Anu brings 25 years of in-depth experience in the design, marketing, and manufacturing of fashion apparel and accessories. Under Anu’s leadership, the 3A Clothing Company (3aclothing.com) successfully competes in the international fashion export industry exporting to retail chains, importers, designers, and private brands in the US and Europe. The company’s manufacturing facilities are located in Udyog Vihar, Gurgaon, India. Through her entrepreneurial vision, Anu has made a global impact on the business of fashion and lifestyle. Both she and her Company have been honored to receive numerous domestic and international business awards. In addition to speaking on global forums on consumer trends in the fashion industry, sustainable fashion, gender equality, and women’s empowerment principles (UN’s WEP), Anu regularly mentors women entrepreneurs from the fashion industry.
Notable awards: International Women’s Entrepreneurial Challenge Business Award (Belgium, awarded by Barcelona Chamber of Commerce, FICCI, and U.S. Department of State); Entrepreneurship Icon award (India, awarded by Women Economic Forum); Udyog Rattan Award (India, awarded by Institute of Economic Studies).
Notable speeches, talks, and lectures: Bloomberg Television (India); World Islamic Economic Forum (Malaysia); Walmart’s Women Economic Empowerment Initiative (India); CIFF Fashion Fair (Denmark); Copenhagen School of Design and Technology (Guest lecture, Denmark), MIT Asia Business Conference (USA), UN Women and Amfori (Business Social Compliance).
Mr Amit Manocha is an alumnus of Harvard Business School and a top ranked Chartered Accountant from India. Amit has over 20 years of experience in private equity and corporate finance across India, South East Asia and US. Amit is based in Singapore and is a Managing Director at Everstone Group, a premier India and Southeast Asia focused alternate asset manager with assets under management of over US$5.0 billion. Prior to Everstone, Amit has worked with Coca-Cola, GE Capital and HCL Technologies in the corporate finance, business analysis and financial management groups in India and US. Amit has passion to invest in startups and nurturing early stage businesses to support the growth journey.
Amit Agrawal is an entrepreneur with a mission to bring a sea change in children’s learning with his Ocky Pocky – India’s first personalized learning app for pre-school kids. Previously, he had built YouTube’s India content network from launch to USD 100 million p.a. Amit is an alumni from IIM Bangalore and a Math graduate from St. Stephens College, Delhi University.
With 15 years of combined experience in business consulting (EY), strategy (Maruti Suzuki) and more recently into academia, he represents finance in the incubation chamber. A fellow chartered accountant and certified FRM®, he is a CFA® charterholder. Corporate restructuring as an expertise, he has spent considerable time in the start-up space, on the buy-side assisting investors for seed/angel funding and on the sell-side as an advisor to incubatees for fund raising, preparation of business accounts, due diligence and other related activities. He co-founded FINSTUDYCLUB, a start-up into ed-tech in 2014, still surviving! He is an empaneled trainer with the RBI’s training institute for the Indian Banks.
His organisation advises Private Family Offices above 100 crore for Wealth Management, Equity Advisory, Equity Advisory, Merchant Banking, Merger & Acquisitions, Private Equity & Debt Syndication and related activities. He has a keen interest in mentoring new start-ups to scale their businesses. He has mentored start-ups from IIT, IIM, DTU, DU and other premium institutions in India.
Prior to his entrepreneurship stint, Amit served the Indian banking & financial services industry for eighteen years. In his last he Reliance Capital Group Company as Business Head for India region. He had been part of Reliance Group's leadership team for almost a decade. He streamlined all business process and created new growth benchmarks blending top-line and pro-stability for this vertical.
Amit Jain is PGDM, Certified Financial Planner from Financial Planning Standards Board of India (FPSB) and Post Graduate Diploma in Financial Advisory from Indian Institute of Banking & Finance (IIBF). He has done B.Com(Hons) from Delhi University. He has qualified for all certifications of National Stock Exchange (NSE) pertaining to financial markets - such as AMFI, NSDL, Debt, Derivatives etc.
Ashish is currently head of innovation at a 38000-person French MNC in India. He is a business development professional in IT services and has vast connects with the corporates in India, US and Europe. His earlier role of managing India business included working on solutions using technology for police modernization and smart cities. As chief evangelist at Startup Board, he also mentors start-ups on business strategy. Earlier, Ashish founded a start-up with niche products in travel and media and successfully established leadership position in each product segment. He is an alumnus of IIM-Calcutta.
Dheeraj Dogra an Indian American Real Estate and Retail veteran with over 30 years of experience in business development with global retail chains like Macy’s, Bloomingdales and Bed Bath & Beyond in the US. He has also held leadership roles with developers like DLF, Ansals Api, Omaxe, Srei infra and Express Avenue. Dheeraj was also associated with BNP PARIBAS Real Estate as their National Director of Retail and Shopping Centre Advisory Services for India. Dheeraj is a Chartered Surveyor and an MRICS. He graduated from Emeritus (MIT, Columbia & Tufts) as a global ivy scholar and has a Masters certificate in CRM from The City University of New York. He also holds an Advance Certificate in Marketing Strategy from Cornell University. A Bharat Gaurav Awardee for his efforts in advocacy of sustainable development, Dheeraj has been nominated and won several awards including a leadership award for Excellence in Real Estate in Asia presented by the CMO council Asia in Singapore as well as Employee of the year award at Macy’s. Dheeraj was recently conferred with one of the most admired global Indians award by Asia Africa Chambers of Commerce & Industry. A keen believer in giving back to the society and community, Dheeraj is a guest faculty in top B-Schools including Masters Union School of Business, ISB, RICS Amity, IIM Kozhikode and several others. He is quoted regularly in national print and electronic media as an expert in Real Estate and Retail and has several published articles to his credit.
