Abhay Tandon
Director & Head
Lowe’s Innovation Labs India
With 38,000+ Startups & 26 Unicorns, India exited 2019 as the 3rd largest start-up ecosystem in the world. 2020 started on an upbeat note, only to be hit by the unexpected. COVID-19, posed a major challenge for Indian start-ups. There was an overall decline in investments.
The ecosystem, including the government, investors & startups responded very quickly triggering a bounce back to reckon with. Entrepreneurs exhibited unique & uncanny resilience & by end of Sep 2020, most start-up segments had recovered to pre-COVID levels, while others like Edtech, Online Health Insurance, Fitness & Teleconsulting, Enterprise Tech seemed to be riding on tailwinds.
Now with 34 companies receiving Unicorn status, investments have recovered to pre covid-19. Key Indicators & Investor sentiment are already showing an uptick. With right interventions, the start-up ecosystem can accelerate India’s economic recovery we seems on track to have 60K+ start- ups & 100 strong unicorn pool by 2025.
It is in this scenario that TiE Delhi – NCR opens the fully online Resurgence TiEcon Delhi – NCR. Resurgence promises to be one of the largest conferences for entrepreneurs anywhere in the world & the most exciting platform for knowledge sharing, networking & mentorship for entrepreneurs globally.
The summit promises to be a high visibility platform where start-up entrepreneurs can showcase their ventures, meet investors, engage with government organizations, attend knowledge sessions, get mentoring, network with business experts, explore partnership opportunities, find potential customers & interact with all the stakeholders that can help them scale new heights!
john / john@colorlib.com
8:00 am - 10:00 AM
59 Breanne Canyon suit, USA
Ecosystem Enabler
Platinum Partner
Platinum Partner
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Silver Partner
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Silver Partner
Cloud Partner
Innovation Partner
Partner
Session Partner
Session Partner
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Investor Partner
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Associate Partner
Associate Partner
Debt Investor Partner
Co-Partner
Platform Partner
Marketing Partner
Inclusion Partner
Inclusion Partner
Driven by passion Aman is a born hustler who loves building brands. Recognizing the need for smart, efficient, stylish, and durable mobile & audio accessories Aman teamed up with Sameer Mehta to “build a brand of his own” and launched boAt in 2016. Prior to co-founding Imagine Marketing Services (boAt), Aman was associated with Citibank, KPMG, and later became director of sales at Harman International, where he oversaw a portfolio of consumer electronics brands. Cross-functional experience with global brands helped build insights and spot a market opportunity. As a successful entrepreneur, Aman has participated and being recognized at various industry forums and is now regarded as a thought leader in his industry. His aim is to build a global lifestyle brand from India that delivers quality consumer electronics experience and at the same time aspires to elevate audio and mobile accessories from commodities to fashion statements.
Under Aman’s leadership boAt has been defying barriers in a sector dominated by established global brands and was recently ranked as the No.1 brand in the earwear segment, with around 20% market share as per the data released by leading IT market research and advisory firm International Data Corporation (IDC). It is one of the first digitally native brands to record a revenue of 500cr in FY19. In a short time span boat has built traction and has created a community of over 3 million boAtheads (consumers). The company today sells more than 15,000 units a day. An alumnus of the Indian School of Business (ISB), he was a Chartered Accountant at the age of 21. Aman is a notable recipient of the BW | Business World Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award and Entrepreneur of the Year Award by Entrepreneur India magazine. He also chairs the IAMAI D2C committee which promotes new-age Indian brands and works with the government and various stakeholders to build consumer trust in the ecosystem.
B. Amrish Rau is the CEO of Pine Labs. He leads the company's growth and expansion in Asia and beyond. He has over two decades of experience in the fintech space, having run his own startup and built large organizations.
Prior to Pine Labs, Amrish co-founded Citrus Pay which was acquired by Naspers FinTech, PayU in 2016. Post the acquisition, he was made the CEO for PayU India and later took over as head of Investments for Naspers where he was responsible for increasing the company's footprint in the financial technology sector.
Amrish started his fintech journey with First Data Corporation in 2005. Later, as Managing Director for First Data Asia he helped build a market leading payments joint venture with ICICI Bank. As CEO of First Data MS Asia, he was responsible for all operations in the South and South East Asia markets. Prior to First Data, Amrish spent eight years with NCR Corporation where he started in business development and went on to head the company's data warehousing and CRM division, Teradata, as Managing Director.
Anjan Chatterjee was born in 1959 in a family of scholars in Kolkata. He went on to complete his graduation from Calcutta University and studied at the Institute of Hotel Management & Catering Technology, Kolkata in 1982. Hospitality was a childhood passion and the institute gave him the formal training he required to follow his dream.
With his core strength in marketing & advertising, his passion for food led to creation of a company called Speciality Restaurants Ltd. In a span of over two decades it’s now the largest chain of fun & fine dining restaurants in India with over 120 outlets in over 25 cities in India and abroad ( Dubai, Doha, Dar es Salaam and soon opening in London & Houston ) with brands like Mainland China, Oh! Calcutta, Sigree , Hoppipola, Sweet Bengal, Asia Kitchen, Riyasat , Chourangi amongst others. Speciality Restaurants Ltd. entered the Indian Capital markets in May 2012 as being the only restaurant chain India to do so.
The greatest reward for passion is work itself. But once in a while, others in the trade or industry or the general public recognize the passion and drive, in the form of awards and accolades. They are milestones in Anjan Chatterjee personal and professional journey.
Byju Raveendran is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of India’s largest edtech company and the creator of India’s most loved school learning app – BYJU’S. An entrepreneur by chance and a teacher by choice, he started BYJU’S with the vision to help students fall in love with learning and change the way India learns.
An avid sportsperson (expert in six games), he believes that children can learn a lot outside the classrooms by playing multiple games. He harnessed the power of technology to build a brand to create self-initiated and life-long learners.
He is part of the The Bloomberg Businessweek 50 list (2020) and recipient of Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the year award-Startup (2018), Manorama Newsmaker of the Year Award (2019), Fortune 40 under 40 Award (2018), CNBC Young Turk of the Year (2017) and Express IT Newsmaker of the Year (2017).
Apart from being a passionate teacher, Byju likes travelling and is a hardcore FC Barcelona fan.
As the Country President & Managing Director, Gagan is responsible for driving AstraZeneca’s science-led strategy in India.
Gagan started his journey in AstraZeneca in 2006 and held initial roles as a Business Director and later as Director Strategic Planning. Thereafter, he was promoted to the role of Vice President, Sales & Marketing - Cardiac and Diabetes.
In 2012, Gagan was appointed as the Country President for AstraZeneca Philippines. Post a successful stint in this role, he moved to the United Kingdom as Global Head of Established Brands GI/CV.
Prior to AstraZeneca, Gagan has worked with Baxter India & Eli Lilly. Gagan holds a degree in Economics from the University of Delhi.
Harley Finkelstein is an entrepreneur, lawyer, and the President of Shopify. He founded his first company at age 17 while a student at McGill. Harley completed his law degree as well as his MBA at the University of Ottawa, where he co-founded the JD/MBA Student Society and the Canadian MBA Oath. Harley is an Advisor to Felicis Ventures, and one of the “Dragons” on CBC’s Next Gen Den. Recently, he received the Canadian Angel Investor of the Year Award, Canada’s Top 40 Under 40 Award, and was inducted into the Order of Ottawa.
From 2014 to 2017 Harley was on the Board of the C100, and from 2017 to 2020 he was on to the Board of Directors of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). Harley is currently starring on Discovery Channel’s I Quit, a television series about hopeful entrepreneurs who decide to quit their 9-5 jobs to focus full-time on their side hustles.
Nadia is a serial entrepreneur, investor, tech enthusiast and champion of SMEs, especially women-led SMEs. Nadia began her career in the Office of UN Secretary Kofi Annan where she learned how to manage complex international issues. This led to her 20-year career as an investor and changemaker working at the intersection of private investing and transformative societal and climate change. She was Nestle’s first ever Director of Health and Wellness.
In her next role as Executive Vice President of South Asia to SN Power, Nadia helped the fund grow its AUM from 260 million to 1.75 billion in under 5 years while also building a JV with Tata Power in India, and was a Board Director for more than 10 companies in India, Nepal and Chile. In 2011, she co-founded Impact Investment Partners LLP, the UK’s first FCA-authorised emerging markets impact investment firm, which invested into companies that transform society.
Nikesh Arora joined as chairman and CEO of Palo Alto Networks in June 2018. Before joining Palo Alto Networks, Nikesh served as president and chief operating officer of SoftBank Group Corp. Prior to that, he held a number of positions at Google, Inc. during a 10-year span, including senior vice president and chief business officer, president of global sales operations and business development, and president of Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Prior to joining Google, Nikesh held the role of chief marketing officer for the T-Mobile International Division of Deutsche Telekom AG. He was chief executive officer and founder of T-Motion PLC, which merged with T-Mobile International in 2002.
Nikesh serves on the board of Compagnie Financière Richemont S.A., a public Switzerland-based luxury goods holding company, and Tipping Point, a non-profit organization that fights poverty in the Bay Area. Previously, he served on the boards of SoftBank Group Corp., Sprint Corp., Colgate-Palmolive Inc. and Yahoo! Japan, among others. He holds an M.S. in Business Administration from Northeastern University, an M.S. in finance from Boston College and a B. Tech. in electrical engineering from the Institute of Technology at Banaras Hindu University.
Oliver is a co-founder and CEO of Voyage. Voyage is a leader in self-driving cars, and on a mission is to deliver on the promise of this revolutionary technology. Oliver previously led the autonomous vehicle, artificial intelligence, and deep learning curriculum at the online education startup Udacity.
Parmesh Shahani is Vice President at Godrej Industries Ltd. and the founder of the Godrej India Culture Lab. Parmesh is a passionate advocate for LGBTQ inclusion in corporate India and has guided many of the country’s leading companies on their inclusion journeys. His first book Gay Bombay: Globalization, Love and (Be)Longing in Contemporary India (Sage Publications) was released in 2008 and re-released in June 2020 as an updated edition and his second book Queeristan: LGBTQ Inclusion in the Indian Workplace was released in August 2020. Parmesh holds an MS in Comparative Media Studies from MIT.
He has been a TED Senior Fellow, a Yale World Fellow, and a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. He is a member of the FICCI taskforce on diversity and inclusion and a board member of KHOJ International Artists’ Association.
Peyush’s entrepreneurship journey started in 2010 with the launch of Lenskart along with few more business lines catering to different product markets. But he was drawn towards the glaring yet unaddressed problem of Vision in India and the world
More than 600 Million Indians and 4.2 Billion people globally are affected by poor vision and need eyeglasses. However, only 170 Million Indians and 1.7 Billion people globally have any form of vision correction. Fired by this passion to solve this problem, Peyush’s singular mission became to deliver vision correction using technology.
Prashant is Co-founder and CEO of 1mg, India’s largest digital health platform. He’s been recognized for his work by Unreasonable Goals Program, (targeted at helping solve the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals-SDG#3 Health and Wellbeing for all by 2030), by Economic Times 40 under 40, AsiaOne - India’s 40 most influential Indians under 40 and by several other organizations. Prashant also helms DHP (Digital Health Platforms) – an association of India’s top e-health companies as their first President, Chairs the FICCI sub-committee on ePharmacy and is also the co-chair for Digital Health at IAMAI (Internet and Mobile Association of India). He is also a key influencer in Niti Aayog’s Champions of Change programme, a Government of India Initiative.
Under his leadership, 1mg has disrupted the standard model of healthcare delivery and grown to operate India’s largest online pharmacy and diagnostic platforms and one of the largest online consultation platforms – thus making healthcare accessible, affordable and understandable for millions of Indians.
Prior to 1mg, Prashant was the Co-founder & Managing Director of HealthKart.com, India's #1 Nutrition e-Commerce company. Till 2009, before he returned to India, Prashant worked at McKinsey & Company in San Francisco where he focused on the healthcare sector. He started his career with the Business Leadership Program at Hindustan Unilever India, where he worked in roles spanning Innovation, Product Development and Operations. Prashant is an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business and a graduate from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.
As part of the leadership team at Sequoia Capital, Rajan is focusing on developing Surge into the world's top scale-up program for startups by acting as an investment advisor and mentor to the programme's founders.
Surge aims to engineer rapid early progress for startups, by enabling disproportionate access to capital, talent, network and decades of company-building knowledge. Rajan's deep understanding of technology, operating expertise and a track record of growing tech businesses across the region will help Surge's founders scale and build the businesses of tomorrow.
Prior to Sequoia, as Head of Google India and Southeast Asia, Rajan played a key role in expanding the regions internet ecosystem while accelerating Google's innovation and growth units. He is also a prolific angel investor who has backed a large number of successful startups at very early stages. Rajan also led Microsoft and Dell in India and was earlier a Partner at McKinsey & Company in Chicago.
Rakesh Mishra is the vice president of marketing of Bengaluru based Target India, an extension of the U.S. retailer Target’s headquarters operations. In this role, Rakesh leads a team that helps drive Target’s competitive advantage across various marketing domains. Target, a leading discount retailer with nearly $70 billion in sales, serves guests at more than 1,800 stores and on Target.com in the U.S. With more than 24 years of advertising and marketing experience, Rakesh has had the opportunity to create and direct, award-winning marketing campaigns and has developed several new products.
Prior to joining Target in 2008, he worked with organizations like Kohinoor Foods, Imageads & Communications and Continental Advertising. Rakesh holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Sambalpur University and a master’s degree in marketing from the Center of Management Development.
Shernaz is an operator who works with companies to build and scale their businesses and brands across consumer, life sciences, retail, enterprise and autonomous transportation.
She was CMO at Udacity and has worked with Walmart, Netflix, Khan Academy and Baidu among others. Her current work includes Kitty Hawk in the flying car space; 10x Genomics in life sciences; and GV (Google Ventures).
Supria is Vice President & Country Manager Western Digital India. She leads India’s strategic charter and its expansion, key customer relationships, government relations , sustained growth of Research and Development capability, and serves as a spokesperson for the corporate brand in India. Supria’s fusion of business acumen, strategy and organizational development has driven high performance culture and strong growth for India region. She has more than 22 years of experience and has held several leadership roles in business and People functions, has anchored Mergers & Acquisitions. and has been an Entrepreneur as well. She serves on the Board of Western Digital India and an Independent member of Board and an Advisory Board member on other companies.
Prior to her roles at Western Digital, Supria has served with reputed technology companies including General Electric, Alcatel-Lucent and SanDisk. Supria is passionate about Technology and People. She strongly believes in institutionalizing an inclusive culture at workplace and one that values respect and equality for all alike. Supria believes passionately in giving back to the community for building a sustainable future.
She is a proud recipient of the recognition—Top 100 Best Companies to work for Women in India—Working Mother and Avatar Study 2016 and 2019, twice when Western Digital India participated in the Study. Supria has also been recently awarded as CEO of the Year for ‘Diversity & Inclusion’ at the Global DEI Summit 2020 hosted by Times of India and Ask Insights.
Vivek is currently leading Swiggy’s business operations as COO since Jul 2018. Prior to that, he led P&G’s business as CEO in East Africa based out of Nairobi. He had been with Procter and Gamble for 20 years in various capacities across developing markets (India, Africa) as well as developed markets & hybrid markets (China, Thailand, Malaysia). In Swiggy he has led the effort to scale the company across cities & he is also leading the effort to bring economies of scale to bear on the core business – the path to profitability. He has also led the effort to pivot, repurpose and re-scale the business during various parts of the Covid pandemic induced lockdown and phases of the unlock.
Swiggy today is a leaner, better business as it completes the recovery of the business back to pre-covid levels. He has done so in diverse teams spanning >20 nationalities, and has done so in diverse roles. He also loves to play at the intersection of technology and business and has been an early adopter and innovator of big data/ analytics across many sales & marketing roles. He is equally wary of the pitfalls of reliance on quantitative data without understanding behavioural psychology and cognitive biases and he has infused some of this thinking into the core parts of the business – both product and operations.
Vivek is a graduate of the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Calcutta, and prior to that studied Computer Engineering from Delhi University. His passion for photography led to his work being featured and recognised by various media outlets globally (Natgeo, BBC, ET).
At 23, Ankiti co-founded Zilingo in 2015 with the vision of bridging the technology gap within the fashion and lifestyle supply chain to help small merchants and traders truly poise themselves for digitization. Under her leadership, Zilingo has raised US$308 million from investors including Temasek, EDBI, Sequoia Capital, Sofina and notable angels such as Tim Draper and Kunal Shah. With offices in 8 countries and over 500 employees, through Zilingo, Ankiti sets out to level the playing field in the global supply chain and empower businesses with tools and software which allow them to scale their business efficiently.
Ankiti has been featured on the Forbes Asia 30 Under 30, Global Fortune 40 Under 40 and Global Bloomberg 50 lists in the last 2 years. Recently, she made it to the Singapore 100 Women in Tech List in the company of some esteemed women achievers. In her position, Ankiti also acts as a mentor on Surge, an initiative by Sequoia Capital designed to supercharge early-stage startups.
Ankiti has been a headline speaker at industry-leading events and webinars, sharing her insights and expertise. At Zilingo, she launched SheWorkz, an initiative to finance and skill/re-skill women factory workers and empower them to be financially independent by letting them work at their own time and space from their homes. SheWorkz has been launched in Indonesia and Thailand.
In more recent times, Ankiti swiftly responded to the widespread shortage of Personal Protective Equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic by repurposing and expanding Zilingo’s network of buyers and sellers to procure and supply PPE to hospitals and governments worldwide. Adapting to changing consumer demands during mass lockdowns across countries, Ankiti spearheaded the company to expand its B2B offerings to multi-categories in health, household and other essential items, on its business solutions platform, Zilingo Trade.
Deepak Bagla has a professional career of over three decades, starting with the World Bank in Washington DC. In 1989 he joined Citibank Global Corporate and Investment Banking team and held several responsibilities across Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. In 2007 he joined Private Equity to start an India dedicated fund for core infrastructure. Mr. Bagla is currently Managing Director & CEO of Invest India, the National Investment Promotion and Facilitation Agency promoted by the Government of India. Invest India is also the execution agency for Government of India’s Start-up initiative.
