Santhosh Mathew is a political economist with extensive experience as a civil servant. With a PhD from IDS Sussex, an MSc from the University of Sussex and an MA from the Delhi School of Economics, he combines teaching and research with his assignments in the civil service. He is currently Chairperson National Council for Teacher Education in the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India.

He has previously taught at India’s civil service college in Mussoorie (1994-2000) and was Country Director (2000-03) of the Leadership for Environment and Development (LEAD) program in India.

A member of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) for over 31 years, he has worked in the departments of Social Welfare, Labour, Rural Development, Finance, Health, Agriculture and Education in Bihar. He was District Magistrate of Palamau (now in Jharkhand) from 1992-94.

 

Shekhar Kapur is an Indian film director, producer and storyteller. His directorial debut with cult Bollywood film Masoom won the Filmfare Critics Award for Best Movie of the year while Mr. India was declared one of the ‘100 Greatest Indian Films of All Time’ on the centenary of Indian cinema. He’s also made several documentaries and short films.

Shekhar gained global recognition with the film Bandit Queen, a biopic of Indian bandit and politician Phoolan Devi, which won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi and the Filmfare Critics Award for Best Movie and Best Direction for that year. Premiering in the Directors’ Fortnight section of the 1994 Cannes Film Festival, the film caused a furore, catapulting Kapur into international success. Kapur introduced Cate Blanchett to the world in his two historical biopics of Queen Elizabeth, which were nominated for 7 Academy Awards, including Best Film, and won 2; also winning 5 BAFTA Awards, including Best Film, between them.

Kapur co-created the hit West-end show Bombay Dreams with Andrew Lloyd Webber and has been the recipient of the Indian National Film Award, the BAFTA Award, the National Board of Review Award, and three Filmfare Awards. In 2010, he served as one of the Jury Members (International Competition) at the 63rd Cannes Film Festival. He’s also been on the jury of the London Film Festival, the Tokyo Film Festival, acted as sponsor for the International Indian Film Festival in Goa and was head juror of the inaugural Macau International Film Festival in 2016.

Aside from his professional work in film, Kapur is one of India’s foremost activists on environmental and water sustainability issues. He is also a digital media entrepreneur, founding ‘Qyuki,’ one of India’s most successful online platforms for young Indian creators.

Kapur is now directing and producing a captivating series exploring the trials and tribulations, temptations and brilliance of the young genius, Will Shakespeare, for TNT. He remains ever inspired by the world around him.

 

Mahesh Murthy is a marketer, investor and widely-followed commentator on both those disciplines.

As a marketer for over 33 years, Mahesh has worked on Pepsi and Unilever apart from helping launch Amazon and Yahoo globally. Mahesh also helped bring youth television to India, launching MTV and later running its rival Channel [V].

Mahesh is considered one of India's leading early-stage investors, both as an angel and through his VC firm Seedfund. His investees include industry-leading brands like Pinstorm, RedBus, CarWale, Chumbak, CareerLauncher, Doolally and MyDentist. Seedfund has twice been awarded “Indian VC Fund of the Year”.

Mahesh has consulted on entrepreneurship policy matters with several governments, and is a sought-after speaker on digital transformation.

Mahesh is now in the midst of launching his next fund. His somewhat outspoken views have attracted a following of more than 500,000 people on social media. You can find Mahesh on Twitter @maheshmurthy.

 

Dr. Venkat Srinivasan is the CEO of RAGE Frameworks and a serial entrepreneur. Venkat brings his rich academic background in finance and technology along with his entrepreneurial successes to lead RAGE Frameworks as its Founder, Chairman and CEO. Having started his professional career as a public accountant, he completed his doctoral work related to implications of knowledge-based technology for credit and working capital, and is an expert in knowledge-based systems architectures, computational linguistics and natural language processing. He has over 30 peer reviewed publications and 2 edited volumes to his credit. His research has appeared in a number of prestigious academic journals including the Journal of Finance, Management Science, Financial Management, European Journal of Operations Research, and others as well as business and news publications such as The Wall Street Journal. Venkat holds several patents related to flexible technology architectures. He is the author of a forthcoming book titled, The Intelligent Enterprise in the Era of BigData, to be published by Wiley.

