Hari Iyer Email & Phone Number

Palo Alto, Ca, Us

Palo Alto, California

Kapeesh is a low cost, chat-based math and science homework help platform for students from middle school to college (650M+ worldwide) who can’t afford traditional tutoring at $50-$100 per hour. Students upload a picture of the math or science problem they are stuck on. Independent, pedigreed tutors on our back-end respond in real-time on chat and help users work through the problem step-by-step.Kapeesh is trying to solve a few big problems: - the first one is AFFORDABILITY of non-school private help. Every student can benefit from extra tutoring, but 99% of them can’t afford to pay $50-$100 bucks an hour. So private tutoring is really a 1%-er solution. But the need for better math and science skills, which lead to better colleges, is much higher for the other 99%.- the second is CONFIDENCE. The average student has so much fear about math and science, which turns into a lack of confidence and self-image. There’s so much self-talk about “I’m just not a math and science kid”, so they end up avoiding challenging classes in school and college, and a lot of them end up making career choices that doesn’t match their real potential. - and the last one is ATTENTION. We let students choose when they want help. They’re truly engaged when they’re struggling through homework late at night or prepping for a test the next morning. They need somebody to guide them through their confusion or nudge them through homework problems, but there’s usually no teacher or tutor or parent or friends around to help them out at that time, so they lose an opportunity to learn.

From my dealings with car dealerships, repair shops, and insurance companies over the years, it was clear to me that every node in the car value chain is designed to take advantage of the customer, so I set out to disrupt car ownership. This was the genesis of YOYO, my on-demand pay-per-mile car subscription startup. I brought many automotive OEMs and insurance companies to the partnership table, including a big box retailer to run a pilot in the Bay Area and an opportunity to scale to their stores nationwide.

Elio Motors is a designer, developer and manufacturer of highly fuel-efficient, low-cost automobiles. Its flagship product is the Elio, which is a disruptive 3-wheeler at $7500 sticker and 84 mpg highway. At that mpg, the Elio will deliver fuel efficiency that is unrivaled in the market today (for an IC powertrain).

Envia Systems (acquired by Zenlabs Energy, Inc. - www.zenlabsinc.com) was a venture-backed advanced lithium-ion battery materials and reference cell design company. Marquee investors in the ~$30M raised included Bay Partners, Redpoint Ventures, GM Ventures, Asahi Kasei, and Asahi Glass. I was brought in to Envia as part of a 3-person turnaround team to commercialize their high energy density lithium-ion battery technology. Over 2 years, I crafted a multi-year licensing agreement with a large automotive OEM with per-car royalties far beyond what Fortune 100 auto component suppliers make. I created a transformative "fabless Intel" business model for Envia in the Li-ion battery space. I assisted the CEO with the successful PR campaign for Envia's 400 Wh/kg announcement. I managed a multi-year, 4-party automotive production program across US and South Korea. I also managed a key Japanese supply chain partner for material scale-up and product launch.

In 2006, I was part of the 6-person founding team and Head of Product at V-Vehicle (rebranded as Next Autoworks). The goal was to create an ultra fuel-efficient, low-priced car to be sold at Big Box retail stores. The stellar set of investors participating in the $90M capital raised included Kleiner Perkins, Google Ventures, T. Boone Pickens, and others. Steve Jobs, Gen. Colin Powell, Al Gore, and Gov. Bobby Jindal were also involved in the project.As Head of Product, I created and directed the industry’s first collaborative vehicle development process called CarWorks (modeled after Lockheed's SkunkWorks), which involved recruiting around 65 major Tier-1 automotive suppliers at the C-level executive and Division President level. I led a team of 150 engineers and set the original vehicle architecture including powertrain selection. The lean and collaborative CarWorks process resulted in the completion of higher quality, soft-tooled running prototypes in one-third of the budget used by traditional OEM programs. I delivered the first production-intent prototypes, which performed highly against competitive vehicles and logged over 5,000 miles without technical issues. Please check out the video of the running prototype below.

Mba

Ms, Mechanical Engineering

Be (Hons), Mechanical Engineering