He is a special invitee on the official Bilateral CEO’s Forum and a member of the Venture Capital Investment Committee of the US $ 1.5 billion “Fund of Funds for Start-ups” established under the Prime Minister’s Startup India action plan. He is also a member of the Ministry of Finance steering Committee on Fintech and a Member of the High-Level committee of the Atal Innovation Mission responsible for establishing and scaling up incubators and tinkering labs across India.
He was a special invitee to the Government of India’s, “High Level Committee on Financing Infrastructure” – (2011- 2013), member of the Banking & Finance Committee of the Bureau of Indian Standards (ISO affiliate 2005-06) and a member of the committee established by the Government to recommend corporate governance norms for independent directors (2006). He was elected President of Delhi Management Association (2008-09).
Mr Bagla has a Bachelor’s degree with Honors in Economics from St Stephens College, New Delhi and a dual Masters in International Diplomacy and International Trade and Finance from The School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, Washington DC.
Navroz D. Udwadia is a Co-Founder and Partner of Falcon Edge. Prior to Falcon Edge, Navroz was an investment professional in Eton Park's Emerging Markets team in London (2005-2011). Prior to joining Eton Park, Navroz graduated from Harvard Business School (MBA, Distinction). Before that he spent time at both JP Morgan (private equity) and Goldman Sachs, where he was an investment banker in the Financial Institutions Group and worked on the firm’s internal strategy team, reporting directly to Eric Mindich.
Navroz graduated from Columbia University (BA, English) and subsequently completed a Law Degree (MA, Law) at Oxford University, which he attended as a Rhodes Scholar from India. Navroz was a national and internationally ranked tennis player (#1 ranked junior in India) and captained both the Oxford University (Double Blue) and Columbia University Men’s Tennis Teams (EITA Senior Of The Year and All Ivy League, 1997).
While at Columbia University, Navroz also received an NCAA Post Graduate Scholarship Award, the Arthur Ashe Sports Scholar Award and was voted an Academic All-American (District Team). He led Columbia as Captain to their first EITA Championship in a decade in 1997.
Utsav Mitra is an investor at Falcon Edge Capital and focuses on global investment opportunities.
Prior to joining Falcon Edge Utsav was at Prince Street Capital Management, leading their public equity long/short investments in South Asia and South East Asia. Prior to Prince Street Capital Management, he served as an Officer on Special Duty to the Minister for Power, Coal and Renewable Energy in the Government of India, and worked in Bharatiya Janata Party's electoral campaign prior to that. He has also worked at Bain Capital Private Equity and McKinsey & Company, before his stint in public service.
Utsav graduated with from Shri Ram College of Commerce, The University of Delhi with a Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Economics and subsequently completed his MBA at Harvard Business School.
Anita M. George is Executive Vice-President and Deputy Dead of CDPQ Global. She joined CDPQ in 2016 and currently fills a key role in developing CDPQ’s activities in its three priority international areas: the United States/Latin America, Europe and Asia Pacific. She actively participates in positioning CDPQ internationally, as well as developing and executing its globalization strategy. In addition to her role of managing the international offices, Ms. George contributes to diversifying the portfolio by taking a holistic view in approaching the various markets. She sits on CDPQ’s Investment-Risk Committee.
She has extensive knowledge of several growth markets, in addition of possessing a strong ability to develop and strengthen enduring and quality partnership. She has a strong track record in managing infrastructure investment portfolios on a global scale.
Ms. George holds a BA in Economics and Spanish from Smith College, in Massachusetts, and a Master’s in Economics and an MBA in Finance from Boston University.
Imran is a Managing Partner at Gaja Capital. Gaja is India’s leading mid- market growth capital firm. Gaja’s aim is to help create India’s next generation of market leaders in sectors such as Education, Consumer, Financial Services and Healthcare.
Imran has 21 years of experience in Private Equity, Pharmaceuticals and Technology services. Prior to Gaja, Imran worked in a variety of roles of increasing responsibility at Dr Reddy’s and Wipro Technologies.
At Gaja, Imran leads investments in the Education and Consumer clusters. He has been closely involved with Gaja’s investments in LeadSquared , Educational initiatives. Kangaroo kids, KOOH Sports, Sportzvillage , Eurokids, John Distilleries , CL Educate and Indus World Schools.
Imran has post graduate degree in software engineering from BITS-Pilani and an MBA from IIM-Bangalore.
Ishpreet Gandhi started his career with Standard Chartered Bank in the SME banking division. This was followed by a term in Citibank commercial banking and thereafter, he managed MNC business for the northern region for Kotak group. He was the team leader at Yes Bank managing MNC relationships for northern operations in 2014, where he started sourcing growth-stage startups. Ishpreet managed relationships with Venture Capital funds like Omnivore, Matrix Partners, Sequoia Capital, Mayfield Advisors & Bertelsmann during his term at YES Bank and IDFC. He closed his first VC-backed transaction as a first lender to BIRA (Alcoholic beverages) in late 2015, when the company attracted Series A investment from Sequoia Capital. BIRA has a distinguished business model in terms of positioning & taste in the Indian market with an aggressive price point, high gross margin, experienced founders & strong VC investors. Due to all these factors, Ishpreet was able to convince the management of the bank for a credit call of INR 6crores, despite the company being an early stage startup.
The second company Ishpreet identified was Lendingkart,backed by Mayfield & Bertelsmann. The company was amongst the earliest fintech companies in India. The unique business proposition included disbursing money within a TAT of 72 hours by leveraging algorithms & technology, while generating IRRs of ~28-30%.
Similar companies which Ishpreet successfully onboarded amongst startups were Leap India backed by Mayfield Advisors, Sixth Sense Ventures & TVS Capital, Rivigo backed by SAIF Partners & Warburg Pincus (2018), Securens backed by Mayfield Advisors (2017), Ofbusiness backed by Matrix Partners and Norwest Venture Partners (2017). All these companies have witnessed significant increase in valuations with no delays in principal repayments or servicing of coupons.
Sheenam Ohrie is the VP for Dell Digital Services – Self Service and APJ CIO Leader at Dell Technologies. She also serves as Chairperson for the Women in Action and Family Balance Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) at Dell India.
Currently based in Bangalore, Sheenam has more than 25 years of experience in various aspects of global delivery, product management, testing and leadership roles. As a global executive, Sheenam is a versatile and strategic IT leader. At Dell, Sheenam is responsible for the Self Service Support Engineering. Her vision is to transform the IT delivery into a Digital IT-as-a- Service business model through a combination of platforms, products and services.
Prior to joining Dell, Sheenam has worked with Infosys, SAP and Oracle. She is an ICF Certified ACC and PCC Executive Coach, and a certified Lean and Design Thinking Coach. As a Diversity and Inclusion evangelist, Sheenam recognizes the value of being a respected leader in the industry and impacting change for the better. She is a company sponsor for Gender Diversity, in addition to serving as Chairperson for key Employee Resource Groups. She has worked to institutionalize several cross-functional programs for recruitment and retention, with development opportunities for female team members, formalized mentorships, training, sponsorships and support for external initiatives as well.
She is also closely involved with the Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network (DWEN), having helped set up the India Chapters of DWEN to spotlight female entrepreneurial success and create a supportive atmosphere for female entrepreneurs across the markets. DWEN connects these entrepreneurs to sources of capital, knowledge and technology, giving them the power to do more.
Sheenam has received several industry recognitions during her career. She was most recently awarded and recognized as a Next Generation Women Leader at the Zinnov 2020 Confluence, as one of the Top 20 Women Catalysts in Indian IT by SME Channels (2019), and Woman Icon of the Year at #GIWL Awards 2019 by UBS Forums.
A cardiac surgeon of repute and a successful entrepreneur, Dr Shetty is a highly respected luminary for his ingenious ideas for reforms in healthcare sector. His visionary leadership to make quality healthcare affordable for all has drawn global recognition. Treading the path of economies of scale to bring down the cost of healthcare delivery, Narayana Hrudayalaya has been an interesting case study for the likes of Harvard University and The Wall Street Journal. In association with Government of Karnataka, Dr. Shetty pioneered Yeshaswini, a very inexpensive micro health insurance scheme benefitting more than 3.4 million rural poor.
Dr. Shetty is the current Chairman, Board of Governors, IIM Bangalore. He has also served as member Board of Governors of Medical Council of India and Representative of President of India in the Board of Governors of Indira Gandhi National Open University. The GoI, state governments, trade bodies and global policy think tanks invite him regularly for discussions on healthcare policies. He was part of International Advisory Group, a strategic advisory platform, invited by Japan Centre for International Exchange to address the global health agenda under Japan’s G-20 leadership during 2019-20. A strong advocate of technology for efficient healthcare delivery, Dr. Shetty takes deep interest in creating and developing software products and applications to achieve time and cost efficiency while minimizing clinical errors in healthcare delivery.
Dr. Shetty also has a US Patent No.10,109,377 dated October 23, 2018 registered as inventor – “System and Method for Facilitating Delivery of Patient-Care” – ‘A computer-implemented method for facilitating delivery of patient-care in adherence with a standard of care clinical protocol is described’. He is the recipient of several prestigious awards including the Padma Bhushan, Padma Shri, The Economist Innovation Award, Ernst and Young – Entrepreneur of the Year, Financial Times Arcelor Mittal ‘Boldness in Business’ Award, Nikkei Asia Prize for Economic and Business Innovation. He has also been awarded honorary doctorates from University of Minnesota, University of Mysore and IIT, Madras.
After his post-graduation from Kasturba Medical College and having undergone higher training in Cardiothoracic Surgery at NHS, UK, Dr. Shetty held positions in BM Birla Heart Research Centre, Kolkata and Manipal Heart Foundation, Bangalore before becoming the Founder and Chairman at Narayana Hrudayalaya Group of Hospitals. The group now has 32 hospitals with close to 7,000 beds.
In Feb. 2016 NH went public and received an overwhelming response getting oversubscribed eight times stands testimony to the investors’ trust in Dr.Shetty’s visionary leadership.
Rohan is the Co-founder and CEO at Drums Food International Pvt. Ltd., the makers of India’s first Greek yogurt brand – Epigamia. At Drums Food, Rohan’s role is to lead the company’s overall business development to create a unique program/ proposition that will outline the next big influx in the FMCG space.
He grew up in the US & moved to Mumbai in 2013. Before moving to India, and becoming one of the youngest leaders in the FMCG space, Rohan led a career in the finance sector with S&P's Corporate Valuation Group where he spent time in Tokyo working on one of the largest M&A transactions in history. He then joined his family owned company, the Ross Group, where he was responsible for re-branding the logistics business and supply chain- based solutions.
Rohan holds a Bachelor's degree in Finance and International Business from NYU's Stern School of Business and an MBA from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
As the leader for Microsoft’s Cloud Solutions in India, Irina is responsible for empowering Cloud Adoption and Digital Transformation by engaging with customers and partners to envision and architect their digital growth strategy. She leads a team of Cloud Specialists & Technical Evangelists with diverse capabilities across Microsoft's five solution areas: Azure Applications & Infrastructure, Azure Data & Artificial Intelligence, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365 and Security Solutions, as well as Lifetime Support Offerings.
Additionally, she heads the India Microsoft Technology Center, an experience center that provides customers access to innovative technologies and world- class expertise.
A Microsoft veteran for nearly two decades, Irina has held a variety of Strategy and Sales leadership roles across our Enterprise and Education segments. In her most recent stints, she has led the Specialist teams for both Azure and Microsoft 365. She is an Electrical Engineer from IIT BHU and an MBA from XLRI. A proponent of Women in Business and Technology, she is a recipient of the ‘Inspirational Women’s Award’ at Microsoft. Besides being a marathon runner and a music lover, she is a strong champion of Diversity & Inclusion. She’s also actively engaged with startups with Microsoft for Startups and as a Trustee in SonderConnect, a foundation for women entrepreneurs.
Pushkar Singh co-founded LetsTransport in 2015 with the vision of enabling last-mile delivery through a large network of mini trucks in India. It was Pushkar’s direct confrontation with inefficiencies in the logistics sector, during his ITC tenure that sowed the seeds of the techno- logistics platform. Under his stellar leadership, the company has been able to create aspiration and employment scalability for truckers in India. Today, LetsTransport is one of the biggest regional logistics players in the country, operating in 17 cities and catering to 200+ enterprises with a network of over 80,000 trucks.
In his initial years of career, Pushkar Singh worked at ITC Limited as an Assistant Manager, Operations. Pushkar holds Bachelors & Masters's degree in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Kharagpur. He is a recipient of the prestigious Forbes 30 under 30 Asia 2017, Forbes 30 under 30 India 2019 and BW Techtors Award 2018.
Vineeta Singh is the Co-founder & CEO of SUGAR Cosmetics, India's fastest growing beauty brand which has clocked in 100+ Crores revenue in just its 4th fiscal year, with a distribution network of 9000+ branded retail outlets in more than 130 cities.
She is a TEDx Speaker and alumnus of IIT Madras and IIM Ahmedabad. She is also a triathlete and ultramarathoner.
Abhay Tandon is the Director and Head of Lowe’s Innovation Labs - India, the innovation entity of Lowe’s (Fortune 50 retailer).
In the past, he has led the Target Accelerator Program – India, setup Innovation Brewery, the Open Innovation program at AbInBev – India as part of the Strategy and Innovation functions. Over the last 5 years in technology innovation function, he has executed over 30 deep technology projects with startups and other innovation stakeholders across the value chain of retail and FMCG. Prior to that, he has also worked in startups, VC and consulting roles ranging across functions.
Abhay is an angel investor, an official global member of the esteemed Forbes Technology Council, a Charter Member of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) and a contributing author in varied publications including Times of India etc. Abhay is also recognised as a ‘Super Mentor’ at AIM iCREST, an Incubator Capabilities enhancement program by NITI Aayog, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Wadhwani Foundation. He has been associated with multiple startup incubation and acceleration programs in the past in the capacity of a selector and mentor. Abhay is an alumni of SP Jain Institute of Management and Research, Mumbai and IESEG School of Business, France. Apart from being passionate about Innovation, he enjoys spending his time watching Sci-Fi shows and travelling.
Abhina Aher is a trans activist working with India HIV/AIDS Alliance as associate director on the gender sexuality and rights project, working particularly with key populations including men who have sex with men, transgender women and women in sex work. She has been working in the HIV sector for the last 24 years.
She is part of the technical support teams of the World Health Organization (WHO) and National AIDS Control Society (NACO). She is also a starring committee member of the International Trans Fund (ITF), was part of the High Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS, and was vice president of the International Reference Group of Transgender Women working in HIV/AIDS globally.
She started the first transgender-led dancing group for gender advocacy in India called "Dancing Queens Mumbai". She holds a postgraduate diploma in NGO management and a diploma in software programming, and is a prominent leader of Hijra (socio ethnic) community in India.
Abhinav Shashank is the CEO and co-founder of Innovaccer, a San Francisco based healthcare technology company. He built the foundation for Innovaccer’s success as a leader in population health management and machine learning-oriented healthcare solutions recognized by Gartner, KLAS, Forbes, Black Book Market Research, and others. Abhinav’s continued efforts and ambition enabled the company to flourish in health information technology in the U.S. and acquire over 25 healthcare organizations as customers, with more than 25,000 providers using Innovaccer’s solutions daily. His continued work and focused approach have resulted in the latest round of Series C investment led by Dragoneer, Tiger, Steadview Capital and M12, Microsoft’s venture fund.
Additionally, Abhinav is an influential thought leader and has published over 300 articles for various international media outlets, was bestowed a coveted spot in Forbes “30 Under 30 Asia 2017: Enterprise Tech” and was recognized by Becker's Hospital Review as one of the ‘Top 60 rising leaders in U.S. healthcare under 40’ in 2019.
Abhishek is the Managing Partner at TVentures. He had earlier started TLabs, India’s leading startup Accelerator that later became TI’s fund.Prior to this, Abhishek has worked across verticals and was the VP of technology at Lime Labs India where he led product and technology initiatives for two internet businesses: LimeDomains (sold to Net Fronts) and LimeExchange (sold to Freelancer).
He was also instrumental in building the Engineering and Operations team at Lime Labs India from scratch (100+). Before Lime Labs, he was part of the early team of Globallogic.Abhishek holds Bachelors in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT-BHU.
Adarsha K is the cofounder of Ayu Devices Pvt Ltd. He has been the cofounder since 2017. Prior to venturing out with his company, Adarsha worked as a Research Assistant at BETiC, IIT Bombay and a senior technical project assistant at IIT Bombay.
He also spent some time at L&T Infotech as a software engineer
Aditya Ghosh is a seasoned professional with over 22 years of experience. Aditya is currently a member of the board of director at Fabindia Overseas. He is also serving as a member of the board of director of OYO Hotels & Homes, one of the world’s leading hospitality chain with presence across 80 countries. Prior to this Aditya has had multiple roles as the CEO of large consumer facing businesses with complex operations including IndiGo.
A strong advocate of philanthropy and giving back to society, Aditya also enabled the launch of OYOReach, the company’s CSR initiative, through which OYO has contributed towards water and environment conservation initiatives, and supported the victims of floods in Odisha, Assam, and Bihar. Aditya joined OYO following an outstanding stint at IndiGo as the President & Wholetime Director of IndiGo, where he was instrumental in turning the airline into the largest and most profitable airline in India, and also one of the fastest-growing low-cost carriers in the world. When Aditya announced his decision to leave IndiGo to explore new ventures, the market capitalisation of IndiGo was around US$ 8 billion. In all the 10 years under Aditya’s leadership, IndiGo was awarded Best Companies to Work For in India. IndiGo does not have any unions and is the only airline of its size in the world which is completely non-unionised. During his stint at IndiGo, also advocate for diversity and inclusion at IndiGo, which is currently credited to have the maximum number of women pilots and a workforce comprising of 43% women.He has also been part of several CSR programmes like IndiGoReach focusing on women empowerment, children and education, and the environment.