 

Group Chief Executive Officer, Viacom18 Media Pvt. Ltd.
Chairman, National Committee on Media & Entertainment, Confederation of Indian Industry
Vice President, Indian Broadcasting Foundation
Chairman, Broadcast Audience Research Council

Sudhanshu Vats is Group CEO, Viacom18 Media Pvt. Ltd., and responsible for all its lines of business – COLORS, Rishtey, Rishtey Cineplex, MTV, MTV Beats, Nickelodeon, Sonic, Nick Jr, Vh1, Comedy Central, COLORS Infinity, COLORS Kannada, COLORS Marathi, COLORS, Bangla, COLORS Oriya, COLORS Gujarati and COLORS Super in Broadcast Entertainment; Viacom18 Motion Pictures in Filmed Entertainment; LIVE Viacom18 and BE Viacom18 in Experiential Entertainment; VOOT in Digital Entertainment and Viacom18 Consumer Products. In the last four years, he has successfully steered the group into a profitable growth phase while expanding the channel network, driving content-led cinema, entering experiential entertainment through Live events across genres, opening up the Consumer Products business line and making the company future ready with Viacom18 Digital Ventures’ OTT platform VOOT. Under Sudhanshu’s leadership the group has grown from 6 to over 36 channels and opened up 3 more lines of business leading to a stupendous 40 X growth in topline.

A Hindustan Unilever (Unilever India) veteran, Sudhanshu Vats has spent about 20 years at the organization in different assignments. A Management Graduate from the Indian Institute of Management - Ahmedabad, he joined Hindustan Unilever Limited as a Management Trainee and worked with them in various Sales & Marketing and General Management roles across categories (Home & Personal Care, and Foods) and in all four regions in the country. During his tenure he has shaped many popular household brands, most notably Lipton, Vim, Wheel, Surf, Rin, Lifebuoy and Lux. He has also done a short term assignment on Modern Trade (Organized Retailing) in Thailand.

In his last assignment with Unilever as Vice President – Laundry, South Asia, he grew the South Asia Laundry business in strong double digits crossing the Euro 1 bn turnover milestone in 2011. In his earlier assignment as Vice President - Skin Cleansing and Laundry, and HHC, HUL India, he successfully led the Laundry and HHC categories doubling this large business segment in just four years.

During 2004-2005, Sudhanshu worked with BP in India for about 18 months as Vice President Marketing and was instrumental in the Castrol Master brand re-launch in 2005.

Sudhanshu leads industry thinking and brings fresh perspective to the Media & Entertainment sector. He is committed to the development and expansion of the sector in India. He is Chairman of the National Media and Entertainment Committee of CII (Confederation of Indian Industry), Vice President of IBF (Indian Broadcasting Foundation) and Chairman of BARC (Broadcast Audience Research Council).

He is an avid trekker and runs marathons regularly.

 

Radhika Ghai Aggarwal is the Co-founder and Chief Business Officer at ShopClues.com. She is also the first Indian woman founder to enter into the prestigious echelons of the unicorn club. As a Co-Founder of ShopClues and the driving force behind its go-to-market initiatives, she has carefully nurtured the brand to make it a house-hold name in less than 5 years.

An alumnus of Washington University in St. Louis, Radhika holds an MBA in Strategy. She further went on to pursue a course in ‘Web 2.0 and Creative Writing’ in Stanford University. Having worked for Goldman Sachs in Wealth Management and Nordstorm in the Strategy Planning Department, Radhika has diverse experience across industry segments such as retail, ecommerce, fashion & lifestyle, advertising, and public relations, all summing up to 16 years. She started on her entrepreneurial journey with her first venture, FashionClues, a content portal for NRI women.

Radhika was recently awarded the ‘CEO of the Year’ Award in the Start-Up category at the prestigious CEO India Awards, 2016. She is an accomplished speaker and is a staunch supporter of women entrepreneurship, having shared her thoughts on several fora including TiE and other industry events. Radhika is passionate about empowering women to assume leadership roles within her organisation as well within ShopClues’ vibrant community of merchant partners.

 

Amit Midha leads the Commercial business of Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) region for Dell EMC, responsible for Sales, Business Strategy and Development, Operations, Marketing, and Government engagement throughout the region.

Amit has been with Dell for 21 years and has held various leadership positions in sales, marketing and corporate strategy organizations in the Americas and APJ regions. Previously, he served as the president of APJ from 2012 to 2016 and APJ Consumer, Small and Medium Business from 2010 to 2012. He was also president of Greater China from 2006. Prior to joining Dell, Amit worked for Godrej & Boyce Manufacturing Company, in Mumbai, India.

