Abhilash Ravishankar

Current

• Field Engineer at Schlumberger
• Co-founder & Director at YoFa

Past

• Intern at Genesis Microchip (India) Pvt Ltd
• President at Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership (CEL), BITS Pilani
• Summer Research Fellow at Raman Research Institute

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Education

• Birla Institute of Technology and Science

Recommended

10 people have recommended Abhilash

Connections

360 connections

Industry

Oil & Energy

Abhilash Ravishankar’s Summary

'I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult', said E B White. I cannot describe my attitude to life in better words.

Over a year into the Oil & Gas Industry, I love the challenges of being responsible for millions of dollars of equipment and on-site crew; being the Schlumberger representative when selling and delivering fluid sampling services to some of the world's biggest oil companies in the Middle East.

I co-founded yofa (Youth Factor), a non-profit society in India, where we work on novel projects to engage youth in social change. Currently, I am developing the on-ground network and managing the community for Grassroutes.in, our first initiative.

In previous years, I have been involved with various entrepreneurial programs ranging from web 2.0 to social entrepreneurship ventures. I have been President of one of India's top 5 entrepreneurship centers for 18 months. With it, I bring experience in strategic entrepreneurial program development, conceptualizing & organizing business challenges and mixers, business plan development and fund-raising.

Key interests: General management and strategy. Energy markets. Web 2.0. Web technologies for non-profits.

Abhilash Ravishankar’s Specialties:

Strategy, Fund-raising, Business Planning, Business Development, Sales

Abhilash Ravishankar’s Experience

• Field Engineer

  Schlumberger

  (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; SLB; Oil & Energy industry)

  August 2007 — Present (2 years 4 months)

  Currently working in the Middle East as a Fluid Sampling Engineer, dealing with some of the biggest oil&gas companies in the world.
  
  I work as the on-site Schlumberger representative, delivering sampling services at the wellsite, and being responsible for collection of high-quality representative oil/gas samples for further analysis.

• Co-founder & Director

  YoFa

  (Non-Profit Organization Management industry)

  January 2007 — Present (2 years 11 months)

  Youth Factor (or YoFa, for short) is a non-profit society wherein we work on novel projects to engage Indian youth into social action/change. After brainstorming for a year on different paths to achieve our mission, we launched our first initiative in 2008.
  
  Grassroutes.in is our first initiative, which encourages youth to embark on road-trips, discover change-makers at the grassroots, bring back stories of inspiration to share with the world, and do their bit by driving campaigns to spread the change. [Visit http://grassroutes.in]

• Intern

  Genesis Microchip (India) Pvt Ltd

  (Public Company; 501-1000 employees; GNSS; Semiconductors industry)

  January 2007 — June 2007 (6 months)

  As part of my University's Industry linkage, I worked in a team of four on developing Simulink models for one of GNSS' products revolving around Digital Video Broadcasting.

• President

  Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership (CEL), BITS Pilani

  (Educational Institution; 11-50 employees; Think Tanks industry)

  April 2005 — October 2006 (1 year 7 months)

  Appointed President by the University to lead a group of 40 students of the Center (named one of the top 5 entrepreneurship centers in India by the Wadhwani Foundation)
  
  Activities included networking with entrepreneurs, VCs and industries for Business Plan development and funding; handling media; representing the Center at networking events; liasing with faculty and alumni to chart the way for the Center's progress.
  
  As a member of a team including faculty of the Center, prepared a 5-year plan for the Center and raised funding of about 40k USD.
  
  Scaled 'Conquest', a small B-Plan contest to one of India's finest International B-Plan contests.
  
  Conceptualized and co-created 'Stimulus', one of India's very few indigenous business simulation games for high-tech startups.
  
  Resurrected a Vocational Training Center for village women folk near Pilani (currently being run profitably as a co-operative), as part of a team of 8 students.

• Summer Research Fellow

  Raman Research Institute

  (Educational Institution; 201-500 employees; Research industry)

  May 2006 — July 2006 (3 months)

  Selected as one among 75 students across India by the Indian Academy of Sciences (IAS) as a Student Research Fellow for their Summer Research Fellowship Program.
  
  Worked across two departments, integrating efforts at both sites to realize a spectral correlator for astrometric use. Currently my work is being used in the Giant Meterwave Radio Telescope at Pune, India.

Abhilash Ravishankar’s Education

• Birla Institute of Technology and Science

  Bachelor of Engineering (Honors) , Electrical & Electronics , 2003 — 2007

  Graduated with honors.
  
  Awarded the Merit Scholarship for one year for obtaining highest GPA in the University's batch of 2003.
  
  Worked on projects in VLSI/Embedded Systems including the 'Design and implementation of an Intelligent Water Resources Management System' as part of a Microsoft Research funded project currently in use at the Center for Desert Development Technologies. I developed the algorithm and the user-interface of the system.
  
  Co-founded and led a team of 15 as Chief Editor of ‘Resonance’, the first freshman e-magazine at the university in 2004, which enjoyed a readership of close to 80% of freshmen.
  
  Co-founding student member of the BITS-IBM Linux Club in Jan 2005. Conducted lecture series for students on creation of Linux distributions.
  
  Hosted BITS Big Bout, a popular Business Forum/Panel Discussion at BITS Pilani
  
  Led the Election Commission of BITS Pilani, to conduct Student’s Union Elections for 1 year.

  Activities and Societies:

  Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership, English Language Activities Society, BITS-IBM Linux Club, Election Commission

Additional Information

Abhilash Ravishankar’s Interests:

Web startups, Social Media, Technology for non-profits, Youth activism, Peak Oil studies, Well Testing technologies, Geo-political energy issues; Architecture, Surrealist art, PC Gaming, Cycling

Abhilash Ravishankar’s Groups:

BITSAA, Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership, National Entrepreneurship Network

•    BITS Pilani Alumni
•    StartingBloc Online Alumni Network
•    Schlumberger
•    Startup Specialists
•    Think Oil !
•    Peak Oil Awareness
•    The Oil Drum Readers Group (Energy, Peak Oil, etc.)
•    Genesis Microchip Alumni Association

Abhilash Ravishankar’s Honors:

Selected for the StartingBloc Global Institute of Social Innovation 2008 at LBS, London.

Three ‘Excellence in Safety’ awards at Schlumberger Middle East, over a period of 6 months.

National Talent Scholarship Award (NTSE) awarded by NCERT in 2001 (Top 800 in India)

All India Talent Search Scholarship Award awarded by INCEF in 2000 (Top 100 in India)

Selected for the CSIR (Center for Scientific & Industrial Research) Programme for Youth on Leadership in Science (Top 1000 students in India) in 2002

Abhilash Ravishankar’s Contact Settings

Interested In:

• career opportunities
• consulting offers
• new ventures
• job inquiries
• expertise requests
• business deals
• reference requests
• getting back in touch