Aditya being a fitness enthusiast has also invested in Sarva Yoga, a yoga studio chain. He is one of the Founders of The Ashoka University. Aditya is married with two teenage children and lives in India . He is considered to be one of the fittest business leaders in India. Aditya has been awarded as ‘Intraprenuer of the Year’ at annual flagship awards by Entrepreneur in 2019, he was ranked 27th globally, in Fortune Magazine’s elite “40 under 40 list”. Vogue India awarded Mr. Aditya Ghosh for being an Extraordinary Individual in the ‘BUSINESS’ category. He was recognized as a Style Icon and was named as one of the most stylish men of 2016 at the sixth edition of the HT Most Stylish awards. He has also been identified as one of India’s “Hottest Young Executives” by the Business Today magazine in 2011.Mr. Aditya Ghosh has been conferred 'Sera Bangali' in the field of Business for the year 2014 by ABP Ananda.
Alex was appointed Chairman and CEO of British Airways in 2016. He also sits on the management committee of parent company, International Airlines Group (IAG). He currently holds the position of Chairman.
Alex began his career at American Airlines before becoming a partner at Arthur D Little. He then set up his own aviation consulting firm and later joined Accenture as its head of aviation.
In 2006, Alex founded Clickair,a Barcelona-based airline, merging it with Vueling Airlines &becoming Vueling’s Chairman and CEO. Vueling was acquired by IAG in 2013.
Alex is also an Associate Professor at the IESE Business School. He is married with four children.
Alok Goyal is a Partner at Stellaris Venture Partners, an early stage, technology focused venture capital firm based out of Bangalore. Alok focuses on investments in enterprise software, logistics and automotive companies. On behalf of Stellaris, Alok is on the board of Whatfix, Noticeboard, Loadshare and Signzy, and also is an Independent Director on the board of eClerx, a publicly listed company in India.
Prior to Stellaris, Alok was a Partner at Helion Ventures, where he led enterprise software and services investments. Before his career in venture capital, Alok was the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of SAP India and had been associated with SAP since the year 2004 in various leadership roles in the United States and in India.
Alok has completed his MBA from INSEAD (France), MS in Computer Sciences from University of Texas, Austin and his B.Tech in Computer Science from IIT Delhi.
Alok is a Founding Trustee of CAPED - organization dedicated to raising awareness and prevention of cervical cancer in India. Alok is interested in cricket, light & classical Indian music, hiking and long distance running.
Alok is Co-founder and CEO of Indifi, a platform for enabling debt financing for small businesses. He serves as the President of Digital Lenders Association of India.
Alok is also an active angel investor, co-founder of Indian Angel Network, and on the board of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) Delhi.
Prior to starting Indifi, Alok setup and ran Canaan Partners' venture investment business in India, investing in high growth technology and internet startups. Earlier, Alok co-founded JobsAhead.com, a leading web-based recruitment business in India, which was acquired by Monster.com, the global leader in online recruitment.Alok earned a BE in computer science and engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and a MS in computer science from UC Berkeley.
Amit Agarwal is the man behind the staggering rise of the company surpassing all the internal milestones in the Indian e-commerce market. Known for his customer obsession and outstanding business development skills, he envisages Amazon to be the most customer-centric company by transforming the online business trend in India.
Amit Agarwal, a native of Mumbai, obtained his B.Tech degree in Computer Science in 1995 from IIT Kanpur and further went on to complete his masters in the same discipline from Stanford University in 1997. Following it, he joined Cambridge Technology Partners in Silicon Valley only to leave it in few months for Informatica. However, he was not satisfied working over there and decided to join Amazon when the company approached him a few times. He began his stint at Amazon in February 1999 in Seattle. It is interesting to know that on being asked what made him join Amazon, he stated that it wasn’t something he had in his mind ever and it is destiny that brought him on board. His Stanford’s batch mate prodded him to join the e-commerce industry.
At the time he joined Amazon, the company was only into book selling and was interested in expanding its operations. Agarwal played a pivotal role in accomplishing the company’s vision and mission. He started working at Amazon as a software developer and steadily rose to the top ranks becoming one of the youngest team members of the Senior Leadership Team of CEO & President Jeff Bezos. In 2004, he moved to India to head AWS team as MD & oversaw the company’s expansion in the country. In 2007, he returned to Seattle and became a part of the Bezos’s much-coveted team of technical advisers prominently known as the Shadow Team. He served as a technical adviser for three years and then was promoted to be a VP International Expansion in 2009 and VP & Country Head, Amazon India in 2013.
Owing to his excellent track record and relentless endeavours to expand Amazon’s business in India, the company elevated him to the position of a Global Senior VP in March 2017. Under Mr. Agarwal’s leadership, Amazon has grown in leaps and bounds over the past few years and is focused in bringing global innovations to India. Besides his work and professional commitments, Agarwal enjoys playing electric guitar and listening to music. He was a vocalist in a rock band known as Algo-Rhythms during his post-grad days at Stanford. He is a family man who loves to spend his spare time with his wife and children. In an interview, he said,
Amit Bhatia (www.amitb.in), an award-winning social entrepreneur, is Founder of Aspire Impact, an impact leadership and ecosystem developer; Founder of Aspire Circle, India’s pre-eminent fellowship for social leadership; and Advisor to Aavishkaar Group, pioneering Asset Manager with >$1bn AUM. Formerly, as inaugural CEO of The Global Steering Group for Impact Investment (GSG) from 2017-2020, Amit helped build the 32-country multilateral, catalysing impact investment and entrepreneurship.
Prior to GSG, Amit was Founding CEO of India’s Impact Investors Council where he built “Brand India” and grew inbound annual impact investments from USD400mn to USD1.1bn. Amit was also Founding CEO of WNS Knowledge Services and Country Manager of FreeMarkets. Most prominently, he was Founder & Head of McKinsey Knowledge Centre. An alumnus of Shri Ram College of Commerce and Delhi School of Economics, Amit quit a successful corporate career in 2007 to serve the social sector.
Shri Anil Agrawal started his career as a software engineer in 1984 writing civil engineering application software. He joined the Indian Police Service (IPS) in 1988 and was allotted to the Uttar Pradesh Cadre. He successfully served as the Chief of Police in many criminally, communally, and politically sensitive districts, including Lucknow, Varanasi and Gorakhpur. He headed the prestigious ‘Special Task Force’ and achieved notable successes against organized crime.
Sh. Anil Agrawal spearheaded the conceptualization and implementation of ‘UP100’: The world’s largest Police Emergency Response System. The project included setting up a Contact Centre at Lucknow and providing field services by means of a dedicated fleet of ~4,800 vehicles manned by more than 24,000 personnel, with an average response time of less than 15 minutes anywhere in Uttar Pradesh – a State with a population of ~220 Million.
Currently serving as the Joint Secretary to the Government of India at Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), his responsibilities include the flagship initiative of Government of India: ‘Startup India’. He has been instrumental in piloting many regulatory reforms and various initiatives for strengthening the startup and innovation ecosystem in India.
Anirudh is Managing Director and Head of Alpha Wave Incubation. He brings to AWI more than 11 years of investing experience, across sectors and stages. Prior to joining AWI, he led India investments at B Capital, a leading technology investment fund with a global focus. Prior to B Capital, Anirudh advised on India investments for Norwest Venture Partners, a global venture growth firm.
In the early part of his career, he also advised on India investments for Canaan Partners, a leading early stage technology fund. His investing experience spans across seed stage to public markets across technology, financial services, consumer retail, healthcare, among others. Anirudh holds an electrical engineering degree from Thapar University, Patiala and an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad
Dr. Anita has over 25 years + of professional experience in Management of Govt. of India programs on Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Start-ups and Incubation coupled with research and academic experience at premier Technical institutes.
Currently Associate Head ( Innovation and Entrepreneurship) at Department of Science and Technology, Govt. of India. It is the lead Govt. of India Department in the country for promoting Technology Business Incubators and startups in tech domain under National initiative of Startup India.
She has played a significant role in horizontal and vertical growth of innovation, entrepreneurship and startups in the country . Have been a lead catalyst in establishing over 150 technology business incubators at Institutions of excellence including IITs, IIMs, NITs, and leading private universities and institutions . Deeply involved in transforming the Indian innovation landscape by engaging new models of Public Private Partnerships with leading MNCs i.e Intel, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Texas Instruments, Tatas and Bennett Coleman and Co etc.
Mrs. Anju Bhalla is a Post Graduate from St. Stephens College, Delhi University. She joined the Central Secretariat Service, Government of India in 1990 and has varied experience from her work in the Ministries of Commerce, Industry, Culture, Women & Child Development and Power.
She is currently Joint Secretary in the Department of Science & Technology, Government of India, and holding additional charge as Managing Director of BIRAC, a Section 8 Not for Profit Public Sector Enterprise under the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India Her first assignment in Ministry of Commerce involved promotion of Indian investment in joint ventures and subsidiaries abroad, through gradual de-regulation of the sector. Policy and programme interventions for empowerment of women, and development and safety of children in WCD, international cooperation and climate change initiatives in the power sector, have been some of the areas of work she was engaged with.
Anshul is Co-founder, Wizikey - Asia’s first Media Intelligence and Outreach company that helps businesses create trust across the World. He is an alum of IIT and MICA and is spearheading Product and Growth at Wizikey. His last stint in the marketing division at HCL helped him identify, strategize, and create the right narratives for brands across the spectrum. With that experience on his belt, his focus shifted to startups and emerging businesses that are struggling to find the right platform and story for their brand.
He is currently helping dozens of such companies scale up and find a strong foothold in an otherwise cluttered ecosystem. Additionally, he is passionately chasing a dream of building the First Indian Martech Company that will find a significant spot in the global USD 90 Bn opportunity.
Anu Acharya is a serial entrepreneur, columnist, poet, and a charismatic speaker. As the Founder & CEO of Mapmygenome, she introduced the concept of personal genomics in India with the launch of Genomepatri in 2013. She co-founded and pioneered her first venture Ocimum Biosolutions from 2000 to 2013 through innovative bioinformatics and LIMS solutions, global acquisitions, awards, and fund raises.
She won Woman Entrepreneur of the Year Award, Special Recognition by Indian Express; Pride of Telangana Award (2018) Alumnus Award); Young Leaders Forum Young Global Leader of World Economic Forum She serves on governing boards of NIBMG, IIIT Hyderabad & WeHub; advisory Board at Action for India & KIIT; board of mentors for Ivy Cap Ventures; member of CII National Committee on Biotechnology; Committee Member of HIMSS Asia Pacific India Chapter.
Anuj Khanna Sohum is a technopreneur with over 20 years of experience in leading technology products/platforms-based businesses including Affle, the consumer intelligence driven global technology company. He is a passionate, vibrant and dynamic leader who has been at the helm of driving force at Affle. Under Anuj’s leadership, Affle has achieved a great scale globally and is presently counted amongst top 300 public listed companies on the NSE and BSE.
With his entrepreneurial zeal, Anuj earlier co-founded Anitus Technologies Pte. Ltd. while studying at National University Singapore (NUS) and later founded Seclore Technology Private Limited before incorporating Affle. He completed a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from the National University of Singapore (“NUS”) on a full scholarship by SIA & NOL Scholarships for Undergraduate Studies in Singapore. He has also completed the Stanford Executive Program from Graduate School of Business, Stanford University and the Owner/President Management Program from Harvard Business School.
Arun Seth took early retirement from his corporate career to focus on bringing the benefits of IT/Telecom to real world businesses in energy, health, fintech, medtech, education, hospitality etc. via a vibrant entrepreneurial system and give back to society.
He is currently an independent Director on the board of Jubilant Foodworks, Jubilant Life Sciences, Narayana Health, Sify Technologies, Centum Learning , Usha Breco Ltd & Serviont Global Solutions Ltd. He is also an active advisor to Avendus Capital, Nutanix USA, United Technologies for energy savings through IOT, MMTC PAMP for driving its Digital gold strategy and InMobi which he incubated in 2007.
He co-chairs the Nasscom Product Conclave and the Nasscom Product Council. He has been an active angel investor over the past two decades, having incubated companies like Avendus, InMobi, Tonetag, Ezetap, and HealthifyMe. As a founding Charter Member of TiE Delhi and Indian Angel Network, he has been part of angel funds and mentors a number of start-ups in the tech space in India and USA.
Arvind is Chairman and Managing Director of Technopak. He started his career as a Management Trainee with the DCM Group in 1979 and then worked with DCM Data Products, VXL India Ltd. and Modern Suitings before founding Technopak in 1992.
Technopak is one of India's leading management consulting firms focusing on the Retail, Consumer Products & E-tailing, Fashion - Textile & Apparel, Food Services & Agriculture, and Education sectors.
Arvind is an active member of various professional associations and industry forums, and is also a regular contributor to various national and international publications. He regularly addresses Indian and international conferences and has given guest lectures at leading educational and other institutions in India and abroad, including Harvard Business School (USA), Wharton (USA), ESADE (Barcelona), various IIMs and IITs, etc., and the Vatican (Italy).
Arvind's personal social-sector interests are in the areas relating to Education, Healthcare and Agriculture. He is an alumnus of UCLA, USA (MBA) and IIT-Roorkee (Engineering).
Abhay Tandon is the Director and Head of Lowe’s Innovation Labs - India, the innovation entity of Lowe’s (Fortune 50 retailer).
In the past, he has led the Target Accelerator Program – India, setup Innovation Brewery, the Open Innovation program at AbInBev – India as part of the Strategy and Innovation functions. Over the last 5 years in technology innovation function, he has executed over 30 deep technology projects with startups and other innovation stakeholders across the value chain of retail and FMCG. Prior to that, he has also worked in startups, VC and consulting roles ranging across functions.
Abhay is an angel investor, an official global member of the esteemed Forbes Technology Council, a Charter Member of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) and a contributing author in varied publications including Times of India etc. Abhay is also recognised as a ‘Super Mentor’ at AIM iCREST, an Incubator Capabilities enhancement program by NITI Aayog, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Wadhwani Foundation. He has been associated with multiple startup incubation and acceleration programs in the past in the capacity of a selector and mentor. Abhay is an alumni of SP Jain Institute of Management and Research, Mumbai and IESEG School of Business, France. Apart from being passionate about Innovation, he enjoys spending his time watching Sci-Fi shows and travelling.
Ashok Chandavarkar is Director – Strategic Initiatives at Intel India. His core charter is to lead and scale the Intel India Startup program, which focuses on disruptive deep tech startups both directly and in collaboration with industry, academia and government. Select startups from these have been able to leverage Intel® Partner Programs for Joint GTM and a few are on the path towards co-creation or licensing.
Ashok has been associated with Intel for over 15 years prior to which he was with IBM, a startup in the late 90’s and a large petrochemical company, across multiple functional and domain areas. Ashok is a Chemical Technologist from the Institute of Chemical Technology, University of Mumbai and hold a Master’s degree in Marketing.
Bijou Kurien has almost four decades of experience in the Indian Consumer & Retail industry. A postgraduate in Management from Xavier Institute of Management, India; he joined Hindustan Lever Ltd., as a management trainee in 1981. After a successful stint of 6 years in sales, distribution and marketing, he joined Titan Industries Ltd., where he was part of the team which set up the Company. When he left in April 2006 after a glorious stint of 19 years, he was the COO of Titan. During this period, he helped build marquee brands in watches and jewellery such as Titan, Fastrack, Tanishq, Sonata etc. He joined Reliance Industries as President & CE of their ambitious Retail foray – Reliance Retail, and was part of the team which helped to build Reliance Retail as India’s largest retailer during the 8 years he was there. Today, he is an Advisor to a couple of leading PE Funds, and an Independent Director on the Boards of several listed and unlisted Retail, Consumer, Infrastructure and Technology companies.
In addition to his role as Chairman of the Retailers Association of India (RAI), Bijou has been a member of the Grand Jury and Advisory Board of the World Retail Congress since its inception. He is also on the Governing Board of two Management Institutes, Mentor of the Retail Committee of FICCI, India, and advises several entrepreneurship networks.
Abhay Tandon is the Director and Head of Lowe’s Innovation Labs - India, the innovation entity of Lowe’s (Fortune 50 retailer).
Bani Paintal Dhawan heads Google for Education in India. She has been with Google for over 10 years, and her focus is to enable a large ecosystem that impacts learning outcomes through Google’s products and platforms that are specifically designed for students and educators.
With over 19 years of experience, Bani has spearheaded many programs at Google that impact student learning and teacher development. Prior to Google, Bani headed global communications at Infosys
Chiki knows well that books are perhaps the last thing on people's mind these days. More so at a time when a smartphone boom, fuelled by high-speed internet, has made it easy to access millions of videos at a click.
Juggernaut was founded in 2015 by Sarkar and Durga Raghunath, a former CEO of Network 18 Digital. Much of the funding came from investors, including Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani, Fabindia promoter William Bissell, and Boston Consulting Group's India Managing Director Neeraj Aggarwal, who put in over $2.2 million while the founders too invested small amounts.
Since then, the Juggernaut app has garnered over a million downloads across on Android and iOS platforms. Bharti Airtel, India's largest telecommunications firm, acquired a strategic stake in the company. Airtel is currently the largest investor in Juggernaut, says Sarkar.
While some of the classics, including those by George Orwell and Jane Austen, are available for free, others are priced between ₹10 and ₹250. Contemporary authors on Juggernaut include Twinkle Khanna, Arundhati Roy, William Dalrymple, Rujuta Diwekar, Rajdeep Sardesai and Sunny Leone. Last year, it launched a writers' platform that gives amateur writers an opportunity to digitally publish their work and win publishing contracts. So far, 10 contracts have been awarded. Sarkar was already a well-known figure in the Indian literary circle. Before founding Juggernaut, she was the editor-in-chief of Random House, and publisher of Penguin India.
We are a generation of smartphone users and most of the media companies have built their own online platforms. But books were still dependent on a third party platform. That's how we began Juggernaut," she says.
