Mandar Agashe

Mandar Dnyaneshwar Agashe (born 24 May 1969) is an Indian businessman, music director, and former musician. He founded Sarvatra Technologies in 2000, and has served as the company's managing director since its inception.

As a musician, he is remembered for his pop and rock music releases in Hindi and English under Sony BMG in the 1990s and 2000s, and for music directing Marathi ghazal albums for Asha Bhosle in 2016, and Rahul Deshpande in 2021.

Biography

Early life and family: 1969–1991

Agashe was born on 24 May 1969 in Mumbai, Maharashtra, into an aristocratic and entrepreneurial Chitpavan brahmin family of industrialist Dnyaneshwar Agashe of the Agashe ''gharana'' of Mangdari, and wife Rekha Gogte, of the Gogte ''gharana'' of Belgaum.

Through his father, Agashe is a grandson of Chandrashekhar Agashe, a nephew of Panditrao Agashe and Shakuntala Karandikar, an older brother of Ashutosh and Sheetal Agashe, of distant relation to Third Anglo-Maratha War general Bapu Gokhale, musician Ashutosh Phatak, historian Dinkar G. Kelkar, and scientist P. K. Kelkar.

Through his mother, Agashe is a great-nephew of B. M. Gogte, a first cousin to poet Rashmi Parekh, a descendant of the aristocratic Latey (Bhagwat) family, and of relation to Kokuyo Camlin head Dilip Dandekar, and academic Jyoti Gogte.

Agashe graduated with a BE degree in software engineering from the Pune Institute of Computer Technology in 1990. He has been married to Aparna Pandharkar since 1996; she adopted the name Jiza Agashe upon marriage. They have two children.

Early business career: 1991–2008

In 1991, Agashe was appointed to the board of directors at his grandfather's Brihan Maharashtra Sugar Syndicate, going on to become the joint managing director of the syndicate in 1994, the same year he was appointed a director on his father's Suvarna Sahakari Bank. He founded a number of companies under the Brihans Group – Brihans Pharmaceuticals, an ayurvedic medicine company in 1998, and ''musicurry.com'', an internet radio company in 1999, the same year, he resigned as joint managing director of the syndicate.

By December 1999, Agashe and his CEO Gautam Godse had partnered with California-based software company Questionable Ventures to develop ''musicurry.com'', and in January 2000 he invited Usha Mangeshkar to be the internet radio's creative consultant, with Agashe announcing plans to upload the Mangeshkar family archives to the web service by February–March 2000. The web service was officially launched on 13 January 2000.

In April 2000, he founded Brihans Natural Products, a skincare products manufacturing company, and under him launched its signature aloe vera product range in 2002. In June 2000, he established Sarvatra Technologies, a company that developed banking software for Suvarna Sahakari Bank; alongside his other financial technology companies, EBZ Online and Codito Technologies, also being founded in 2000. In 2002, Agashe purchased stake in Deepak Ghaisas' I-flex Solutions, after the company agreed to partner with Codito, with Ghaisas joining the board of directors. In April 2002, he contributed an essay titled ''My Father'' to his father's festschrift.

In 2006, Agashe launched "Anywhere Money" POS terminals under his company Saravatra Technologies to praise and support from politicians such as Shankarrao Gadakh in the Government of Maharashtra. By 2007, Agashe had merged the business operations of EBZ Technologies and Codito with Sarvatra Technologies and partnered with Larry Ellison at the Oracle Corporation to introduce banking software technology to rural India, after the Reserve Bank of India's governor Y. V. Reddy and economist Raghuram Rajan approved the plans in January 2008.

Suvarna Sahakari Bank scam allegations: 2008–2009

In November 2008, Agashe was one of the directors implicated during Suvarna Sahakari Bank's ₹4.3 billion alleged scam case. His family, along with other board members of the bank, were arrested on the charges of alleged misuse of their rights to sanction loans to firms owned by themselves and then defaulting those loans, thereby duping the bank's depositors. Agashe was in Germany at the time of the arrests, returning to India for his father's funeral in January 2009.

Agashe was taken into judicial custody in February 2009. After his father's death, Agashe was approached by former depositors of the bank for repayment of the defaulted loans. In early March 2009, he was remanded to magisterial custody after his initial plea for bail was rejected. He was charged with having sanctioned forged loan proposals amounting to ₹1.13 billion. Agashe was subsequently released on bail on 11 March, but was kept under house arrest until the bank merger was resolved. The bank was eventually dissolved and merged with the Indian Overseas Bank in May 2009.

Later business career: 2009–present

In 2011, Agashe launched Sarvatra's POS terminals to Urban co-operative banks in the Solapur district. Under Agashe's chairmanship, having previously been appointed the company's vice-chair as of 2018, the company's financial switch helping 450 co-operative banks and 50 urban co-operative banks, by 2018 and by 2020 respectively, connect to India's National Electronic Funds Transfer service.

In 2020, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Agashe announced he would consider making half of his employees work from home post-lockdown, further stating that cashless transactions would increase given the risk of contamination and social distancing norms. In February 2021, he was a panelist at a fintech conclave hosted by ''Businessworld''. Between 2021 and 2022, Agashe was often quoted by several publications as an expert for the banking software and financial technology sectors. In March 2023, Agashe stated that it was Sarvatra Technologies' mission to showcase its Unified Payments Interface capabilities to highlight India's payment software cababilities at the 2023 G20 New Delhi summit. In September 2023, he was a panelist at a conference hosted by Banca d'Italia in Rome discussing the Payment Services Directive.

In June 2024, he was part of a delegation hosted by Keith Rowley, then Prime Minister of Trinidad & Tobago, exploring the possibility of introducing Sarvatra Technologies' digital payments technology to the country. In August 2024, he was a panelist at the 9th Global Economic Summit at the World Trade Centre, Mumbai, discussing emerging technologies in fintech. In October 2024, the Maharashtra Brahmin Mandal felicitated Agashe and Prasad Oak at the Tilak Smarak Ranga Mandir with entrepreneurship and artist awards, respectively.

Musical career

During his final year in college, Agashe was introduced to Hridaynath Mangeshkar, who invited him to compose music for the Shirish Atre-Pai

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