The Team

Sergei Bazhin selects investment and partnering opportunities in IT, energy, oil/gas and telecoms; he has conducted product, technology and venture assignments in gyroscopes for downhole drilling applications, software syntheses processing & verification in electronic design, software, satellite, wireless and microprocessor opportunities. Sergei has a MS in cybernetics and systems analysis from the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute.

Mr. Bazhin started his working career with PriceWaterhouse as a system developer on a billing/CRM software product that was spun out as a start-up company called Flagship (Moscow), and financed with VC. Flagship was acquired by Protek (London), a publicly traded UK company. At Flagship and Protek, Mr. Bazhin was software development engineer and software development project manager of billing/CRM systems for cellular and landline operators. With E-Style Software, Mr. Bazhin managed the project to gain a level 3 certification, and this is only the 2^nd Russian company to earn this certification. Mr. Bazhin is a native Russian speaker and fluent in English.

Navin Edwin has a Bachelor of Computer Engineering (First Class) from the SST College of Engineering & Technology, North Maharashtra University, India, and an MBA in International Business from the University of Canberra, Australia. Mr. Edwin is an Indian citizen with experience in the creation of Internet marketing strategies and applications. Mr. Edwin selects investment and partnering opportunities in the IT and general manufacturing industries. He has conducted product, technology and venture investment in software, hardware and telecommunications opportunities.

Thomas Nastas is president & founder of IVI, with a B.A., cum laude, and a M.B.A., cum laude, both from Michigan State University. IVI invests capital into US technology companies since 1986. View his resume here, investments here and contributions in Board of Directors here.

He led IVI’s entry into Canada, Europe, Africa & the CIS; established relationships, accessed markets, raised capital to finance the start-up & management of international cash flow & venture capital funds. His early career included product development engineer, Ford Motor Company: Manager of product planning & market development at Multifastner Corp., & Donnelly Mirrors (automotive suppliers): Management consultant to AMF, Lear Sigler, Votrax Speech Synthesis, Sinteris Magnetics, Chinese Computer Communications, Recomtex & others.

Mr. Nastas conducted product, technology and venture capital assignments in automotive, computer hardware & software, energy, oil/gas, speech synthesis, plant, animal and human health to name a few.

Mr. Nastas was Managing Director, US Russia Investment Fund; Chief Investment officer & Senior Advisor, HP Russia, LP; Founder & General Partner, the Michigan Product Development Fund. He advised the IFC, the World Bank, the EU, the Canadian Business Development Bank, Financiere St. Dominique, the Government of Kazakhstan, HP Russia LP, and others in the creation of seed and early stage funds. Mr. Nastas raised US$283,000,000 of capital for these and other funds under the management of IVI and others.

Thomas participated in the board of directors of US companies including Applied Intelligence Systems Inc., Neogen Corp., Personal Bibliographic Software, and Russian companies Flexoprint (Volgograd,) Frank’s Ice Cream (Magadan) MCRI (Seattle, WA) and Sotsgorbank (Moscow).

Mr. Nastas is author of international articles and presenter at global conferences on topics of venture capital, technology and innovation. He is Professor of Marketing at the American Institute of Economics & Business College (Moscow) where he teaches evening MBA classes in Entrepreneurship/Venture Capital, Introduction to Marketing and Sales Management (click on a link to view course syllabus). Additionally, Mr. Nastas is a volunteer of ‘MBA Advising’, at Pericles (Moscow), a non-profit institution that tutors Russians for admission to MBA universities in Europe and the USA. Mr. Nastas assists Russians in the strategy and writing of answers to MBA essay questions and their preparation for entrance interviews.

Mr. Nastas is a U. S. citizen. He speaks intermediate Russian.

Tegid Roberts sources corporate partnering opportunities with UK companies seeking technologies supplied by Russian SMEs, institutes and developers in IT, telecommunications, electronics and software. Previously Mr. Roberts was technical strategist at Sony TV Europe, advisor to Sony Venture Capital Europe and software engineer at Sony’s Advanced Technology Group. Mr. Roberts performed a variety of technology scouting assignments for Sony Venture Capital, Benchmark Capital and Finance Wales.

Mr. Roberts technical and investment assignments have included embedded software for flat panel displays, semiconductors, RFID, display technologies and recording/broadcast systems. He designed software for a broadcast/recording system sold to NBC, Peter Gabriel and Sony Music. Mr. Roberts has a BE from the University of York, Department of Electronics, and is a member of the Audio Engineering Society, the Institute of Electrical Engineering and the Society for Information Display. Mr. Roberts is a British citizen, speaks English (fluent) and Welsh (Mother tongue).

Olena Stadnyuk selects investment and partnering opportunities in the life sciences; she has conducted assignments in inhalable proteins and inhalation devices for Alpha, Beta & Gamma Interferon, proliposomal technologies for the delivery of drugs, cosmetics and vitamins and biochip technologies for the analysis, processing and analysis of a variety of diseases including TB, leukemia, AIDS and STDs. Dr. Stadnyuk has an M.D from the National Medical University, Kiev, Ukraine. Dr. Stadnyuk is Ukrainian, speaks Ukraine (mother tongue), with fluency in Russian, English, and an intermediate speaker of Spanish.

Previously Ms. Stadnyuk was Research Assistant, Laboratory of Cancerogentics (Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow), Laboratory of Biomagnetical Studies (Institute of Cardiology, Kiev), Laboratory of Pharmacological Studies (National Medical University, Kiev), and Laboratory of Histological Studies (National Medical University, Kiev). Dr. Stadnyuk’s research work has appeared in articles published in medical journals and presented at international medical conferences.

RETURN TO TOP