Co-founders

The two co-founders who came together to form DhatuSphere are:

Abhijeet Tipnis; co-founder; DhatuSphere Pvt Ltd.

Abhijeet Tipnis, one of two co-founders of DhatuSphere Pvt Ltd. The company’s mission is to embark on a ground-breaking venture to inaugurate India’s foremost high-purity metal refineries, focusing on strategic essential metals like nickel, cobalt, and lithium. (www.dhatusphere.com).

Abhijeet is the CEO of ThinQable Ltd; a company focused on helping Governments worldwide provide digital GovTech experience to their citizens and bringing Governments and citizens closer. (www.thinqable.com)

Abhijeet is also a Non-resident Fellow at Digital India Foundation (DIF) which is a not-for-profit think-tank aiming to foster digital inclusion and adoption, and the use of the Internet and related technologies for the developmental process. Abhijeet has been a big advocate of citizen enablement and believes in creating platforms that will serve as a public good and act as a catalyst in job creation by enabling start-up ecosystems. His engagements in GovTech include providing advisory services in Banking, National ID, Citizen Benefit System, Citizen to Government engagement Platform in emerging markets across the Middle East, Asia Pacific, and LATAM countries. (www.digitalindiafoundation.org)

He has over 20 years of Global experience working in the IT consulting and services industry, supporting technology transformation in the Government and Manufacturing sector. As part of this journey, he has worked with industry-leading Tech transformation organizations like Atos, TCS, and HCL Technologies.

Abhijeet has been a big advocate of citizen enablement and believes in creating platforms that will serve as a public good and act as a catalyst in job creation by enabling start-up ecosystems. His engagements in GovTech include providing advisory services in Banking, National ID, Citizen Benefit System, Citizen to Government engagement Platform in emerging markets across the Middle East, Asia Pacific, and LATAM countries.

In the manufacturing space, he has had deep involvement in helping the manufacturing industry adopt the industry 4.0 approach and help them create the required ecosystem to support the transformation initiative.

Abhijeet has a Master’s in Business Administration from Anglia Ruskin, UK, and a Master’s in Economics from Madurai Kamaraj University, India.

Francisco Pinto, co-founder; DhatuSphere Pvt Ltd.

Francisco Jose Pinto, one of two co-founders, of DhatuSphere Pvt Ltd. The company’s mission is to embark on a ground-breaking venture to inaugurate India’s foremost high-purity metal refineries, focusing on strategic essential metals like nickel, cobalt, and lithium. www.dhatusphere.com

Francisco’s career pathway over 30 years focused on corporate governance, strategy development, commercial and risk management within the energy sector and across a range of businesses, functions, countries and cultures. These competencies have been built on a solid foundation of strong commercial experience in trading, retail, refining and supply chain management;

across start-up and established business operations.

Francisco is the Managing Partner of Grinding and Dispersion Technologies; a leading supplier of high-quality industrial consumables. With more than four decades of wet milling experience, Grinding and Dispersion Technologies, is the sole selling agent in India to the world-renowned Sigmund Lindner GmbH (SiLi) SiLiBeads® for over 20 years. The business supplies high quality grinding media and related products to premium industries across various sectors including paints, agro-chemicals, inks, dyes, polyester yarn, high tech coatings etc. (www.gdtech.co.in)

Francisco also serves as a Partner and shareholder across a number of companies as well as overseeing not only his own but also his family’s diverse business portfolio interests. Francisco, comes from a business background with interests in real estate, construction and trading. He has the required knowledge and rich “hands-on” experience across multiple businesses within India and abroad. He possesses strong; leadership, commercial awareness, financial evaluation, investment appraisals, and project management skills.

From 2000 to 2015, Francisco worked at BP Plc (UK) in group audit risk management and assurance, a centralised function that reports to the Group Chief Executive and the Main Board Committee. He specialises in areas of corporate governance, risk management tax, treasury and internal control.

Francisco has a Bachelor’s in Business Administration from University of Cyprus; securing a First-Class Honours Degree and on the Deans Honours List with scholarship recognition throughout his academic tenure. He attended a Master’s in Finance and International Business at the University of Westminster, UK but withdrew to deliver on an early career role which demanded 80% global travel.

Senior Executive Committee

DhatuSphere is supported by a stellar team of technical, industrial, regulatory and other subject matter experts such as:

Arvind Philip Balan

Arvind Balan is the CFO of Rolls Royce Civil Aerospace. He is a finance leader with over 20 years of finance and commercial experience. His career story is driven by his desire to experience cultures and his enthusiasm to unlock value through change. Arvind started his career working with Citibank and HSBC. He worked in equity research and structuring covering metals, mining and oil & gas sectors. His experience took him to Arcelor Mittal in East Europe. Based in Poland, Arvind worked in the M&A and Treasury outfit completing acquisitions in the steel and iron ore value chain.

For the last 14 years Arvind worked in Royal Dutch Shell. He started as a risk manager in oil trading but soon transferred to a variety of leadership roles in the upstream and downstream business of Shell. Arvind led the expansion of the Shale gas business for Shell as the CFO of the China business. Arvind also worked on M&A deals in Shell, mostly in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean with global and national oil companies.

Since 2019 Arvind has been the CFO of Shell Petrochemicals business in Asia, based in Singapore. He led a transformation which included organisation restructuring, portfolio sales and new partnership venture in its efforts to return to profitability. While in Asia he served as a board member of one of the world’s largest petrochemical complexes which is a joint venture with China national Oil company.

As a leader Arvind enjoys unlocking value in companies that require radical changes to its business model. He brings his commercial acumen to helping businesses succeed in changing times. Arvind is passionate about leading teams with a strong sense of virtue and with a mindset of delivery.

Arvind is a chartered accountant and an MBA from Indian Institute of Management.

Dr. Barun Gorain, President & CEO

Dr. Gorain has served the global minerals industry over 25 years in precious and strategic metals operations, capital projects and has delivered commercial value worth +US$ 1 billion through implementation of innovative, breakthrough and digital technologies in metals operations. Some of his key professional roles include Chief Technology Officer for Hindustan Zinc (Vedanta), Director with Barrick Gold based in Toronto and as a Group Leader at Teck Resources in British Columbia, Canada.

Dr. Gorain is now the President and CEO of  ORE2METAL  based in Toronto: a provider of advanced eco-efficient technologies  for  production of strategic and precious metals in collaboration with its partners focusing on value chain implementation, plant

design and commissioning to full production. Ore2Metal specializes in metals recovery from complex ore bodies as well as from mine tailings, smelter residues and electronic waste.

Dr. Gorain holds a Ph.D. in Metallurgical Engineering from the University of Queensland in Australia, and a B.Tech in Mineral Engineering from the Indian School of Mines (now IIT) Dhanbad. He has co-authored several books, published over 50 peer reviewed technical papers and owns several global patents with commercial applications in production of copper and gold.

Served as a board member for the JKMRC Sustainability Minerals Institute, Australia and also in the technical advisory committee for the Canadian Mining Innovation Council. Now an advisory board member in various Centres-of-Excellence of Australian Research Council and International Mineral Processing Congresses (IMPC).