Nicole Girard was named Consul General of Canada to Bangalore in October 2018. Nicole has over 10 years executive leadership experience in the Canadian government overseeing significant policy reform and managing major overseas Canadian migration operations.

A graduate with a BA in Law from Carleton University, she began her career in the Canadian government in 1989 when she joined the Department of Employment and Immigration and where she held various assignments in Ottawa related to immigration enforcement, strategic policy and refugee policy. In her most recent headquarters position, she was Director General of Citizenship and Multiculturalism policy.

She served in Beijing from 2015 to 2018 as Migration Program Manager and Area Director for North Asia and Oceania, with oversight of Canadian migration programs in eight offices, including those in China, Japan, South Korea and Australia. Nicole is the recipient of 10 Canadian public service awards including a Deputy Minister’s award for her leadership on comprehensive reform of Citizenship legislation. Early in her career, Nicole co-founded a successful small business.

Nicole speaks English, French and Italian. She is married, and is the parent of one child who is a university student.

Graduated from niversity  as a Computer Science Engineer in the year 2017. After graduation, started working as a Junior Software Developer in a startup called AsepsisLife, Inc’.

Over a period of time Nikhil found great interest in volunteering for social sectors. That’s when he decided to take a break from work and start volunteering for an NGO called YOUTH FOR SEVA(YFS). This helped him volunteer for a social cause which not only helped develop problem solving skills but also helped with my leadership skills. 

Nikhil also started working for a part time events like Rapido and Dunzo. These part time job did help Nikhil with his finance.

Mr. Naveen Soni is Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical Branch) & MBA.
He began his career in 1992 with Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. (Indian Utility Vehicle
Manufacturer) and worked in various areas of Marketing & Sales, including Overseas Markets
(South East Asia).
In 2001, he joined the Toyota Kirloskar Motor Pvt Ltd, as Regional Manager for West Region
(posted at Mumbai) and continued in that position till 2005.
In 2005 to 2010 he spearheaded the rapid expansion of Toyota Dealer Network to facilitate the
launch of the Toyota Etios & Liva.
In 2010 he was posted to Toyota’s regional headquarters in Singapore where he was responsible
for the business development of Singapore and Philippines. He was posted in Singapore till 2013.
In 2013 he came back to India to head the Toyota Training Initiative (Toyota Institute) and in
2014 was moved to be the Vice President of External Affairs & CSR.
From 2015 Public Affairs responsibilities of the company was added to his portfolio.
Mr Soni has been the Co-chair of the environment and sustainability panel of CII Karnataka for
2014-15 and 2015-16.
He is also the chairperson of the CSR Panel of SIAM for 2014-15.
He is the elected member of CII Southern Regional Council from 2 years and he is currently
holding the chair position for environment and sustainability panel for Southern Region.
He was the past chairman of SIAM SAFE council and got recognitions as the thought leader in
CSR by Cause Because Magazine, South India’s best CSR leader from World CSR Forumn and
Global CSR Excellence and leadership award.
Born in Jaipur, India, in 1966, Mr Naveen Soni enjoys travelling and spending time with family
and friends.
He is married to Mrs Sumita and has a daughter (Ruhi) & son (Ansh).

Dr. E.V. Ramana Reddy is an Indian Administrative Service Officer of 1988 batch. He is one of the senior most bureaucrats in Karnataka and has has been instrumental in establishing the leading position of Karnataka as an economic and technology hub of India. He has 30 years of experience across diverse portfolios such as Agriculture, Revenue Administration, Commerce & Industries, Rural Development & Panchayat Raj, Education, Health & Family Welfare, Information Technology & Biotechnology, Space applications, Personnel & General Administration, and Housing.

As first Director of Department of IT & BT, and he spearheaded Asia’s biggest tradeshows Bangaloreit.Com and BangaloreBio, for three consecutive years, from 2002 to 2005. He was also an integral part of formulation and implementation pioneering strategies and policies such as Millennium IT Policy (Mahiti), Millennium BPO Policy, Million Job Strategy, Millennium Biotech Policy; and e-Governance Strategy for the State.

During his tenure with the Agriculture Department, he was pivotal in implementation of various state and central schemes such as Rashtriya Krishi Bhima Yojana and Calamity Relief Fund. He was also responsible formulating The Karnataka State Organic Farming Policy, the first such policy in the country. As the Secretary of Department of Health and Family Welfare, he
laid Biomedical Waste Management in all healthcare facilities, again, a one of a kind initiative in India.

His primary objective in his current position as the Additional Chief Secretary for IT, BT and S&T, has been to promote innovation and research in the State by mobilizing startups,
academia, and corporates. He is driving strategic initiatives such as Elevate, to provide seed funding to technology start-ups, and “Global Innovation Alliances” for curated technology partnerships with innovation hubs across the world.

He also holds additional charge of Transport Department, which is responsible for regulation of the use of motor vehicles in the State and collection of tax on motor vehicles, road safety, control of air and noise pollution. Dr Reddy holds B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Agriculture, and PhD in Agronomy from Andhra Pradesh Agricultural University Hyderabad.

Dr. Geetha Manjunath is the Founder, CEO and CTO of NIRAMAI. She has over 25 years of experience in IT research and has led many innovative projects in Healthcare and Transportation, especially catering to Emerging Markets. Until the end of 2016, she was a Lab Director heading Data Analytics Research in Xerox India.  Prior to that, she was a Principal Research Scientist at Hewlett Packard Laboratories for 17 years, and a member of the C-DAC team which built the first commercial supercomputer from India.

She holds a PhD in Computer Science from Indian Institute of Science and management education from Kellogg’s School of Management Chicago. Geetha has won many international and national recognition for her innovations and entrepreneurial work. She was awarded the Computer Society of India Gold Medal  in 1991 and  TR Shamanna State Award from Karnataka in 1989. She was named as one of the top 50 NASCCOM IT Innovators in 2009.   Among several accolades from Hewlett Packard, her outstanding innovation called SiteOnMobile was tagged as a  “HP Legend”. She was also the winner of 2010 MIT Tech Review Grand Challenges for Technologists in Healthcare category. She has co-authored a book on Cloud Technologies called “Moving to the Cloud” which was published by Elsevier Syngress Publications.  She is a Senior member of IEEE and current Chair of IEEE  Computer Society, Bangalore Chapter. She is the inventor of 15 US patents with more pending grant. She was awarded BIRAC WinER Award 2018 for her Entrepreneurial Research.

Mr. Shekar Viswanathan is a BA Economics graduate & a Chartered Accountant.

He began his career in 1981 with Unit Trust of India and then moved to Chase Manhattan Bank, later to Lazard Brothers until 1995. During 1995 – 1998, Mr. Viswanathan was associated with Haldia Petrochemicals Limited – A USD 2 billion Petrochemical enterprise, as General Manager – Finance responsible for project fundraising.

In 1998, he joined the Toyota Kirloskar Group, as a member of the Board of Directors of TG Kirloskar. He was then requested by senior Toyota Motor personnel to take over as Director Finance at Toyota Kirloskar Auto Parts which makes gear boxes. He was subsequently moved to Toyota Kirloskar Motor and has served on their Board of Directors since 2008 as the Deputy Managing Director. Mr. Shekar Viswanathan was appointed to the position of Vice Chairman & Whole-time Director in Toyota Kirloskar Motor Pvt. Ltd in January 2013. He is also the Senior Executive Advisor to the Toyota Kirloskar Auto Parts Board since 2009.

He is also a Director of Kirloskar Systems Ltd since 2006 & a Director in ASM Technologies Ltd since 2011. He is an Independent Director in L&T-MHPS Boilers Private Ltd & L&T- MHPS Turbine Generators Private Ltd effective March 2015. He is also a Director of ANA ARC Private Ltd.

He is a member of various industrial associations – Member of National Executive Committee of FICCI, Member of Steering Committee of FICCI, Chairman of CII Karnataka State Council 2015-16 & Chairman of Taxation Committee in SIAM for the last 3 years. He is also a Past President of the BCIC.

He is currently the Chairman of Council of Economic Affairs of SIAM Born in Madurai, India, in 1956, Mr. Shekar Viswanathan enjoys playing Golf & invest personal time in serving for the
betterment of the society.

He is married to Dr. Radha and has a son & daughter.

Ms. Dana Kursh is the Consul General of Israel to South India since August 2017, after serving two years as Deputy Ambassador of Israel to India in New-Delhi. Ms. Kursh has vast experience as a diplomat in the Israeli Foreign Ministry. Amongst her managerial positions in Ministry of Foreign Affairs: Policy Advisor to the Director General and Director of the department for training of the next generation of diplomats. Her first diplomatic assignment abroad was at the USA. For the first years of her professional life, Ms. Kursh had the privilege of working in Israel’s cutting edge hi-tech industry. Later on, she chose also to take part in Israel’s flourishing NGO’s ecosystem as a General Manager of a non-profit organization (JVP Community) aiming at transforming Israel’s Capital, Jerusalem, via education & culture.

During her military career, she achieved the rank of a Captain at the Israeli Defense forces (IDF).

Ms. Kursh holds a BA and MA from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (MA in Public Policy- Executive program).

Ms. Kursh was born and raised in a farmer family in a village called “Moshav Meravia”, located in the north of Israel.

Sandeep is an Industrial & Production Engineer from Manipal Institute of Technology [MIT, Batch of 1989]. He stood first in the University and was awarded with Dr. TMA PAI GOLD MEDAL for Best Outgoing Student and the Blue Ribbon from MIT for Best Student for the Production Engineering Batch. He also secured the first rank in the University.

Sandeep started his career in the Maini Group in 1989.

