Alay Merchant
I evaluate deals like an investor and ship products like a PM. 5+ years in enterprise architecture and technology strategy at SAP LeanIX and Deloitte, now at HEC Paris building toward venture and product leadership in London from April 2027.
Enterprise depth. Venture instinct. Product execution.
With 5+ years at SAP LeanIX and Deloitte, I led enterprise architecture engagements, designed frameworks that identified £27M+ in cost savings, launched AI governance offerings, and presented globally on cloud transformation and application rationalisation.
At HEC Paris (Excellence Scholar), I scout for LvlUp Ventures, co-lead the Product Management Club, and build MVPs from zero to live. I won Founder of the Year at HEC VIBE and I'm placing my capstone in upstream resource intelligence and space economy themes. I'm targeting venture and product roles in London where technical depth and investment judgment both matter.
- •MBA Class of 2027 · Excellence Scholarship
- •Co-President, Product Management Club
- •VC Fellow, HEC VIBE (Entrepreneurship Club)
- •AIR Programme, AI for Energy and Energy for AI Thesis
- •Advisor, Innovation Ventures
- •Director of Private Equity and Venture Capital, HEC Finance Club
- •Analyst in Residence, Pre-Seed Fund
- •Founder in Residence, MVP Builder
- •CDL Space placement, September 2026
- •Capstone: upstream resource intelligence & critical minerals (space economy thesis)
Where I've Made an Impact
HEC Paris & Venture
- •Lead PM case prep, mock interviews, CV reviews, and speaker series for the J26 MBA cohort.
- •Organise Paris tech treks and cross-club hackathons to connect students with product leaders.
- •Build community engagement across 100+ MBA students interested in product careers.
- •Built and operated a mock $1M pre-seed fund over six weeks.
- •Sourced companies, created investment memos and evaluated startups presented to real VCs.
- •Developed financial models and market-sizing frameworks for early-stage B2B SaaS and AI startups.
- •Built Lecturely, a P2P knowledge exchange platform for cohort communities, in a six-week sprint and pitched at Vibathon to real founders and industry leaders.
- •Won the Founder in Residence competition (Founder of the Year, HEC VIBE) for product development, market validation, and pitch quality.
- •Designed monetisation strategy and ran GTM experiments to validate product-market fit.
Knowledge exchange platform where cohort communities, such as MBA cohorts, deliver lectures to each other and teach skills they specialise in. Helps expert teachers arrange sessions, gain recognition, and scale peer learning within their community. Built during the HEC Founders in Residence programme. Competition winner; no public link.
Professional Experience
- •Sourcing robotics and physical AI pre-seed start-ups for Grishin Robotics' Accelerator programme, based in London.
- •Also sourcing Series A and beyond robotics and Physical AI ventures for investments.
- •Advising start-ups and growth-stage companies to support investor engagement and fundraising readiness.
- •Identifying and connecting companies with aligned investors, focusing on strategic fit and long-term value.
- •Preparing founders for investor conversations through research, positioning, and tailored guidance.
- •Building and nurturing a high-quality investor network to drive meaningful introductions and partnerships.
- •Building portfolio around AI and Energy Infrastructure thesis, sourcing and evaluating pre-seed and seed deals in both verticals.
- •Sourced under-the-radar founders with investment memos and first-contact tracking, optimised for carry-based attribution.
- •Led engagements as project manager and Enterprise Architecture Management Specialist, working with Heads of EA to implement use cases across global organisations.
- •Specialised in Technology Strategy, Cloud Migration, Application Rationalisation, AI Governance, and Enterprise Architecture Advisory.
- •Created and led global AI Governance and EA Use Case Advisory services; presented at conferences and webinars on rationalisation, modernisation, and cloud migration.
- •Designed an Application Profiling Framework identifying £27M+ in client savings; supported enablement of 100+ new Enterprise Architects in the APJ region.
- •Ran workshops and supported project proposals generating new business for the Professional Services team.
- •Promoted from Analyst to Consultant in 9 months; served as Scrum Master, Azure Engineer, Technology Lead, and Data Analyst across client engagements.
- •Used Terraform to build Azure modules and environments; managed agile delivery of cloud transformation programmes.
- •Led technology work-stream for a mobile application installation programme: workshops, data security, automation, and biometric technologies.
