Mandeep co-founded Cantaloupe Systems and is the company’s chief executive officer. He is responsible for setting Cantaloupe Systems’ overall direction and product strategy.
Born into a family in the vending business, Mandeep stocked his first vending machine when he was 13, and has never stopped trying to make the industry smarter, faster, and better. Today, he and the Cantaloupe Systems team are helping vending machine operators optimize their business operations through innovative technologies and services, including wireless communications and cloud-based applications.
While keeping his hand in vending through his family’s business, Mandeep began his entrepreneurial career with a website development business started while in high school. Mandeep met his Cantaloupe Systems co-founder, Anant Agrawal, at UCLA, and immediately found common ground in their shared interest in entrepreneurship and technology.
Mandeep has had a variety of relevant work experience, including Work Life and Cisco Systems. While working with these companies, Mandeep had the opportunity to research, analyze, and improve data-driven service offerings, while also gaining knowledge in testing and quality assurance in software and hardware. His experience at Cisco in particular gave Mandeep an appreciation for network connectivity that helped shape his vision for Cantaloupe Systems. What he learned through his online service experience with these companies contributed to Mandeep’s creation of Cantaloupe Systems’ innovative, web-connected vending solutions designed to lift vending from a plodding, best-guess industry to a more precise, technology-driven undertaking.
Mandeep earned a B.S. degree in Engineering from UCLA.
Mandeep’s favorite vending snack is Peanut M&Ms. |
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Anant co-founded Cantaloupe Systems and is the company’s chief marketing officer. As CMO, Anant is responsible for worldwide business development, customer management, sales, advertising and communications.
Anant’s love of entrepreneurship began in high school, when his computer-building business, Laltech Computers, grew into a $600K operation. By the time he entered UCLA, Anant was interning at Imagine Venture Capital and ITU Ventures.
Anant met Mandeep at UCLA, where they discovered their shared interest in technology and its application to business ideas. This fortuitous friendship also began Anant’s education in and passion for vending. Upon graduation, the two entrepreneurs set out on a three-week trek through India where, as a sidelight to their journey, they began to brainstorm specific business ideas, and Cantaloupe Systems was conceived. Anant gave up a full time offer at ITU Ventures to devote his efforts to building the new company, and he hasn’t looked back. He credits his early experiences in technology design, sourcing, and manufacturing as a major factor in the growth and development of Cantaloupe Systems.
Anant has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and a B.A. Economics from UCLA.
Anant’s favorite vending snack is Twix. |
As President and Chief Operating Officer, Sarah is responsible for managing Cantaloupe Systems’ day-to-day operations including finance, manufacturing, logistics and human resources.
Prior to joining Cantaloupe Systems in 2009, Sarah worked with a number of venture capital-backed, early-stage companies in the Bay Area providing guidance and oversight on finance and business operations, including Fabrik and Hip Digital. Earlier in her career, Sarah was senior director, worldwide operations and engineering, for the disk drive company Maxtor Corp., acquired by Seagate Technology in 2006. At Maxtor, Sarah managed all budgeting, financial and operating activities for the company’s engineering group and was responsible for a broad array of logistical operations, including supply chain management, inventory control, and repair and recovery production operations.
Sarah has a B.A. degree from Mt. Holyoke College and an M.B.A. from Dartmouth College’s Amos Tuck School of Business.
She serves on the board of the National Automatic Merchandising Association (NAMA) and, in her spare time, has worked as a math tutor for homeless children in San Francisco.
Sarah enjoys all salty, crunchy vending snacks, especially salt & pepper potato chips. |
Tammy is vice president of engineering at Cantaloupe Systems, responsible for the hardware and software in Cantaloupe’s product suite. She also oversees the company’s infrastructure and internal technology systems.
Tammy has held a number of executive and management roles over the past 15 years, including vice president of engineering at Encanto Networks Inc., vice president of engineering at E-Color Inc. and vice president of product development for the Americas at Weathernews.com. More recently, Tammy was the vice president of engineering for the open source software company Untangle, Inc.
Tammy earned a B.A. degree in Computer Science from Cornell University, graduating cum laude, and attended the Executive MBA summer program at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Tammy served as a charter member and advisor to Dare 2B Digital Conference, and currently volunteers with the Silicon Valley Code Camp.
Hostess Cupcakes are Tammy’s favorite vending snack... but just the icing off the top. |
Justin Grant, Director of Product Management
As Director of Product Management, Justin is responsible for developing Cantaloupe Systems’ product strategy and overseeing product management and design. Justin and his team work hands-on with vending operators to identify features they need, and then they partner with Cantaloupe Systems’ engineering team to bring those products to market.
Prior to joining Cantaloupe Systems, Justin was senior product manager at Splunk, a fast-growing data analytics software company, where he started Splunk’s Application Management business and was responsible for Splunk’s app store and community site. Justin’s experience also includes 11 years with Microsoft, where he was Product Manager for MSDN and TechNet and led the Program Management team for Microsoft’s Server Management Products. Justin also ran web development and datacenter operations at Stockpoint.com (now part of News Corp), and was one of the first software developers at Ask Jeeves.
Justin has a B.A. in English and Architecture from the University of California at Berkeley.
Justin’s favorite vending snack is pretzels. |
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