Akhil Suresh Nair

I grew up in Kochi, Kerala, in southern India. My dad is a scientist who built a life-saving biotech product but struggled to bring it to market. Watching that taught me something I never forgot: great products do not sell themselves.

I studied engineering at VIT University, earned two MBAs (one from NMIMS in Mumbai, one from Babson College near Boston on a full scholarship), and worked at organizations ranging from Abbott Healthcare to HT Media, where I managed the expansion of FM radio studios and built the e-commerce operation for one of India's largest media companies. In 2017, I moved to the United States through Babson's Global Entrepreneur-in-Residence program with nothing but a suitcase and a conviction that I could build something meaningful.

I started consulting for small e-commerce businesses and kept seeing the same problem: brands drowning in data, spending hours on manual ad optimization, with no clear way to grow. During the pandemic, I turned that insight into Xena Intelligence, an AI-powered platform that helps CPG and e-commerce brands grow on Amazon and Walmart.

In 2022, I won the Render pitch competition and the Vogt Awards in Louisville, Kentucky, and decided to move my company and my life here. I got accepted into Techstars NYC the same year. Today, Xena serves over 100 brands including Fortune 500 companies like Nestle. I have won over $1.65 million in pitch competitions. I sit on the board of the Louisville Orchestra. And I am still just getting started.