- •Published monthly L&D newsletter as internal Learning & Development Consultant; co-founded GCP Hackathon practice with 60+ participants at first sustainability event.
- •Infrastructure Analyst on graduate programme. Managed device migration of 600+ users as first point of contact for technical needs.
- •Acted as PMO analyst with large-scale data tracking and manipulation across client delivery.
- •Researched financial markets and technical analysis; developed trading algorithms across crypto, forex, and commodities.
- •CPD certified (Certificate of Continuing Professional Development).
- •Year-in-industry placement in Operations Transformation and Cloud Engineering within Deloitte Consulting.
- •Drove programme management of 30+ projects at a global energy company; automated reporting reducing manual analysis by 80%.
- •Software Quality Assurance and automation engineering for research management platform used by asset managers.
Academic Foundation
- •Excellence Scholarship Recipient
- •MBA Ambassador
- •Focus: Finance & Entrepreneurship
- •Analyst in Residence (Pre-Seed Fund)
- •Founder in Residence (MVP Programme)
- •CDL Space · September 2026
- •NUS Exchange · Jan–Mar 2027
- •Lead speaker series, mock interviews, and Paris tech treks for MBA students pursuing PM careers.
- •Organise cross-club hackathons and CV review sessions.
- •Facilitated VC event logistics and engagement across ventures and investment initiatives.
- •Led sourcing and evaluation of early-stage startups for the club's deal pipeline.
- •Analyst in Residence programme focused on AI for energy and energy infrastructure for AI.
- •Advising Innovation Ventures initiatives within the Entrepreneurship Club.
- •Leading private equity and venture capital programming for the Finance Club.
- •BSc Computer Science with Year in Industry
- •Consulting placement at Deloitte Switzerland (Business Operations, Cloud Engineering)
- •Graduated 2021
- •Provided CV reviews, LinkedIn optimisation workshops and interview coaching to 15+ students, achieving a 100% placement success rate.
- •Oversaw financial transactions, budget planning, sponsorship negotiations and operations of a 100+ member society.
- •Awarded "Best Committee" and "Best Gold Society", the two highest honours among 100+ clubs.
Upstream Resource Intelligence Thesis
The global economy faces accelerating scarcity of critical materials, from rare earth elements to platinum-group metals, essential for energy, AI infrastructure, and defence supply chains. At the same time, the space economy is commercialising rapidly, yet early-stage VC capital concentrates in downstream applications where revenue is near-term and risk is legible. My capstone asks how funds should reframe their space investment thesis to capture upstream resource intelligence: satellite-enabled mineral mapping and prospecting ventures with credible near-term revenue through data licensing and government contracts, rather than dismissing the entire category because long-dated extraction plays carry unacceptable horizon risk.
To operationalise the argument, I built an interactive Upstream Deal Screener that ranks space and minerals companies against five adjustable criteria: revenue proximity, technical readiness, check-size fit, regulatory exposure, and founder-market fit. Near-term revenue-proximate upstream companies score high; long-dated extraction plays score low for structural reasons the tool makes explicit. Changing the weights reshuffles the ranking, demonstrating that a fund's thesis is fundamentally a weighting scheme. The screener is not embedded on this portfolio, but it turns the capstone's analytical move into falsifiable screening logic for VC partners and capstone judges.
Building at the Intersection of VC & Product
While researching my MBA capstone and interviewing industry experts, I identified structural gaps in how orbital and upstream resource intelligence is accessed, analysed, and acted on. I'm building a stealth infrastructure platform that unifies both: orbital monitoring and analysis on one side, and critical minerals and upstream mining intelligence on the other. It serves space (orbital) and planetary mining as an infrastructure and analysis tool, not a point solution.
Capabilities
Interests
Open to conversations in London from April 2027
I'm targeting Venture Associate, Senior Product Manager, and senior leadership roles at AI companies and startups in London. I evaluate deals like an investor and ship products like a PM, currently completing my MBA at HEC Paris, based in Paris until April 2027.
Available: London · April 2027 · Venture Associate · Senior PM · Senior Leadership · AI companies & startupsBest for roles & introductions
alay.merchant@hec.eduPersonal
alaymerchant@hotmail.co.uk© 2026 Alay Merchant. All rights reserved.