About Us

Shyam Rao

Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer

Shyam Rao is the Co-Founder and CEO of Punchh, the world leader in delivering dynamic, one-to-one customer engagement through artificial intelligence, mobile-first expertise, and omnichannel communications for restaurants and retailers. Punchh’s solutions are designed to guide consumers through their lifecycle from customer to loyalist, delighting them along the way, and dramatically increasing lifetime customer value. Nearly 200 global enterprise brands rely on Punchh to grow revenue by building customer relationships.

Previously, Shyam held various senior positions at Motorola in its CDMA and WiMAX divisions. His experience at Motorola led him to co-found LoCognition, a mobile location based services (LBS) startup focused on aggregating and standardizing access to subscribers through a proprietary platform across different cellular networks.

Shyam holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering from the University of Toronto and an MBA from the University of Chicago.

Sastry Penumarthy

Co-Founder & VP Strategy

Sastry Penumarthy is the Co-Founder and VP of Strategy at Punchh, the world leader in delivering dynamic, one-to-one customer engagement through artificial intelligence, mobile-first expertise, and omnichannel communications for restaurants and retailers. Along with his co-founders, Sastry built Punchh from its alpha product to becoming the market leader in the restaurant industry with nearly 200 global enterprise brands.

Prior to Punchh, Sastry led Product Marketing teams, launched products, and ultimately grew revenue at various CRM and marketing platform companies like HotSchedules, InsideView Inc., BEA Systems, and Siebel Systems. In addition, he co-founded Nuevora, a big data analytics services company where he designed and developed analytics capabilities for Fortune 500 companies.

He holds a Masters of Science in Chemical Engineering from UC Santa Barbara and an MBA in Finance and Marketing from the University of Chicago.

Aditya Sanghi

Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer

Aditya Sanghi is the Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Punchh, the world leader in delivering dynamic, one-to-one customer engagement through artificial intelligence, mobile-first expertise, and omnichannel communications for restaurants and retailers. He has led tech on the platform since inception, including the build of the server platform and native apps.

Prior to Punchh Aditya worked at ADC Telecommunications and owned Rising Sun Tech, a company that focused on building and running Web based business applications like Salaree.com and Risemoney.com. Earlier in his career he was a business consultant for various companies in Germany (Nexnet), Sweden (Accenture), and Thailand (Hutch).

He is a Graduate of Queensland University of Technology, Australia with a bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Computer Science and Software Development.

Don Wight

Chief Revenue Officer

Don Wight is the Chief Revenue Officer at Punchh, the world leader in delivering dynamic, one-to-one customer engagement through artificial intelligence, mobile-first expertise, and omnichannel communications for restaurants and retailers.

Don has been in Enterprise Software sales management for over 20 years and has led several companies through the scaling years. He was part of an IPO at Netcentives, one of the original online loyalty companies, as well as other experiences where the company grew to over $100M in revenue. He has led all functions of the GTM team over his career and heads up the Sales and Customer Success teams globally here at Punchh.

He has an extensive sales background, having received a bachelor’s degree in International Business from the University of California, Berkeley.

Anish Mehta

Chief Financial Officer

Anish Mehta is the Chief Financial Officer at Punchh, the world leader in delivering dynamic, one-to-one customer engagement through artificial intelligence, mobile-first expertise, and omnichannel communications for restaurants and retailers.

Prior to Punchh, Anish was the CFO at Clover Networks, a First Data company, builds the largest open-architecture point of sale solution aimed at small & medium sized business owners. Earlier in Anish’s career, he was Head of Capital Markets at First Data Corporation and the SVP of Finance, Operations and Investments for CBRE.

He holds a Master of Business Administration in Finance and Economics from the University of Chicago and a Master of Science in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.