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Bahar Wadia
CBO
Bahar Wadia is an engineering professional who shifted gears to become a successful entrepreneurial executive known for his adeptness at scaling companies. With a keen interest in problem-solving, Bahar has a proven track record of building exceptional teams to turn innovative ideas into profitable ventures. He is a skilled public speaker with strong fundraising and networking abilities, excelling in forging partnerships and driving substantial top- and bottom-line growth for multimillion-dollar enterprises.
Throughout his career, Bahar has achieved remarkable milestones in various industries including semiconductors, display technologies, utilities, and telecomm. Notably, he spearheaded the growth and scale-up of Visionox's North American pipeline from $1 million to $150 million in just two years after a period of stagnant revenues. He also made significant cost-saving contributions to McDonald's by introducing a solution that revolutionized training and beverage dispensing processes, resulting in multimillion-dollar annual savings.
Bahar's value creation capabilities shone through as he transformed TouchSensor from a $2 million to a $60 million ARR company using innovative sales strategies and custom engineering approaches. As a startup co-founder, he played a pivotal role in scaling UICO to an $18 million ARR business, catering to esteemed clients like Garmin, Johnson Outdoors, and United Technologies. Bahar's expertise extends to capital raise activities, having successfully secured $15 million from Seed through Series B funding rounds.
With a diverse skill set, Bahar excels in entrepreneurial leadership, innovation, customer-centric strategies, product-market fit identification, long-term planning, digital transformation, marketing, growth initiatives, product development, sales, profitability management, AI, IoT, SaaS solutions, software and hardware development, operations management, supply chain optimization, and financial analysis. He is also well-versed in negotiations, contracting, financial modeling, P&L management, investor relations, venture capital, private equity, and mergers and acquisitions.
Bahar's academic background includes a Master of Business Administration (MBA) with a focus on Economics, Behavioral Economics, Marketing, Strategy, and Finance from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He has also pursued courses in Machine Learning at Stanford University and holds a Master's degree in Software Engineering from DePaul University, along with Bachelor's degrees in Electronics Engineering and Polymer/Plastics Engineering from DeVry University and University of Massachusetts Lowell, respectively. His educational journey began with high school studies in General Sciences at The Scindia School in Gwalior.
Over the years, Bahar has held key positions in several organizations, including serving as the Interim Chief Business Officer at Six15 Technologies, Board Member at Qwake Technologies, Managing Partner at Qntm Ventures, and Entrepreneur in Residence at Intellectual Ventures. He has also taken on leadership roles such as President at Novinium Underground, CEO of Visionox North America, Executive Business Advisor at Qwake, and CEO and Co-founder at UICO. His early career saw him contribute meaningfully as the Director of Product and Principal Software Engineer at TouchSensor Technologies, alongside roles at ACT / Invensys Controls and Bell Labs as a Software Engineer and Lab Engineer, respectively.