He has served as the Chief Executive Officer of M/s Dunlop India Limited and Modi Rubber Limited (Modi-Continental) – leading automotive tyre manufacturers of the country. He has also headed various functional areas like marketing, after-sales service, commercial, manufacturing, HR and general management at different times, besides heading two startup companies in his career of 38 years. He is a director of Skills Gap Solutions Pvt Limited and an advisor to EON Reality, Inc., a US-based company and a world leader in using augmented and virtual reality for skills development and knowledge transfer.
Fariha is presently the Director of Investor Relations at Stride Ventures, and comes with 21 years of work experience in finance, insurance and government across the US, Europe and APAC. At Stride, Fariha is responsible for fundraising and for global investor relations across the funds. She serves on the Alumni Board of Harvard Business School, that meets bi-annually on campus with the Dean, faculty and management to discuss initiatives, curriculum and the 85,000+ global alumni community engagement. Fariha is also on the HBS Club of India Board managing the 2000+ alumni community. She has curated and executed over 100 programs and conferences over the last 7 years with business leaders like Ratan Tata, Nadir Godrej, Anand Mahindra, Ajay Piramal, etc. She was previously the Chief Strategy Officer at Toffee Insurance where she was responsible for all strategic partnerships with a clear view to substantially increase company revenue and long-term value. She is also actively involved in investment fundraising and responsible for investor relations. Till 2021, Fariha was the Founding Director at The Common Room, a platform for new entrepreneurs supported by patrons like Lightspeed, Sequoia, Matrix India Partners, Greenoaks Capital and Bain & Company.
A known mentor and passionate thinker in agriculture, policy and development, Dr. Gopi Ghosh has over 38 years of extensive experience of managing several sustainable agri-business programs in India and abroad.
A sales professional with expertise in technical sales, business development, channel management & key account management by working closely with EPC contractors, process licensors, end-users, OEM’s, PSUs, and engineering consultants. With over 14 years of rich sales & application experience, Gaurav has been associated with global organizations i.e. American & Korean MNC’s wherein his job responsibilities included sales, market strategy, application work, and assisting the commissioning team at the site providing technical support. Presently associated with Korean MNC, Gaurav is responsible for handling industrial product sales on a pan-India basis. He is also responsible for New product introduction, sales & strategy globally.
Industries served include: Oil & Gas, Power & Energy, Pharmaceutical & Life sciences, Chemical, Dairy, Food & Beverage, Water & Waste Water (Industrial/Municipal), Mining, Minerals & Metals, Utilities & Turbines.
Life achievements :
Heena is an investment banker by profession and is currently serving as Vice President at Morgan Stanley in London. With 10 years of experience in corporate finance, strategic reviews, mergers & acquisitions, and capital raising for clients across Europe and Asia, she has a demonstrated track record of successfully managing notable deals.
She specializes in offering guidance to startups in business model assessment, finance, and fundraising. Within the finance domain, she has assisted early-stage startups in areas such as financial reporting to stakeholders, creating projections, and strategic finance for day-to-day decision-making. In the fundraising sphere, she demonstrates expertise in assessing startups' readiness for venture capital, positioning equity stories, evaluating business plans, conducting valuations, and providing support to deliver compelling pitches to investors.
Heena is an alumna of INSEAD Business School in France and Kirori Mal College in Delhi
Michelle E. Messina is CEO of the global training and consulting firm, Explora International LLC and co-author of the best-selling book Decoding Silicon Valley: The Insider’s Guide. She is part of the Startup Chile Global Advisory Board and an Author-In-Residence at the NASDAQ Entrepreneurial Center. Michelle is an entrepreneur coach and mentor, and a trainer on strategy, market readiness and development, and corporation innovation. She has worked in > 65 countries and is fluent English/Spanish, and now studying Portuguese. Read more here: www.m2messina.com.
Ms. Neha Agrawal has nearly two decades of professional experience. Neha has been advising companies on Organisational Growth, Performance and Productivity Mapping, Corporate and Marketing Communications, Public Relations, Policy and Advocacy Campaigns, Brand Identity and Positioning, Storytelling, Crisis Communications, Digital Assets and Strategy, Influencer Outreach, Personal Profiling and overall Strategic Communication. Neha has successfully built a progressive company culture through MensenTock Communications. She conducts training workshops for professionals on motivation, personality development, leadership, process and time management, business advisory, Media and Public Relations, persuasive communication, digital reputation, storytelling, and holistic abundant living. Neha is presently empanelled with DMRC (Delhi Metro Rail Corporation) as a corporate trainer. She is also a mentor with the Deep Tech Club (DTC) programme of NASSCOM and with the GOAL programme of Facebook. She is a National President (India) at WICCI (Women India Chambers of Commerce and Industries) for India-USA Bilateral Business Council. Neha has a Major in Sociology, Mass Communication and Human Rights.