Chinmaya is a Venture Partner at Beenext and also leads platform initiatives. Besides India investments and actively engaging with our portfolio, he also leads the community charter across the Beenext global founder network. A seasoned tech industry leader, he has been in roles across Strategic Partnerships, Marketing, Strategy and Program Management. He was actively involved in building the global developer program for Facebook and leading several startup initiatives across India and South Asia.
He has spent almost a decade at Microsoft across multiple roles, Led IT-BPO engagements at Wipro, Keane and a couple of other startups in his career giving him a unique perspective on both small and mature organizations. He gets his energy from deep founder engagements and is an active participant in the Indian startup ecosystem working with founders across sectors, co-investors and several industry bodies.
Mr. Damodar Mall is the Chief Executive Officer of the Grocery Retail Business at the Reliance Retail Ltd.
An IIT-Bombay and IIM-Bangalore alumnus, Damodar worked in Sales and brand roles at Unilever prior to founding a retail venture that went on to become the DMart Supermarket Chain. He was then with Future Group in various leadership roles and was part of Kishore Biyani’s core team.
Mr. Mall writes an invitation blog for Forbes India. His first book SupermarketWala - Secrets to wining Consumer India, provides business insights for shaping consumer business and modern retail, in India. His recently published book “Be a SupermarketWala” is a business primer for supermarket entrepreneurs. Apart from English, this book is being published in Hindi, Marathi, Telugu & Gujarati.
He has received the Golden Spoon Award for the most admired Food & Grocery professional of the year, at the India Retail Forum.
Naini have been a business journalist for close to four years now, formerly with Outlook Business and since the past 2.5 years with Forbes India. While she wouldn't say that she have a particular beat that she cover, She enjoy writing about anything and everything that she think is interesting, yet challenging from—Innovation to Agriculture.
Naini also host a podcast show—Forbes India Teenpreneurs—where she speak to entrepreneurs and innovators under the age of 20.
Shradha Sharma is the Founder & CEO of YourStory Media , India’s largest digital media platform for entrepreneurship. Shradha founded YourStory as a digital storytelling platform for entrepreneurs and startups in 2008, leaving behind a lucrative job at a top national media company, solely because she believed India’s new-age entrepreneurs deserved to have their stories told – something that mainstream media was not ready to do at the time. Today, Shradha is widely recognised as the de facto voice and champion of entrepreneurs, innovators, and change makers in India. With more than two million followers on her personal social media handles, over five million on YourStory's handles, and around eight million monthly active readers on the platform.
Her contributions to the ecosystem have been acknowledged many times over the years. She was on Fortune’s list of the best 40 under 40 entrepreneurs in India for three years in a row. In 2018, she won the Forbes Power Trailblazers award and the FICCI Flow Young Women Achiever Award, among others. She was twice featured on LinkedIn’s list of powerful influencers, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi and actor Priyanka Chopra.
Shradha adopts a unique interviewing style, one that has won her much praise and allowed her to unravel the deeply personal sides of her interviewees. In the recent past, she has interviewed and profiled notable change makers & influencers, including PM Narendra Modi, Ratan Tata, Amazon India Head Amit Agarwal and Aadhaar Architect Nandan Nilekani, and SBI Chairman Rajnish Kumar to name a few.
Pramod is Senior Director & Head Digital, Innovation, Partnerships & Fintech at VISA. He was earlier heading Products & Digital Channels, Wallets – Payments at VISA.
Manish has been part Axis Bank as VP - Vice President & Head - Digital Banking, Mobile (digital) Payments & Innovation where he was responsible to Drive Mobile Banking & Mobile (digital) Payment initiative's for the Bank, including IMPS, Masterpass, mVisa to develop new innovative products & services using the mobile
Dinesh Agarwal age 51 is the Managing Director of IndiaMart InterMesh Ltd. He studied at Maharaja Agrasen Vidyalaya Inter College, Lucknow and acquired his B.Tech engineering degree with a specialization in computer science from the Harcourt Butler Technological Institute, Kanpur.
He has previously worked with Hindustan Management and Technical Services Private Limited, HCL America, Inc., HCL Limited, HCL Hewlett-Packard Limited, Centre for Development of Telematics and CMC Limited. Dinesh has led various revolutionary ideas to promote and help Indian SMEs worldwide and has raised voice on multiple concerns like GST, taxation, infrastructure, power, technology, etc.
Dinesh is a prolific investor and has invested in a large number of start-ups. He is a Member of the Governing Council of Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) from 2015 till present. From 2017, he has also been actively associated with the Indus Entrepreneur (TiE) and serves on the Advisory Committee of Amity International Business School.
Divia Thani is a writer and editor based in Mumbai, India
She is the Editor-in-Chief of Conde Nast Traveller magazine, which launched in India in October 2010 to great acclaim. Prior to this, she worked as Features Editor at Vogue. Divia graduated summa cum laude with a degree in English from the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania.
She received the Robert C Laing Award for Creative Writing, and a prestigious Brackenridge Fellowship from the University Honors College. On returning to India, Divia immediately became involved in magazine publishing. She has been part of the core teams to launch five international m agazine titles in India. She has written extensively on the arts, culture, lifestyle and travel, interviewed several luminous personalities, including film stars, celebrities, artists and authors.
Divia has trained extensively in Middle Eastern dance and enjoys travelling and science writing.
At Sequoia, GV Ravishankar advises on both technology as well as non-technology investments. He’s deeply interested in technology’s role in helping to drive efficiencies, reduce costs and improve access in consumer and healthcare markets.
He currently serves on the boards of BYJUs, Capital Float, Eruditus Learning, Faces Cosmetics, Five Star finance, Finova Capital, HomeLane, India Shelter Finance Corporation, Indigo Paints, K12 Technoservices, Prataap Snacks (NSE: DIAMONDYD), Rebel Foods, Rupeek, Suburban Diagnostics and Turtlemint. I have also served as board member/observer of companies like Via (sold to NASDAQ: EBIX ), Manappuram (NSE: MANAPPURAM) and Equitas (NSE: EQUITAS).
Prior to this, GV worked at McKinsey & Company, where he advised senior management of top Indian companies on a variety of issues including business building, channel management and leadership development. He also had a prior stint with Wipro Technologies in their Embedded and Internet Access division.
GV has an MBA from IIMA and holds a BE in Computer Science and Engineering from NIT Trichy.
Gabriela is committed to building networked & distributed organizations that bring together multiple stakeholders and enable them to achieve collective positive impact.
She spent her last 10 years working as a leader of innovative for profit and not for profit global organizations, organizational transformation consultant and experiential learning designer, spanning over 50 countries around the world. As a senior leader she worked for AIESEC Romania and International, Future Considerations and Impact Hub. As a consultant, she worked with clients such as HSBC, KPMG, BP, TATE Britain, ProVita Romania, RoPot, Human Invest and more.
Currently she works for the Impact Hub network as a global Managing Director, overseeing the network growth & development strategy with a passion for catalyzing and scaling social enterprises and change making businesses that address the key issues of our time.
Gaurav has more than 20 years of work experience across private equity & venture capital investment funds, responsible PE/VC investments, inclusive corporate development and policy reform having lived and worked in India and in global markets.
Over the last decade, Gaurav has worked on bilateral development cooperation between the UK and India, notably to spur private sector investments for India’s economic development. He has led joint investment programmes with Government of India institutions and worked with international development finance institutions including the UK’s CDC Group. Gaurav represents FCDO Development on several investment, investor advisory and steering committees overseeing FCDO’s circa. £300m alternative investment fund investments in India.
Gaurav has lived and worked in Singapore, France and the USA. He holds an MBA with Distinction from INSEAD, France and Wharton, University of Pennsylvania, USA in addition to a B.Eng (Hons) from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
Gautam is a General Partner at A91. Previously, Gautam was a Managing Director at Sequoia Capital India where he focused on technology and financial services businesses. At Sequoia Capital, he led investments in Oyo Rooms, Ola, Bankbazaar, CapitalFloat, Urban Ladder, Star Health Insurance and others.
Previously, Gautam worked at McKinsey & Company and Arthur Andersen. He is an alumnus of IIM Calcutta and the University of Mumbai.
Gita Dang is the Founder Director of TALENT ADVISORY SERVICES, a boutique executive search firm that focuses on working with top MNC and Indian companies in a variety of ways to help them execute world-class talent management strategies.
Ms. Dang has successfully placed senior executives in the C-suite for a wide range of companies, including, Omidyar Network, Acumen Fund, Fidelity Information, Schneider Electric, IVCA, Charities Aid Foundation, British Telecom, Goldman Sachs, Bennett Coleman, Cisco, Dell, EDS, Vodafone, McAfee, Autodesk, Lenovo, ADP, Moser Baer, NASSCOM, Symphony and Sequoia. In the course of her search work, she also consulted with these organizations on topics related to talent planning and on-boarding.
Ms. Dang was a Senior Client Partner for more than ten years with the global search firm Korn/Ferry International, where she was Regional Leader for India and focused much of her work in the Technology space. Prior to Korn/Ferry, Mrs. Dang worked as an Investment Banker with HSBC and with ANZ Grindlays.
Ms. Dang holds a Master’s degree in Economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, and she is a Charter Member and on the Board of Directors of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) Global.
Ms. Dang spent part of her career in publishing, and she has co-authored English language text books and workbooks for primary schools as well as written on Special Needs. Her interests include mentoring a Women in Business Group as well as working with a Parent Support Group on Special Needs.
Himanshu is a technology executive and entrepreneur with experience of building and leading businesses in India and the US. Currently Himanshu is the Managing Director for Etsy in India. His key focus is mobilising and empowering the creative community and connecting micro-entrepreneurs from India to a global audience through the Etsy platform.
Himanshu has also been an entrepreneur based in Mountain View where he founded MentMo - a peer to peer mentorship and admission consulting platform. Himanshu has also hadIn his previous roles Himanshu was head of operations at Craftsvilla in Mumbai, sales strategy and operations lead at HP based in Palo Alto and a consultant with McKinsey in their US and India offices. At McKinsey, Himanshu advised Private Equity, Technology and Financial services clients on a wide range of topics.
Himanshu earned his MBA from the Darden School of Business, University of Virginia and holds the CFA charter from the International CFA Institute.
Abhay Tandon is the Director and Head of Lowe’s Innovation Labs - India, the innovation entity of Lowe’s (Fortune 50 retailer).
Himanshu is a technology executive and entrepreneur with experience of building and leading businesses in India and the US. Currently Himanshu is the Managing Director for Etsy in India. His key focus is mobilising and empowering the creative community and connecting micro-entrepreneurs from India to a global audience through the Etsy platform.
Himanshu has also been an entrepreneur based in Mountain View where he founded MentMo - a peer to peer mentorship and admission consulting platform. Himanshu has also hadIn his previous roles Himanshu was head of operations at Craftsvilla in Mumbai, sales strategy and operations lead at HP based in Palo Alto and a consultant with McKinsey in their US and India offices. At McKinsey, Himanshu advised Private Equity, Technology and Financial services clients on a wide range of topics.
Himanshu earned his MBA from the Darden School of Business, University of Virginia and holds the CFA charter from the International CFA Institute.
Kalyan Krishnamurthy is the Group CEO of the Flipkart Group since 2018. As the Group CEO, Kalyan is responsible for driving growth and operations across the country with the vision to democratize e-commerce in India. He has been leading various charters at Flipkart since his association with the company in 2016 and was appointed the CEO for Flipkart in January 2017.
Kalyan has played a pivotal role in shaping the consumer internet business in India and helping Flipkart become a leading homegrown e-commerce marketplace focused on building an inclusive ecosystem. During his journey at Flipkart, Kalyan has led Flipkart’s commerce business, managing a portfolio that ran across category operations, marketing, customer shopping experience, marketplace, Ads retail, and Private Labels. Under his leadership, the company has expanded into significant new categories like Grocery and Fintech and launched iconic innovations like voice assistant and regional language interfaces.
In an earlier association with the company, Kalyan served as interim CFO in 2013. An e-commerce veteran, Kalyan has served as the Managing Director at Tiger Global Management, managing the fund’s India portfolio companies. Before that, he was Director, Finance - Portfolio Companies at Tiger Global Management.
A seasoned finance professional, Kalyan has worked as the Director of Financial Planning & Analysis for eBay Asia Pacific, and as the Country Finance Director (Hong Kong) at eBay South Asia. He was also a part of Procter and Gamble in its Supply Chain Finance business.
Kalyan holds an MBA from the Asian Institute of Management, Philippines. He is an avid reader and practices yoga.
Kanishk is Investor at Falcon Edge Capital where he is a part of Investment team & is based out of Bangalore. Earlier he was in Investment team at Accel where he looked at B2B space.
Earlier in his life he also co-founded a startup called SpoonJoy.com where he played a major role in strategic planning, organisation structuring, milestone setting, hiring the leadership team along with the other founding members.
He is IIT Roorkee alumni.
Kanwal Singh Managing Partner, Fireside Ventures Kanwal Singh is Founder and Managing Partner of Fireside Ventures. Fireside has invested $50Mn across 18 investments in the early stage consumer brand companies and is in the process of closing a $100Mn second fund. He has been passionate about mentoring and helping build consumer brands in India and has been involved as an investor with brands like Paper Boat, ID Fresh, Epigamia, Yogabar, Licious, Mama Earth, Vahdam Teas, boAt etc.
Kanwal has been investing in the early stage ecosystem in India for the past 19 years, first as a Director of Carlyle Group, India and later as a Co-Founder and Senior MD of Helion Venture Partners.
Prior to his investing career, Kanwal spent over 13 years in consumer marketing with Hindustan Unilever and Intel India. He has over 30 years of experience in venture investing, marketing, sales and business development across diverse sectors. Mr Singh holds a Master of Business Administration degree in Marketing and Finance from the Faculty of Management Studies, New Delhi; and a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from Punjab University.
Karan always believed in the incredible power of early childhood learning and harnessing the natural curiosity and creativity of kids. He founded WhiteHat Jr in 2018 with a vision of making children creators of technology rather than being passive consumers of it. In August 2020, Karan joined hands with BYJU’S, the world’s most valuable edtech company, to further accelerate his vision. He continues to lead the company post acquisition.
A striving yogi, Karan believes in keeping it simple, is a minimalist and views modern life through a yogic prism. He took a sabbatical in 2013 and backpacked across South America and Central Asia with his wife and spent most of the year in forest ashrams and silent meditation retreats.
Karan is also an acclaimed novelist and has written three bestselling novels so far published by HarperCollins-India and Penguin Random House: Keep Off the Grass, Johnny Gone Down and The Seeker. His first novel, Keep Off the Grass became a bestseller with more than 70,000 copies sold in the year of release. Together his novels have sold more than 200,000 copies in India. In fact, Keep Off The Grass is also being made into a movie. Kunal Kohli Productions, UTV Productions, and Mosaic Media Group bid for the film rights of the book.
A graduate of IIM-Bangalore, Karan has earlier served as the CEO for Discovery Inc. South Asia. He’s been associated with companies like P&G, BCG, and Kraft Foods Group in the past.
Karan Mohla is a Partner at Chiratae Ventures (formerly IDG Ventures India) and leads fundraising and partnerships for the firm in the Asia region. Karan was recognised by BusinessWorld Magazine as one of the 40 under 40 leaders for 2018, as well as one of the 40 under 40 Alternate Investment Professionals by the Indian Association of Alternative Investment Funds (IAAIF).
Karan has been part of the technology and startup ecosystem since 2003 with experience spanning investment advisory, finance, portfolio management, fundraising and M&A. he has worked on investments in companies including Bounce, FirstCry, HealthifyMe, Xpressbees, CropIn, Peel-Works, Oye Rickshaw, Wmall, , LittleBlackBook, Tripoto and Yatra.com (NASDAQ: YTRA).
Prior to IDG Ventures, Karan worked with QVT Finance LP, a US based hedge fund and was a founding member of their Asia-Pacific practice. He earlier worked in the TMT investment banking group at Jefferies & Company (formerly Broadview International) in Silicon Valley, where he advised several technology companies in Internet, Mobile and Enterprise Software on capital raising, M&A as well as strategic partnerships. Later, Karan helped start the India office for Jefferies where he advised and executed financing strategies for companies in the Technology, Media, Telecom, CleanTech and Education sectors. He has successfully completed over 20 transactions covering M&A and helped raised over $1 Billion in capital for corporates across India and the US.
Karan holds a Bachelors degree in Business Administration (BBA) from the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and MBA from INSEAD.
Kaushik is a Partner at A91. Previously, Kaushik was Head of India Investments at CapitalG (formerly Google Capital) where he focused on technology and financial services businesses.
At CapitalG, he led investments in Aye Finance, Cardekho, Freshworks and Cuemath. He was previously at Sequoia Capital India and McKinsey & Co. He is an alumnus of Harvard Business School and IIT Madras.
An MBA & a Chartered Accountant with experience in various operating and strategic leadership roles. Mr. Roy has an extensive exposure in strategic & financial planning, business performance management, integration, risk management & internal controls, financial reporting and business process re-engineering.
Prior to his role of Regional Fin Director Kaushik served as Global Category Finance Director & as part of the Top 400 management team, responsible for shaping the strategic direction of the Power Brands to deliver longer term financial performance and leading the performance management of the Innovation Pipeline across Health, Hygiene & Home.
Kiran is a Partner at Kalaari Capital and focuses on early stage investments across sectors. Prior to Joining Kalaari, Kiran was COO & SVP at Paytm where he was instrumental in building payments & other business verticals.
Kiran has more than two decades of experience in Internet & telecom sector; He had played several other roles in number of organizations before which include IBM, Comverse and VocalTec.
A serial entrepreneur with 13 years of experience in the financial technology space, Mabel currently working on re-imagining business banking for SMEs in India through Open- India's first Neo-banking platform for SMEs & addressing financial complexity, has been actively building products and successful startups.
She has previously worked at Citrus Payment Solutions and PayU. An alumnus of IIM Bengaluru, in 2019, she won the “Startup leader of the year” award hosted by MEITY and Nasscom, and was also recognised in the fintech space.