Amit has been recognized for his contributions to China and the information technology industry on a number of occasions. He was honored in 2013 with the Magnolia Gold Award for his outstanding contributions to the city of Shanghai. He currently sits on the advisory board of Binhai district, city of TianJin and Chengdu Overseas Advisory Committee for the Chengdu Investment Promotion Commission. Amit is also a senior consultant for the Chengdu Government, Sichuan province. He is a vice chairman of CAFIE (China Association of Foreign Invested Enterprises) and a senior member of the advisory board of Xiamen University School of Management. At the 2010 CNBC China Business Leader Awards, Amit received the People’s Choice CEO of the Year Award and was named CEO of the year (IT category) by Bloomberg UTV in 2010.

He serves as the member of the Board of Directors of the U.S.-India Business Council, which aims to foster a deeper strategic and economic cooperation between both countries. Amit is also a council member at the Singapore National Employers Federation that focuses on enhancing the flexibility of the labor market and a member of Young Presidents’ Organization, the world’s largest network of peers that connects members to exchange ideas, pursue learning, and share strategies to achieve personal growth and professional success. In 2016, he was recognized by the Economic Times Group as ‘The most promising business leader in Asia’.

Amit is committed to helping the youth of today to have a more promising future and actively supports programs that help educate women in cultures where negative biases exist. He sits on the Dell Global Giving Council, Dell Global Diversity Council and Dell Entrepreneur Executive Council. He is also on the board of “Project Hope Magazine” sponsored by the CYDF (China Youth Development Foundation) and CYLCC (Communist Youth League (CYL) Central Committee) to bring schools into poverty-stricken rural areas of China.

Amit holds a Master of Science in Industrial Engineering from the University of Missouri, Columbia, US, and graduated with a first-class Honors degree in Engineering from the SGS Institute of Technology & Science, Indore, India. Amit resides in China with his wife and two children.

 

Robert Stoner is the Deputy Director for Science and Technology of the MIT Energy Initiative, and Founding Director of the Tata Center for Technology and Design. He currently serves on the Science and Technology Committee of the Alliance for Sustainable Energy which oversees the National Renewable Energy Lab, and is member of the board of directors of the Tata Center at IIT-Bombay. His current research interests include energy technology and policy for developing countries, and design for resource constrained settings. Dr. Stoner has worked extensively in academia and industry throughout his career. He is the inventor of numerous optical measurement and computational techniques, and has built and managed successful technology startups in the semiconductor, IT and optics industries. From 2007 through 2009 he lived and worked in Africa and India while serving in a variety of senior roles within the Clinton Foundation. He earned his Bachelor’s degree in engineering physics from Queen’s University, and his Ph.D. from Brown University in condensed matter physics

 

Sumant Sinha is the Founder Chairman and CEO of ReNew Power, one of India’s largest clean energy companies. In a matter of six years since the company was founded, ReNew Power has organically grown to own 3,000 MW of commissioned and under-construction clean energy assets -- for perspective, India’s cumulative energy capacity across all energy forms is 310,000 MW. To fund this growth, Mr. Sinha has raised close to $1 billion in equity and $ 2 billion in debt, making ReNew one of India’s most well capitalized companies. After graduating from Columbia SIPA in 1992, Mr. Sinha worked as an investment banker with Citi and ING Barings in the U.S. and the U.K; following which, in 2002, he moved to India to become Group Chief Financial Officer of India’s third-largest conglomerate, the Aditya Birla Group. In 2007, he became Founder CEO of Aditya Birla Retail and scaled the company to make it one of India’s largest retail businesses. Following this, he served as the Chief Operating Officer of India’s then largest wind energy company, Suzlon, until 2011. Mr. Sinha is a frequent public commentator and has written columns and delivered lectures on market reforms, economic policy, governance, and climate change. He is a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology, Indian Institute of Management, and Columbia University

 

Kartik Varma is investor and co-founder of PropTiger.com, India’s largest digital real estate services company backed by Accel, News Corp, SAIF and Softbank. Prior to starting PropTiger, Kartik co-founded iTrust.in, India’s first open architecture online financial supermarket providing financial products and advice to the mass affluent, which was backed by Softbank and acquired by Karvy Group.

Kartik has also worked extensively in the business of sports and built Rush Sports & Entertainment’s practice in India, especially in motorsports. He was influential in helping Rush work with Mahindra Racing, one of the ten teams in Formula E, the global electric vehicle street racing series. He is the author of the Harvard Business School case study on Formula 1 motor racing.