In 2007, he took over as the Chairman of the Maini Group. Since then, he has been involved in consolidation of the Group companies and diversification into new businesses including plastics, aerospace and electric mobility. The Group consists of companies that have Domestic and International Operations in the fields of Automotive and Aerospace, Plastics and Composites, Material Handling, Warehousing, Storage Systems and Electric Mobility.

Maini Group was also the founder promoter of REVA, India’ first Electric Car. Sandeep was the Chairman of Reva Electric Car Company from 2007- 2010 and was on the Board of Mahindra Reva Electric Vehicles till November 2016.

Maini Group of Companies
Director – Maini Precision Products
Chairman and Managing Director – Maini Materials Movement
Chairman and Managing Director – Armes Maini Storage \ Systems
Chairman and Managing Director – Maini Plastics and Composites
Director – Sun Mobility
Partner -VIRYA Mobility 5.0
Managing Trustee – Maini Kalyan Sama Kendra (Maini Group’s CSR arm)
Apart from being a successful entrepreneur, Sandeep Maini has played an
active leadership role in Industry promoting trade & commerce both in India and internationally.

L Krishnan has over 38 years of experience in manufacturing, marketing, application and sales of industrial products in various reputed organizations.

Mr. Krishnan holds a Mechanical Engineering Degree.
Positions currently held:

1. Managing Director, TaeguTec India Pvt. Limited

TaeguTec is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of tungsten carbide cutting tools. It is part of the International Metalworking Companies – the IMC group, which is 100% owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway.

With a world class manufacturing facility located at Bommasandra Industrial Area in Bangalore, TaeguTec is an exemplar player of the manufacturing industry in India.

Since inception of the company in 2000, Mr. Krishnan is instrumental in establishing a wide market for rank new products of TaeguTec and garnering the acceptance and confidence of customers all over India.

2. IMTMA – Past President of IMTMA

As President of IMTMA, Mr. Krishnan was actively involved with Machine Tool & allied sectors of the Industry in many areas including but not limited to VISION, POLICY ADVOCACY, and
SKILL BUILDING Etc.

3. CII – As Past Chairman of CII, Karnataka, and by virtue of his association with the industry, Mr. Krishnan has led and contributed to numerous related initiatives at the State,
Regional & National Level. Very actively associated in the areas of Policy advocacy, Manufacturing & capital Goods investment, education and CSR, Mr. Krishnan is a veritable ambassador for the Indian manufacturing sector.

Introduction

Dr Vikram Venkateswaran works in the emerging area of digital risk, where he looks at implementing risk advisory at digital transformation initiatives. He has worked on creating digital transformation frameworks and applied them to organizations across the globe. His areas of specialization include Cognitive and Robotic Automation, Blockchain and Digital Risk Strategy.

Relevant Experience

Dr Vikram was part of the digital business services group at Dell Services. He was responsible for building the Dell brand in the Digital Business Space. Prior to Dell he has worked at IBM and CSC with the consulting organizations. His areas of interest are in Digital Health, Automation, Analytics, Blockchain, Customer Engagement and Patient Engagement.

Background and Interests/Professional Affiliations

Dr Vikram works with healthcare and life sciences sector. He is a graduate of the College of Dental Surgery Manipal and a post graduate from the Institute of Management and Technology, Ghaziabad. He is member of the following industry bodies

1. Blockchain ISO Council
2. ICT Working Group BCIC
3. Healthcare working group IET IoT

Dr. Taslimarif Saiyed is the CEO and Director at Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms (C-CAMP), an initiative of Dept of Biotechnology, Govt. of India. initial training has been in neurosciences, where he received his PhD from Max-Planck Institute for Brain Research, Germany and followed it up by postdoctoral training at University of California San Francisco (UCSF). At the same time, he also underwent training in management for Biotech and Innovation from QB3 at UC Santa Cruz, UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco. In the bay area, he also served as a Management Consultant with QB3 New Biotech Venture Consulting and in an individual capacity, he also consulted for many biotech firms in the US.

Dr. Saiyed is also an Adjunct Faculty at Amrita Institute – School of Biotechnology and working on Neurodegeneration. He also heads the Discovery to Innovation Accelerator program at C-CAMP. He is actively involved in promoting innovation in lifescience / healthcare by supporting translation of discoveries to application, entrepreneurship and technology development.

Mr. Sandeep Singh is a professional with a vision. A vision complemented with profound leadership and business development skills that empower him to lead and drive multinational organizations.

With an excellent knowledge of crafting strategic alliances and marketing strategies, Mr. Singh has hands on experience in leading the organizations he has worked for across different geographies and departments, facilitating the process of marketing, sales and production across industries.

With a rich experience of over three decades in Sales, Marketing, and Customer Support and General Management, Mr. Singh has worked in industries across Automobiles, Tractors and Construction Equipment sectors in India and abroad.

An engineering graduate from the National Institute of Technology Surat, he began his career with the Mahindra group where he worked in the Tractor and Automotive divisions.

Next, he had a five-year stint in the Construction Equipment industry with JCB India, where he was the Executive Vice President, Sales & Marketing.

He spent a large part of his career at Toyota – 22years over three stints. His last assignment was as the Deputy Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer of the India operations. Post this, he moved to International Assignment to Toyota Motor Asia Pacific Head Quarters and was based at Bangkok, Thailand where he was responsible for leading the strategy planning function.

Mr Singh joined on August 1st, 2015 as the Managing Director of Tata Hitachi Construction Machinery Company Private Limited. He is the President of ICEMA and Vice Chairman of CII Karnataka.

Suresh Bhagavatula is an Associate Professor at Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. He heads the newly constituted Entrepreneurship area. His research interests are in two partly overlapping domains – entrepreneurship and social networks. In entrepreneurship, his interests are in low and high technology firms in India. Within the social network domain he is interested in understanding the influence of social capital on performance of entrepreneurs and teams.

He is active in building an eco-system to support entrepreneurship in India and is one of the co- founders of the organisation HeadStart, which runs a popular monthly event called Startup Saturday. He has trained as an engineer in India and Germany and has a PhD from Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam.

Ravinder has 21 + years of experience in Life Sciences and Healthcare provider industry with expertise across research , development and commercial space. Ravinder has led several digital transformation programs with large pharma, medical devices and care provider organizations. He has been instrumental in establishing Life Sciences domain practice for Infosys and leads a team of 200+ domain consultants. Key skills include data driven transformation, AI and machine learning in clinical development and commercial value chain.

Key Strengths & skills

Technologies

• Clinical Development Analytics ( CDA)and Reporting
• CTMS
• Cloud – AWS and Azure.
• Machine Learning / AI and compliance
• Digital Health
• Medical IoT and devices

Skills

• Program management
• Strategy Development
• Process Design and reengineering
• Digital business models
• Change Management

Industry Expertise

• Personalized medicine and data driven research
• Real World Evidence
• Digital / connected health
• Clinical Operations Transformation
• Quality and compliance including AI andMachine learning
• Digital business models
• Clinical research and development
• Clinical and commercial supply chainMgmt. and strategy

Engagement Highlights

Helped launch of digital patient engagement model for top 5 medical devices company

• Develop concept from a data science led initiative into a closed loop patient engagement model
• Conceptualization and development of a SaMD grade digital health platform
• Establish quality processes for AI based algorithms and digital disease coaches

R&D portfolio transformation strategy

• Delivered multiple projects in assessment and transformation of client R&D portfolios
• CxO Audience for transformation design leveraging next generation digital technologies

Data Science driven Real world evidence

• Established an end to end data science model leveraging EMR and claims data to derive insights and deliver new business opportunities for a diabetes major
• Established operating model and data science tools and methodologies that deliver business value to clients

Regulatory collaboration and digitization

• Regulatory function transformation through business process management and orchestration
• Establish structured content management and auto generation solution for large pharma

Nachiket P Kosode
Sports Physiotherapist (Manipal University)
Sports Biomechanist (Robert Gordon University, UK)

As a Rehabilitation and performance enhancement specialist, have been working with athletes from different sports ranging from grassroot to the international level. Currently working with Abhinav Bindra Targeting Performance as the Center head at the Bangalore facility located in Dravid Padukone Center for sports excellence.

Navakanta Bhat received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, Stanford, CA in 1996. Then he worked at Motorola’s Networking and Computing Systems Group under Advanced Products R&D Lab (APRDL)  in Austin, TX until 1999. He joined the Indian Institute of Science, where he is currently a Professor and Chair, Centre for Nano Science and Engineering. He has 300 research publications in international journals and conferences and 10 granted US patents and 20 pending patents. He was instrumental in creating the National Nanofabrication Centre (NNfC) at IISc, Bangalore, benchmarked against the best university facilities in the world.

He is an elected Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering and elected Fellow of IEEE. He has received several awards in recognition of his research contributions. The notable among them include Swarnajayanti fellowship (2005), IBM Faculty award (2007), Dr. Abdul Kalam Technology Innovation National Fellowship (2018), Prof. Rustum Choksi award for Excellence in Engineering Research (2017), NASI Reliance Industries Platinum Jubilee award (2018) and Infosys Prize (2018) for his contributions in Engineering and Computer Science category. He is currently  a member of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Electron Devices Society and also the Chair of Nanotechnology technical committee. He is a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Electron Devices Society. He was the member of the committee set up by the Principal Scientific Advisor to Govt. of India to recommend strategies to develop semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem in India.  

He is the founder and promoter of a startup company, PathShodh Healthcare Pvt Ltd (www.pathshodh.com), which has introduced first of its kind Lab on Palm for diagnostics. For this
technology, PathShodh has received multiple recognitions, including CII Grand Jury Award (2017), FICCI Healthcare Excellence award (2017) and Design Impact award for Social change by Titan (2018).