She co-founded her first startup CashNxt in 2007, which was a plug and play mobile payment and financial inclusion solution meant specifically for semi-urban and rural markets. In 2013, she co-founded Zwitch, India's first developer focused payment platform, which was later acquired by Citrus Payments. Experienced in Business development & strategic alliances. More recently, conferred the 'Top 20 Women in Fintech Award' at Fintegrate 2019.
She is passionate about start-ups & entrepreneurship and was one of the jury panel for The Economic Times - Power of Ideas initiative 2010 held in alliance with IIM Ahmedabad.
Madhu Shalini was the Chief Data Officer of Gojek and helped grow the business into a $1 billion unicorn. She was on the board and started the Singapore office.
Prior to Gojek, Madhu was an operating partner at a 150M private equity fund building startups across South East Asia. She was part of the founding team of Intuit’s Quickbooks Lending Platform where she helped grow the platform to $300 million and holds 3 patents in the areas of user data augmented algorithms for financial inclusion.
Madhurima Agarwal works as the Director for Engineering Program with global responsibility for leading NetApp’s startup program called NetApp Excellerator – startup.netapp.in. She also plays a key role in driving enhanced collaboration between engineering and market-facing functions across NetApp India and acts as the touch point for all external partnerships.
She brings with her over 17yrs of experience spanning domains across the globe with leading financial firms. She’s been an entrepreneur and currently dons the hats of a mentor and advisor to startups. An alumna of IIM, Ahmedabad, Madhurima enjoys driving innovation and taming the power of technology to achieve organizational growth.
She’s an avid reader and enjoys writing on topics around entrepreneurship. Madhurima is an advisor to the WIT (Women in Technology) group at NetApp and focuses on professional development of women in the workplace.
Madhusudanan is a Fintech entrepreneur with deep rooted experience in building and scaling Payments businesses across Asia. He is CEO, Yappay - YAP is Asia’s largest API platform for Fintech that serves both the disruptor and the disrupted in a meaningful way. Over the last 5 years YAP has become the platform of choice for over 250 fintech in Asia and growing rapidly.
Madhu is a Knowledge powerhouse and weekend chef, he feels startups are constantly challenged. He aims to transform every business into a Fintech.
As Head – Strategic Partnerships & Entrepreneurship Development at BIRAC, is excited to nurture and empower the Biotech Innovation Ecosystem in India. He is responsible for strategic partnerships at national and international level to leverage mutual strengths in facilitating BIRAC’s mandate to promote translation of innovative ideas to PoC, validation to commercialization of innovative affordable products and technologies to address unmet needs in the areas of Health care, Diagnostics, Medical Devices etc.
He has about 25 years of global Industry & Academia R&D experience in Pharma/ Biotech sector from discovery research to product development, Leadership, Project Management and Administration
Contributed to several Clinical Drug Candidates for global drug development at Daiichi Sankyo (India), Ranbaxy, Dabur etc.
He serves on several national level committees and advisory boards, and contributes at national and international forums.
Manish Kheterpal is a private markets investor with over 15 years of experience in venture capital and private equity, and 6 years of operating experience in technology, telecom and education sectors. Manish has led and managed over $500Million of investments throughout his investment career, mostly in India and across the US-India corridor.
Currently he is a Managing Partner with WaterBridge Ventures, an early-stage VC firm focused on investments in India or in global companies with a strong India connect. His investments at WaterBridge include leading start-ups like Chalo, Dataweave, Magicpin, PocketPills, SocialCops, Unacademy and 9Stacks.
Prior to WaterBridge founding in 2016, Manish spent 11 years working in senior investment roles at Rho Ventures, Actis Capital and Providence Equity Partners. Manish’s achievements during this period included investments in Idea Cellular, Hathaway Cable, Dalmia Group as well as BroadLogic etc.
Manish has spent a year working on an entrepreneurial venture in the education sector, and he has been an active angel investor in India and the US. Manish is an active member of entrepreneurship focused networks such as Stanford Angels and TiE. Manish graduated with a bachelor’s degree in engineering from IIT Delhi (1996) and received his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business (2004).
President and CEO of Panasonic India & South Asia, overseeing strategy planning and business development for the company’s product portfolio. I am also responsible for propelling growth across the B2C, B2B, and B2G segments. Serving as the Executive Officer of Panasonic Corporation, and being an integral part of the leadership team, have been contributing to the decision-making process for the business, globally
Currently the Chairperson of FICCI Electronics Manufacturing Committee. Also held the position of the President at CEAMA (Consumer Electronics and Appliances Manufacturers Association) from 2014-18.
With about 25 years of experience in the consumer durables industry, I have been associated with a number of leading electronic companies in the past like LG Hotline, Samsung India and Haier India.
Mark co-founded Omnivore with Jinesh Shah in 2010. Previously, Mark was the Executive Vice President (Strategy & Business Development) at Godrej Agrovet, one of India’s foremost diversified agribusiness companies. At Godrej Agrovet, Mark was responsible for corporate strategy, M&A, R&D, and new business incubation. Earlier in his career, Mark worked for Syngenta and PFM
He earned a BA (Honors) from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he graduated as a Baker Scholar. Mark is a member of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) National Council on Agriculture, a member of the Governing Council of the Maharashtra State Innovation Society, and a member of EMPEA’s Venture Capital Council.
Mayur is Chief Executive & Product Architect at Blackfrog Technologies.
A Manipal-based product development company has been working on a project for the last six months that can help exterminate larvae laid by mosquitoes on the rainwater puddles.
A hatchling under the Manipal University Technology Business Incubator (MUTBI), a university initiative, Blackfrog Technologies was co-founded by Mayur and Donson D’Souza in 2015, with an aim to not just provide a platform for innovator and entrepreneurs, but also for the purpose of employment within the city.
Meena is one of India’s foremost business leaders and most successful entrepreneurs with nearly three decades of experience in industries including healthcare, consulting, technology, outsourcing, education and e-commerce.
She is CEO of Portea Medical, India’s largest and fastest growing home healthcare company, which she co-founded in July 2013. With 1700+ employees and operations across 20+ cities, Portea brings, in-home to patients, the full range of geriatric, chronic, post-operative care as well as allied healthcare services.
Till February 2013, Meena was a promoter and board member of TutorVista, and CEO & MD of Pearson Education Services, which included innovative and successful brands. As a partner of the platform, Growthstory.in, she is also co-promoter of nearly a dozen, new-age Internet/ Technology enabled start-ups. A few of them that are leaders in their category include Bigbasket and Bluestone.com. She also serves as a member of the Board of Directors of Bigbasket.com, Bluestone.com.
She was also the only Indian and amongst only four women in the Global Retail Council of Tesco, an elite group of about 50 people who ran the operations of Tesco worldwide. Before joining Tesco, Meena co-founded one of India’s pioneering BPO companies: Customer Asset, which she sold to ICICI OneSource. Meena also had a five year stint with Microsoft India, during which she set up multiple business units including Microsoft Consulting, Internet and Application Development/Business services units. During the initial 11 years of her career, Meena was with PricewaterhouseCoopers and with NIIT.
Meena is a PGDM holder from IIM Calcutta has a graduate degree in Physics from the Madras University. In 2011, she was conferred the ‘Distinguished Alumnus’ award by IIM Calcutta. She was also one of the 5 finalists for the Forbes Leadership Award in 2012.
Megha Vishwanath is a business journalist, television anchor & producer. With an experience of over 8 years in broadcast journalism, she is a graduate from Symbiosis Institute of Media & Communication, Pune with a major in journalism. She is the Assistant Editor of India’s longest running show on entrepreneurship – Young Turks on CNBC-TV18.
Megha also anchors and produces CNBC-TV18’s technology series Tech Toyz and the daily news show on startups on CNBC-TV18 called Startup Street. She is the co-curator of the channel's flagship annual event Young Turks Conclave, that brings together global and Indian business leaders under one roof.
Over the past eight years, Megha has been closely watching technology, startups, new economy and social sectors in India and around the world.
Her reporting includes headlines such as multiple startup acquisitions and major technology breakthroughs. Megha's research has led to coverage of early stage startups, several of which have become reputable businesses over the years. She also covers key international events in the startup and technology space, including Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and Shanghai, Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Wharton India Economic Forum, Innovation Week in Tel Aviv and other regional summits.
Megha is a TEDx speaker and has been nominated as the ‘Young Professional of the Year’ at Exchange4media News Broadcasting Awards 2015 and ‘Young TV Journalist’ at News Television Awards 2015
Meghana is passionate about children's nutrition and health. She is committed to make a positive change to childhood malnutrition statictics. Her efforts to feed her daughter healthy, tasty food is what led her to starting this venture. Before starting Slurrp Farm, Meghana led the Public Health practise at McKinsey & Company.
She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, a BA in Computation as a Rhodes Scholar from Oxford University and a BE with Distinction in Computer Engineering from Bangalore University.
Meghana was a national level swimmer for India for many years. She has won over 400 gold medals, including at the Asian Games. Her dream is to help bring more golden Olympic medals home!
Mihir Dalal is the author of Big Billion Startup, a biography of Flipkart. A leading production house is adapting the book into a web series. He also works as an editor with Mint, from where he has covered internet businesses for more than five years.
He previously worked at Reuters and CNBC TV18. He was born and brought up in Bombay and currently lives in Bangalore.
Mukesh P Kalra is the Founder & CEO of ETMoney, India’s largest app for financial services. Mukesh has over 12 years of experience in building businesses & products from scratch in the consumer internet and mobile advertising space.
Prior to ET Money, he was the first core employee at InMobi & built it from concept into the world’s largest independent mobile ad network. He then launched his own fintech firm, Moneysights, which was acquired by Times Internet. Since then, Mukesh has been building ETMoney with a vision to simplify the financial journey for new age Indians.
After completing his BTech from IIT Roorkee in 2013, Mukul joined Futures First as Financial Derivatives Analyst and worked there till September 2015. Just after quitting, Mukul and his co-founder, Bhaswat Agarwal, decided to work in edtech. Their first venture could not achieve the desired success. However, the duo learnt a lot about the edtech sector in Indian from this experience and used this knowledge to start Classplus in 2018. Classplus, is India’s leading mobile-first platform that enables local coaching institutes and independent educators to launch their online teaching businesses and stay relevant in the smartphone age of today.
Mitesh Agarwal is the Director of Customer Engineering for Google Cloud based in Bangalore. Mitesh brings with him over 2 decades of experience across technology consulting, product strategy, enterprise architecture and enterprise sales. He joined Google from Oracle (via the Sun Microsystems acquisition) where he spent 18 years across a variety of roles across technology and business. He was instrumental in driving the Cloud and Digital Strategy agenda for several customers and helped them through massive transformations.
Prior to Sun and Oracle he worked with Ramco Systems and Wipro. Mitesh holds a Master’s degree (Hons) in Physics and a B.E. (Hons) Mechanical Engineering from BITS, Pilani. He is also an accomplished quizzer, quizmaster and is on the technology advisory board of Arka Ventures.
Namita Thapar is a graduate in Commerce from the Pune University. She is a Certified Chartered Accountant from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and received her MBA from The Fuqua School of Business in 2001.
She is currently the Executive Director of Emcure Pharmaceuticals, a 700M USD company that her father founded. Namita is also involved in the HR and CSR activities at this family business. Prior to returning home to India, Namita worked in the U.S. for Glaxo and Guidant (now Abbott) in various finance roles.
She is also the Founder and CEO of Incredible Ideas ltd, a franchisee of Young Entrepreneurs Academy, USA, which brings innovative entrepreneurship education to middle and high school students in India. YEAIndia launched in Delhi and Mumbai in August 2016. Namita serves on the Board of Finolex Cables ltd. and is an active member of Young Presidents Organization. Ms. Thapar is married to Emcure’s President of Corporate Development and Strategy, Vikas Thapar, and they have two beautiful children.
Nayantara Rai heads the Delhi Bureau at ET Now and hosts StartupCentral every weekday from 6-7pm. She anchors other shows too including Markets@Noon and India Tonight at 8pm.
Nayantara has been a journalist for 13 years; which includes an 8 year long stint at CNBC-TV18. Prior to that she was with Business Standard. Nayantara says nothing gives her a bigger thrill than breaking a big story (other than watching Roger Federer beat Rafa Nadal)
A professional with several years in the Industry with proven business leadership in strategy and execution. A passion for launching of ‘new’ initiatives, products and services. In the last decade have focused on innovation and innovation frameworks, defining of new product/service ventures,Intrapreneurship, business strategy/modeling, value creation and build out of strong alliances and eco-systems.
He has given shape to several new initiatives taking them from an idea to real world. In recent times Neel led and nurtured from a business perspective the Security and Blockchain eco-system of Intel including confidential computing in the APAC region and India. Neel currently is responsible for Intel startup ecosystem programs, strategic initiatives and industry collaborations. Neel mentors several start-ups and upcoming entrepreneurs, is passionate about healthcare, education amongst others and enjoys the fun and the learning experience.
An IIT Bombay graduate Nitin was always the "designated chai-maker" of his family. He realised very early on, the role that chai played in his life & his love for chai led him to start Chaayos.
Nitin Saluja Living away from home and unable to get that perfect cup, he decided to bring about a chai revolution that would become a force to reckon with. His passion for chai led him and his friend Raghav Verma to start Chaayos, India’s leading chai café. Nitin is the Founder & CEO and also does all product R&D (Infact, most of the chai menu at Chaayos has been designed by Nitin himself).
However, This is not his first shot at entrepreneurship - he co-founded a robotics education company (Think Labs) at IITB, which is today valued over $10 MM. Prior to Chaayos, he worked at Opera Solutions, a consulting firm, for over 5 years.
Dr. Omkar Rai is Director General, Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) which is the premier government organization working for the promotion of IT/ITES/ESDM industry in India. Dr. Rai has contributed immensely in repositioning STPI with focus on Innovation and dispersal of IT/ESDM industry beyond metros. He brings over 25 years of experience in IT/ESDM sector having unique distinction of working very closely with government and IT/ESDM industry.
He is working for the formulation of Incubation program and Centre of Excellences for IT/ESDM sector to promote startups, entrepreneurship, innovation and product creation in the country.
Prior to joining of STPI, he served National Informatics Centre in various capacities. He is serving as Chairman, AIC STPINEXT INITIATIVE and Director on the Board of Directors of MTNL-STPI IT Services Limited, National Internet Exchange of India & (HARTRON). He has been contributing immensely in shaping up programs and policies of these entities.
He is a member of Governing Body of School of Open Learning, Delhi University and also a member on the Board of Governors for the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) University, Bhubaneswar. Dr. Rai has been educated in Banaras Hindu University (BHU) from where he earned his Bachelor’s, Master’s and Ph.D in Statistics.
Padmaja is nationally recognized as a key player in the Indian entrepreneurial ecosystem and has helped co found many of the relevant institutions, besides being an active Angel investor herself. Her operating experience spans large corporates, M&A, and startups/early stage companies.
She has been awarded as one of the 'Top 50 Most Powerful Women in Business' by Fortune India for 2017, 2018 2019, listed in Forbes India’s WPower Trailblazers & “30 Most Powerful Women in India” by Business Today for 3 years running. She is Co-Founder & President of IAN, India's first and now possibly one of the world’s largest group of business angels, comprising the who's who of successful entrepreneurs and dynamic CEOs from India and overseas. She built IAN from inception, making it within 15 years a unique institution globally, with close to 500 investors across 10 countries and a portfolio of 160+ companies in 7 countries, spanning 17 sectors. She has operationalised IAN’s international operations in London – making it the only angel group in the world to set up operations outside of its home country.
She is a member of several committees of BIRAC, various committees of Ministry of Finance, DPIIT, & SEBI. She is the Senior Managing Partner of the IAN Fund, a uniquely differentiated Fund which along with IAN, is set to create the largest horizontal platform in India for investing in seed and early stage ventures. She is a member of the Governing Council of EM3 Services, a nation building venture seeking to create a paradigm shift in the Indian agricultural sector by improving productivity. Padmaja is an Independent Director on the Boards of Avendus Finance Pvt. Ltd. & Ester Industries Ltd. Apart from cofounding IAN, she also set up and operationalised the The Indus Entrepreneurs Delhi. She played a key role as Executive Director in building the IVCA.
Currently, she is a member of IVCA’s Limited Partners Council. In addition she helped the creation of Lankan Angel Network in Sri Lanka. In her corporate avatar at Xansa India, she led several functions over a 16 year period handled recruitment operations, built and successfully executed an innovative brand and communication strategy and led the corporate social responsibility initiative which engaged employees, clients as also the government. A graduate with English Honours, Padmaja then completed her MBA as well as Chartered Accountancy with her internship with S.R. Batliboi.
Pankaj Naik co-heads the Digital & Technology vertical for Avendus’s investment banking business and is based in Mumbai. He has over 18 years of investment banking experience across sectors including technology, media, and other diversified industries.His areas of expertise include mergers and acquisitions (M&A) advisory, private placements, leveraged finance and capital markets.
Prior to joining Avendus, Pankaj worked with JP Morgan’s investment banking team for over 11 years, where he led several marquee transactions amounting to over USD 10 billion across various industries. Before JP Morgan, he worked with DSP Merrill Lynch’s investment banking team for 4 years.
Pankaj holds an MBA degree from IIM, Calcutta and a Bachelor of Engineering degree from Government College of Engineering, Pune. He is a regular speaker at leading industry events focused on internet technology.
Pankaj Vermani is a serial entrepreneur and has co-founded and grown two companies in the past, which went through successful acquisition and got featured in multiple global forums including Red Herring Asia 100 and Deloitte India Fast 50.
In his previous role, he was heading the Incubator/Company-Builder Mountain Apollo India, an initiative of Mountain Partners AG Zurich. Pankaj's latest venture is Clovia, one of the fastest growing Lingerie, Sleepwear, Activewear and personal care brands in India. The brand sells a unit every 4 seconds through its online and offline channels and has a customer base of over 2Mn. Over the years the brand has won several awards including Super Start-up Asia 2018, and India Retail Awards 2019.