Kartik is currently writing his first book, to be published by Harper Collins. He has written over 200 articles on personal finance, real estate and online marketing for the Economic Times, Mint, Money Today, Outlook Money, Times of India, Indian Express, Financial Express, Reuters Money, Yahoo! Finance and other mainstream and financial journals. Kartik helped define and build the PropTiger brand through thought leadership in real estate through weekly TV shows on ET Now, Bloomberg TV and CNN-IBN on helping first time home buyers make their housing decisions.

Before becoming an entrepreneur, Kartik worked as an investor at Ziff Brothers Investments in New York and London, and at The Children’s Investment Fund in London. He started his career as an M&A banker at James D Wolfensohn in New York.

Kartik has also been an actor with Stagedoor, India’s largest professional theater group, and has acted in 11 productions.

He has an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was a Co-President of the Business of Sports Club, and an LLB from London School of Economics.

 

Shraysi Tandon is a New York based documentary filmmaker and journalist.

She started her career as a business reporter for the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) and at 25 became the youngest business reporter at Bloomberg Television, covering breaking financial and political news stories. Most recently, she was an anchor and business reporter for CCTV America.

Over the course of her career, Tandon has covered global events such as the World Economic Forum in Davos and the annual World Bank and International Monetary Fund conferences in Washington D.C.

She has also interviewed hundreds of people, including CEOs, Nobel laureates, heads of state and leaders such as Israeli President Shimon Peres, U.S. Vice President Al Gore, billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson and Academy Award winning actor Matt Damon.

A passionate human rights advocate, she is on the advisory board of the American India Foundation.

Tandon is currently in production on her directorial debut - a documentary focused on child labor and child trafficking.

Born in New Delhi, India and raised in Indonesia, South Africa and Australia, she considers herself a global citizen who remains Indian at heart.

 

S.P. Kothari is the Gordon Y Billard Professor of Accounting and Finance at the Sloan School of Management. He received his BE (Hons.) from the Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani; his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; and his PhD from the University of Iowa. Kothari has served on many boards in the industry, as well as editor of the Journal of Accounting & Economics, a world-renowned academic research journal in accounting. He served as Dean of Faculty and Head of the Department of Economics, Finance, and Accounting at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

 

Gita Rao is a Senior Lecturer in Finance, and Associate Faculty Director of the Master of Finance program at the MIT Sloan School of Management with two decades of experience in global investing, asset allocation, risk management, and client service In addition, she has managed socially responsible portfolios and teaches a course on social impact investing at MIT Sloan. Dr. Rao is a managing partner with East Horizon Investments in Cambridge, MA. Her previous roles include: portfolio manager at MFS Investment Management, managing global long-short portfolios and co-director of quantitative equity research; associate partner and director of quantitative equity research at Wellington Management Company, managing over $4 billion in global equity portfolios on a team responsible for $15 billion in client assets; senior vice president at Liberty Financial Companies, managing over $1 billion in global and international equity/balanced mutual funds and serving on the firm’s investment policy committee; senior research analyst at Fidelity Management & Research Company and vice president at Kidder, Peabody & Co. in New York.

Dr. Rao has served as a president of the Society of Quantitative Analysts, on the editorial board of the Financial Analysts Journal, on the board of trustees of the Research Foundation of the CFA Institute, and as Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She holds a Ph.D. in Finance and Accounting from the University of Rochester, an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and a BA in Economics from Delhi University’s St. Stephen’s College in India. In her spare time she enjoys travel, practicing yoga and organic gardening.

 

CP Gurnani (popularly known as CP) is the Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Tech Mahindra. Tech Mahindra Limited is an Indian multinational provider of information technology, networking technology solutions and business support services to the telecommunications industry. CP played a pivotal role in the three-year transformational journey of Mahindra Satyam and spearheaded the company's eventual merger with Tech Mahindra. In his career spanning 32 years, he has held several leading positions with HCL Hewlett Packard Limited, Perot Systems (India) Limited andHCL Corporation Ltd. CP was named the Ernst and Young 'Entrepreneur of the Year [Manager]', CNBC Asia's 'India Business Leader of the Year' and Dataquest 'IT person of the Year' in 2013.

 

Dr. Chintan Vaishnav is an engineer trained to understand human as well as technological complexity in large systems, a socio-technologist. He is interested in creating socio-technical systems for improving lives in underserved communities, and in analyzing the implications of promoting and managing such technologies for policymakers, managers, and society at large. He teaches at MIT's Sloan School of Management and is a member of the founding team of the MIT Tata Center for Technology and Design.

