About Us

A co-founder at Beroe, Mitch is also CEO of the International Academy of Public Safety, Inc., an online educational center of excellence for public safety professionals, and the founder of NanoPhrades, a strategic partner to private equity firms, delivering research, insight, and strategy development services.

An accomplished scholar and professional leader with over 25 years of academic and business experiences, Mitch is recognized for high-profile turnaround achievements affecting revenue, stability, and profitability. Mitch speaks 4 languages and holds a Black Belt in Taekwondo and Aikido. He has a passion for cooking, fine red wine, hiking, water sports, and big band music. He is also an honorary member of the United States Army Special Operations Command. He is a proud father of two accomplished sons.

Mitch grew up in Norman, Oklahoma completing all of his education in the Mid-West. He moved to NC in late 1980's to become a professor at North Carolina State University where he became the youngest professor to be inducted into its Academy of Outstanding Teachers.

Rob is the Bank of America University Distinguished Professor of Supply Chain Management at North Carolina State University and Director of the Supply Chain Resource Cooperative (http://scm.ncsu.edu). The SCRC is the first major industry - university partnership to integrate student projects into the MBA curriculum, and has had 15 Fortune 100 companies participating as industry partners since 1999.

Prior to this role, Robert was an Associate Professor with the Global Procurement and Supply Chain Benchmarking Initiative at Michigan State University from 1992-1999, working closely with Professor Robert Monczka.

Rob is the author of several books on supply chain management, and has published many scholarly articles on the subject. He is considered a thought leader in the field of strategic sourcing, supply market intelligence, and supplier relationship management. He has spoken on these subjects at companies around the world, including China, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Latin America, Germany, Korea, Japan, the UK, and other regions.

Rob grew up in Calgary, Canada, playing hockey and downhill skiing. Currently, he commutes weekly from Charleston, South Carolina to NC State. His wife Sandi is a mathematics professor at the College of Charleston, and he has a daughter and a son. He enjoys the outdoors and has completed several marathons and triathlons, as well as spending time fly fishing with his son in the North Carolina mountains.

Robert received his PhD in Operations Management from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a BSc in Applied Math from the University of British Columbia.

As the CEO and President of Beroe Inc, Vel is the guiding hand behind Beroe‘s transition from a start-up to a mature, global enterprise with more than 400 people. Beroe is the result of a study that Vel conducted in 2003 with the CPOs of fifty Fortune 1000 companies.

In this study, the CPOs revealed that their top two areas of concern were the lack of good market intelligence and supplier/supply chain risk. In founding Beroe in 2005, Vel‘s vision was to create an organization that embodies the statement “The future of procurement intelligence” while strategically partnering with clients as an extension of their procurement function.

Before founding Beroe, Vel had extensive procurement and supply chain consulting experience for over 30 Fortune 500 companies. Vel is a prominent speaker at major procurement/supply chain events like ISM, ProcureCon, Procurement Leaders, EIPM, CIPS, SCIP, F4SS, LogiPharma, AME and MAPI. Passionate about procurement, travel, architecture and entrepreneurship, Vel‘s idol is Tom Enders, the CEO of Airbus. Vel is married and has two kids. Vel completed his MSc (Hons) Chemistry and BE (Hons) Mechanical Engineering from BITS Pilani, and his Masters in Operations Research, NC State University.

Vale leads Beroe’s Capital and Site Services, Marketing Services and Procurement Outsourcing, Oil & Gas, Facilities Management and our Latin American operations. Vale started life in Beroe as an analyst in 2006 when it was in garage start-up mode and is now one of our Associate Vice Presidents of Indirect Services and Oil and Gas. In the past 8 years at Beroe, he has supervised 1,000+ deep dive projects. Vale’s experience includes working with clients across a wide range of industries such as Life Sciences, Consumer Packaged Goods, Chemicals, Mining, BFSI and Oil & Gas.

A frequent speaker at procurement conferences his strength lies in framing innovative procurement solutions. His vision is to redefine the procurement intelligence landscape into one where information and advice is measured only for effectiveness hence pushing the bar for integrated and continuous partnerships across the industry.

Vale is from the town of Madurai which he feels is the food capital of the world. His first job was in a drag car motorsports engineering team and still is very passionate about anything which runs on an internal combustion engine. He splits his time between the Beroe office and vehicle overhauling workshops. Once a swimmer and now a weekend power-lifter he idolizes the Royal Enfield, Rajinikanth and Chip Foose in that order.

Vale has completed his Masters from University of North Carolina and graduated in Engineering from Thiagarajar College of Engineering.

As Vice President of Products, Rahul Devarakonda leads the global product development strategy, supplier and expert relations and knowledge management team. He is responsible for strategy and direction of the product vertical across the company’s service offering.

Mr. Devarakonda brings over 15 years of Procurement, technology sales and management experience to Beroe Inc. Rahul joins us from Cincinnati Bell Inc., where he led the sourcing and procurement organization as Director, Procurement.

