MeltingPot2020

The 23rd governor of RBI, he was earlier Chief Economist at International Monetary Fund and Chief Economic Adviser for the Indian Government. Apart from authoring many books and papers, he is also a member of the “Group of Thirty” and the Ämerican Academy of Arts and Sciences

A successful Silicon Valley executive and expert in financial service inclusion, Carol is a staunch believer in the potential of mobile banking and payments to create financial inclusion. A serial entrepreneur, she has been recognized as one of the 50 Top Women in Technology by Corporate Board Member magazine. She has also co-authored a book – “Financial inclusion at the bottom of the pyramid” with Karl Mehta.

Founder & CEO of India’s largest online travel company that revolutionized the way Indians research and purchase travel services, Deep Kalra also serves as a Board Member of TiE Delhi and is an active angel investor in the internet space. Deep is a member of the NASSCOM Executive Council and chairs its Internet Working Group and has been recognized by Ernst & Young as Entrepreneur of the Year - Business Transformation (2011).

An Indian American venture capitalist and entrepreneur, he is best known for co-founding the Chelmsford, MA-based internet equipment manufacturer Sycamore Networks, the Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation at MIT and the Deshpande Foundation. He was also appointed by President Barack Obama to the Co-Chairmanship of the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, a group established to support the US President's innovation strategy.

A seasoned media and technology professional with over 12 years of experience working in both the creative and business aspects of startups, NGOs, media production companies and broadcast outlets, Asad Butt helped launch Bridges TV and also leveraged technology to connect High School students in the Middle East to their peers in the USA.

Indian entrepreneur and founder of the mobile wallet, PayTM, Sharma started the website indiasite.net in 1997 and sold it two years later for $1 million. In 2005, he started One97 Communications which offered mobile content like news, cricket scores, ringtones, jokes and exam results. One97 now is Paytm’s parent company. Having started college at 15 he runs a billion dollar company at age 37.

Serial entrepreneur with a track record of success, including 5 startups in 25 years; as CEO of three, the fourth was acquired and the fifth grew to a 300 people company. He is also a Board of Trustee of TiE Global, a non-profit that fosters entrepreneurship globally. Vinit also teaches an MBA course on Entrepreneurship at BU.

George R Blumenthal is University of California Santa Cruz’s 10th Chancellor. Under Chancellor Blumenthal's leadership, the campus in 2013 launched its first comprehensive fundraising campaign, The Campaign for UC Santa Cruz. In addition, he has presided over significant growth in research funding, from $100 million in 2006 to $130 million in 2013.

In 2009 he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome". He is the current President of the Royal Society, having held the position since November 2015. Since 1999, he has worked as a group leader at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, UK.

Named one of the smartest people in tech by CNN, elected as fellow to Association of Computing Machinery and National Academy of Engineering, and a Google Fellow, Amit is the man behind Google Search. Currently Senior Vice President at Google, he was given the Outstanding Achievement in Science and Technology Award at The Asian Awards in 2011.

Sanjeev is the founder and executive chairman of Info Edge (India) that owns naukri.com, one of India’s largest job portals. He has also set up Quadrangle, an offline executive search engine. He has won the Ernst and Young – Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2008 for Business Transformation. He has also won the Dataquest Pathbreaker Award and the Teacher’s Achievement Award for Business in 2008.

Ramakrishnan is a pioneer in the field of research in the interdisciplinary domain of science and spirituality or “evidence-based theology” and works towards the integration of psychiatry and spirituality to obtain better outcomes in healthcare. He is working towards identifying where religious differences stand out drastically, where the boundaries are mixed together, and where they are blurred. He is also a resident at the Center for the Study of World Religions.

MadhavanRamanujam is a board member and partner at Simon-Kucher& Partners based in its Silicon Valley office. Ramanujam has led more than 125 monetization projects for Internet, software and technology clients, helping bring numerous new products to market. He is also co-author of Monetizing Innovation: How Smart Companies Design the Product Around the Price which illustrates the importance of putting the customers’ willingness to pay at the very core of product design.

In his current role Rajesh Natarajan is responsible for the strategic direction of Intuit TurboTax technology and product experiences. In his 20-year career in Web scale technology and product development experience, Nat has launched multiple innovative products. Before joining Intuit, he served as vice president of global credit expansion at PayPal where he held multiple senior roles in his eight-year tenure at PayPal, including vice president of global product development and vice president of platform engineering and operations.

Prior to his current role as Head API – R&D at Ranbaxy Laboratories, Dr Mohan Prasad has held positions of increasing responsibilities in the R&D divisions of various Indian Pharma companies. He is Vice President of Indian Society of Chemists and Biologists, Adjunct Professor JamiaHamdard University, New Delhi, Member of European Federation of Biotechnology and Executive Member of Indian Society of Analytical Scientists – Delhi Chapter. He has over twenty publications and more than 160 patents to his credit. His research interests include chemo & regioselective reductions, asymmetric catalysis and insightful process development of significant active pharmaceutical ingredients.