 

Amit is a Principal in the Life Science Practice at Deloitte where he helps Life Science clients adopt models for disruptive change and adapt to shifts in the changing marketplace.

 

Mr. Sridharan is the Co-founder and President of Sankara Eye Foundation (SEF). SEF initiates and drives community eye care activities in India by working with Sankara Eye Care Institutions (SECI), India, which runs the "Gift of Vision" rural outreach program through Sankara Eye Hospitals in India.

 

Milind Mahajan, PhD, is the Director at the Icahn Institute of Genomics for Multiscale Biology at the Mt. Sinai Hospital, New York. As Director, he responsible for rolling out genomics screening services for various disorders.

 

Nitin Mittal is a Principal in Deloitte Consulting LLP and leads the Life Sciences and Healthcare Analytics business. He has also worked in India, where he built a Life Sciences and Healthcare consulting practice to serve global clients.

 

Yatindra is the CEO of Symmetrix Pharmaceuticals that is in the process of developing and commercializing a biologic wholly indigenously biologic: a Clot Specific Streptokinase discovered in India at the Institute of Microbial Technology.

 

Anand Daniel, an MIT Sloan alumni, is a seed/early stage venture investor with Accel Partners & Co. Inc. Anand focuses on technology startups in consumer, healthcare, and education sectors and is responsible for investments such as Forus, Pristine, and TaxiForSure (Acquired by Ola). Before joining Accel, Anand was with Flybridge Capital Partners in Boston, where he focused on early stage investments across a range of industries. Previously, Anand spent several years in key engineering and product management positions at Intel Corporation, working on cutting-edge microprocessor products. Anand holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management, an MS in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University, and a BE in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Madras.

 

Neeraj Singhal is the Head of Expansion for India and the Subcontinent at Uber. He has led Uber's foray into India since they began operations in Bangalore in August of 2013. Prior to working on the India operation, Neeraj was an International Launcher, and started Uber's first markets in the Middle East and Africa, and has spent time working on the operations in Europe and North America.
Prior to Uber, Neeraj was an M&A consultant with PwC, and worked in the investment management industry in New York. He's a photography enthusiast, food junkie, and a passport stamp collector.

 

Mr. Rishi S. Jaitly is a media executive and entrepreneur with technology, investing, social change and operational experience across sectors and around the world. He has been India Market Director at Twitter, Inc. since November 2012.
Mr. Jaitly served as Co-Chair of the Projects Board of the Undergraduate Student Government and was student Coordinator of the Crystal Tiger Award selection committee that honored U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. He served as a Trustee at Princeton University and is a member of Princeton University Technology Advisory Council. Mr. Jaitly holds an A.B. in history from Princeton.

 

Srikanth Nadhamuni is the CEO and co-founder of Khosla Labs (a startup incubator looking to create and nurture startups using technology), and is the brain behind the technology at the ambitious Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) project. He setup the Technology Center for the development, design and operations of the Aadhaar system to issue a National ID to all the 1.2 billion Indian Residents, helped create a biometrics based National Identity platform that has enrolled about 200million people to date. He continues to be adviser to the UID Authority of India.
Mr Nadhamuni is also the Managing Trustee of the eGovernments Foundation which he co-founded with Nandan Nilekani (co-founder of Infosys) in 2003. It focuses on improving governance and public service delivery in Indian cities using a suite of inhouse Municipal ERP products. Currently eGov products are deployed in over 275 cities in India including Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore etc.

 

Ashutosh Varshney is a political scientist specializing in ethnic and religious conflict in South Asia. He is Sol Goldman Professor of International Studies and the Social Sciences, and the Director of the Brown-India Initiative at Brown University.

 

Milan Vaishnav is an associate in the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His primary research focus is the political economy of India, and he examines issues such as corruption and governance, state capacity, distributive politics, and electoral behavior.
One of his ongoing major projects examines the causes and consequences of political corruption in India with an emphasis on representation and quality of political leadership, connections between the state and private capital, and the management and exploitation of natural resources. He also works on development policy as well as issues of governance in developing countries and their relation to democratic accountability. Milan is the co-editor of the book Short of the Goal: U.S. Policy and Poorly Performing States (Center for Global Development, 2006). His work has also been published in the Latin American Research Review.
Previously, he worked at the Center for Global Development, where he served as a postdoctoral research fellow, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Council on Foreign Relations. He has taught at Columbia, Georgetown, and George Washington Universities.