Neelesh Bhatia
Founder & CEO
Serial founder with multiple successful exits and 20+ years building ventures and innovation ecosystems across Asia. Neelesh founded AKADASIA, Southeast Asia's largest educator community. thegurucool is his second venture built for teachers, in a market he knows first-hand.
- Founded AKADASIA, Southeast Asia's largest educator community
- Architected UniVentures, Vietnam's largest virtual incubator, with 1,000+ startups supported concurrently
- Former Director of Strategy, NUS Enterprise BLOCK71, scaling startup ecosystems across Southeast Asia
- Educator at heart: former Singapore Polytechnic lecturer and regular speaker at EDUtech Asia and regional edtech forums
More about Neelesh
Neelesh has spent two decades at the intersection of education and entrepreneurship in Asia: teaching at Singapore Polytechnic, designing national-scale incubation programmes, and building products that put educators first. A regular speaker at EDUtech Asia and across the regional edtech circuit, he brings an unmatched network of schools, universities and education ministries to thegurucool's mission of preparing every teacher for the AI era.
May Yang
Co-Founder & COO
15 years building and running technology businesses across Asia, Europe and the US, from standing up a 5-person startup office to leading global operations for 13,000 people. At thegurucool, May leads product delivery and operations, working hands-on with the engineering team to build the platform.
- Led global operations at Synechron: delivery, workforce and platform automation across 13,000 employees
- C-suite leadership in digital transformation and enterprise AI adoption, most recently as President, North America (Synechron)
- Led M&A due diligence and integration across UK and Europe, delivering $30M in synergies
- Advisory Board member, Brighter Children, supporting schools in developing countries
More about May
May's career spans every stage of scale: launching Synechron's Singapore and Hong Kong offices, building its UK hub from 5 to 300 people, running global operations for 13,000 employees, and leading its largest region as President, North America. An engineer by training (BA Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, NTU) with an MBA from Columbia Business School and London Business School, she drove Synechron's automation, AI adoption and process-optimization agenda, experience she now applies directly to building thegurucool's platform and operations.