Meet our management team and advisors

Nihongo Bashi is managed and guided by a team of professionals and entrepreneurs, with considerable global experience in management of technology companies.

  Karthik Tirupathi,
  President & Founder, Nihongo Bashi Pte Ltd.
  Principal, RV-Nihongo Bashi Centre for Japanese Management Studies.

Based in Asia for over 15 years, Mr. Tirupathi has extensive general management, sales and marketing experience. Prior to founding Nihongo Bashi (NBS), he headed up South East Asia operations for Free Markets, as their regional director for South East Asia.

Before Free Markets, Mr.Tirupathi served as the Global Vice President of Sales & Marketing and Vice President of M&A division at TradeAlliance, a CommerceOne based B2B marketplace that focused on Internet-based cross commerce solutions. He conceived the original concept of Nihongo Bashi as an enabling services provider while working with Japanese investors at TradeAlliance.

Mr.Tirupathi has also successfully held other management positions in sales and business development at SAP Asia, Clarkston Protomac and a HP joint venture. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Engineering from the Bharathiar University in India.

Mr Tirupathi is also a winner of the 2007 Spirit of Enterprise award, which honors local self-reliant entrepreneurs operating small and medium-sized businesses. He is a regular contributor of articles related to Indo-Japan business & culture on India’s leading portal, rediff.com. He blogs on career opportunities in Japan at Jobs in Japan.

Apart from his business interests, he is a keen student of Carnatic music and actively involves himself in the promotion of study of music through Syama, a non-profit organisation in Singapore.

Bobby Choonavala,
CEO & Managing Director of Twinwood Engineering Ltd.

Leading an IT Software Services company, Mr.Choonavala has extensive experience in sales and marketing of technology companies and is well-networked in the Asia Pacific IT community. Immediately prior to his current role, Mr.Choonavala was VP and Managing Director of the Iomega Corporation.

After graduating from University of Bombay and the Technical University in Aachen, Germany, Mr.Choonavala joined Siemens as a Development engineer in their computer labs in Munich. He started a long and illustrious career with Digital Equipment Corporation in 1966, holding various senior marketing and general management roles in Europe, United States and the Asia-Pacific. He was also appointed an Officer of the Company at Digital's corporate headquarters in Massachusetts, before taking on responsibilities for the Asia Pacific, headquartered in Singapore, a position he held until Compaq's acquisition of Digital in mid-1998.

Jayesh Parekh
Founder,MobiApps and ProPoor

Mr. Jayesh Parekh is a Founder of MobiApps and ProPoor, a non-profit portal for NGOs (Non Governmental Organizations) in South Asia, and now a service of CharityFocus. He was on the Board of United Way International for 6 years.

Mr. Parekh spent 13 years at IBM in various positions based out of Houston (USA) and Singapore, where he was involved in technical, sales and marketing roles.

Mr. Parekh holds a Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering from Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda, India and a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, USA.