Ms. Gunjan Krishna is a graduate in Economics (Hons) from Lady ShrivRam College and Law from Campus Law Centre, Delhi University. She joinedvIndian Administrative Service (IAS) in the year 2004. She has rich experiencevof working with the State Governments and Government of India. She isvpresently working as the Commissioner for Industrial Development and Director of Industries & Commerce. As Commissioner, she is responsible forvattracting and facilitating investments, promotion of exports and industrialvgrowth of the State. She also holds concurrent charge of Managing Director,vKarnataka State Industrial & Infrastructure Development Corporation Limitedv[KSIIDC], where she is responsible for spearheading implementation ofvinfrastructure projects including projects on Public Private Partnership [PPP] basis.

Experience

• Narayanan has over 23 years experiencein management consulting and industry. His current focus is on Education, Skill Development andsocial sector advisory. He has experience across financial services and Infrastructure sectors, spanning multiple solution offerings –business strategy, process and performance improvement, and organization and change management, systems and IT strategy
• Narayanan leads a team of over 60+ professionals exclusively focused on Education and Skilling –working across India, SAARC, MiddleEast and African regions
• He is an acknowledged thought leader and represents KPMG in multiple forums. He was invited to be a part of the expert committee toreview the New Education Policy by the Govt. of India. He is in the Board of Studies for two leading private Universities. Hewas a part of thePawarCommittee for Technology in Education -constituted by MHRD; He is part of various committees for Education and SkillDevelopment in leading Industry forums such as CII and FICCI

Relevant Project Snapshot

• Had advised the Govt. of India on the concept and formation of Institutes of National Importance & led the team in implementing for thefollowing
  •Indian Institute of Information Technology for Ministry of Human Resources and Development
  •National Aviation University for Min. of Civil Aviation
  •Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Petroleum Technology for Ministry of Petroleum
  •Center of Excellence (will be a University soon) for Animation, Virtual Reality, Gamingand Comics for Ministry of Information &Broadcasting
• Led multiple engagements for Private Universities in concept to enrolment –from initial application, proposal assistance, visioning,establishment and expansion across Gujarat, Rajasthan, Karnataka, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh (PDPU, Jain University, GujaratMaritime University, RICE university, Santhosh University)
• Led successfully a transformative engagement for revamping the cost and operations structuring for India’s leading business school –led tosignificant cost saving initiatives
• Led the design and implementation plan for strategic direction of India’s premier technology institute (IIT Kharagpur-Vision 2020 plan)
• Led multiple projects (a team of over 40 professional) from strategic initiatives, capacity building, partner identification & multiple schemedesigns for NSDC
• Led the successfully capacity building and implementation of quality standards (NSQF) across 9 states and 4 central schemes for NSDA –through a large ADB funding
• Assisted a number of US, UK, Australian and Canadian PolytechniquesFurther Education colleges, TAFEs in India entry, finding Trainingproviders as partners in India and build India based business models

Santhosh is a Global business leader with 20+ years of experience. He is responsible for driving ‘Digital Transformation’ and building digital capabilities across various business sectors within Mahindra. His primary focus areas include strategy development and implementation around Mobility, IoT and Analytics. In his current role, Santhosh heads the ‘mobility solutions’ business for Mahindra Electric and has been instrumental in driving new business opportunities around shared, connected and electric mobility services.

Prior to joining Mahindra, Santhosh was leading the IoT/Analytics Solutions business at Cisco for Asia Pacific. He has worked in the Silicon Valley for over 12 years and holds an MBA from UC Berkeley – Haas School of Business, California.

Dr. Gaurav Laroia is a Senior Vice President at Biocon Biologics. He is entrepreneurial leader with 20 years of strategic, operational and management consulting experience in the Healthcare Industry in developed and emerging markets. Gaurav is passionate about providing better healthcare for patients. He has a deep understanding of the pharmaceutical value chain with experiences across P&L, global marketing, business development, alliance and project management and R&D having worked in roles of increasing responsibility at McKinsey, Sanofi, Merck & Co, and Roche. He has been recognized for spotting and seeding innovation across organizations has been a recipient of the Golden Peacock, Mathan and CII Innovation Awards. Gaurav is a PhD in Molecular & Cellular Biology from New York University and a MS in Genetics from the University of Cambridge UK where he was a Commonwealth Trust Scholar. He is published in scientific and management journals such as Science, Research and Technology Management, etc. Prior to joining Biocon Biologics, Gaurav was the General Manager for Roche Diabetes Care in India.

Mohammed Hisamuddin is the Founder & CEO of Entri, a vernacular language learning platform for India. Entri provides different types of learning content in local languages for job aspirants, that prepares them to get a govt. or private job. More than 1 million users have used Entri so far.

Entri is the first Indian startup to get into LearnLaunch, leading EdTech accelerator based out of Boston. Entri is also part of FBStart and AWS Edstart.

Mr. Krishnamurthy Ramamurthy, Managing Director and Industry Group Lead – Communications,v Media, Technology (CMT) at Accenture’s Advanced Technology Centers in India (ATCI). As the industry lead for CMT, he champions the CMT agenda for ATCI and leads a team delivering solutions for 120+ clients globally across the Communications & Media, High Tech and Software & Platform industry verticals. His focus is to enable enterprises, embrace digital disruption and drive
business transformation through innovation, workforce transformation and adoption of New-IT.

With over 25 years of experience, Mr. Krishnamurthy Ramamurthy has an extensive track record in product engineering, sales and technology delivery across multiple geographies and industry verticals. Prior to Accenture, he was involved full-time in several technology start-ups as a technology advisor and held senior positions with Infosys in the US.

Dr. Vijay Kumar Saraswat retired as Secretary, DRDO, after more than four decades of Government service. He is ME from IISc Bangalore and Phd from Osmania University and a gifted scientist with vast experience in defence research in both basic and applied sciences.

During his illustrious career, Dr Saraswat, has been credited with indigenous development of (i) Missiles namely PRITHVI, DHANUSH, PRAHAAR and AGNI-5; (ii) Development of two-tiered Ballistic Missiles Defence (BMD) systems (iii) Initial Operational Clearance of Light Combat Aircraft TEJAS; and Nuclear Submarine INS Arihant.

As Secretary DRDO Dr. Saraswat played a pivotal role in: (i) establishment of the command, control, communication, storage, transportation and deployment infrastructure for strategic nuclear assets to support the nuclear doctrine; (ii) Flight Evaluation of long range sub-sonic cruise missile (iii) Long Range Radars for tracking incoming (enemy) Ballistic missiles, Command control and communication network, Command Centres with decision support system for defence of National
Capital Region against enemies’ ballistic missile threat, (iv) Established Cyber Security Research and Development Centre for developing offensive and defensive technologies for cyber security.

As Homi Bhabha Chair Professor and Consultant to IOCL R&D, evolved a road map for development of Alternate Energy Systems viz. clean coal technologies, High Efficiency Concentrated Solar Power Systems, Bio-energy and Hydrogen based economy. Presently he is Chairman of Research Advisory council of IOCL R&D.

As Chairman NTPC R&D Advisory Council similar alternate energy technology the development plan has been prepared with a focus on clean coal technologies viz. Integrated Gasification and combined cycle system, Advanced ultra-supercritical Thermal Power Plant to work on efficiencies better than 40% and highly reduced greenhouse emissions.

Initiated a programme for development of Silicon-Photonics technology by setting up Photonics Valley Corporation at Telengana. Govt. of Telengana initiative in collaboration with Photonics Inc USA. This will be a game changer for the next generation of networks like 5G and super computers.

As Chairman of Committee for development of Indian Microprocessor led a team to evolve the configuration of the M Processor for IOT, Smart Cities and other ICT applications laid out the strategy for development with DieTy, CDAC, IIT(M), IIT(B) and SCL Chandigarh. Two devices have already been developed in IIT(B) and IIT(M).

Evolved a Concept Document for setting up Indian Railway Research Institute (SHRESHTHA) for Indian Railway that would propel indigenous designs and manufacturing in the forthcoming programmes like High Speed Rail System and Dedicated Freight Corridor and usher a new era of R&D in Railway.

As Member, NITI Aayog, Initiated a program to develop “Methanol Economy” for transportation, energy generation and production of chemicals, fertilizers, etc. Production agencies, academic institutions, and Petro-refineries have been brought
on a common platform to leapfrog in “Methanol Economy”. M-15 gasoline blend, methanol cookstove and methanol-fueled propulsion for Inland Waterways and Methanol-fueled gensets are being introduced as part of “Methanol Economy” initiative in the country. R&D activity in gasification of High Ash content Indian coal has been initiated at Academia & Industry.

Chaired a Committee on Technical Textile and prepared a roadmap for futuristic growth of technical textiles in India with respect to the promotion of industries for indigenous production of technical textiles and fibers such as Carbon and Aramid for
strategic and ballistic needs, laying due emphasis on reviving R & D structure in the sector.

Chaired a Committee and submitted a report titled “Roadmap for Make in India in Body Armour”, release of Indian Standards on body armor by BIS, R&D work on Carbon Nano Tube, etc. Led an Empowered Technical Advisory Committee for the development of National Super Computing Systems. Configuration and strategy for development have been evolved and the programme has been launched as a multi-organisation mission.

He is a recipient of many awards and most notable among them being Padma Shri (1998), Padma Bhushan (2013). He has been conferred Honorary Doctorate by more than 25 Universities the latest among them being Jamia Humdard (2018).

