TiE Toronto

Upasana Sharma is a Global Board Trustee at TiE and President of TiE Toronto, as well as Co-Managing Partner at Tangentia Ventures and board member of Angel One Network Inc. She began her career in law at Lerners LLP in Toronto and works with founders on capital raising, governance frameworks, and cross-border expansion. A MacArthur Foundation Scholar with an LLM from the University of Toronto, she maintains a network of global investors, legal experts, and operators focused on structured company scaling.

Azhar Janjua is Chief of Staff and Board Advisory at SMARTBUILD Construction Solutions and Chairman of Rosegate Group, which manages investments including True North Fund, Knowledgehook, and Tritonwear. Previously General Counsel at SOTI, he was involved in scaling the organization from $20M to $100M USD. He serves on advisory boards for Smartbuild, Cloudcure, and Aethics.ai, and previously led initiatives at Communitech including the Communitech Outposts EOR solution and Elevate IP, Canada's federal startup investment program.

Jey Narayanan is founder and CEO of Aculeap Inc, a company focused on go-to-market strategy and artificial intelligence. His work examines product launches and market entry decisions to identify and communicate effective strategies for market success.

Kanchan Kumar is co-founder and CEO of Truly Financial, a platform providing multi-currency accounts, cross-border payments, and embedded financial infrastructure for small and medium-sized businesses. He brings over two decades of entrepreneurial experience across ventures in six countries. Kumar contributes to the fintech and startup ecosystem as a speaker and mentor at organizations including the World Bank, GITEX Dubai, TiECon, Antler, DMZ, Techstars, and TiE.

Nisarg Lakhmani founded Nisarg Media Productions in 2012, building it into a Canadian visual content producer with three operational divisions: Film, Events, and Brands. The company provides end-to-end creative services including film and web production, full-service event planning and execution with integrated technology, and digital marketing and branding strategy for clients ranging from global media companies to emerging enterprises. Lakhmani has directed narrative films including Minus 35, a feature centered on illegal border crossing between the United States and Canada.

Zahin Hussain is a Senior Advisor for Stakeholder Engagement at the Ontario Securities Commission's Innovation Office, where he oversees TestLab, an agile testing program for capital market innovations. He brings international experience in venture capital partnerships, including a role as Vice President of Partnerships at Ankur Capital, and has previously worked with multilateral organizations and innovation hubs, including an incubation center at a South Korean engineering university and the Asian Development Bank's education financing facility.