Pankaj actively advises and mentors start-ups in the internet, mobile, e-com, consumer and ed-tech space. He writes regularly for technology blogs on team building, scale, and business strategy. In his free time, he is a theatre buff and performs in the Professional Theatre Circle. He is a Reiki Practitioner for over 20yrs. Pankaj was awarded the Young Entrepreneur Award by Business World and Retail CEO of the Year @ Global Leadership Awards 2019. He is a graduate from IIT Delhi, a premier Engineering Institution in India.
As part of his tenure with GE Capital, Parag cycled out to an industry operating role for two-years at Genpact, India’s largest business process outsourcing company and an operating subsidiary of GE.
Parag made a foray into venture capital after his MBA in 1993. He started off with ICICI Venture and followed that up with stints at GE Equity and Intel Capital. At Inventus, Parag is a Board Director at FundsIndia, Vizury, Power2SME, PolicyBazaar, eDreams, Avaz, peel-works and Tricog.
Parag earned an MBA from Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Bangalore and a BSME from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi. He is a Charter Member of TiE Bangalore mentoring entrepreneurs.
Pawan Mehrotra holds a Ph.D. in Cancer Sciences sponsored by Cancer Research UK which involved inter disciplinary work at Cambridge, Oxford, Dundee and Manchester. He was a independent research fellow below the age of 30 years in the context of Centre for Chemical Biology and Therapeutics, a joint initiative of University of Cambridge and Department of Biotechnology (DBT) at National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore before foraying into affordable healthcare product development for unmet user-centric medical needs. His team has successfully developed and launched their nascent social enterprise’s first two products – Sampoorti and Poorti which aims at post-surgical rehabilitation of breast cancer patients supported by BIRAC, Foundation for Innovation and Social Enterpreneurship-Tata Trusts and Translational Health Science and Technology Institute – DBT. He has the unique experience of having publications, patents and products to his credit in the field of oncology.
Mr. Piyush Goyal is Minister of Railways; Commerce & Industry; Consumer Affairs and Food & Public Distribution Government of India, Deputy leader of the Rajya Sabha. He was earlier the Minister of Railways and Coal. He has also held additional charge of Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs twice in 2018 and 2019.
Mr Goyal’s tenure has seen Indian Railways achieve its best ever safety record in 2018-19. This was achieved through holistic measures such as elimination of Unmanned Level Crossings from the broad gauge network, production of safer coaches etc. Additionally, Mr. Goyal oversaw the launch of the first indigenous semi-high speed train Vande Bharat Express between Delhi and Varanasi.
He also received the 4th Annual Carnot Prize in 2018 recognising the pathbreaking transformations in India’s energy sector. During his 35 yearlong political career, Mr Goyal has held several important positions at different levels in the world’s largest political party, the Bharatiya Janata Party & is in its National Executive. He has been the National Treasurer of the Party. In the 2019 Indian General Elections, he was a member of the Manifesto and Publicity Committees. He also headed the BJP’s Information Communication Campaign Committee for the Indian General Elections 2014.
Mr Goyal has had a brilliant academic record – all-India second rank holder CA and second rank holder in Law in Mumbai University. He was a well-known investment banker and has advised top corporates on management strategy and growth. He also served on the Board of India’s largest commercial bank, the SBI and Bank of Baroda. His father, Late Vedprakash Goyal was Union Minister of Shipping, and the National Treasurer of the BJP for over two decades. His mother Chandrakanta Goyal was elected thrice to the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly from Mumbai. He is married to Seema, an active social worker, and has two children – Dhruv and Radhika, who have both graduated from Harvard University, USA.
As part of Sequoia's Strategic Development team, Piyush work with founders to identify and create strategic engagement with global corporates and investors where he gets to interact with talented and visionary founders every day. It's his daily dose of energy and inspiration. He loves the fact that he get to really dig into the businesses and develop a deep understanding of their goals, capital needs and strategic roadmap.
Prior to joining Sequoia, he spent 17 years in investment banking in India, Hong Kong and Singapore, focussed on the TMT sectors. His experience spans the entire capital structure, including public and private equity, converts, bonds, loans and M&A.
He believes, Entrepreneurs work incredibly hard over many years, building their businesses. It's incredibly satisfying to help crystalize value for those founders, their teams and their early investors.
Praapti Jayaswal is a scientist turned entrepreneur. Her PhD in tuberculosis research helped develop her skills and a molecular & microbiologist. She intends to translate her scientific education to real world application by combatting anti-microbial resistance through AarogyaAI. AarogyaAI provides precision medicine for anti-microbial resistance by unlocking the power of genomics and artificial intelligence.
AarogyaAI's TB drug susceptibility test ensures patients are prescribed the most effective drugs in a matter of hours - 100 X faster than the existing gold standard.
Pradeep Gupta is the Chairman of the CyberMedia Group, the specialty media house, with brands like Dataquest, PCQuest, Voice&Data, DARE, CIOL, Global Services, etc.
He was conferred the “National Entrepreneurship Award as the Best Mentor” by the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Government of India. Pradeep is the Chief Mentor of Electropreneur Park, Delhi & Bhubaneshwar.
PG is an Angel investor and has mentored over 250 start-ups. He is the co-founder of Indian Angel Network, Asia’s largest angel network with more than 500 members that has done over 180 deals. He was on the Board of UTI AMC with $20 Bn of AUM. PG is Chair - Alumni Trust (IvyCap Ventures) that has a corpus of $150 mn for investments in medium scale businesses.
Pradeep was a global trustee of TiE, the world’s largest entrepreneurial ecosystem with 12,000 members, including over 2,500 charter members in 60 chapters across 17 countries. PG was the GP of India’s first angel fund Infinity Ventures.
He has been the past President of Pan IIT India and Association of Indian Magazines. He is/has been on the Boards of IIT Mandi, Indian Newspaper Society, IIT Delhi incubator, IIM Calcutta Innovation Park, Lemon Tree Hotels, etc.He is the recipient of the Distinguished Alumni award of IIT Delhi and IIM Calcutta and the Helen Keller award for working in the disability sector.
PG is an Engineer from IIT Delhi (1975) and an MBA from IIM Calcutta (1977).
Pramath is a pioneering force in Indian higher education. He is the Founder & Chairman of Harappa Education, which strives to become India’s largest online institution focused on teaching habits and skills critical to workplace success in the 21st century.
He is the Founding Dean and a member of the Executive Board of ISB which rapidly became one of the top-20 business schools in the world. He is also the Founder & Trustee of the acclaimed Ashoka University, a liberal arts university which launched the popular Young India Fellowship.
Pramath has been instrumental in setting up a wide spectrum of change-based higher education initiatives, including a management program for career-oriented women, an entrepreneurship fellowship for the Himalayan region, and a solution-focused design education for the built environment.
He has also been a media entrepreneur, education consultant and management advisor at the 9.9 Group, which he founded, the CEO of the Ananda Bazar Patrika Group, and a Partner at McKinsey & Company.
Academics are his first love: He received a PhD and an MSE from the University of Pennsylvania and a BTech from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, where he was honored with the Distinguished Alumnus Award in 2018.
Pranav Pai is a Founding Partner at 3one4 Capital - an early-stage venture capital fund that is based in Bangalore, India. The firm works in select market categories and in the intersection of adjacencies that are large, growing, and ready for unique products and services. The fund’s focus areas include machine-driven actionable intelligence services for the enterprise, enterprise automation, ambient intelligence technologies, consumer products, fintech, media and multi-lingual content generation, and health.
3one4 manages a corpus of INR 800 Cr (+$110Mil) and a portfolio of 50+ investments across the early stage. 3one4's investments include Licious, Betterplace, Open, ToneTag, DarwinBox, Faircent, Bugworks, Pocket Aces, YourStory, and Tracxn. Pranav is a Stanford Alum, and is the co-president of Stanford Angels & Entrepreneurs India.
Prashant is CEO of Fundbox, the leading small business working capital platform in the US. Prior to Fundbox, Prashant was SVP of Advertising Products at Yahoo, which he joined through the acquisition of Flurry, then the world’s largest mobile analytics platform. Prashant was previously Senior Product Director at Facebook, responsible for advertising products and monetizing the Facebook platform, and an early product leader at Google, where he built the company’s global billing and payment network, and ran all products for the APAC region.
Prashant holds a PhD in Business with a Minor in Engineering-Economic Systems & Operations Research, an MA in Business Research, and an MS in Statistics, all from Stanford University. He also holds a B. Tech. from IIT Delhi, where he was the President’s Gold Medalist. Prashant is an avid guitar player, formerly with Euphoria, at one time India’s largest-selling rock band.
Prashant is Co-founder and CEO of 1mg, India’s largest digital health platform. He’s been recognized for his work by Unreasonable Goals Program, (targeted at helping solve the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals-SDG#3 Health and Wellbeing for all by 2030), by Economic Times 40 under 40, AsiaOne - India’s 40 most influential Indians under 40 and by several other organizations. Prashant also helms DHP (Digital Health Platforms) – an association of India’s top e-health companies as their first President, Chairs the FICCI sub-committee on ePharmacy and is also the co-chair for Digital Health at IAMAI (Internet and Mobile Association of India). He is also a key influencer in Niti Aayog’s Champions of Change programme, a Government of India Initiative.
Under his leadership, 1mg has disrupted the standard model of healthcare delivery and grown to operate India’s largest online pharmacy and diagnostic platforms and one of the largest online consultation platforms – thus making healthcare accessible, affordable and understandable for millions of Indians.
Prior to 1mg, Prashant was the Co-founder & Managing Director of HealthKart.com, India's #1 Nutrition e-Commerce company. Till 2009, before he returned to India, Prashant worked at McKinsey & Company in San Francisco where he focused on the healthcare sector. He started his career with the Business Leadership Program at Hindustan Unilever India, where he worked in roles spanning Innovation, Product Development and Operations. Prashant is an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business and a graduate from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.
Prukalpa is the co-founder of Atlan. She has previously founded SocialCops, a widely recognized global data for social good company that is behind landmark projects including India’s National Data Platform, global SDG monitoring in partnership with the United Nations, and India's widely successful gas subsidy program, Ujjwala Yojana.
Prukalpa has been recognized in Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Asia, Fortune India’s top 40 under 40 and CNBC’s top 10 Young Business Women.
A cost accountant by training, sales and marketing professional by choice and an entrepreneur by passion, Narayan has over 3 decades of general management, sales & marketing experience. An entrepreneur for the last 2 decades, with a strong corporate background, Narayan started his career working in sales and marketing profile across Microsoft, Oracle and Tata.
After working closely with SME segment for more than a decade, he realised that there is a substantial difference in procurement pricing for large enterprises as compared to SMEs. He then co-founded Denave India Pvt Ltd, India's largest technology powered sales enabling services company, where he continues to be a board member.
He spearheaded Denave’s growth over the first 13 years as the CEO of the company before laying the foundation of Power2SME, the first ‘Buying Club’ for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in India. Under his stewardship, Power2SME enjoys a position of prominence in sectors in which it operates.
Narayan has been honoured with many laurels and accolades and he is widely acclaimed for his contribution to the SME sector. Recently declared the Entrepreneur of the Year, Narayan is a recognized thought leader across policy, SME and entrepreneurial platforms. Power2SME was awarded the Forbes India Leadership Award for “Outstanding Startup” in 2018 under his able stewardship.
Narayan is currently associated with FICCI as the President of FICCI- CMSME (Confederation of MSMEs), an affiliated body under the umbrella of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), an apex Chamber of Commerce & Industry of India.
A trained microbiologist by profession, Dr. Rachna Dave has vast experience in developing R&D based technological solutions. After completing her doctoral studies at NYU, USA in 2008 she returned to India to work as a FAST-Track Young Scientist. She joined as staff scientist at the prestigious Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in 2008. She quit her position in BARC in 2016 and established MicroGO.
She is also receipient of various awards including the recent COVID Warrior Award from IKP Knowledge Park, Hyd and Biotech Product and Process Development and Commercialization Awards from Department of Biotechnology, Govt. of India for the year, 2019. MicroGO works on enabling the power microSWACHHTA by prevention technologies and recently showcasesd their innovations to the Hon. PM of India at the Prarambh Summit- Jan 2021.
For over two and a half decades, Radha Ahluwalia has created and led industry leadership networks across the country centred on the creation of independent economic and business insight. A renowned name in India’s business leadership community, Mrs Ahluwalia’s perspective on the Indian economy, its socio-political landscape and on business best practices has informed the views of global Boards and Indian industry leaders.
For a decade and a half, Mrs Ahluwalia curated and chaired over 120 discussions among CEOs, CFOs, CHROs and CMOs each year, forming bridges of interaction within industry and among government and industry. After a career spanning two decades at IMA and previously at the World Bank, Mrs Ahuwalia now lends her time selectively to guide start ups and is closely involved with community development and social responsibility initiatives
Raghav leads India and APAC business of Coursera. He is responsible for growing Coursera’s consumer and enterprise business in the region, and thereby bringing the world’s best education to learners.
In this role, he is responsible for driving impactful partnerships with universities, leading corporate and government institutions. He has over 20 years of experience across consumer, internet, and management consulting industries in India, Southeast Asia, and Europe.
Previously, Raghav was India Country Manager at BlaBlaCar, an inter-city carpooling service. By partnering with the company’s founders, he successfully launched BlaBlaCar in India in early 2015. As a management consultant for 15 years, Raghav led the Retail Practice of Strategy in India and served as President of Technopak Advisors.
Raghav holds an MBA from INSEAD in France and is a recipient of the INSEAD Syngenta Scholarship for Emerging Country Leadership. He has done BE Mechanical Engineering from Padamshree Dr. DY Patil Vidyapeeth.
Rahul Singh is the Founder & CEO of THE BEER CAFÉ. Rahul is the recipient of the TiE-Lumis Partners Entrepreneurial award for excellence 2014 and holds the position of the Honorary Secretary for the NRAI (National Restaurant Association of India). He was recently bestowed with the prestigious Entrepreneur India 2015 award in F&B service.
Prior to having founded The Beer Café, Rahul has served as the CEO, Greg Norman Collection India from 2007-09. Prior to 2007, he was the Executive Director at Reebok India for 8 years.
Ambassador Raj Kumar Srivastava is a career diplomat who joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1997. He holds a Civil Engineering degree from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. He has pursued further studies in Structural Engineering and Earthquake Sciences.
Mr. Srivastava has served in Indian Embassies in Madrid (Spain), Yangon (Myanmar), Vienna (Austria), Brasilia (Brazil) and Tokyo (Japan). While at Headquarters in Delhi, he has worked in Foreign Service Institute, Americas (U.S. & Canada) Division, and Gulf (Persian Gulf) Division. In his last assignment in Delhi during 2015-2017, he was on deputation as Joint Secretary to National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS), Government of India, looking after the External Security.
Apart from Hindi and English, Mr. Srivastava speaks fluently Spanish & Portuguese. He takes special interest in Emerging Technologies & Digital domain. He likes to play Bridge, Chess, Cricket, Golf & Snooker. He plays guitar with interest in music. Amb Srivastava is married to Lakshmi, a linguist (with fluency in five foreign languages apart from Hindi, English and Gujarati and teaching experience in Spanish), a keen Bridge and Golf player, multi-cuisine expert and an accomplished singer. They have a son and a daughter.
As part of the leadership team at Sequoia Capital, Rajan is focusing on developing Surge into the world's top scale-up program for startups by acting as an investment advisor and mentor to the programme's founders.
Surge aims to engineer rapid early progress for startups, by enabling disproportionate access to capital, talent, network and decades of company-building knowledge. Rajan's deep understanding of technology, operating expertise and a track record of growing tech businesses across the region will help Surge's founders scale and build the businesses of tomorrow.
Prior to Sequoia, as Head of Google India and Southeast Asia, Rajan played a key role in expanding the regions internet ecosystem while accelerating Google's innovation and growth units. He is also a prolific angel investor who has backed a large number of successful startups at very early stages. Rajan also led Microsoft and Dell in India and was earlier a Partner at McKinsey & Company in Chicago.
Rama is a Director at Qualcomm Ventures India, based out of Bangalore. He joined Qualcomm with 17 years of experience spanning technology investing, R&D and product management.
Previously, he was Principal at Ventureast, a premier VC firm in India. During his 10 years at Ventureast. He has worked closely with entrepreneurs and startups in financial technologies, semiconductors, internet commerce, media and advertising. As a board member, he played a crucial role in scale-ups, pivots, and M&As of these businesses. His current interests include enterprise software, IoT, and machine learning among the emerging technologies.
Prior to venture capital, Rama enjoyed being a part of the computing and internet technology sector in the late nineties. He was with Sun Microsystems in Silicon Valley for close to 7 years, initially as a systems programmer and later as a senior product manager. Rama holds a MBA from Cornell University, M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Rhode Island, and B.Engg in Computer Science from University of Mysore, India.
Raman is widely regarded as the Pioneer and “Guru” of the BPO industry in India. He is fondly referred to as the “Father of the Indian BPO Industry”. He has played a pivotal role over the last 30 years in shaping the Global Outsourcing Space and promoting Indian BPOs and proving that India can be a preferred location for Remote Processing.
Raman is a pioneer four times over, having successfully led the BPO initiatives of American Express, GE & before starting Quatrro in mid 2006. Raman launched Quatrro to focus on ‘Beyond the Existing’ high end and new areas of BPO services with a mix of incubation and acquisition led strategies. Raman is co-founder and member of IC of the IAN Fund. Raman also sits on the Board The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) Delhi-NCR and the Indian Angel Network besides a select few of his investee companies such as Stratemis.
Raman has been deeply involved in shaping the future of the BPO and Services industry in India, China, Mauritius and Sri Lanka. He was the Chairman of the Executive Committee of NASSCOM for 2017-18, is Ex-Chairman of the BPO committee of ASSOCHAM and many more. He is an active Resource Leader at the Isha Insight Program which is focused on creating next generation Business Leaders
Raman is a rare example of a living practitioner of the BPO industry having created many successes and overcome many challenges. As a tribute to his contribution to the creation of the BPO industry in India, Raman has been awarded the Dataquest Pathbreaker Award in 2002, Raman was given the Distinguished Alumni award by SRCC and was honoured as Business Leader of the Year 2008 by the ICAI. Raman is a Chartered Accountant and a Chartered Management Accountant with a doctorate in Management Accountancy. In his career spanning 30+ years, he has handled roles in Finance, Consulting, Operations and General Management with equal ease. He has a very hands-on approach to business and has first-hand experience and rare insights into servicing markets as diverse as North America, Europe, Japan, Asia Pacific and Australia.