Ramakrishnan completed his BSc from the University of Bombay, MSc from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay and received his Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in 1988. After a two-year postdoctoral stint at the Corporate Research Laboratory of Exxon Research and Engineering Company at Annandale, New Jersey, he took up a faculty position in the Department of Inorganic and Physical Chemistry at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, He served as the Chairman of Chemical Sciences Division for five years and later as Deputy Director for three years, before returning to full-time research in 2018. He was awarded the prestigious S S Bhatnagar Prize for Chemistry in 2005 and is currently a J C Bose Fellow. His research interests are in the design and development of novel polymerization methods, hyperbranched polymers, conjugated polymers, polymerization in ordered media, internally functionalized porous polymers and conformational control in synthetic polymers. He is currently the President of the Society of Polymer Science-India (SPSI), and is also one of the Associate Editors of the Royal Society of Chemistry’s flagship journal, Chemical Communications.

“Punit works with the Infrastructure team at Infosys as Regional Head – Infrastructure. He heads the Smart Campus practice, Retrofits practice, Operations Excellence and drives green building design projects at Infosys. His goal is to make every campus at Infosys a smart, productive and sustainable campus, enhancing occupant and hence business productivity while consuming minimum energy and resources. Punit has over 17 years of experience in Green Building Design, Smart Buildings, Deep Green Retrofits, Industrial and Comfort cooling systems.  Punit is a chemical engineer with a post-graduation in marketing management.”

An IAS Officer of 1990 batch, Mr. Gaurav Gupta presently is the Principal Secretary to Government, Commerce & Industries Department, Government of Karnataka.

Till recently he also holding concurrent charges as Principal Secretary, IT, BT and S&T, in a span of last one year, he has been instrumental in creating several Centres of Excellence in new technologies such as IoT, AI & Robotics and also one on Cyber Security, with active collaboration from the industry, academia and stakeholders. He has worked to enhance the ecosystem for the Infotech & Biotech Industry in Karnataka. Programs like ‘Bengaluru Tech Summit’ & ‘Elevate 100’ to promote technology startups were initiated during his tenure.

During his previous position as Commissioner for Industrial Development and Director of Industries & Commerce, a position that he held from October 2014 to February 2017, he was instrumental in conduct of highly successful mega investor summit “Invest Karnataka” on February 2016, and also in successful organizing of “Pravasi Bharat Divas” in Bengaluru on January 2017.

He is graduate from IIT Kanpur in Electrical Engineering and Post graduate from IIT, Delhi. The IIT Kanpur has conferred ‘Distinguished Alumnus Award’ in recognition of his exceptional services

Vikram Damodaran is Vice President – Digital Health and Chief Product Officer for Emerging Markets at GE Healthcare. He owns the roadmap for the Affordable Healthcare Portfolio, a $1.6B global business. His primary focus is to identify the most pressing healthcare needs, incubate solutions, attract investments and drive business model innovation for commercial scalability of these solutions. Vikram is the co-founder of “five.eight” – GE’s first Healthcare Accelerator for emerging markets.

Vikram has 21 years of industry experience. A year after running his own company in Chennai, Vikram joined GE Healthcare in X-ray Tubes Engineering and has performed multiple roles of increasing responsibility. Considered a domain expert in interventional cardiology, he was instrumental in delivering GE’s first Interventional Angiographic Tilt system and architected the delivery of Optima 2100, GE Healthcare’s first “In India
for India” cath-lab. Under his leadership, GE has launched 25 new products. He founded the technology productivity platforms across healthcare modalities, GE Healthcare’s Global Design Studio in India – eCube, and champions the Lean Startup initiative for GE.

He has worked in multiple technology and medical application domains and through different product life cycles. Widely recognized as a mentor, he has served as a Director on the Board of GE Medical Systems India Pvt Ltd. He is an acknowledged practitioner of frugal innovation and was nominated to be on Fast Company’s list of most innovative leaders in India. He is an active speaker and advocate for the Healthcare Start-Up ecosystem, and a healthcare evangelist with primary focus on creating affordable, accessible and accountable solutions.

Vikram is a mechanical engineer by education, a white space explorer by nature and an impact innovator by passion. Follow him on Twitter @vikydam

Sunit is a Managing Director with the Talent and Organization practice of  Accenture. His focus is on large transformation engagements in growth  markets such as India, China, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Middle East. He has worked on projects in over 17 countries in his career. Sunit brings with him 22 years of consulting experience across multiple areas such as  Organization Design, Leadership, Culture Transformation & Change, Human Capital Strategy and Organization Effectiveness. He frequently publishes and speaks at industry conferences. His most recent research paper is on the impact of Cognitive Computing on Workforce Productivity in the future and how Leaders will have to adapt to AI in their teams. Sunit is involved in ongoing research at Accenture on the Workforce of the Future. Recently, he has been actively looking at ways to incorporate Human-centered Design Thinking to solve complex organizational issues. His Interests outside of work include the frontiers of science (especially the search for Earth 2.0), and the historical evolution of military tactics and strategy. He has done his MBA from XLRI, Jamshedpur in  Human Resources Management and Organization Development and Masters in International Relations from the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University.

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 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.

Milind Shah is a senior executive with experience in diverse industries such as healthcare (Medtronic), specialty chemicals & adhesives (Henkel), telecommunications (3M) an petrochemicals (Shell). This includes 18 years of country/regional leadership roles, in the Indian Sub- Continent and Thailand, with strong competencies in growth strategy, market development, business model innovation and building organizations with strong culture & talent pipeline. His consulting firm, StratLead Advisors LLP, advises clients in developing & executing growth strategies and business models. The firm also provides executive coaching for development & evolution of business leaders. Milind is an active mentor for healthcare start-ups, is a Venture Partner at Unitus
Ventures, an Impact Early Stage investor, a member of the advisory board at Arogya Finance, a social healthcare venture that offers medical loans to people who are mostly outside the formal banking system and a senior advisor at BioConnexUS, a firm focused on connecting healthcare technologies with global markets.

Milind’s last corporate assignment was with Medtronic plc, a global leader in the medical technology industry, where he was the Managing Director (MD) and Vice President (VP), Indian Sub-Continent during the period 2004-16. Reporting directly to the CEO, Milind was also a member of Medtronic’s global executive committee during the period 2012-15. Having led the Indian Sub Continent’s business for Medtronic for more than a decade, Milind brings a good understanding of the healthcare eco-system, a strong network of relationships amongst upper echelons of medical technology companies & hospital chains as well as hands on experience in developing & executing strategic plans, business model innovations and M&A. An acknowledged
industry leader, Milind has chaired healthcare industry associations and led advocacy discussions with the government. As the Managing Director of Henkel Loctite India for 7 years, Milind has also been adequately exposed to different segments of the industrial economy. An alumnus of IIT Delhi and IIM Calcutta, Milind is also an active member of the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO).

Vishvesh is Managing Director, Accenture Strategy. He has more than 21 years of experience. He has assisted a large number of clients across Strategy, Sustainability and Business transformation. Additionally, he actively contributes to thought leadership in partnership with organizations such as UNGC, CII, FICCI and NASSCOM. Some examples include

 With UNGC he works closely on topic of Sustainable development goals over 5+ years
 With FICCI he has been working on topic of Circular Economy over 2+ years
 With CII he has led an Industry Study on Construction Equipment
He is a MBA from IIM Lucknow and B.Tech from IIT Delhi.

Samay Godika is a 17-year-old 12th Grader from Bangalore, India. In 2018, Samay won the Breakthrough Junior Challenge, a global competition with a 2.9 crore prize funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Khan Academy, Yuri Milner, etc. He came first with over 4000 participants. Samay being awarded the Prize with Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, etc. He was awarded a $250,000 college scholarship. In 2017, he was the Global Popular Vote Winner and Finalist in the Breakthrough Junior Challenge.

In this 9th grade, Samay was selected by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), for their Launch Entrepreneurship Program. Out of 80 students selected in the program, he was one of just seven 9th graders selected from all over the world. The MIT experience led him to co- found 2 companies – Memorably and Sirona Security -and he is currently trying to operationalise them.

In December 2017, Samay was invited by TEDxLavelleRoad to give a talk about the various learnings he imbibed during his experiences of the Breakthrough Junior Challenge and MIT Launch. In 2016, he was part of a team that collected over 500 pairs of uniforms and shoes and distributed them to the underprivileged school children. In 2013, Samay was part of a team that reached the National Round of the World Robotics Olympiad.

Prof. R. V. Ravikrishna obtained his B.Tech degree from IIT Madras, M.S. degree from the University of Alabama, USA, and PhD from the School of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University, USA. He joined the faculty of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in 1999 and currently, he is a Pratt & Whitney Chair Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at IISc. His research interests broadly cover Energy Systems and Thermal Sciences.  He has over 170 publications in journals and conferences.  He has engaged in research projects with industries in the auto, energy and aero sectors such as TVS Motors, Tata Motors, Bosch, Ashok Leyland, GAIL, Pratt & Whitney (USA) and HAL, Bangalore.

Nitin brings over 25+ years of industry experience in product design and R&D, business strategy and marketing for the automotive, consumer electronics, media and telecom industries.

He started his career as a motorcycle designer in Bajaj Auto. In 1999, he initiated Tata Elxsi’s design business and was responsible for growing it into India’s leading industrial design and product design services provider.

Nitin moved to head the global marketing function in 2005 and has led the repositioning of Tata Elxsi as a unique and differentiated design-led company.

As head of corporate strategy, he helps the company develop business and market strategies, steer business units and the company in select verticals and markets, and drive strategic partnerships and ecosystem development.

He holds a B.E (Honors) degree in engineering from BITS – Pilani and is an alumn of IIM- Bangalore and INSEAD for management.

