People & Expertise

StoneBridge team has a track record of backing entrepreneurs from early stage, late stage and middle market firms, to unlock value. The StoneBridge team combined, has unlocked value in excess of $10B through a combination of IPOs, VC investments, M&A, Merger Integration and Private Equity, across 6 continents and 25 countries.

In order to achieve our objectives of acquiring the right Indian company, we have assembled a group of officers and directors who have experience in the public company governance, executive leadership, operations oversight, private equity investment management and capital markets, both in India and the U.S. Our team has extensive operational, financial and capital markets experience that will be put to use to identify a Unicorn and pave the way for a public listing through a merger with StoneBridge SPAC.

Our broad and diverse network of relationships provides access to unique and proprietary deal flow as well as access to experienced operators and management teams that we anticipate will enhance diligence and will add value post transaction.

The Board

Bhargav Marepally
CEO – Bhargav Marepally

Bhargav Marepally, the CEO and founder of GSS Infotech comes with over 20 years of experience in the IT Services Industry. GSS made it to the “Forbes' list of Asia's 200 Best Under $1 Billion” for three consecutive years. He led an acquisition led growth strategy that included buyout of ATEC, Infospectrum and System Dynamix.

He is a serial entrepreneur with stakes in several services firms across 4 continents and employ a combined 1000 people worldwide, serving several fortune 500 clients.

He was also nominated for “The Entrepreneur of the Year” contest by Ernst & Young in 2005. Bhargav’s vision is to make GSS Infotech the most preferred Managed IT Services Provider and grow the revenue and profits in line with the best in the industry.

Prabhu Antony
President, Co-Founder & CFO – Prabhu Antony

Prabhu Antony is the President, Co-Founder and CFO of StoneBridge (Nasdaq: APAC). He is also on the board of Linus ventures – A secondary markets focused fund, Scieniti – An early stage venture fund and S&L Growth fund – A SaaS and Technology focused hedge fund.

Prabhu Antony is also an Executive Director & Co-Founder at Sett & Lucas, a global investment. Bank headquartered out of Hong Kong. He has consummated capital raise, Mergers & Acquisition and debt syndication deals valued over $3.5B in enterprise value across 6 continents and 22 countries.

As an investment banker, he has won several awards from M&A Advisor, the leading global industry consortium for Mergers and Acquisition. In 2016 he was awarded Investment Banker of the Year among 650 participating financial institutions in the US, in 2015 he was ranked among the top five cross border investment bankers in the US, in 2017 his deal Starpoint acquisition by Day & Zimmerman won the best M&A deal of the year and in 2014 he was awarded the 40 under 40 Americas M&A Dealmaker award.

At Linus Ventures, he has had three notable investments and eventual exits, these include a secondary investment into Docusign exited through an IPO, a late stage investment into Meetup exited through acquisition by Wework and an early stage investment in SUPR Daily exited through an acquisition by Swiggy, Asian food delivery Unicorn. Through Linus and Scieniti, he currently sits on the boards of several firms based out of US, UK, Central America and India across industries such as Manufacturing, Consumer Products, Human resources, Sports Marketing and Healthcare, collectively employing over 1200 people.

Prior to joining Sett & Lucas, he was vice president at MAPE Group, a boutique M&A advisory firm in Asia, where he was the head of the technology, media and telecom (TMT) vertical and the US-Asia cross border M&A practice. Prior to MAPE, Prabhu spent his first seven years in the technology sector for blue chip companies such as Cognizant, i-flex and Oracle, where he managed corporate development, corporate strategy, corporate restructuring and M&A initiatives across London, the US and Asia.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in electronics and instrumentation engineering, a masters in business administration and a post graduate diploma in international business.

Prabhu is an alumni of Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Anna University. His business specialties and interests include disruptive innovation, Cross border M&A and Board observer roles.

Sylvia Barnes
Independent Director – Sylvia Barnes

Ms. Barnes has over 30 years of financial experience and a background in engineering. From 2011 – 2015, Ms. Barnes served as Managing Director and Group Head for KeyBanc Capital Markets Energy Investment and Corporate Banking Group and was a member of the firm's Executive Committee.