Dr. Arun Purohit spent 21 years at Ranbaxy in various roles as Medical Director and Medical Advisor.His profile included global new product portfolio management including dosage form and API; strategic initiatives and identifying growth areas for the company; guiding the development of a strong-branded pipeline and branded business for Ranbaxy markets and support continuing medical education. He is the General Secretary for the Indian Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy and also sits on the advisory board for the Indian Institute of Healthcare Management & Research, Jaipur.

Gopi sets vision & strategic direction for the company and leads learning & education initiatives. He is the principal facilitator for large L&D interventions.He has facilitated corporate training sessions on a large scale, consulted for companies on strategic matters, coached CEOs, and delivered niche workshops for scientists, entrepreneurs, and parents. He is a strategic advisor to corporates for their visioning, goal setting, and execution goals.He takes personal delight in mentoring people towards high performance and career building goals.

Salman Khan is an American educator, entrepreneur, and former hedge fund analyst. He is the founder of the Khan Academy, a free online education platform and an organization with which he has produced over 6,500 video lessons teaching a wide spectrum of academic subjects, mainly focusing on mathematics and sciences. As of May 2016, the Khan Academy channel on YouTube has more than 2.6 million subscribers and the Khan Academy videos have been viewed more than 840 million times. In 2012, Time named Salman Khan in its annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Mr. Mahesh Murthy is a Co-Founder and Managing Director at Seedfund. He is also the Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Pinstorm Technologies Private Limited. He ran Channel V till 2000 and then founded Passionfund to invest in and guide startups.Mr. Murthy is also invested in Geodesic Limited, Compassbox, EBS Direct, and WebDunia and serves as Director of Netcraft Retail Solutions Private Limited and Innoz Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

Former creative head of Publicis Ambience Ashish Khazanchirecently launchedEnormous - his own venture along with Ajay Verma, erstwhile chief growth officer of DraftfcbUlka and Vivek Suchanti. Ashish is an industry veteran with more than 20 years in advertising who has won every single creative award including 50 Abby’s and the Cannes Gold. He has been rated one of the ‘Top Twenty Creative People’ by Brand Equity and ‘The Creative People to Watch Out For’ by DNA.

Vishal Gondalis an Indian entrepreneur and angel investor.He is the founder and CEO of GOQii, a fitness technology company, and previously founded the game development and publishing company Indiagames, which he sold to DisneyUTV Digital, The Walt Disney Company (India) in 2011 for $100 million. In 2008, Gondal launched Sweat and Blood Venture group to invest in startups at a seed level. The organization has invested in Instablogs and Docsuggest, among others.

Ganesh the founder and Chief Executive Officer of TutorVista, an online tutoring company. He is a serial entrepreneur and has launched four startups with an aggregate capital of ?16 million (US$240,000) and an aggregate exit valuation of $300 million. Ganesh has been busy promoting Growthstory, which is a venture builder entrepreneurship platform to greenfield ventures. His ventures include Bigbasket, Bluestone, Portea, Freshmenu, Dogspot

As Portfolio Manager for South Asia, Akshay is responsible for expanding Kiva’s portfolio in the region and managing the relationship with existing field partners. Akshay was based in Afghanistan for a year, studying the interaction of informal economies of credit with formal microfinance. After completing his MA in International Political Economy from Johns Hopkins University, he worked at the World Bank HQ in Washington DC on private sector development and entrepreneurship support operations.

Dr. Pramod leads the overalltechnology and application architecture and development within UIDAI TechnologyUnit.Prior to this, as CTO at Sterling Commerce, he has worked across the organization and customers to evangelize technology and helpsproduct teams make strategic technology and architecture decisions.He began his career as part of the research team at Infosys Technologies and has lead research teams thatconceived, designed, and built an Internet banking module and a powerful web application server as back as1995.

Kiran Shetty is Chief Executive of SWIFT India Domestic Services, a joint venture with the top Indian public and private sector banks. SWIFT delivers high quality domestic financial messaging services to the Indian financial community. Kiran is based out of Mumbai, he manages a product portfolio that caters to critical domestic market infrastructures and market segments across payments, trade, corporate and securities.

Kiran joined SWIFT in 2016 after more than 20 years in the financial services industry, with top Fortune 500 US companies. Prior to SWIFT, Kiran was Managing Director & Regional Vice President, India & South Asia for Western Union, where he was part of the top 100 Global leaders group. He has been recognized with the prestigious National Award for E-Governance (driving financial inclusion), by Government of India in 2016.

Kiran has a degree in Commerce from Delhi University and has completed his Accelerated Management Program from, Indian Business School, Hyderabad, India.

Siddhartha Bhattacharya is responsible for the overall development, management, and leadership of the activities of ACCESS Health International in India. His responsibilities include the establishment of collaborations and management of partnerships with government and the public and private sectors as well as with research and development organizations.

Previously, Siddhartha served as chief operating officer and technology head for the Emergency Management and Research Institute of GVK. The Institute delivers integrated emergency response and technology driven health outreach services to seventeen states and union territories in India through public private partnerships. In prior leadership roles, he has worked with Dell, Inc, (USA), Philips (India), and the government of Kerala in a number of cross functional global assignments. Siddhartha holds a Bachelor's degree with honors in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, Rajasthan. He also received his Master's in Business Administration from the John M. Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis, MO. In addition, Siddhartha received an Executive Scholar certificate in sales and marketing from the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. Siddhartha is interested in people, projects, and alliances that thrive on rapid change, scale, and globalization. He likes to mentor promising startups in his personal time.

Shankar Maruwada is the CEO and Co-founder of EkStep. Shankar is passionate about addressing social problems at scale through technology based tools. He is an entrepreneur and marketing professional with a wide range of experience working on large scale projects such as the AADHAAR, India’s national identification program, where he was the Head of Demand Generation and Marketing.

Shankar pioneered data analytics in India through, Marketics, a company he co-founded. He is an investor in startups and a mentor to entrepreneurs. He is an alumnus of Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad and Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur.

Rama Vedashree was Vice President, NASSCOM leading all initiatives in Domestic IT, eGovernance and Smart Cities among others. At NASSCOM, she has also led the Healthcare initiative in partnership with apex Health Sector body, NATHEALTH. She is also anchoring a new initiative of the Industry on making India a global hub for cyber security.

With a rich and varied experience of 28 years in the Industry, she has had long stints at NIIT Technologies, Microsoft and General Electric. Until recently, she was also interim CEO of Data Security Council of India.

Her previous roles include that of Director in Microsoft Global Services, and Vice President, GE India. She has experience in the diverse domains of IT consulting, Strategic Accounts and Business Development, e-Governance projects and Business Development for Infrastructure projects and Health and Water Sectors at GE.

A Gold Medalist from University of Hyderabad, she has also completed an Executive Education program from Harvard, and a short program in High Performance Computing from Cornell University.

In her spare time, she actively participates in Long Distance Runs, and has to her credit many Half Marathons.

Rohan Khara is Director for Products at MobiKwik, India’s largest independent payments network and mobile wallet, since July 2016. Prior to MobiKwik, Rohan was the Co-founder and COO at Jabber Labs, a podcasting startup that he founded in 2014.

A Stanfort graduate, Rohan started his career with Microsoft and has worked in leadership positions at Quikr, during his career span of over a decade. He also has an engineering degree from R. V. College of Engineering, Bangalore.

Upasana’s mission is to simplify payment acceptance for retailers in India. Her current focus is to bring a million retailers into the MobiKwik payments network. She is also in charge of bank partnerships, business operations, and talent acquisition at MobiKwik. Upasana comes with a strong background in payments as a senior product manager with PayPal in the Silicon Valley and prior to that with HSBC in San Diego, US.

In 2008, Upasana decided to return to India and contribute to the ecosystem back home. The year after she joined MobiKwik as its cofounder. From a handful of early employees to a headcount of around 250, Upasana has been chiefly responsible for holding things together at MobiKwik, keeping the team focused on the goal of building India’s largest independent mobile payments network.

Upasana graduated with Bachelors in Engineering from NIT Jalandhar and holds a Masters in Management Science from Stanford University. She has 13 years of extensive experience in Payments & Financial Services and has been an entrepreneur in India for over 6 years now. Away from web products and startups, Upasana can be found traveling to offbeat destinations or doing triathlons.

Acknowledging her achievements in the tech startup ecosystem of India she was featured by Forbes under "Asia's Women to Watch in 2016".

Mr Anand is senior partner and head of the trademarks, contractual and commercial IP entertainment and contractual IP. He advises several Fortune 500 companies and acts for over 6,000 clients. His practice areas include trademarks, contractual law, franchising and licensing, character merchandising, advertising and labelling laws, IP audits, IP issues in mergers and acquisitions, and due diligence. Mr Anand has spoken extensively at various conferences, including the Lexis Nexis conference on the importance of IP in mergers and acquisitions; the ACMA conference on IP management through brand protection; and the Brand Licensing conference on negotiating a licence agreement.

Sandeep is a Global Network and Information Technology executive with demonstrated success in service, support and software business. With deep networking and IT background, he is currently focused on SDN, NFV and Cloud, driving technology strategy for Telco's and Enterprise customers while building internal capabilities to scale. He is a hands-on leader comfortable in driving high value business with CXO as well as internal strategy with deeply technical engineering teams.

With 25+ years of experience in service delivery, product management and business development, he has been effective in building exceptional teams.

Presently in IBM, Sandeep is leading Global Network Consulting services organization to help our clients transform their network infrastructure and operations.

Previously, in Huawei, leading an elite Center of Innovation team, Sandeep has\d driven $200M+ business in the first year of joining. He built a strong SDN/NFV consulting practice with a customer centric Transformation Program for Telcos that included Business, Technology and Operations (DevOps) consulting. He was also responsible for OSS Open Innovation strategy with Open Standards bodies/projects such as ONF, ONLAB, ONOS, ODL,OPNFV, MEF-LSO, OPEN STACK.

With over 15 years in Cisco Systems Inc, Sandeep built strong services capabilities and directed development of 15+ new service products/offerings, cloud/XaaS based migration delivery model, services automation. Earlier in his career, he provided technical consulting solutions to over 100 large customers across the globe.

His experience is truly global with customers in all continents and diverse teams in US, Europe, Asia and Middle East.

Poet at heart, his leadership style is motivational to drive exceptional results.

In stealth mode of my latest startup; In the past, co-founded 3 successful and 1 failed technology startup; Co-founded Angelprime (now Prime Venture), a Seed Fund, where we worked with awesome entrepreneurs from EZEtap, SmartOwner, HackerEarth, Happay, Synup and more!

Started Snapfish from scratch and helped build it to a $300M revenue & profitable business spanning 22 countries, sold it to HP in 2005; Volunteered for UIDAI Project in India before starting a technology incubator with 2 other co-founders; Professional interests are in mobile, Internet ecommerce entrepreneurship & running International businesses with focus in Europe and Asia; Personal interests include hiking, traveling, scuba diving, skiing, reading, yoga and meditation.Traveled to more than 80 countries; crossed the Sahara desert, climbed Kilimanjaro; trekked in Himalayas, Andes, Sierras, Alps; fluent in 3 languages and working knowledge of Spanish & French;

Specialties: COO responsibilities including P&L management, Operations, R&D in internet or ecommerce businesses; International business development and expansion in Europe & Asia Pacific including Japan; International M&A

“Harish Hande is an engineer and renewable energy entrepreneur with over 20 years of grassroots experience in meeting requirements of underserved communities. He is the co-founder of SELCO India, and under his leadership SELCO reached 220,000+ households across 6 Indian states, while focusing on Innovation and Ecosystem building, for which he was awarded the Magsaysay Award in 2011”

Harish, a graduate from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur and a Masters and PhD from University of Massachusetts, US, returned to India to start SELCO in 1994-95 after experiencing benefits of solar energy in rural areas of Dominican Republic and Sri Lanka. Having installed the first 1000 home lighting systems on his own and over 2,10,000 households now through his company SELCO India, Harish is recognized as a pioneer of rural energy service across the globe. He and his company have received many national and international awards including the Ashden award (2005 and 2007), The tech museum award (2005), Khemka Social entrepreneur of the year 2007 and the Financial Times –Arcelor Mittal Boldness in Business award 2009. Harish was one of the 21 CEOs invited to meet US President Barack Obama during his visit to Mumbai in 2014.”

Professor Sadagopan, Director of IIIT-Bangalore, is a product of Madras University, India and Purdue University, USA. He taught for 25+ years at IIT Kanpur, IIM Bangalore, IIT Madras and IIIT-Bangalore in addition to short teaching assignments at RUTGERS, USA and AIT, Bangkok.

He has authored seven books, several book chapters and papers.

He is a Fellow of IEE (UK) and Computer Society of India. He is a Senior Member of IEEE, ACM and AIS.

He consults widely and lectures extensively on all aspects of IT. He serves on the boards of Vignyani Industries Limited (A fully owned subsidiary of BEML Limited) National Stock Exchange, Indian Overseas Bank, National Payment Corporation of India, Mumbai, BEML Ltd, Bangalore also served on Bharat Electronics, Neyveli Lignite Corporation and Indian Renewable Energy Agency as well as several Universities / Institutes - IIIT-Gwalior, Jain University, IDRBT, IBAB, ISIM, IIIT Bhubaneshwar and IIIT-Delhi.

He serves as a Member of Karnataka Knowledge Commission, Chief Minister's Vision Group on IT, NASSCOM Regional Council, Indian Electronics Semiconductor Association (IESA) Executive Council and ACM India Council. He is the Chair of IEEE Computer Society, Bangalore Chapter.

I completed a 3-year term as Jamuna Raghavan Chair Professor of Entrepreneurship at IIMB in August 2010. I was the Fall semester 2008 Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania. In November 2010, I received the Dewang Mehta Award for Best Teacher in Strategic Management.

My book "From Jugaad to Systematic Innovation: The Challenge for India," published in February 2010, identified the challenges faced by India in enhancing industrial innovation and proposed an agenda to enhance innovation output (see http://jugaadtoinnovation.blogspot.com for details). I have served on a number of committees set up by the Government of India, Nasscom, and CII related to innovation in India.

I am a trustee of the Foundation for Excellence India Trust (www.ffe.org), an organization committed to helping economically underprivileged and academically talented students complete their higher education through one of India’s largest scholarship programmes.

I am a mechanical engineer with an undergraduate degree from IIT Kharagpur, masters degrees in applied mechanics and applied mathematics from the University of Florida, a PhD from Cornell University, and postdoc work at Penn State University. I spent a year, just out of college, working for Telco (now Tata Motors) in Jamshedpur. I joined the Indian Institute of Science in 2000, moved to IIT Kharagpur in 2009, and to IIT Kanpur in 2012.

I have guided eight PhD students to completion and authored or coauthored several journal publications on various topics (my CV). I have also worked on some consulting projects that I found interesting.

I have taught courses in dynamics, control, nonlinear oscillations, and undergraduate statics and strength of materials.

Dr. Arun Purohit spent 21 years at Ranbaxy in various roles as Medical Director and Medical Advisor. His profile included global new product portfolio management including dosage form and API; strategic initiatives and identifying growth areas for the company; guiding the development of a strong-branded pipeline and branded business for Ranbaxy markets and support continuing medical education. He is the General Secretary for the Indian Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy and also sits on the advisory board for the Indian Institute of Healthcare Management & Research, Jaipur.

An astute and result-oriented professional with about 16 years of experience in journalism, including 13 years of in-depth coverage of the Indian automotive sector. Experience of managing a wide bandwidth of products developed in conjunction with the magazines I’ve been associated with, with demonstrated initiatives.

Presently associated with Auto Tech Review as its Founder Editor-in-Chief, driving editorial excellence with quality content for pint, web and live events (conferences & seminars). I also Head the Professional Publishing (B2B) division at Springer Nature India, with additional responsibility of Dentistry India, a magazine focussed on the dental community and industry in India.

A keen planner and strategist with proven skills in conceptualising, managing and executing new projects and products, I’m able to work on own initiatives and as part of a team. I possess recognised proficiency in development and implementation of business strategies and product positioning, plans and policies. A team leader with proven team building and management abilities, I have extensive experience in building new strategies around teams – new and old.

I’ve moderated panel discussions and thought leadership roundtables at various internal and external events and conferences.

A keen political observer, I’m a sports fanatic and an experimental chef, and someday wish to pursue my dream of being a nursery school teacher.

Inala Veerabhadra Rao, popularly known as IV Rao, is currently heading the Engineering vertical in Maruti Suzuki India Limited as Managing Executive officer.

Mr. Rao looks after Engineering, Research, Design & Development function along with Quality Assurance and Service functions

He has completed his graduation in Mechanical Engineering from Osmania University and Masters in Mechanical Engineering from IIT-Kanpur and started his career with KG Khosla and co in 1979. He joined Maruti in 1983 and has spearheaded the R&D activities at Maruti Suzuki.

In his 26 years career at Maruti Suzuki, Mr Rao has made significant contribution in different roles and positions in Product Development and Manufacturing Engineering functions. Under his leadership, Maruti R&D has grown from strength to strength and has developed capability for new model & facelift development, alternate fuel product development and new technology development. Mr Rao is nominated as a Director in the Board of Directors of Maruti’s joint venture company Bharat Seats Limited.

With his vast experience of technology development and understanding of Indian context, Mr. Rao plays an important role and holds key positions in different industry/ government bodies, such as:

• Executive Council member – SIAM (Society of Indian Automobile manufacturers
• Chairman, SIAM – Frontier Technologies Committee
• Chairman, BIS (Bureau of Indian Standards) - TED-11 Committee
• Vice Chairman, SAFE (Society for Automotive Fitness and Environment), an SIAM initiative

He has keen interest in SAEINDIA activities and holds the position of Chairman of SAEINDIA Northern section.

Irene started her career in Standard Chartered Bank Indonesia as an international graduate, which later brought her to expand her investment banking career in UAE, India, and Singapore. Upon her return to Indonesia, she has started her own business and supported her alma mater i.e. President University as the foundation’s treasurer and strategic planning director. In addition, she is also the founder of Discovery Nusantara Capital – a venture capital fund. As an entrepreneur and leader, one of her greatest challenges is the quality of human capital.

Further, With ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) fast becoming an everyday reality, she is extremely concerned about the ability of Indonesian workforce to compete.Hence, along with her co-founders, she founded ONE Indonesia which aims to (a) use Big Data applications to unlock the nation’s education issues and (b) to create an ecosystem for all concerned parties to cooperate and to collaborate so that Indonesia’s education goals could be accomplished and Indonesians would be ready for the increasingly competitive world.

Prior to her role in Microsoft, Dr Vinnie has worked as Director and Professor of Strategy at IIMT, Gurgaon and Region Lead for HP Labs Open Innovation Office for India. She has over 19 years of experience which pans across industry and academic assignments. She has authored twelve books and has several papers in international journals. She is the Founding Editor of Journal of Services Research and Journal of Technology Management for Growing Economies.

Jay Krishnan is the CEO of T-Hub, the largest incubator in the country for startups and a serial entrepreneur. He was the founder of three different startups across the world, in the IoT and energy management spaces. With over 15 years of startup and corporate experience, Jay has managed P&L across business units.

As a C-level executive, he has run businesses in companies like Aditya Birla Minacs, Cisco systems, Juniper Networks and Intel Brooktrout Dialogic Inc.

Ravinder Pal Singh is a Senior Industry Consultant and Expert in Digital infrastructure solutions to create sustainable and Smart business processes. Ravinder has more than 20 years’ experience in the business & technology consulting, Enterprise Architecture and solutions mainly in the areas of Industry vertical solutions (Real Estate, Healthcare, Education, Media, Manufacturing etc.), Data center, Collaboration and network technology Solutions. Ravinder has managed several roles mainly in Enterprise Architecture, Solution Architecture & design, Project & Program management, Service delivery and services Management.

A Certified project manager (PMP), IT Services Management (ITIL) & Enterprise Architect (TOGAF), he has extensive experience in Technology infrastructure for effective Workplace, IT service management based on ITIL framework, Information security processes (ISO27001/BS7799), quality process compliance (ISO9000), LEED certification and quality processes improvement areas based on six Sigma and DMAIC foundations.

Ravinder has consulted and managed projects with diverse streams of segments like govt, manufacturing, R&D, Media, IT & ITES, Telcos and Retail customers. He has been part of empaneled consultants for India Smart City Mission and Delhi Mumbai Infrastructure Corridor (DMIC) projects. He has 2 patent applications submitted in the areas of Data center and Security.

Ravinder is a regular speaker in national and international forums around Internet of Everything and Smart Communities. Some of his articles have been published in leading publications.

Pranay Gupta is the Co-Founder of 91springboard, the first and the biggest coworking hubs company in India. They have hubs across Delhi, Noida, Gurgaon, Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad.

An IIT Delhi and IIM Ahmedabad alumnus, he was previously Joint CEO at CIIE, IIM Ahmedabad's incubator where he was instrumental in setup and running of Power of Ideas, iAccelerator, MentorEdge etc. He was leading the Internet & Mobile domain activities for them and had lead investments in 40+ startups that have resulted in multiple exits.

Pranay was one of the first investors in AlmaConnect and has been an invaluable mentor and evangelist from early days of the company.

Rubish is CTO at Alma Connect and handles tech product and infrastructure. AlmaConnect is a social network based on private alumni networks focused on helping an alum / student get trusted help from his/her alumni network. Help ranging from getting referral for jobs, advice for careers, recommendations for services, introductions, fund raising to just asking if anyone is travelling from New York to Delhi in the next week and can carry a small parcel. Institutes can host their official alumni networks on AlmaConnect for strengthening their alumni relations and leveraging the network for increasing placements & branding.

Dr. Sumit Chowdhury is a global thought leader in the field of Smart Cities, Telecom, IOT & Information analytics. His company, Gaia Smart Cities, is creating IOT based wide-area telecom solutions for cities, industries and citizens – like Smart Metering, asset tracking, industrial automation and smart health. He is also the Program Director for PMU for Swachh Bharat Mission (Clean India Initiative) and heading their IT initiatives with the Ministry of Urban Development. He is working closely with multiple cities in India’s 100 Smart Cities Initiative.

He is a business leader, and an entrepreneur having invested in multiple startup companies. He has been a CIO of several telecom companies in India, been a Partner with KPMG Consulting in US & Australia. He is on the board on one listed entity.

He is a Visiting Faculty teaching a course on Smart Cities at Carnegie Mellon University (USA) and an expert with TM Forum Smart Cities Global Network. He heads in Indo-American Chamber of Commerce, Smart Cities Group.

Sumit is a graduate of IIT Kanpur and MS and Ph.D from Carnegie Mellon University in Information Systems Management from the School of Urban Planning and Administration.

He is the author of a bestselling career management book, 'Rules of the Game'. He is also a TEDx speaker, an avid painter, a trained musician and an active marathon runner and cyclist.

Sanjay Sethi is the Co-founder and CEO at ShopClues.com. He is highly regarded in the industry as a product visionary and a marketplace expert with proficiency in building multifaceted environments in the field of e-commerce. As the Co-founder of the company, Sanjay aims to deliver a pleasurable shopping experience for consumers through the advanced and user-friendly online platform.

An alumnus of Banaras Hindu University, Sanjay holds a B.Tech Degree in Mechanical Engineering. He further went on to pursue a course in Software Technology from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (Delhi). He has enjoyed a fruitful career of over 20 years in the internet product space, including e-commerce marketplaces, online payments, operations and trade logistics.

Prior to his appointment as the CEO, Sanjay served as the Vice President (Products) in ShopClues since the company’s inception in July 2011. In his previous position, Sanjay’s role involved providing necessary tools and processes essential to produce and operate an efficient online marketplace. Before co-founding India’s first and now largest managed marketplace, Sanjay served as the Global Product Head for Shipping & Logistics, Payments & Billing at eBay Inc. in Silicon Valley. He has also worked with other reputed companies including IIS Infotech, HCL Perot Systems, Tradebeam and Steel Authority of India Limited.

Sanjay has been felicitated with a number of awards and honours for his entrepreneurial achievements such as the “Distinguished Alumni Award” at the IIT-BHU Alumni Excellence Awards Ceremony. He has also held the CEO of the Year award with Radhika Ghai Aggarwal at CEO Awards 2016.

Pradeep Gupta is the Chairman of the CyberMedia Group, South Asia's first and largest specialty media house, with brands like Dataquest, PCQuest, Voice&Data, DARE, CIOL, Global Services, etc. CyberMedia is a public company. CyberMedia is executing India’s first Electropreneur Park, an incubation centre for Electronics start-ups funded by the Government of India.

Pradeep is also an Angel investor and has mentored over 100 start-ups. He is the co-founder of Indian Angel Network, Asia’s largest angel network with more than 300 members that has done over 70 deals. Currently IAN invests in 20-25 deals each year. Some successful exits of IAN include Druvaa Software, StayZilla etc.

Pradeep is also the Chair of the IIT Alumni Trust, the sponsors of IvyCap Ventures Trust Fund-I, a $40 mn fund that invests in medium scale businesses.

Pradeep is 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.

Pradeep was the GP of India’s first angel fund Infinity Ventures 15 years ago which had angel investments in companies like India Bulls and India Games, both of which were highly successful exits.

He is on the Board of the IIT Delhi and IIM Kolkata incubators and on the Advisory Board of STPI Gurgaon.

He has been the past President of PanIIT India and Association of Indian Magazines. He is/has been on the Boards of IIT Mandi, Indian Newspaper Society, UTI AMC and its subsidiary UTI Capital etc.

He is the recipient of the Distinguished Alumni award of IIT Delhi and the Helen Keller award for working in the disability sector.

Pradeep is an Engineer from IIT Delhi (1975) and an MBA from IIM Calcutta (1977).

Mr. Christopher Hanvey began his career with CII (Confederation of Indian Industry) in 1982. He went on to becoming a key member of the Computers in Schools project in 1985-87 at Eiko Computers in Delhi. This project saw the roll out of computers in private schools for learning purposes for the first time, all over Delhi and the North. This effort included working closely with experts to develop age-appropriate educational software.

He then went on to do a Design & Technology project working closely with designers at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad on ready-made components for commercial spaces. Later, in 1991, as Branch Head in Mumbai with Amtrex Ambience Limited, he was responsible for establishing market supremacy of the Amtrex-Hitachi line of air-conditioning solutions in Maharashtra and Goa. This experience took him to Indonesia for 5 years in a similar field.

On return in 2007, he joined Kasiga School, Dehradun as General Manager for 4 years, simultaneously teaching the IGCSE programme. He joined the much-awarded Genesis Global School, Noida in 2011, and spends most of his time studying aspects that enrich and make curriculums accessible, particularly the role of technology in learning at K 12 Schools.

Dr. R. Shivaraman, PhD (Magnetic Data Storage Devices) spearheads the Research and Innovation verticals of Accendere. Having completed his Masters in Nanotechnology prior to his PhD, Shiva derives his expertise in a broad range of topics from the time spent in top research facilities such as Carnegie Mellon University, UWA, Curtin, and Bhabha Atomic Research Centre

Shiva’s research interests include nano magnetic storage devices, spintronics, controlled release and drug delivery systems for hepatic cancer and dabbles with robotics and non-euclidean geometry. He has over 30 international journal publications, patents and has delivered talks in dozens of international conferences. He has been awarded several prestigious recognitions such as the Young Scientist Research Award, BRNS, DAE and Australian Visiting Fellowship, Australian Academy of Science. He is on the advisory board of several top Institutions around the country.

Varun Aggarwal co-founded Aspiring Minds with his brother Himanshu Aggarwal in 2008 and together the two have built it into the world’s leading job credentialing company. As CTO, Varun oversees delivery, operations, product design, research and new initiatives. Under his guidance, the research group at aspiring Minds has developed the world's first machine learning based programming assessment, the world's first automated test of motor skills and the only scalable way of spoken English assessment.

Varun is a recognized expert on developing and applying statistical learning and optimization techniques to real world problems, including circuit modeling and design, parallel processing and network coding. His work has been published in more than 20 technical publications and he has five US patents pending, including his work for the algorithms he developed for Aspiring Minds.

He is the founder of the MIT India Reading Group, a platform for collaborative research on socio economic issues in India, which has completed more than 65 meetings. He is also the co-founder of CURE, an organization working against hazing (ragging) in India.

Varun was awarded the HUMIES award in 2006 for developing algorithms that mimic human intelligence and the AWA award for his article on Bose's contribution to the invention of radio. He has been a prominent speaker and panelist at Harvard University, MIT, INSEAD and IBM Research Center (NYC).

Varun completed his Bachelors of Engineering from NSIT, University of Delhi and holds a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT.

Meenu Grover is a Portfolio Management, Strategy & BD professional with over 23 years in the Pharmaceutical Industry. She has handled key roles including Director Global Marketing in Ranbaxy and Director Global Marketing in Sun Pharma. She was also Research Director in Smartanalyst prior to joining Ranbaxy.

Dr Rajiv Seth is an Aerospace Engineer by training. Having spent 27 years in the Indian Air Force, he has worked on various types of aero engines and has been involved in technical evaluation, field testing and technology transfer. He has been with the TERI University for the last thirteen years and, as the Registrar of the University, has been instrumental in the establishment of the University and the post-graduate programmes it offers. He has been actively involved in the curriculum development of the various courses. He is responsible for the overall administration of the University. As a faculty member in the Department of Business Sustainability, he teaches courses in Finance to students of the MBA programs. His current research interests are in the areas of financing of renewable energy projects, risk management, and use of weather derivatives as a hedging tool for weather related risks.

Was the Founder Head and Professor, Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Tezpur University, Tezpur- 784 028, Assam

Served as an Associate Professor, Division of Life Science, Institute of Advance Studies in Science and Technology (IASST) (A Department of Science and Technology Institution, Government of India Institute), Guwahati, Assam, India

Was the Head, Department of Botany and Biotechnology, Tocklai Experimental Station, Tea Research Association, Jorhat, Assam, India during 2002-2003

Founder Head, ONGC Centre for Petroleum Biotechnology at Tezpur University

Chairperson of the Students Welfare Committee (equivalent to Dean, Students Welfare) at Tezpur Central University for more than two terms.

Served as a Reader, Department of Botany, Gauhati University, Assam, India

Served as members and Chairpersons in many Committees, Board of Studies of Central Universities of the North East and the UGC

Master of Public Management (2011), University of Maryland, College Park, USA. MSc Physics (1993), St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi. BSc (Honours) Physics (1991), St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi.

Commissioner-Cum- Secretary (Shipping, Transport, Civil Aviation, PWD & Urban Development, Relief & Rehabilitation, Disaster Management, Labour), Andaman & Nicobar Administration, Secretariat, Port Blair (Oct 2011 – Nov. 2014). Private Secretary to Union Minister of Shipping, Road Transport and Highways, Government of India (Feb 2008 – June 2009).

Director/ Deputy Secretary (Port Development & Ports Human Resource Development), Ministry of Shipping, Road Transport and Highways, Government of India (July 2005 – May 2008). Deputy Commissioner, South District, New Delhi (Dec 2004 – June 2005). Deputy Commissioner, Municipal Corporation of Delhi (July 2002 – Dec 2004). Collector & District Magistrate, Dadra & Nagar Haveli (Nov 1999 – June 2002).

Managing Director, Omnibus Industrial Development Corporation of Daman, Diu and Dadra & Nagar Haveli (Dec 1998 – Dec 1999). Director, Industries and Mines, Government of Goa (Sep 1998– Dec 1998). Managing Director, Goa Industrial Development Corporation (Nov 1997 – Sep 1998). Deputy Collector & Sub-divisional Magistrate, Panaji, Goa (Oct 1995 – Nov 1997).

Ambar is a senior product leader in mobile and ecommerce space; currently working as Associate Vice President at Shopclues.com. As the head of product for buyer and customer experience, Ambar is responsible for managing all aspects of product including strategy, building teams and executing go to market.

He has considerable experience in building ecommerce marketplaces and is an expert in building scalable products for delivering delightful online and offline experiences to consumers. He is passionate about data science and incorporates NLP and ML in products to help solve complex problems at scale like personalisation, search, customer loyalty and retention.

He is an engineering graduate from NSIT and completed his Master’s degree in management from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

Vincent has more than 25 years of experience working in the education (K12 and tertiary), high performance computing, life science, learning and healthcare industries. From an IT perspective, he has held roles in content development, project management, consulting, solution development, sales, business development, operations management, marketing and programs management. He has worked in major MNCs, primarily focused in the education and research industry and have led successful teams to deliver strong business outcomes.

Vincent is the Business Development Lead, Education, Research and Not For Profit, Asia Pacific at Amazon Web Services.

Dr Vijay Kumar Saraswat, India’s most gifted scientist and an accomplished researcher with more than four decades of experience spaning over several fields and areas in both basic and applied sciences of defence research. Apart from being a scientist, he is a rare combination of an innovator, technologist and visionary.

Born at Gwalior on 25 May 1949, Dr Saraswat completed his engineering from Gwalior; Master of Engineering from IISc Bangalore followed by Ph.D from Osmania University.

During his illustrious career, from Scientist to Scientific Adviser to Defence Minister, Director to Director General DRDO and Secretary to Dept of Defence R&D, Dr Saraswat has been credited with development of Liquid Propulsion Rocket Engines and missiles namely PRITHVI, DHANUSH, PRAHAAR indigenously. He is the principal architect of the Ballistic Missile Defence programme which included major technology breakthroughs. The successive interceptions of incoming target ballistic missiles at Exo and Endo atmospheres are a testimony to his dedicated efforts and exploitation of limited technological resources. With this India joined the select nations that have the capability to develop BMD systems

Surya, provided thought leading consulting solutions in the areas of Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing, Data Management and Analytics to Fortune 500 Clients over the last 2 decades. He achieved demonstrable results for many clients through consulting and solving complex decision making environments. Currently the vision behind the comprehensive customer experience management platform called CXP and a Data Science Platform called - "ZettaMine". Earlier, he architected commercial Analytical Applications for Product MDM (epaCUBE) and Procurement Optimization (SolPro). He has helped many large System Integration programs achieve productivity benefits through creating smart solutions and accelerators.

Surya has a tremendous zeal to create Analytics products that bring significant improvements in Business Performance. He is passionate about areas related to Data Science, Big Data, High Performance Cluster Computing and Algorithms. His current interests are building customer solutions in Data Science (Machine Learning, Statistical Analysis, Natural Language Processing), Big Data (Hadoop, Spark, Storm, NoSQL), Technology Transformations (Strategy, Value Articulation, Architecture, Assessments, Portfolio analysis and rationalization).