Summary
Specialties: Product Development, Delivery Processes, Customer Empathy, Cloud Computing, Cyber Risk, UX/UI, Microsoft Azure, Azure IoT Hub & Software Development

Experience
Microsoft
Senior Microsoft Student Partner
May 2014 – Present
Bengaluru Area, India
• Currently leading the Bangalore community with over 20 colleges on board
• Delivered sessions on how to use Microsoft technologies and products.
• Got many students on board by letting them know about the benefits of Microsoft technologies.
• Won the world finals of Microsoft Imagine Cup in the big data category.
• Helped students learn more about Microsoft Azure.

IEEE Computer Society RVCE
Chair
June 2018 – Present
Bengaluru Area, India
Currently the Chair of the IEEE computer society at RV College Of Engineering. Under my leadership we have conducted several hackathons and guest lectures. We are now making sure that we promote a culture of research and leadership.

LinkedIn
Campus Editor
February 2018 – Present
Bengaluru Area, India
• Currently the campus editor for RV College Of Engineering.
• Writing and publishing articles to promote technology

• Publishing articles to help people understand more about experiences and technology.

Microsoft
Program Manager Intern
May 2019 – July 2019 (3 months)
Hyderabad, Telangana, India
•Worked on solving an account search problem for the Microsoft sellers which included Inside Sales and Field sales team.
•Worked on improving Microsoft Seller Experience Search (MSX) experience. Improved Search by reducing the number of duplicates, helping create a look-ahead search experience. •Worked with several teams across to understand the problem. Demonstrated Business problem understanding, Getting clarity of requirements, Defining roadmap, doing a comparative market study, data analysis, defining success measures.
•Reduced duplicates by 60% by introducing advanced search. Increased probability of getting the most accurate result to 90% by introducing filters. Bought down 300 results to just 10 results for a specific account by using advanced algorithms.
•Also created a small Prototype of leveraging blockchain for streamlining account creation and was very well received by my peer team which was added to their future backlog.
•Partnered with multiple teams like UX, Data science, MSX, CALC, etc – to identify potential solution options and created a UX, Design, and implementation.

Deloitte India
Cyber Risk Intern
May 2018 – July 2018 (3 months)
Gurgaon, Haryana, India
As an intern in the risk advisory team I did the following
• Built a project to secure IoT devices.
• Scaled the application to serve a lot of requests using Microsoft Azure.
• Used an Azure certified Microprocessor to get data and simulate real-time usage.
• Used Adobe XD to prototype the product mockups.
• Built a end to end secured solution using cloud.

IEEE Computer Society RVCE
Vice-Chair
February 2017 – May 2018 (1 year 4 months)
Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
As a vice chair I achieved the following
• Founded a hackathon club “RVCE Hack” under which we have conducted 3 hackathons.
• Motivated students in my college to learn more about research and to publish papers.
• Helped to get guest speakers so that they could conduct sessions about technology.
• Mentored my fellow students about Microsoft products and leadership.
IndiaSpark
Head of Technology
October 2016 – October 2017 (1 year 1 month)
Bangalore
• As the head of technology I took up multiple responsibilities.
• I lead a team of developers to leverage technology to build one of the most robust applications.
• Built the website with the frontend and backend scoring high scores on page speed insights and GT Metrix.
• Built a progressive web application to help more users come on board.
• Used a host of Microsoft Azure services including CDN’s, VM’s & Redis Cache.
• Used Cloudflare to secure the website from DDOS attacks and secure it from spam.

Zomato
Intern
May 2017 – July 2017 (3 months)
Bengaluru Area, India
• Was working with the Online Ordering Team.
• Worked on getting restaurants on board for Zomato Order.
• Interacted with clients to understand their requirements and troubleshoot issues.
• Proposed many technical changes in the Zomato stack.
• Got over 40 restaurants on board

Entrepreneurship Cell, RVCE
Junior Associate
August 2016 – June 2017 (11 months
Bangalore
• Helped to understand more about the ecosystem about E – Cell in RVCE.
• Was an active part of the club and helped the community to know more Entrepreneurship.
• Gave recommendations on how to improve the technology stack and the design of the website.
• Participated in various events conducted by E – Cell.

IndiaSpark
Technical Envagelist
April 2016 – October 2016 (7 months)
Bangalore
Built the site on the new material design. Currently developing the frontend and the design.|

NASSCOM
Youngest to be selected for ‘Nasscom Nurture My Startup’
May 2015 – September 2016 (1 year 5 months)
Bengaluru Area, India
Youngest to be selected for Nasscom 10k Nurture my startup

Limitinfinity Softwares
Founder and CEO
March 2014 – December 2015 (1 year 10 months)
Bangalore
http://www.limitinfinitysoftwares.com/

Intel App up
Developer
January 2012 – December 2013 (2 years)
Programmed many complex applications.

Education
R. V. College of Engineering, Bangalore
Bachelor’s Degree, Computer Science · (2016 – 2020)
National Public School
High School, Computer Science (CBSE) · (2005 – 2016)

Kshitija Krishnaswamy is the Director, Corporate Citizenship for Accenture in India, overseeing the company’s social responsibility mandate in the country since 2007.

Her expertise and experience over the last twelve years in CSR strategy and program management has helped Accenture progress towards its global goal of skilling 3 million people by 2020, by successfully training several thousands of people in India in securing a job or starting a business.

Prior to joining Accenture, she was an independent marketing consultant to several blue chip organizations and it was her consultancy for a USAID funded NGO that influenced her to make a full-time shift to the field of CSR.

An MBA from Bombay University, Kshitija has worked for over fifteen years in Marketing and Business Strategy with reputed corporates like Levi Strauss, 3M and Cadburys.

Kamal has been spearheading top global and Indian brands as President & CEO for over 16 years, and since 2014, he is the President & Managing Director of the Swedish major’s Indian outfit, namely Volvo Group India, headquartered in Bangalore.

A distinguished alumnus of the IIT Roorkee’s 1981 batch, Kamal did his schooling from St. Joseph’s Academy, Dehra Dun.

With an illustrious career spanning nearly four decades, predominantly in the automotive industry, Kamal has worked for well-known Indian brands (such as the EICHER and the ESCORTS Group) and established multinational corporations in India, including the Italian major, ‘SAME DEUTZ-FAHR’ as also Singapore Technologies (STK). He has accumulated precious cross-functional knowledge, is respected for his values’ based eadership and professionalism with a strong ethos.

He is the recipient of the coveted “2019 Machinist Lifetime Achievement Award” by the Times of India Group for his outstanding contribution in the field of Manufacturing in India.
Kamal also holds the following board / governing council positions:-
 Board Member of Volvo Group India
 Chairman of Swedish Chamber of Commerce India (SCCI)
 Independent Director on the Board of Antrix Corporation Limited (department of Space, Government of India)
 Industry Advisory Executive Panel (IAEP) member of CIMA, London
 Board Member of Xavier Institute of Management (XIMB)
 Member of the Joint Board of Directors of Xavier Emlyon Global
School of Business (XEMGSB)
 National Council Member of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
 Past Chairman of CII Karnataka (2017-18)

Based in Bangalore for the last two decades, Kamal is married to Gina who is a Masters in English Literature, has a son who is a commercial pilot and a daughter who is an educator in an international school. He loves driving in the hills and, on most weekends, he tries to dabble with a game of golf.

Kamal can be reached on kamal.bali@volvo.com OR balikamal@gmail.com

Mr Senapathy “Kris” Gopalakrishnan is the Chairman of Axilor Ventures, an accelerator that helps start-ups during the early stage of their business journey. Kris served as the vice-chairman of Infosys from 2011 to 2014 and the chief executive officer and managing director of Infosys from 2007 to 2011. Kris is one of the co-founders of Infosys. Recognized as a global business and technology thought leader, he was voted the top CEO (IT Services category) in Institutional Investor’s inaugural ranking of Asia’s Top Executives and selected as one of the winners of the second Asian Corporate Director Recognition Awards by Corporate Governance Asia in 2011. He also was selected to Thinkers 50, an elite list of global business thinkers, in 2009. He was elected president of India's apex industry chamber Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) for 2013-14, and served as one of the co-chairs of the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2014.

In January 2011, the Government of India awarded Mr. Gopalakrishnan the Padma Bhushan, the country’s third-highest civilian honor. Mr Gopalakrishnan serves on the Board of Governors of Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) and is the Chairman, Board of Governors of IIIT, Bangalore. He is the Chairman of the Vision Group on Information Technology of Karnataka Government and the Chairman of CII Start-up Council. Mr. Gopalakrishnan holds Master’s degrees in physics and computer science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. Kris is a Fellow of Indian National Academy of Engineers (INAE) and an Honorary Fellow of Institution of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineers (IETE) of India.

Samith Ramachandran is responsible for overall Product & Technology Strategy and Execution at Uniphore, including Product Management, Product Engineering, Core Tech R&D and Product Operations.

Samith comes with over 22 years of rich and diverse experience in Software Product Engineering and Service Delivery. Prior to Uniphore, his has worked with Siemens (now Nokia Solutions), Subex and Flytxt primarily in Software Product Engineering roles.

Samith holds a degree in Computer Science & Engineering from the University of Kerala. Bred in Telecoms Tech, Big Data Analytics and ML, he found his passion for Conversational AI and Speech Tech at Uniphore. He is also an avid foodie and gourmet at heart and loves to explore-cook-eat-write world cuisine.

Abhishek has around 16+ years of diverse experience and currently he is part of the Environment Services team at Tata Sustainability Group (TSG). He has a Master’s degree in Environment Economics and Management from University of York, UK, and a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Indore University.

Prior to joining TSG, he was employed with McKinsey & Company as an Analytics Specialist in their Sustainability and Resource Productivity practice where he contributed to the development of greenhouse gas (GHG) abatement cost curves for countries, cities and corporations. In an earlier stint Abhishek worked with Ernst & Young’s Climate Change and Sustainability Services, where he managed carbon mitigation projects under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol. Abhishek has also worked on multiple projects related to sustainability reporting advisory, assurance, training and capacity building programmes across varied industry sectors.

