Gehan Talwatte

Biography

With almost 20 years experience of the business information industry in the US and Europe, Gehan joined Ascend in 2005 to direct the company’s international growth. Gehan was previously Managing Director of Hoover’s Online Europe, a subsidiary of the US business information company [NASDAQ:HOOV]. In 2001, he led a buyout of the European business and later sold it to D&B in 2004.

In the late 1990s, Gehan was founding partner at eccelerate.com, a Silicon Valley start-up specialising in real-time decision support solutions for e-business. He was also a director of D&B UK [NYSE: DNB], where he ran several global and European business divisions. Earlier in his career, Gehan was instrumental in setting up D&B’s software business in India, now Cognizant Technology Solutions [NASDAQ:CTS].

Gehan holds an MBA and a Masters of International Affairs from Columbia University, New York, and a BA (Honours) from Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania.