the founder and Managing Partner of TOLIMA Partners, which is the primary source of financial support for LFL Foundation. TOLIMA invests and provides advisory services to disruptive innovation technology companies in AI, Block chain and Cloud computing.
Prior to TOLIMA, he was co-founder and Managing Partner of JT Ventures, which focused on investing and mentoring early-stage technology companies through their growth and successful acquisition. Investments included CrosStor (acquired by EMC), Allegro (acquired by Cisco Systems: CSCO), Fidelia (acquired by NetScout: NTCT), Ibrix (acquired by HP) & Sixth Sense Media (acquired by Evolving: EVOL).
During his career, he was President and CEO at Evolving Systems (NASDAQ: EVOL), a real time digital engagement solutions company, where he completed two acquisitions and grew the company to over 100 mobile operators in 75 countries touching 2 billion consumers leading to its acquisition by PartnerOne Software. Previously, Mr. Thekkethala was a founding investor, Chairman and CEO at Sixth Sense Media, which created the industry’s leading real-time Analytics and Mobile Marketing solutions. He developed the company’s strategy and led its global operations and growth, including secondary buyouts, leading to its acquisition by Evolving Systems.
He also founded SRG, a telecom network operations and management software company and CCSS, a telecom industry "Software as a Service" platform company in the early 1990s, where he developed the product vision, architecture and market strategy and led the companies to their successful acquisitions. He began his career at Cybertel, a start-up wireless carrier, that grew to become a market leader before its acquisition by Ameritech (now ATT Wireless).
Mr. Thekkethala received his Masters’ degree from the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University where he was also an adjunct faculty member. He is passionate about education as a catalyst to change lives and uplift communities.