Venkatesh Valluri is the founder and Chairman of “Valluri Technology Accelerators” and “Valluri Change Foundation” (www.valluriorg.com). Valluri Technology Accelerators focuses on building high end Technology & Sustainability Solutions for Urban and Smart City markets. Valluri Change Foundation engages in imparting Corporate Mentorship and Coaching interventions in Leadership, Technology and Environmental Sustainability.

Venkatesh Valluri has been associated with various global Industries for over 30 years and has Leadership, Operational and General Management experiences spanning the regions of India, Europe and the US.

Venkatesh Valluri served as the Chairman of the Board for Ingersoll Rand India’s public company operations till 2015. Before joining Ingersoll Rand, he was associated with the global measurement technology leader, Agilent Technologies (a spin off from Hewlett Packard), as its Chairman & President of its Indian subsidiary. Prior to Agilent, he held various leadership roles at GE (General Electric) in India and overseas. He served as the Managing Director of GE’s Silicones business in India and later as the European Business Leader for GE’s Specialty Materials business.

He currently serves as the member of TERI’s Executive Council (The Energy and Resources Institute). He has been a member of the National Executive Board of AMCHAM and chaired the U.S. India Energy Cooperation Program in 2008. He served as the Chairman of the National Committee on Technology of the CII between 2012 and 2015 and currently serves on the Prime Minister’s Fellowship scheme for Doctoral Research grants. He has been a member of the Karnataka Knowledge commission for developing Machine & Artificial Intelligence initiatives in the State. He is engaged as a member of the Advisory Board of FICCI’s Skills Development initiative. He also serves as the Member of the Executive Council Board of BMS Institute of Technology, Bangalore.

Venkatesh Valluri holds a Bachelor’s in Technology in Electronics and an MBA from IIM

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 the unique distinction of working very closely with government and IT/ESDM industry. He has been instrumental in formulating an appropriate interface among Industry, Academia and IT/ESDM Industry. He is working for the formulation of Incubation program and Centre of Excellence (CoEs) for IT/ESDM sector to promote startups, entrepreneurship, innovation and product creation in the country.

Prior to joining of STPI, he served the National Informatics Centre (NIC) in various capacities. He is serving as Chairman, AIC STPINEXT INITIATIVE and Director on the Board of Directors of MTNL-STPI IT Services Limited (MSITS), National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) & Haryana State Electronics Development Corporation Limited (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 (SOL), Delhi University (DU) and also a member of the Board of Governors (BoG) for the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) University, Bhubaneswar. He is also a member of the standing committee of the council of IIITs and coordination forum of IIITs(PPP) of MHRD, GoI.

Dr. Rai has been educated in Banaras Hindu University (BHU) from where he earned his Bachelor’s, Masters and Ph.D. in Statistics.

Dr. Balamuralidhar P is a Principal Scientist and Head of TCS Research & Innovation Lab at Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS), Bangalore. He has obtained Bachelor of Technology from Kerala University and Master of Technology from IIT Kanpur. His Ph.D. is from Aalborg University, Denmark in the area of Cognitive Wireless Networks. Major areas of current research include different aspects of Cyber Physical Systems, Sensor Informatics & Internet of Things, Robotics & Computer Vision. He has lead several research projects and programs in the above areas.

Dr.Balamuralidhar has over 30 years of research and development experience. He has over 120 publications in various international journals and conferences and over 40 patents granted. His previous research careers are with SAMEER Bombay and Sasken Communications Bangalore. He has co-authored a book titled ‘IoT-Technical Challenges and Solutions’ published by Artech Book House. He has co-authored several book chapters and was a guest editor of an International journal on ICT.

Balamuralidhar is the recipient of two Tata Innovista awards and the Serial Innovator award from Tata group. He has delivered several keynote addresses and invited talks in reputed conferences and symposiums. He is a contributing member of High-Level Task Force on 5G Application-Layer Standards
set up by Govt of India. He is also a senior member of IEEE.

Vishnu R is an Indian musician known for his strikingly original music with ‘Vishnu R Collective’. He is the inventor of NAVTAR ®, a one-of-a-kind instrument in the world allowing for the best of Indian Classical microtonal and Western harmonic music simultaneously. Vishnu is one of the few guitarists today, with a superlative command over Indian Classical and Western harmonic music. An accomplished and trained Guitarist, Composer, Vocalist and Percussionist, Vishnu’s cross-cultural explorations within the realm of Carnatic and Jazz music has gained him international attention, with performance opportunities across India, Europe, and the USA. He is a Grade 8 distinction holder in Western Classical Guitar Performance from the Trinity College of London. Vishnu has collaborated with some of the most distinguished names in music such as Padma Vibhushan Umayalpuram Sivaraman, Global Rhythms (mentored by A.R.Rahman), Singer Srinivas, Vijay Prakash, Guitar Prasanna, Maarten Visser, Denis Stern (Russia), Ueli Gasser (Switzerland), etc.

Manasi Prasad is a musician, a museum director, an MBA and a mother. She is an acclaimed Indian classical vocalist and the Museum Director of the Indian Music Experience – India’s first hi-tech interactive music museum. Manasi has learnt Carnatic classical music from renowned gurus such as RK Padmanabha in Bangalore and Sriram Parasuram in Chennai. She started performing concerts at the age of 9 and since then has performed widely across India and in 6 continents around the world! Manasi is a recipient of several awards in music,including the prestigious Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar from the Sangeet Natak Akademi, Govt. of India. Manasi is an engineering graduate, and went on to do her MBA from IIM Bangalore, where she won the Aditya Birla Scholarship. She has been awarded a Fellowship by the TED Organization, and has been recognized as one of the 35 ‘Indians of Tomorrow’ by the India Today publications.

Rukmini, is the Artistic Director of her Classical Dance Company Raadha Kalpa and Director of her Art Space LshVa. Her primary training and rigorous practice has been in Bharatanatyam. Initiated into the form by Guru Padmini Rao, she later pursued a
deeper study and understanding of Bharatanatyam under Late Guru Narmada Rao. Her Bharatanatyam practice and ideas of movement are influenced greatly by her training under Guru Sundari Santhanam, in Karanas (the research of Dr. Padma
Subramanyam). Yoga, Ballet, and Acting became a part of her training through her teenage years. She went on to intensify her training and practice in Modern Dance and Ballet at the Boston Conservatory, obtaining a BFA in Modern Dance and Ballet.
At the conservatory, she developed an awareness of the physical body that influenced her practice of Bharatanatyam. Her approach to choreography and movement changed through her 4 years of intense training in Boston, and her study in the pedagogy of western movement forms made her find new avenues of training the body for Bharatanatyam.

Mahesh Raghvan is an Indian musician who is known for his Carnatic fusion music. He plays modern electronic instruments and runs a YouTube fusion project – “Flair – Carnatic music 2.0”. His experiments with Carnatic music on the iPad have multi-million views on YouTube and Facebook. Mahesh has also been featured by many media houses in their respective publishes. Moreover, he aspires to showcase Indian classical music innovatively and continues to enjoy his success in presenting Carnatic music pieces contemporarily. Besides being a full-time musician and music producer for two bands ‘Carnatic 2.0’ and ‘Thayir Sadam Project’ Mahesh does music technology workshops across major universities and is a creative director for IndianRaga – an US-based platform that promotes classical arts. Additionally, he works with major music technology companies such as Wizdom Music, CME Pro, Swar Systems, SWAM and ROLI to make Indian Classical Music playable on their hardware/software.

As the CEO for GE India Technology Centre, Alok Nanda leads 5000+ engineers and scientists across multi-disciplinary R&D labs and industry verticals including Power, Aviation, Transportation, Healthcare and Renewables. Alok inspires collocated multi-disciplinary GE technology teams in India to create value beyond individual team potential.

In his role as the CTO for GE South Asia, Alok is responsible to drive regional business outcomes through innovative technology solutions and to maximize value for GE from the India ecosystem through strategic partnerships, monetizing IP and external funding.

Prior to his current role, Alok was the Chief Operating Officer at GE India Technology Centre and General Manager for Engineering in India for GE Aviation. He developed and led an innovative and high-performing team to create deep technical impact across the GE Aviation business and established a successful Services Engineering organization in the region to
support GE’s key customers.

Alok has been with GE for about 19 years and has held engineering and technical leadership positions across Aviation, Power and Global Research. Prior to joining, GE, Alok spent eight years at the Indian Defense Research & Development Organization (DRDO).

Alok serves on the AMCHAM (American Chamber of Commerce) Executive Committee – Karnataka, India and is a member of the CII (Confederation of Indian Industry) National Innovation and Entrepreneurship Council, Expert Group on Technology, & Karnataka State Council.

Alok has a Masters degree in Mechanical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai; and is based in Bangalore, India.

Rajesh Kumar is a professor of linguistics in the Department of Humanities and Social  Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai. He obtained his Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Prior to joining IIT Madras, he taught at IIT Kanpur and IIT Patna in India and at the University of Texas at Austin in the USA. He has been a visiting faculty at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai in India. The broad goal of his research is to uncover regularities underlying both the form (what language is) and sociolinguistic functions (what language does) of natural languages.

Vipul helps schools to make the most of Khan Academy’s online learning resources in their classrooms, mainly by training their teachers. As a CXO at Global Discovery Schools and Director of Academics at Pearson Schools India, he designed the daily classroom experience of thousands of students nationally. Vipul previously worked at Cisco, managing a large part of their global multi-million dollar IT training and professional certifications portfolio. He is a TED-Ed Innovative Educator, a TEDx Colombo speaker, and an alumnus of the Stanford University Graduate School of Education.