R Ramanan is the Mission Director of the Atal Innovation Mission Additional Secy NITI Aayog - the Atal Innovation mission is a strategic national Innovation initiative NITI spanning schools, universities, NGOs and the industry. Mr. Ramanan was previously MD & CEO and member of the Board of Directors of CMC Ltd, a subsidiary of the globally acclaimed Tata Consultancy Services (TCS).
Ramanan’s illustrious career in the IT industry spans more than three decades when he joined TCS in 1981 after graduating from IIT Mumbai in Electrical Engineering. Ramanan played an instrumental role in the growth of TCS with a variety of responsibilities ranging from software product development, technical marketing, global business development, and general management of large delivery centers of TCS.
Ramanan graduated from IIT Mumbai in electrical Engineering in 1981. He is also a Harvard Business School Advanced Management Program Alumni and accredited by Cambridge University in Sustainability Leadership. He was also elected Lifetime Chair of HBS AMP187 Alumni by HBS. Ramanan received the CEO of the Year award in 2015 from CMO Asia, India’s top 3 most “ Value”able CEO recognition by Business World in 2011 and 2013 , Indira Gandhi Sadbhavana and Rajiv Gandhi shirani awards in 2005-2006 and many other recognitions for outstanding contributions in Innovation and Business Leadership.
Rema is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Ankur Capital Fund, Investing in transformative technologies for the next billion. A pioneer investor in early stage agritech, they invest across agritech, health and other enabling technologies for aspiring Indians. They go the extra mile to identify and nurture such entrepreneurs.
Rema cofounded Ankur with a vision to use her three decade CXO and entrepreneurial experience to bring the tools to young startups to become game changers. She has worked across manufacturing, IT/ITES, edtech, taking young companies from scratch to midsize ventures. Having worked with both Indian and Global companies, she intends bringing her experience to scale these enterprises.
Dr Renu Swarup is presently Secretary, Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Government of India, having served in Department of Biotechnology for nearly 29 years. She was appointed a Secretary to GoI on 10th April, 2018. She also holds the position of Chairperson -BIRAC, a Public Sector Company incorporated by the Government to nurture and promote innovation research in the Biotech Enterprise with special focus on Start‐ups and SMEs.
A PhD in Genetics and Plant Breeding, Dr. Swarup completed her Post-Doctoral at The John Innes Centre, Norwich UK, under Commonwealth Scholarship and returned to India to take up the assignment of a Science Manager in the Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology, GoI, in 1989
As a Science Manager issues related to policy planning and implementation were a part of her assignment. She was actively engaged in formulation of the Biotechnology Vision in 2001, National Biotechnology Development Strategy in 2007 and Strategy II, 2015-20 as the Member Secretary of the Expert Committee.
She was also a member of the Task Force on Women in Science constituted by the Scientific Advisory Committee to the Prime Minister. She has earlier held charge as MD, (BIRAC), till she took over the charge of Chairperson, BIRAC and Secretary, DBT. Through Biotechnology translational research and industry academia partnerships she has supported more than 1000 Startups and Entrepreneurs, and nearly 500 small companies for innovation research and product development. A Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences (NASI) India.She is also a Member of the Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World (OWSD), she was awarded the “BioSpectrum Person of the Year Award” in 2012. She also received the “National Entrepreneurship Awards 2017”-- Special Jury recognition Award for Government Mentor from Ministry of Skill Development. She was awarded TiE WomENABLER Award 2018.
Ritesh Agarwal is a young entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of OYO Hotels & Homes. He believes that everyone deserves a safe hygienic and comfortable living space, irrespective of their budget and founded OYO in India in 2013 to achieve this aim.
Today the unicorn start-up is India's largest hotel chain and is present in over 800 cities across 80 countries. OYO is backed by leading investors, including the SoftBank Vision Fund, Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Ventures, Hero Enterprise, and China Lodging Group, amongst others. Ritesh was the first Asian resident to be accepted to the Thiel Fellowship.
Ritu is one of the co-founders at Ankur. She is passionate about bringing innovation from lab to the market and did that for a decade across corporates - Unilever and Philips. She has also worked globally investing in IP led renewable technologies.
She has a PhD in physics from University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from INSEAD. If Ritu had any spare time she’d love to travel to all ends of the earth and read a few books.
Ranked amongst the fifty most influential people in India, Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, visionary and a New York Times bestselling author. He has been conferred the Padma Vibhushan, India’s highest annual civilian award. Over the years, Sadhguru has also launched large scale ecological initiatives.
Over thirty years ago, Sadhguru founded the Isha Foundation, a non-profit human serviceorganisation, which has over 11 million volunteers across the world. Through Isha Foundation's flagship program, "Inner Engineering", Sadhguru has transformed the lives of millions of people, empowering them with tools for well-being derived from the science of Yoga.
Sahil Kini is the Founder and CEO of Setu, a technology company building API infrastructure to enable any company to offer fintech products. Setu's mission is to accelerate economic growth by making digital finance accessible to every Indian. Setu APIs cut across lending, deposits, and bill payments connecting India’s leading Banks and Financial Institutions to developers. Previously, he was a Principal at Aspada Investment Advisors, an India focused $100M early-stage investment vehicle where he led investments in financial services, SME enablement, and technology for underserved markets.
Mr Kini was one of the early team members of Aadhaar. He is also an active iSpirt volunteer working to evangelize the India Stack, and addressing issues around financial inclusion, macroeconomic policy, and data privacy. Sahil writes regularly on these topics in national and international publications. His prior experience includes stints at McKinsey & Company, Titan Industries, and Ezetap. Sahil holds a B. Tech from IIT Madras
Sairee Chahal is Founder and CEO of SHEROES – the world’s largest online ecosystem for women. She is on the Board of Directors of Paytm Payments Bank.
The SHEROES Network is home to the SHEROES app; Babygogo, a platform to support young mothers’; Maya, a global reproductive health platform and remote work product MARS. The network has a national and global footprint of 16 million women.
Sairee has an M. Phil from JNU and a PGDBM from IMT Ghaziabad. She is a Fellow of the Ananta Aspen’s Kamalnayan Bajaj Fellowship and a member of Aspen Global Leadership Network.
Sairee has an M. Phil from JNU and a PGDBM from IMT Ghaziabad. She is a Fellow of the Ananta Aspen’s Kamalnayan Bajaj Fellowship and a member of Aspen Global Leadership Network.
Sameer is responsible for Google’s product and design team for Android, as well as product, design and engineering team for Google Play. He joined Google nearly 10 years ago and helped start the Commerce team where he ran the Google Shopping and Google Travel teams. Prior to Google, Sameer was the Executive Vice President of Products at Kofax, a publicly traded company in the content management space, where he was responsible for Product Management, Engineering and Product Marketing
Sameer founded Mohomine, a software company providing cloud based machine learning tools for text mining and served as CEO and then CTO before the company was acquired by Kofax (KFX). Sameer holds a BS in Computer Science from the University of California, San Diego and is a graduate of Harvard Business School's PMD program. He lives in Piedmont, California with his wife and two children.
Sandeep is the glue at Lightbox. Having pulled together the team over the last five years, he’s the one responsible for keeping the machine moving as one. As an early investor in InMobi and InfoEdge, two of India's billion dollar technology companies, Sandeep is one of the builders of India's Internet economy. And he hasn't just seen the highs and lows play out as an investor, but actually roughed it out in operational roles including one as the CEO of Cleartrip in 2006 for three years.
A dreamer from the start, who doesn’t believe in choosing between “this or that” he did his undergrad in both business and engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. Like all good Penn grads he dove into investment banking. However, since it was the height of the dot.com boom, he did it a little differently by moving out to Palo Alto, California to join CSFB Technology Group.
He started to explore the India technology opportunity and ultimately moved to Mumbai to manage investments for Sherpalo Ventures, a fund based out of Menlo Park in California. Having raised over $400M from leading institutional investors, his most recent investments include Droom, Rebel Foods, Furlenco and AI-platform Embibe, which received a $185MM investment commitment from Reliance, India's internet super power. Sandeep also supports platforms like Magic Bus, a non-profit organization that uses activity based curriculum to teach underprivileged kids life skills.
Most of his time is spent figuring how to make something unprecedented happen. With an all-in, nothing-held-back style, he loves diving in, getting to the heart of the matter, trying new things and getting as many people as possible involved. In a somewhat unpredictable market, Sandeep’s investment success stems from a combination of deep product instinct and unconventional thinking.
Sandeep is a software engineer,Hindustani classical vocalist, and an 'Endless Evolutionist'. He's also the creator of the famous 'Na Corona Karo' song, NaadSadhana for iOS and Naadyoga: 15 minute workout.
As a software engineer, he has worked in the US at companies including Google, Microsoft, Citrix, VMware and Cirtas. He holds a Master’s Degree in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University. In a career spanning 18+ years, he's gained expertise in areas of storage, file, distributed and operating systems, compression and deduplication, networking and cloud technologies, big data pipelines, artificial intelligence and machine learning, mobile development, UI, UX, graphics and logo design etc.
Sandeep is also a Hindustani classical vocalist, composer and educator. He performs and teaches students all over the world. He has been learning music from the age of four and is currently being mentored by Padma Vibhushan Sangeet Martand Pandit Jasraj.
Sandeep is an 'endless evolutionist' - deeply passionate about continuous improvement, systematic practice, efficient systems, accelerated learning and optimal minimality. As a geek-gayak with the aim of evolving endlessly, he is in the unique position to combine multidisciplinary ideas to help solve problems that he's passionate about.
Sandeep is the co-founder and Managing Partner of Lumis Partners. At Lumis, Sandeep brings an entrepreneur spirit, a hands-on investing experience in India, and over fifteen years of global operating experience. At Lumis, Sandeep is focused on building portfolio across higher education segment and human capital services in emerging markets. He is an active member in this sector and leads several activities across various public/private organizations in this ecosystem.
He began his professional career with Technology Management Leadership program at GE. His prior experiences include quality and technology leadership roles across various businesses of GE; and senior operating positions at 3Com. Sandeep completed his undergraduate studies in Computer Science from the Delhi Institute of Technology followed by postgraduate program from the London School of Economics.
Dr. Sangita Reddy is a Global Healthcare Leader, Indian Entrepreneur and Humanitarian. She is the Joint MD of Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Limited - Asia's largest and most trusted healthcare group. She is also the President of(FICCI). Passionately committed to transforming healthcare system through technological advancements, she is accelerating positive transformation for effective healthcare service delivery. She has been conferred with an Honorary Doctorate by Macquarie University Australia, in recognition of her untiring efforts and resolute commitment to bringing transformative changes in healthcare, development of Health IT and championing manifold initiatives both in India and abroad.
As a policy influencer and reformist, she is actively engaged with governments and industry bodies on aspects of public health and policy development. Committed to building a more inclusive in public and private sector healthcare ecosystem in the nation, one of her initiatives has been Apollo Clinics which aims to build a string of tech enabled primary care clinics across urban and rural India. Dr. Sangita Reddy is also Chairman at Apollo Knowledge, an education initiative focused on shaping healthcare human capital for tomorrow.
She heads Apollo Philanthropy, an umbrella entity encompassing ‘Save a Child’s Heart Initiative’, SAHI, CURE and the Billion Hearts Beating Foundation, Total Health – a unique integrated rural health model with a focus in public and private sectors. Dr.Reddy has been a recipient of numerous prestigious awards for business and leadership. She ranks 32 on INDIA TODAY group Top 50 Annual Power List for 2020 .In 2019, she was presented with the “Best Female Healthcare Leader “Mediko award from the prestigious Indian Medical Association. Dr. Sangita Reddy has also been featured by LinkedIn in the “Top Voices 2019 India List”.
Sanjeev is the founder of Naukri.com, India’s leading job site. The company also runs Jeevansathi.com, 99acres.com, and Shiksha.com. In addition it has made strategic investments in promising web start-ups such as Zomato, Policybazaar, Shopkirana and Ustraa.
Sanjeev graduated from IIM Ahmedabad and quit his job for entrepreneurship eighteen months later. Finally in 1997 the company launched Naukri.com.
Starting off from a servant quarter and seed capital of two thousand rupees, the company grew and attracted investment from leading venture capitalists. It was the first Internet company to list on Indian stock exchanges. Today, the company employs over 4000 people and has a market capitalization of over USD 3.0 bill.
He along with his partner Hitesh Oberoi won the “Ernst and Young – Entrepreneur of the Year” award in 2008 for Business Transformation. He also won the Dataquest Pathbreaker Award & the Teacher’s Achievement Award for Business in the same year.
In 2011 he was conferred the Distinguished Alumnus award by IIM Ahmedabad and in 2012 he was honoured with the CF Andrews Distinguished Alumnus award by St. Stephen’s College.
He is also the recipient of Lakshmipat Singhania – IIM Lucknow National Leadership Award as Young Leader in the Business Category in 2012. He is a member of the Board of CIIE at IIM Ahmedabad. In 2017, Outlook Magazine selected him as one of India’s fifty greatest CEO’s ever.
Sanjeev has served as the President of the Delhi chapter of TiE. He serves on the National Council of AIMA. He has been Chair of the Internet Council of NASSCOM.
Sanjeev is a founding trustee of Ashoka University. He has also served on the expert committee for the SIDBI Fund of Funds for startups. He also supports 2 NGO’s, Chintan and 1947PartitionArchive.
Sarbvir believes in the power of content and direct communication with all stakeholders and at all levels. He feels people form the core of every business.
Sarbvir has over 20 years of global experience in corporate leadership roles, venture capital, and public markets investing. Currently, CEO - Policybazaar on a mission to help India's middle class protect themselves from death, disease and disability.
He is closest to his daughters and loves spending time with them, and playing squash whenever he can.
Satya Narayana Nadella is an Indian American business executive. He is the CEO of Microsoft succeeding Steeve Ballmer in 2014.Before becoming CEO, he was the executive vice president of Microsoft's cloud and enterprise group, responsible for building and running the company's computing platforms.
Nadella worked at Sun Microsystems as a member of its technology staff before joining Microsoft in 1992. At Microsoft, Nadella has led major projects that included the company's move to cloud computing and the development of one of the largest cloud infrastructures in the world.
Nadella worked as the senior vice-president of Research and Development (R&D) for the Online Services Division and vice-president of the Microsoft Business Division. Later, he was made the president of Microsoft's $19 billion Server and Tools Business and led a transformation of the company's business and technology culture from client services to cloud infrastructure and services. Previous positions held by Nadella include:[27]
Nadella was born in Hyderabad of present-day Telangana, India. Nadella attended the Hyderabad Public School, Begumpet before receiving a bachelor's in electrical engineering from the Manipal Institute of Technology in Karnataka in 1988. Nadella then traveled to the U.S. to study for an M.S. in computer science at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee,receiving his degree in 1990.Later, he received an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business in 1996
Dr. Srivastava is one of India’s leading entrepreneurs, investors and institution builders, widely acknowledged as one of the architects of the Indian IT Industry and as leading the creation of a vibrant entrepreneurial eco system in India. He has worked extensively in the US, UK, Singapore and India. The Indian Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has presented him an Award for contribution to the Indian IT Industry and the President of India has awarded him the Padma Shri, one of India’s highest civilian honours.
He is a Co-Founder & former Chairman of NASSCOM. After a successful stint in the US and India with IBM and Unisys, he founded several successful IT companies including one which was ranked amongst the top 15 companies in India and was listed, post merger on the London Stock Exchange with revenues of $800 mill. He is also a cofounder and Former Chairman of NASSCOM Foundation, the IT Industry’s social service arm.
He has co-founded and Chaired key institutions of modern India focussed on IT and entrepreneurship: IVCA, TiE NCR, Indian Angel Network ,now the world’s largest angel investor group with over 100 portfolio companies, 475+ investor members globally and operations in 8 locations, including London. He has been involved in investing in around 100 start-ups and has personally mentored hundreds of entrepreneurs.
He created India’s first highly successful private sector VC Fund, Infinity which created several marquee companies such as India Bulls, India Games and Avendus. His public service commitments have included the National Innovation Council, SEBI Committee, STPI, Investment Committee of the Indian Government’s Fund of Funds, BSE Hi-Tech Advisory Panel , Telecom Centre of Excellence, Railway Expert Committee, PM’s Empowered Committee for Awards on Excellence in Public Administration. He is a co-founder of Ashoka University, served on the Advisory Board of Imperial College Business School, London and was adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship at IIT Mumbai. He has Masters from Harvard University, a B Tech from IIT Kanpur. Other Awards include “Distinguished Alumnus Award” from IIT, the Data Quest Lifetime Achievement Award for IT, Patrick J McGovern Lifetime Achievement Award for Entrepreneurship and an Honorary Doctorate in Technology from the University of Wolverhampton, UK
Ms. Chaturvedi has over 20 years of capital markets and financial management experience. She is extremely passionate about promoting entrepreneurship in general and women entrepreneurship in particular. She founded & leads as chairwoman TiE Global’s marquee women’s entrepreneurship program - All India Roadshow for Women’s Economic Empowerment through Entrepreneurship (AIRSWEEE), for which she obtained funding from the US Department of State for 6 consecutive rounds of funding and has directly mentored 575 women from 97 Tier 2 and 3 cities in 20 states in India.
As an impact outcome of AIRSWEEE, Ms. Chaturvedi is now launching Achieving Women Entrepreneurs (AWE) Early Growth Fund to invest in women owned, led, influenced companies with the investment thesis that women businesses can be a great investment for purposes of both commercial returns and economic development impact.
Previously, she was founder & MD of Accelerator Group, LLC. As a prolific speaker, Ms. Chaturvedi was invited to US Department of State’s US Speakers Program in 2017. She is an invited member of Indiaspora, a by invitation only not for profit organization to amplify the impact of Indian Americans. She has promoted two chapters of (TiE) in Michigan and South Florida, USA. She was elected to the Global Board of Trustees of TiE Global as the first woman member of the Board.