Prior to that, he held various senior management roles including Global Account Management Head, Assistant Vice President of Operations and Service Delivery, Supplier and Vendor relationships owner at GE and GENPACT.

Vinod is responsible for business development in the Americas region. He is a senior leader in the Dallas office of Beroe Inc. Over the last 4 years, he has focused on leading market research and assisting global clients in their approach to developing and leveraging industry best practices in procurement transformation and strategic sourcing.

Areas of expertise include procurement outsourcing, strategic sourcing, procurement excellence, and risk management. Earlier in his career, he helped the senior leadership team in formulating solution strategy around up-and-coming technologies at Collabera Consulting. Prior to that, he led strategy & business development at a start up in Bahrain. At Infosys, he worked in the consulting group, focusing primarily on strategy and operations cases, and lived for 8 years in the U.S. He has an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management and a B.E in Mechanical Engineering from Anna University.

Vinod has ample reason for discomfort when the topic turns to technology: He co-founded a start up that was short-lived, due largely to the fact that “technology has the shelf life of a fruit”. When not at work or spending time with family, Vinod usually does something related to food. One day he is determined to start a fine-dining restaurant.

As Group VP, Hemant leads a group of Beroe’s Industry /Regional VPs whose remit covers client acquisition & expansion, value delivery & retention and identifying new service offerings to ensure industry sector leadership. His additional responsibilities includes building partnerships with leading consulting & technology firms and building a support organization for Beroe’s transition to a “non-linear” growth model.

During the past 15 years, he has successfully scaled up new businesses / practice areas for emerging companies such as Zycus and Selectica, winning new clients within ‘Global 1000’ space, across USA, Europe and APAC for enterprise software & advisory services in Procurement. He has directed business development, solution consulting and customer success management organizations.

Prior to Beroe, Hemant was VP Global Sales & Customer Success at Zycus Inc, a provider of SaaS Procurement solutions and a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant. As part of their Exec team, he grew the operations from a startup phase to winning 200+ new clients globally. He also served as Zycus’ executive sponsor counterpart to client CPOs. He enjoys traveling globally, trying local food & wine and getting to know the local cultures. He lives in New Jersey, loves spending time with his family (he has 2 kids), listening to music & watching sports with his friends (avid fan of Lakers and Mumbai Indians).

Hemant studied Electronics Engineering and Management in India. He grew up in Goa, studied in Pune/ Mumbai and worked internationally. But, he has stayed a ‘Goan’ at heart !

Supriyo is Vice President of Technology and Customer Experience at Beroe. In his role, he oversees the technologies that empower Beroe’s customers with continuous advantage in procurement.

Supriyo is a seasoned technology professional and comes with rich experience in IT Strategic Planning, Service Delivery & Management, Engineering and Operations. He spent close to 10 years in the IT Services playing various roles in Delivery and Management for Wipro and Infosys. Prior to joining Beroe, Supriyo was Head of Information Systems & Security at GlobeTouch, where he spearheaded implementation of several Business Process Automation, Analytics and Security solutions.

A die-hard fan of Barca and Lionel Messi, Supriyo lives up to the true Bengali passion for soccer. His favorite pastime is investment research and planning for his next road-trip. Supriyo holds a Post Graduate in Management from Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad and B.E in Electrical Engineering from Bengal Engineering College, Shibpur (Kolkata).

Projjal is responsible for enabling procurement decisions at over 170 Fortune 500 companies. Prior to Beroe, Projjal has essayed leadership roles at global research & business consulting firms such as Lucintel, Synovate Business Consulting and Frost & Sullivan. He has steered consulting projects for Fortune 500 clients in market entry, procurement and due diligence across Aerospace, Automotive, Chemicals, Agro-chemicals, Advanced materials, Healthcare, Energy and Electronics industry.

Projjal grew up in the picturesque North-Eastern part of India. He loves travelling and has a keen interest in nature photography, which stems from respect and appreciation for cultural diversity and a deep love for nature. He is quite the sportsman, excelling in Badminton and Football. He lives with his wife and twin daughters.

Projjal graduated top of his class and holds a Post Graduate degree in Applied Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras and a Business Management degree from KIAMS.

Anand has the coolest job in Beroe - ensure the hard work and insight of Beroe’s smart analysts gets converted into credit for Brand Beroe.

Prior to joining Beroe, Anand spent a decade in the IT services industry essaying various roles in marketing for TCS and HCL Technologies, including five years in Los Angeles with the Media and Entertainment vertical of TCS. In his last role, as the head of the brand office at HCL Technologies, Anand was part of a team that made B2B guerrilla marketing an art form.

A once voracious reader, now mostly a cricket tragic, Anand spends his free time unleashing his so-called sense of humor on everyone around - mostly causing polite nods and raised eye brows followed by empty neighborhoods. Anand is a post graduate in management from the Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode (IIMK), with a bachelors in science from Bhavan’s College, Hyderabad.