Vijaya Kumar Ivaturi (known as IVK) is the Co-Founder and CTO of Crayon Data, a Big data & AI product company at Singapore with a development center in Chennai.

He is also an active member of Indian Angel Network, a syndicate for early-stage capital to invest in the start-up companies.

His current technical interests and activities include Recommender systems and Choice theory, Product and Taste affinity graphs, Customer analytics, Text, and Graph mining in
both B2B and B2C contexts.

He worked at Wipro for more than two decades before entering into the startup world. He was one of the core group members to set up the telecom business in Wipro and led the wireless and telecom applications businesses before becoming Wipro’s CTO.

He is one of the core members of CII’s Innovation council and a charter member of TiE. He serves on the governing council of CMI Algo Labs, an industry-academia initiative by Chennai Mathematical Institute. In social impact segment, he is a partner with Acumen Fund in India and helps their investee companies in education and other sectors.

He holds a BE degree in Electronics & Communications engineering and an advanced leadership certification for senior executives from McGill University in collaboration with Lancaster University, UK and IIM, Bangalore.

He has been with the ICT industry for the last 30 years and is one of the leading experts in innovation management and advanced technologies incubation in India.

Ramesh Ramadurai was appointed Managing Director, 3M India Limited, from June 1, 2019.

Prior to this role, he was based in Shanghai for the past five years (2014-2019), leading 3M’s Industrial Business across the entire region, as Director of Asia Pacific. He also served as Managing Director of 3M Philippines from 2011 until 2014, based in Manila.

Ramesh joined 3M in India in 1989 as part of the early start-up team. He contributed to building 3M India’s foundational businesses, specifically in the automotive and industrial segments, over the following 14 years. He then relocated to 3M’s headquarters in St Paul, Minnesota, USA, where he held various marketing leadership roles over the next five years, focused on the US industrial segments, global product management, and international business development.

Ramesh brings a unique global perspective with his breadth of experience spanning different businesses and geographies. He is passionate about emerging technologies, and their applications to solve problems and create new solutions.

Prior to 3M, Ramesh worked for a year as Production Engineer at an Offshore Oil Production facility, and for about 3 years in a business planning and development role at automotive parts and motorcycle manufacturer, both in India.

Ramesh holds an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, and a Bachelor of Technology in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. He enjoys various outdoor activities, and a renewed desire to take up running.

L. Ravichandran (Ravi, to all his peers) is President and Chief Operating Officer for Tech Mahindra, and is a vital part of the organization’s senior executive leadership team. In a career spanning 37 years, he has played a significant part in building and delivering businesses to many Fortune 500 organizations across the world.

At Tech Mahindra, Ravi heads global delivery across all verticals, competencies and geographies. He also plays a critical role in many initiatives including alliances and acquisitions. Ravi’s strength lies in creation of new business lines and he is known for his capability to create high performance teams, deliver quality solutions and nurture strong client relationships.

Prior to Tech Mahindra, Ravi was Chief Operating Officer in Perot Systems India. He has worked with reputed organizations including Tata Infotech Ltd, where he headed the Application Solutions division and managed client relations, services and delivery of large accounts.

Ravi holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science and is a distinguished alumnus of the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata.

Chandra R. Murthy received the B. Tech. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, India, in 1998, the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN and the University of California, San Diego, CA, in 2000 and 2006, respectively. From 2000 to 2002, he worked as an engineer at Qualcomm Inc., San Jose, USA, where he worked on WCDMA baseband transceiver design and 802.11b baseband receivers. From 2006 to 2007, he worked as a staff engineer at Beceem Communications Inc., Bangalore, India on advanced receiver architectures for the 802.16e Mobile WiMAX standard. Currently, he is working as a Professor in the Department of Electrical Communication Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India.

His research interests are in the areas of energy harvesting communications, multiuser MIMO systems, and sparse signal recovery techniques applied to wireless communications. His paper won the best paper award in the Communications Track at NCC 2014 and a paper co-authored with his student won the student best paper award at the IEEE ICASSP 2018. He has 50+ journal papers and 80+ conference papers to his credit. He was an associate editor for the IEEE Signal Processing Letters during 2012-16. He is an elected member of the IEEE SPCOM Technical Committee for the years 2014-16 and has been re-elected for the 2017-19 term. He is a past Chair of the IEEE Signal Processing Society, Bangalore Chapter. He is currently serving as an associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing and IEEE Transactions on Information Theory and as an editor for the IEEE Transactions on Communications.

Since February 2017, Ms. Pamela Kumar has been appointed as the Director General of TSDSI. An alumnus of PEC Chandigarh, Rutgers University and IIM Bangalore, Pamela brings with her an experience of 30+ years in the communications, computers and semiconductor industry.

TSDSI is involved in mobilising the Technical experts in the country to develop standards based on National Priorities & requirements and influencing Global Standards, particularly at ITU, 3GPP and other forums. Major contributions are being driven to incorporate India’s innovations to address Rural connectivity requirements for India and rest of the world. CCICI published a Framework & Roadmap for Cloud Computing Adoption in India and provided technical consultation on various aspects of the Cloud Computing Strategy for India. CCICI also formed the IoT for Smart Cities Task Force which published a series of reports related to Smart Cities Requirements Analysis, Smart Cities Reference Architecture, Smart Cities RFP Guidelines, Design & Planning of Smart Cities using IoT.

Prior to TSDSI, she has spent the first 10 years of her career at AT&T, Bell Labs in USA and at C-DOT in Bangalore. Later, she held leadership positions in Texas Instruments, IBM, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, R&D labs in India. She also did a short stint with 2 startups, setting up the R&D centers of Network Programs and Alliance Semiconductors. She holds 3 Patents granted by USPTO and has 5 patent applications pending in the Networking Accelerators domain. She has been a Keynote/ invited speaker in 70+ Local and Global forums.

Pamela is also the Founding Chair and current President of Cloud Computing Innovation Council of India (CCICI). She is the Bharti Chair for IT Research and Member Research Council, UIET, Panjab University. She also mentors a few Startups in the ICT space. She has been on the Governing Board of Indian Financial Technologies and Allied Services (IFTAS) and PEC University of Technology.

Pamela is the past Chair of the IEEE Charles Steinmetz Awards Committee. She was the first ever appointee from India in the IEEE Standards Association – Board of Governors, as the Member at large for 2011-12. She has held several other leadership roles as a senior member of IEEE – such as General Chair of IEEE ANTS Conference, Coordinator for IEEE Region 10 Industry Relations, Chair for IEEE Computer Society Chapter & Vice Chair of IEEE Bangalore section, etc.

Prof. Pushpak Bhattacharyya is the Director of IIT Patna (since 2015) and Professor of Computer Science and Engineering Department IIT Bombay where he also held the Vijay and Sita Vashi Chair Professorship. He was raised in the picturesque town of shillong in Meghalaya where he was the state topper in both class 10th (1977) and class 12th (1979) examinations. He was educated in IIT Kharagpur (B.Tech, 1984; also chosen as its Distinguished Alumnus in 2018), IIT Kanpur (M.Tech, 1986) and IIT Bombay (PhD, 1994). He has been visiting scholar and faculty in MIT, Stanford, UT Houston and University Joseph Fouriere (France). Prof. Bhattacharyya’s research areas are Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning and AI (NLP-ML-AI). His lab called “Center for Indian Language Technology” (CFILT) at IIT Bombay is known internationally for its contribution to NLP and ML. In IIT Patna too, the lab called “Center of Excellence in Natural Language Processing” is gaining visibility in the country and abroad.

Prof. Pushpak Bhattacharyya has worked in all areas of Natural Language Processing- machine translation, sentiment and opinion mining, cross lingual search and multilingual information extraction. He combines linguistics, cognitive science and machine learning in a unique way. He has published more than 300 research papers. Multilingual Lexical Knowledge Bases and Projection and Computational Sarcasm are his reasearch trail-blazers. Author of the text book ‘Machine Translation’ Prof. Bhattacharyya has shed light on all paradigms of machine translation with abundant number of examples from Indian Languages. Two recent monographs by him called ‘Investigations in Computational Sarcasm’ (with Dr. Aditya Joshi) and ‘Cognitively Inspired Natural Language Processing- An Investigation Based on Eye Tracking’ (with Dr. Abhijit Mishra) describe cutting edge research in NLP and ML.

Prof. Bhattacharyya has guided more than 250 students (PhD, masters and Bachelors); he is loved by his students for his friend-phillosopher-guide approach to mentorship. Students mentored by Prof. Bhattacharyya are faculty members in IITs, NITs, IIITs and Universities, and also are industry leaders and members of top research labs.

Ministries, Government organizations and leading industries have benefitted from Prof. Bhattacharyya’s expertise. The list includes MEITY, MHRD, MoC, MEA, NITI Aayog, CDAC, Accenture, Elsevier, Microsoft, IBM, Honeywell, Samsung, HCL, LG, Emirates Airlines, and startups like Bluepool, Scribetech, FreshGravity etc. He has led government and industry projects of international and national importance. Sponsored projects and consultancy projects executed by Prof. Bhattacharyya run into multiple crores.

Over the years, Prof. Bhattacharyya has been rendering professional service in various capacities. He has been President (2016-17) of Association of Computational Linguistics (ACL) the highest International body defining standards of and propagating Computational Linguistics. He is currently serving as Chairman of Committee for Standardization in Artificial Intelligence, set up by Bureau of Indian Standards under Ministry of Consumer Affairs in 2018, whose members include IITs and IISc, CSI, MEITY, NITI Ayog, CAIR DRDO and leading industries like TCS, Google India, IBM Software, Samsung, Intel Research, and Microsoft Research. He has been a founding member (2017) of Asian Association for Computational linguistics (AACL) and South Asian Association for Language Processing (SAALP) (2005). He organized one of the major international conferences on computational linguistics- COLING 2012 in Mumbai.