Ms. Chaturvedi has received several honors including Crain’s Detroit Business “40 under 40”, Crain’s Detroit Business “Detroit’s Most Influential Business Women, Asian Indian Women’s Association’s Women of Distinction, inducted to Michigan Hall of Fame for Enterprising Women and the Special Recognition Award for promoting Women Entrepreneurship by TiE Global.
Ms. Chaturvedi holds a Master’s degree in Finance from Boston College and an undergraduate degree with honors in Economics from Lady Shri Ram College of the Delhi University in India.
Shantanu is an Indian score composer, musician and pianist who has composed songs for the Hindi film industry, and is most known for his scores in films Parineeta , Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi , Lage Raho Munnabhai and 3Idiots and private albums, Mann ke Manjeere and Ab ke Saawan sung by Shubha Mudgal.
In 2014, he received the National Film Award for Best Music Direction for Na Bangaaru Talli.[2]
Shantanu was born in Lucknow, where his father came from a Bengali musical family. He was very young when he moved to Delhi with his family, where initially he lived in Patel Nagar in West Delhi, and studied at Springdales School, Pusa Road. There, he was the leader and singer of a band, and in 1982, the band hosted the school's first rock show.
He also received musical training from urban-folk singer, Sushmit Bose, a Springdales alumnus, who would occasionally drop in and teach them. Later he moved to Chittaranjan Park in South Delhi. He studied at Deshbandhu College, Kalkaji, Delhi University and has a degree in Economics.
Shereen is the Managing Editor of CNBC-TV18 with over 20 years of experience in the field of Television Broadcast, tracking corporate, policy news and events that defined the business landscape in India. For more than a decade now, Shereen has been not only producing and anchoring flagship shows like 'India Business Hour' and Young Turks', she has also been hands-on in guiding and moulding young business journalists.
She has been responsible for breaking a range of news stories that have redefined the Indian economic landscape in recent times and has also interviewed some of the biggest names in business and politics, both domestic and global. She is also the Anchor & Editor of 'Young Turks', one of India's longest running shows on entrepreneurship – a section that over the last 18 years has successfully built a niche category in business news programming.
She is also the Author of Young Turks, a book published by Random House India. She has interviewed some of the biggest names in Business from legendary investor Warren Buffet to Bill Gates, Satya Nadella, Richard Branson, Sheryl Sandberg, Indra Nooyi to name just a few. She has also spent several years tracking the political- economy and has interviewed several Finance Ministers and other Cabinet Ministers over the years.
Over the course of her 19-year tryst with business journalism, she has been the recipient of the 'Best Business Talk Show' award at the News Television awards for two years consecutively. She also won the 'FICCI Woman of the Year' award for her contribution to the Media in 2005, and was named a 'Young Global Leader' by the World Economic Forum. She also won the ‘Best Business Anchor Award’ at the ‘News Television Awards’ in 2013 and the Best English News Anchor Award in 2018. She was named in IMPACT's '50 Most Influential Women In Indian Media, Marketing & Advertising List, for 2018, 2019 and yet again for 2020. She has won the News Television Editor-in-Chief of the year in the English category and the Best Anchor, English in the prestigious ENBA 2019 Awards. More recently, Shereen won The Best Business News Anchor (English) at the News Television Awards 2020.
Dr. Shesheer Kumar has a Ph.D. in molecular virology. Prior to Ph.D. he worked at Premier Biosoft, R&D unit of Shantha Biotechnics and as a consultant to Sudershan biotech.
He founded RAS with Dr. Rachana in 2008. He continued as CEO of RAS. His expertise in molecular biology helped RAS and subsequently Huwel to build its current product profile. Currently taking care of operations, sales and marketing of Huwel products.
Mrs. Shikha Sharma was the Managing Director and CEO of Axis Bank, India’s third largest private sector bank, from June 2009 up to December 2018. As a leader adept at managing change, she led the Bank on a transformation journey from being primarily a corporate lender to a bank with a strong retail deposit franchise and a balanced lending book. She has more than three decades of experience in the financial sector, having begun her career with ICICI Bank Ltd. in 1980. During her tenure with ICICI Bank, she was instrumental in setting up ICICI Securities. As Managing Director and CEO of ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company Ltd., she led the company to become the No.1 private sector life insurance company in India.
Mrs. Sharma was a member of RBI’s Technical Advisory Committee, RBI’s Panel on Financial Inclusion, the Committee on Comprehensive Financial Services for Small Businesses and Low-Income Households. She has chaired CII’s National Committee on Banking 2015-2017. She has a demonstrated track record of building successful and enduring businesses, deep understanding of business through data and analytics and has built businesses based on consumer insight and technology execution
Mrs. Shikha Sharma is also an independent director on the Boards of Ambuja Cements Ltd., Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd, Tech Mahindra Ltd, Dr Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd. and Tata Consumer Products Ltd. She is a member of the Board of Governors of IIM Lucknow, a member of the Advisory Board of Bridgespan and an advisor to several companies.
Shivam has done Bachelor of Technology from NITK, Surathkal, and a Master's Degree in Science from the University of Alberta. He has previously Co-founded Spareta and worked as research engineer at University of Alberta.
At Blue Tokai, Shivam oversees retail operations, business strategy and expansion, production, supply chain, and technology.
Shweta is Head of Public Policy for India and Southeast Asia – Sequoia Capital LLP. She is so passionate about educating policymakers on the transformational impact of technology & sharing stories of how start-ups are changing the world around us.
She advises portfolio companies on how to manage regulatory risks and unlock new levers of growth - and enjoy working with government stakeholders to craft sensible and progressive policies that help accelerate the growth momentum of the startup ecosystem.
She love connecting the dots to create partnerships that align the vision of the founders and governments.
Sridhar Pillalamarri is the CEO and a co-founder of Ubiqare Health Pvt. Ltd. Sridhar has held global leadership positions in various organizations at various levels of management since the last 33 years with about 20+ years in senior executive roles. He is also associated with a few NGOs and social organizations such as Indian Cancer Society (Bangalore), Sanman and has been actively volunteering to help in Cancer Screening Activities and helping grow volunteers to support hospices, hospitals and other organizations.
Prior to starting Ubiqare Health, Sridhar was the Managing Director of Max Linear India Pvt. Ltd and helped setup its operations in India. Sridhar holds a Master’s Degree, in Control & Instrumentation from IIT Bombay. He is based in Bangalore.
Srikanth Iyer is the co-founder and CEO of HomeLane.com, India's tech-enabled home interiors brand. HomeLane was started in 2014 and was inspired by Srikanth’s personal experience in dealing with the unorganized sector for home designing and décor.
He began his career at Wipro, from where he moved on to follow his entrepreneurial acumen. With over 25 years of experience as an entrepreneur and a passion for new business ideas, Mr. Iyer has started multiple ventures. He is also a Venture Partner with Unitus Ventures where he leads USF’s national efforts to invest in the best education companies, catering to the requirements of low-income groups.
Prior to starting HomeLane, Srikanth was the CEO of Pearson India where he was part of the core leadership team, spearheading the mandate to grow the business in the K-12 domain across the country. He ran B2B, B2C and B2G businesses in education and was a pioneer in the managed services model in private schooling in India.
Srikanth holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Software Engineering from Harvard University (DCE) and an Undergraduate degree in Computer Science Engineering from Bangalore University, India. He was a state-level table tennis player for four years and is an avid sports fan who dabbles in squash, tennis and cricket.
Sruthi heads the Cisco LaunchPad startup accelerator where she works with start-ups for co-creating end-to-end digital solutions focused on technology areas like IOT, Collaboration, Security, Network and Infra, Analytics, etc. Through LaunchPad, she drives meaningful outcomes for start-ups in their scale-up journey by providing access to a wide gamut of resources including Joint Go-To-Market, Tech Integrations, Business Mentorship, Grants and Investor Connects. Over the last 3+ years, she has worked closely with over 100 CXOs of deep tech start-ups as well as mentors across various organizations.
Prior to Cisco LaunchPad, she spearheaded Customer Success for Tier-1 Telecom Providers deploying mobility solutions around the world.
Suchi Mukherjee is the Founder & CEO of LimeRoad which has been the fastest growing apparel platform online, for 9 consecutive quarters. With 50 million+ visits, the country’s highest conversion rates as well as capital efficiency.
Prior to LimeRoad, she helped build eBay in the UK, was on the Executive Team of Skype where her team designed the biggest upgrade in Skype’s product history, and as Managing Director built Gumtree into the #1 horizontal classifieds business in the UK.
Suchi Mukherjee was named Woman Entrepreneur of the Year in NDTV Unicorn Start-Up Awards 2016, was recognised as Rising Talent, Global Leaders under 40 in Deauville, Paris in 2010. LimeRoad was voted as the Coolest Start-Up by Business Today in 2015.
She studied B.A (Hons) Economics from Cambridge University as Cambridge Commonwealth Scholar. She did her MSC in Finance & Economics from London School of Economics.
Sunil K Goyal is the MD, YourNest Venture Capital, an early-stage venture fund he co-founded in 2011, that manages YourNest Angel Fund-I and YourNest India VC Fund-II. One of the early angel investors and a former member of The Indian Angel Network and Mumbai Angels, Sunil has led seed-stage investments and guided companies to successful exits.
Prior to turning a full-time, early-stage investor and fund manager, he was a senior executive in the Telecom and FMCG industries. From his stints with Bharti Group & Dabur, he has gained comprehensive experience of leading complex projects during his career in the areas of M&A, business turnarounds, and strategic partnerships. Sunil continues to be an independent director on the Board of Bharti Telecom Ltd and Bharti Hexacom Ltd. (a joint venture with TCIL, a Government of India undertaking).
Sunil believes in ‘conscious capitalism’ and relishes driving business that involves a high sense of purpose and vision. Start-ups gain from his experience in building businesses from the ground-up stage to leading transformation. He is a qualified CFA from ICFAI, a Cost Accountant from ICWAI and a Master’s in Business Economics (MBE) from University of Delhi – South Campus.
Ramachandran (Ram) joined Visa in 2015 as the Group Country Manager for India and South Asia. He is responsible for the overall management and strategy development and execution across all aspects of Visa’s South Asia business in India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Maldives and Bhutan
Ram brings a wealth of knowledge to his role, with more than 25 years of experience across banking, Cards & payment products, investments, insurance and Fintech across Asian markets. Prior to Visa, he was the MD & CEO of Aviva Life Insurance in India, and Chairman of Aviva Sri Lanka for six years helping build the company into a leading insurance player in the region, turned the company to profitability while launching India’s first suite of digital and online insurance products.
Previously, he was the Country Head for Retail Banking with Citibank capping a two-decade stint that included leading the Mortgages & Business Banking team as well as the Credit Card & Payment Products team at the bank. Ram serves on the board of USIBC and on the governing council of IAMAI. He is a regular contributor to magazines and newspapers in the areas of Fintech, Innovation and Leadership, a guest lecturer at several B-schools, and participates as a speaker and panelist in many industry and public forums. In his spare time, Ram is a mentor and advisor to several start-ups and Fintechs, an avid reader and a keen golfer.
Ram holds an MBA from the Bharatidasan Institute of Management, and is an alumnus of Columbia Business School’s CSEP Advanced Management Program.
Tanushree Co-Founded Doubtnut with Aditya , IIT-Delhi alumni who are veterans in the education space. In 2009, the husband-and-wife team set up Class 21A, a brick-and mortar coaching centre, where they taught math and science to high school students.
Doubtnut is a multi-lingual online learning platform that uses AI technologies for image recognition, natural language processing and proprietary machine learning algorithms to throw up solutions to students’ queries.
Vaishakh has 8+ years experience in digital strategy, product marketing & go-to-market roles for product companies post his MBA from IIM Calcutta.
At Google, Vaishakh is responsible for creating effective go-to-market strategies for Google Firebase in APAC, collaborating with global product and sales teams to deliver app products that delight users and advertisers.”
Vamshi moved from Cisco systems in the San Francisco Bay area to come back to India and establish Apalya.
Apalya is a pioneer in providing OTT solutions in India.
Vamshi currently is a venture partner at Kalaari as a part of the Investments and Research team.
Vamsi and his team always were keen to improve the educational methodology being practised across the institutes in India.
Vedantu’s journey began in Barnala, a small town in Punjab. It was 2005, a time when access to quality education was a challenge in smaller cities. Fresh graduates from IIT-Bombay and IIT-Roorkee, Vamsi, Pulkit Jain, and Anand Prakash, were eager to bridge this gap and in 2006 launched their first venture Lakshya, a test prep company.
In 2012, Lakshya was acquired by a listed company, MT Educare (Mahesh Tutorials). Of the 35 children they coached, 11 cleared the IIT entrance. Motivated by this success, the trio decided to help students across the country. A brainchild of these IIT graduates has reached the last mile in bringing Online Tutoring to even bandwidth scarce section of the nation through their innovative Ed-Tech product called WAVE- Whiteboard Audio Video Environment that can operate even at low-bandwidth internet speeds.
Vamsi had their task cut-out, bring in best of brains to teaching and make it a career of choice and not of chance.
Vani is the Managing Director at Kalaari Capital, an early stage venture capital firm based in Bangalore. She is a renowned investor and a visionary known for identifying emerging markets. Her leadership at Kalaari centers around her commitment to the development of entrepreneurs and her conviction that Indian companies are poised to become global players. Vani is a technology focused investor with many of her investments having now become very successful, validating her aptitude for picking the best young minds and mentoring them to build high growth enterprises. Some of Kola's notable venture capital successes include: Dream11, Cure.fit, Snapdeal, Myntra among others.
Vani is profiled in numerous books and has been identified as one of Fortune’s Most Powerful Women in Business. She is actively involved in various organizations focused on fostering entrepreneurship and women leadership. Outside of work, Vani enjoys spending time with her family, practices yoga and heartfulness meditation devotedly. She believes in sustainable living and grows enough organic produce in her garden to meet her family’s needs.
Venkat Sitaram is Geo Head & General Manager responsible for Corporate business & verticals like Education, Startup & Healthcare, he is based out of Bangalore, he has been with the company for over a decade now. During his stint with in the company Venkat has handled cross functional sales roles including BFSI Vertical Head, Director for Enterprise Solutions Sales & Enterprise Product Management.
Prior to Joining Dell, he spent close to a decade @ Wipro infotech, Venkat brings along with him an overall experience of 25+ years of sales in IT Industry.
Vikram manages around INR 800Cr across two Funds that have been raised almost entirely in India. Started in 2011, IvyCap has now become the largest home grown Venture Capital Fund in India. IvyCap has also launched its first Venture Debt Fund of about INR 500Cr and an Angel Fund of around INR 60Cr.
IvyCap Ventures is an chored by the IIT Alumni Trust , a Trust represented by the network of the IIT’s through its Dean/Faculty/Former Directors. The Trust also connects the fund with the entire eco-system of the 400,000 IIT Alumni around the world.
He has over 20 years of experience in Venture Capital, Business Consulting, M&A, Strategy and Technology across multiple sectors.
Vikram is known for setting up India’s First Healthcare and Life Sciences Venture Capital Fund where Ajay Piramal was the sponsor. Previously, he also managed the Clinical Genomics practice for IBM’s Healthcare and Life Sciences vertical in the US. He has also been an entrepreneur himself in the areas of technology and healthcare.
He has completed his B.Tech in Chemical Engineering from IIT Delhi and has an MBA degree in Strategy and Finance from Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, USA.
Vinod has more than 25 years of experience in Communications Software industry. Previously, Mr. Sood was Head of Engineering and R&D at Hughes Software Systems (HSS) and served on the Board as well. Prior to HSS Mr. Sood worked with C-DOT.
He is on the CII National Committee on IT, ITeS & e-Commerce and on the NASSCOM mentor panel for emerging companies. He is a member of Advisory Committee of the Institute of Informatics and Communications, University of Delhi.
Mr. Sood is also the Chairman of RMC-CORE in Network Engineering (setup by TIFAC, Department of Science and Technology Government of India, a Government, Academia and Industry partnership initiative).
Vivekananda is the co-founder and CEO of Bounce, India’s first smart urban mobility solution, with a vision to enable access to affordable and clean mobility. Starting with a fleet of eight motorcycles in 2014, Vivek and the co-founders quickly realized that there is a larger market need for first and last-mile connectivity for cities with more than a million-plus population, thus setting up Bounce.
Being a chartered accountant by qualification, Vivek’s venture into the world of entrepreneurship stems from his passion for bikes coupled with his love for numbers. Leading business development, government relations, investor relations, marketing, and sales at Bounce, Vivek’s background has been with multiple tax, regulatory and internal audit companies including KPMG.
Nandini heads the inward investment at northern India British high commission from last 4 years.
Prior to that she was in International department of CII and UKIBC. She is currently advising the UK government on investments and strategy in the start-up/MSME space in India. Leading a portfolio of USD 100m in capital investments.
She has done a masters in international relations from UKI and works with Indian industry in supporting their expansions to UK.
Deep is the Founder & Executive Chairman of India's leading online travel company, MakeMyTrip Limited. He has steered MakeMyTrip as CEO since its inception in 2000, to a successful listing on NASDAQ in August 2010.
He is on the Board of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) Delhi Chapter and served as President from 2013 to 2016. Deep is the founding member of IndiaTech.Org, an association representing interests of Indian Companies in the country’s fast-growing internet sector.
Deep is also one of the founding members of Ashoka University and serves on their governing body and Board. He is a founding member of ‘I am Gurgaon’ a non-profit focused on improving the quality of life in Gurgaon. Deep is passionate about environmental sustainability and has been championing this cause via the MakeMyTrip Foundation.
Deep has been recognized by Ernst & Young as Entrepreneur of the Year - Business Transformation (2011) and as the most powerful Digital influencer in India (2012) by KPMG. He holds an MBA degree from IIM, Ahmedabad and a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi.
His interests include swimming, yoga, adventure sports, quizzing and travelling.