Prior to joining KeyBanc, Ms. Barnes was Head of Energy Investment Banking at Madison Williams, and Managing Director at Merrill Lynch's energy investment banking practice. She joined Merrill as part of the firm's acquisition of Petrie Parkman & Co. Prior to that Ms. Barnes worked as Managing Director and SVP for Nesbitt Burns, including serving as head of the firm's U.S. energy investment banking group and working in various capacities at Nesbitt Burns and its parent company, Bank of Montreal.

As a banker Ms. Barnes devoted her career to serving companies in the energy sector and she successfully executed a variety of mergers, acquisitions and divestiture transactions, and advised on public and private equity offerings and private debt and equity placements. Ms. Barnes is a member of the board of directors of Teekay LNG Partners L.P. and serves as Chairperson of the Governance Committee and is a Member of the Audit and Conflicts Committees. Previously Ms. Barnes served on the board of directors of a SPAC: Pure Acquisition Corp., and the following publicly-traded corporations: Ultra Petroleum Corp., SandRidge Energy Inc. and Halcon Resources Corporation and was a Member of various Committees and Chaired an Audit, Compensation and Independent Directors Special Committee.

Shamla Naidoo
Independent Director – Shamla Naidoo

Shamla will be responsible for target assessment of SaaS & Enterprise Product companies and the overall security infrastructure of the target company.

Shamla Naidoo is an accomplished information security executive with more than 25 years of experience. As the Global Chief Information Security Officer of IBM, Shamla is the company’s top information security executive, responsible for safeguarding IBM globally including all its business units and brands. She is responsible for IBM's overall information security program, which includes the company’s information risk and security strategies, planning, governance, architecture, and operations.

She is also a non-executive director on the board of QBE North America, a $15B market cap APAC insurance group.

Richard Saldanha
Independent Director – Richard Saldanha

Richard Saldanha’s career spans over 50 years across a gamut of leadership functions that ranged from Manufacturing and Planning to Corporate Development and General Management. He has been a Board Member since the mid 80’s on several Boards nationally and internationally.

He served as a Executive director with Blackstone India and was responsible for operational excellence of portfolio companies.

He also served on the board of the Times Group as an executive director, a leading Indian media and publishing conglomerate to help build organizational capability, culture and competitiveness.

Jeff Najarian
Independent Director – Jeff Najarian

Jeff is responsible for target assessment and business model due diligence.

Jeff Najarian founded Starpoint Solutions in 1982 and built it into one of the nation’s fastest-growing, privately held companies.

Goldman Sachs acquired a minority stake in the firm through its venture fund. Eventually he bought back Goldman’s stake and recapitalized the firm.

As a result of his guidance and Starpoint’s success, Starpoint was named to the elite ranks of Inc. 500’s Hall of Fame, to the CRN SolutionProvider 500 list for 15 years, to Crain’s New York Business’s coveted list of Top 200 Privately Held Companies, and to Deloitte & Touche’s prestigious “Fast 50” Program for the New York region.

Jeff eventually sold Starpoint to multi-billion dollar conglomerate Day & Zimmermann, the country’s top munitions vendor. He currently mentors entrepreneurs and is himself a serial entrepreneur.

Naresh Kothari
Independent Director – Naresh Kothari

Naresh is a seasoned Indian financial services professional with over 23 years of experience in business building and capital markets. During his career, he has held various operating as well as management responsibilities.

Naresh was one of the earliest Senior Partners at Edelweiss Financial Services, and was a key person involved in shaping it into one of the leading financial services firms of India. At Edelweiss, he led teams that built India’s largest domestic Institutional Brokerage business, a large coverage platform with some of the best corporate relationships in India, one of the most aggressive Equity Capital Markets platform and also a leading alternative asset management platform. During his 13-year tenure, he held various management roles including President of Edelweiss Capital, Senior member of Management Committee, Co-Head of Edelweiss Alternative Asset Advisors, Head of Coverage & ECM, and Co-Head of Institutional Equities. Naresh spent the initial years of his career in building and running an institutional equities sales & trading desk at ICICI Securities.

Along with building various financial services businesses, Naresh has also played an active role in advising Corporate India on business and capital markets strategy. This active engagement approach also led to development of very strong relationships with corporate India over the years. He remains an active Board member on a few of these corporates.