Recently Prof. Bhattacharyya has been appointed member of the AI Advisory committee to NITI Ayog. He is also the MHRD nominee in the Mission Control Group (MCG) of the National Mission on Automatic Translation.

Prof. Bhattacharyya has been a propagator of NLP, its foundations, state of art and Indian Language Technology. Starting with educational institutes in and around Mumbai, he has lectured in IITs, IISc, NITS, IIITs, MIT, Stanford, University of Chicago, Oxford University, Grenoble University, University of Texas at Houston etc. Similarly, he has delivered invited talks in industries and research labs like IBM, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, NVIDIA, Accenture, Honeywell, Adobe, CDAC, CDOT and others.

Prof. Bhattacharyya’s research has gained national and international visibility. His work on Computational Sarcasm with his students featured in The TIMES London Edition, 19th Sept, 2017 (Link) and also in Hindustan Times, 22nd August, 2018 (Link). The deep learning based sarcasm research also featured in MIT Technology Review and ACM Tehnology News (Link). A recent web analysis places Prof. Bhattacharyya in the list of most prolific researchers on NLP and ML for the period 2012-17 (Link). Another such very recent web analysis places Prof. Bhattacharyya amongst top 10 machine learning researchers of the country (Link).

Prof. Bhattacharyya is Fellow of Indian National Academy of Engineering (FNAE) (elected 2015). For sustained contribution to technology he received the Manthan Award of Ministry of IT (2009), P.K. Patwardhan Award of IIT Bombay (2008) and VNMM Award of IIT Roorkey (2014). He is also Distinguished Alumnus Awardee (2018) of IIT Kharagpur.

Dr. Rajiv Kumar took over as Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog, in the rank and status of a Cabinet Minister, on 1 September 2017. He also serves as the Chancellor of Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Pune. He has wide experience of having worked in government, academia, industry as well as in multilateral institutions.  Dr. Kumar was a Senior Fellow at CPR and earlier the CEO of Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations(ICRIER).  He has also been Chief Economist at CII and Secretary General of Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce & Industry(FICCI).  He was a professor at Indian Institute of Foreign Trade(IIFT).In the government, he was Economic Advisor with Department of Economic Affairs (DEA), Ministry of Finance and Senior Consultant at the Bureau of Industrial Costs and Prices(BICP), Ministry of Industry.  He was Principal Economist at Asian Development Bank, Manila where he spent 10 years. He has also served on many Boards including that of RBI and SBI. Dr. Kumar has a Ph.D. in Economics from Lucknow University and a D. Phil. From Oxford University.

Madan is an entrepreneur working at the intersection of transforming youth, enabling entrepreneurial journeys & empowering social changemakers. His vision is that every youth is an empowered youth, every empowered youth is an entrepreneur & job-creator and every entrepreneur is a social changemaker!

An engineer from NIE Mysore and an MBA from SPJIMR, Mumbai, Madan Padaki had worked with Wipro, Infosys and Mphasis (Japan) – before being bitten by the entrepreneurial bug in 2000 when he co-founded MeritTrac as a pioneering idea in skills assessments. MeritTrac is today one of the leading Skills Assessment companies in the World and Madan is recognized as a thought-leader in the sector. MeritTrac was acquired by Manipal Global Education Services, one of India’s largest education services company. In 2011, he moved to Manipal Education to head up Strategy, Innovation and International Partnerships, and transitioned out in March 2013 – listening to his heart to pursue a journey as a changemaker.

With a vision of transforming rural youth to be entrepreneurs, he founded 1Bridge, a platform that empowers rural entrepreneurs to accelerate abundance of access, choice & convenience to rural citizens, leveraging technology. Today, 1Bridge is present in 40+ districts across South & East India and has over 1500+ rural youth engaged in delivering services to rural consumers.

Madan is also the Managing Trustee of Head Held High Foundation, a non-profit that stands for human dignity. HHH focuses on initiatives for poverty eradication like Make India Capable, where a rural youth with no schooling is transformed into work-ready professionals and Global Action on Poverty (GAP) a platform that builds and supports Changemaking communities to eradicate poverty.

Madan is the co-founder of Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship (GAME), a network that aims to catalyse large-scale job creation by bringing together Government, Businesses & Civil Society organisations to work collaboratively on igniting a mass entrepreneurship movement
Partnering with other Education leaders, Madan is also a co-founder & Director of Sylvant Advisors. Sylvant invests and supports education entrepreneurs, and has a current portfolio of 20+ ed-tech companies.
He is currently serves as an Strategy Advisor to UNICEF India and is helping launch a large initiative on youth empowerment called Generation Unlimited in India.

He is a member of the FICCI National Committee on Rural Development, member of the CII National Committee on Women Empowerment and a part of the Governing Council of TiE Bangalore. He had also served as a Senior Advisor to Tata Trusts between 2015-2016.

Madan is a sought-after speaker at various conferences around the world and has shared his innovative ideas & thoughts at prestigious forums like TEDxGateway, TEDx GolfLinksPark, INK Conference, etc.

Rekha M. Menon is the Chairman and Senior Managing Director at Accenture in India. In this role, she is responsible for building Accenture’s business, strengthening its position in the communities, and enhancing its profile in India. Rekha oversees the integration of the organization’s overall growth strategy with the long-term vision for the country.

Rekha is a thought leader, an active voice for social causes and a proponent of responsible leadership in the age of technology disruption and innovation. Some of her external positions include – Nasscom’s National Executive Council, American Chamber of Commerce in India’s (Amcham) National Executive Board, USIBC’s India Advisory Council and the Board of Governors at the XLRI School of Business. She champions her support for society through her association with Accenture’s corporate citizen initiatives and with not-for-profit organizations—Pratham Books and Akshara Foundation.

In 2018, Rekha features in Fortune India’s as well as Business Today’s list of most powerful women in business, OUTStanding & Financial Times Top 10 LGBT Ally Executives, LinkedIn’s power profile in India, and is also an ambassador for NITI Aayog’s mentor of change program. 

Rishikesha Krishnan is an author, columnist and professor of management who focuses on strategy, innovation, and education. He is listed in the Thinkers50 India list of most influential management thinkers from India. 

Prof. Krishnan’s book 8 Steps to Innovation: Going from Jugaad to Excellence (co-authored with Vinay Dabholkar) won the Best Book Award for 2013-14 from the Indian Society for Training & Development. His earlier book From Jugaad to Systematic Innovation: The Challenge for India proposed a blueprint for how India can enhance its innovation output. 

Prof. Krishnan has been on the faculty of IIM Bangalore since 1996, where he held the Jamuna Raghavan Chair in Entrepreneurship from 2007 to 2010. He completed a 5-year term as Director of the Indian Institute of Management Indore in December 2018.He was educated at IIT Kanpur, Stanford University and IIM Ahmedabad.

Prof. Krishnan was a member of the Expert Committee to create a Data Protection framework for India under the chairmanship of Justice BN Srikrishna. He is a member of the board of directors of Sundaram Asset Management Company Ltd., and Higher Education Financing Agency (HEFA). 

K R Sanjiv is the CTO of Wipro. The focus of the CTO office, which is the company’s technology think-tank, is to identify and incubate emerging technologies of the future to power business growth and the transformation journey of Wipro’s global clients.

The current emerging technology areas of focus include robotics & smart machines, 5G, Autonomous vehicles, Blockchain, Mixed Reality / Augmented Reality / Virtual Reality, open source, hyper spectral imaging, open innovation, Wipro’s crowdsourcing platform Topcoder and research around AI, Quantum. He and his team of technology leaders work at the intersection of transformative technologies to co-innovate with customers leveraging Wipro’s state-of-the-art innovation centers across the globe, design differentiated solutions & IP (intellectual property) and run skill and competency development initiatives on next generation technologies at the enterprise level.

Sanjiv joined Wipro in 1989 and played multiple roles in the company leading growth and transformation – both for customers and the company. Before taking on the role of CTO, he served as the Global Head of Analytics & Information Management for several years, carrying a P&L responsibility. His experience includes consulting, application and technology development across multiple industries.

Sanjiv is a member of a variety of industry forums such as Confederation of Indian Industries (CII), The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), Forbes Technology Council, etc. He is on advisory committees to Government agencies on various topics. His views on technology innovation are well respected in the industry. He is a frequent speaker at several C-suite forums, industry events (like keynote session at the Berkeley Innovation Forum on Transitioning to New Business Models through Open Innovation), technology associations (like keynote presentation at IEEE International Conference on Advanced Networks and Telecommunications Systems on “Transforming through 5G”) and academic conferences (like keynote session at IIT Bombay on “Digital: Boon or Bane”) where he provides insights on emerging technologies and their business impact. He writes on future of technologies, skills of the future, power of innovation in the digital era and new ways of working, and his views and voices has been featured in global publications such as Forbes (like “Tech Experts Predict 12 Ways 5G Will Transform How Business Is Done”,  “What It Takes To Lead In An Era Of Disruption”), Innovation Enterprise (like “It’s Smart to Start Considering Smart Machines for Your Industry”), ReadWrite (like “How three disruptive technologies can work together to change the world as we know it”), Observer (like “Haptics: What’s Next for Users ‘Feeling’ the Virtual World Around Them”), IoT Agenda, Recruiter, Mashable, InformationWeek, TMT News and others. His insights and perspectives on technologies are also covered in media like Business Standard, Business World, Economic Times, Entrepreneur, Inc.com and others.

Sanjiv holds a bachelor’s degree from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani, India.

Connect with Sanjiv at: LinkedIn, Twitter