An Environment and Sustainability thought leader, Prarthana Borah has over two decades of experience in strategy planning, management and implementation of large budget projects on diverse environmental issues including Air Pollution, Climate Change, Biodiversity Conservation and Urban Sustainability. She has extensive experience of working with various Ministries of Government of India, United Nations Agencies, international donors and private sector to influence policy and action. A strategic environment policy planning expert with experience in analysing political situations and global scenarios she was involved in preparation of Government of India policy documents for international negotiations like COP 21 in Paris and SDGs at UN. She specialises in creating institutional responses and programs for leveraging growth and advocates both technology and behavioural solutions for conservation of the planet. Her present position as Country Director of Clean Air Asia, an international not for profit set up by the ADB, involves leading the India strategy, working towards advancing better air quality in Indian cities. Earlier she has worked with major institutes like the Centre for Environment Education nd the National Institute of Design
Rahul Bagga is the Founder and Managing Director at Aumirah. He is an engineer-turned lawyer and has worked extensively on intellectual property and corporate law matters of well-known startups across India. He has advised clients on patents, trademarks, investment agreements, and several company and business law related compliances to a range of businesses. Prior to this, Rahul headed the IP Department of a medium-sized biotechnology company in Mumbai, where he worked on a range of patent and trademark matters in different countries. He is a registered patent and design agent with the Indian Patent Office.
With an entrepreneurial streak and a background in HR and marketing/digital marketing, Ruchika has spent the last decade helping organisations & startup founders (in BFSI, FinTech, eComm, Consulting & Fashion) to conquer self doubt and achieve remarkable success. She is also an alumni of Startup Nexus. Now, she is excited to extend the support to you, whether you're navigating personal or professional challenges. She believes in fostering meaningful conversations rather than overwhelming you with jargon. Drawing upon her expertise and skills, she will help you not only achieve your goals but also create a life that aligns with your unique journey.
Rachana Panda, a Harvard Business School Alumnus, has been a corporate leader for around 25 years across different brands like GE, Alstom, Alcatel Nokia, Apollo Tyres and more. She presently is the VP & Country Group Head of Communications, Public Affairs & Sustainability of Bayer in South Asia. She also is on the boards of a few companies/forums. She is passionate about Sustainability, Innovation, Diversity & Inclusion and looks forward to learning & adding value from the mentoring programs. Rachana is interested in working with startups in the Agriculture sector.
Rajiv Bakshi, An alumnus of Harvard Business School, Rajiv Bakshi has two decades of multi-functional experience of working with global and Indian consumer product and services companies. He has a deep understanding of Broadcast Media, OTT and Digital, Smartphones, Consumer Durables and Electronics industries. As the CEO of Reliance Big Synergy, one of India's oldest and most respected content development and production companies, with a legacy of 5,000 plus hours of path- breaking and high-impact content, he leads a team of creative visionaries with the mission to transform the company into a content powerhouse, by leveraging the new industry dynamics and the growing OTT and Digital dominance. Earlier in his career, Bakshi turnaround Discovery Networks’ India & South Asia business. In the 13 years at Discovery, as Head of Products & Marketing, he is credited for building its 11-channel portfolio, 10-year leadership for Discovery Channel; pioneering lifestyle category with TLC; launching kids' business - Discovery Kids and introducing HD experience to viewers in India. Prior to Reliance Entertainment, Rajiv was the CMO of a home-grown Indian disruptor in Smartphones and Consumer Durables where he envisioned the brand transformation and Go-To-Market strategy across product verticals - Mobile Phones, LED TVs, ACs, Washing Machines and Accessories. In his early career, he consulted companies in FMCG, Auto, Financial Services and Telecom.
He has 12 years of experience working in project management in the biotechnology manufacturing industry and in international technical sales and marketing of power instruments in the electronics manufacturing industry and the utility sectors in more than 20 countries in North and Latin America. He is passionate about engineering management, international business development and entrepreneurship. He has expertise in technical marketing, market research, competitive analysis, complex sales processes in North and Latin American, identification of barriers and formulation of strategies to overcome them.
Rohit is a tech entrepreneur, passionate leader, startup mentor and angel investor with a successful track record of more than one & a half decade.
His last company - "360logica" a software services company got successfully acquired by a listed MNC - SakSoft. Under his inspiring leadership 360logica was listed twice in Deloitte Fastest 50 technology companies of India and was included in Top 100 Asia by Red Herring. He has also received “Entrepreneur of the Year 2015” award from Silicon India.
Rohit is now on his new Healthtech initiative - "GoMedii" which focuses patient fulfillment in Indian market as well as international and becoming a bridge between international patients and Indian doctors.
Having worked for some of the most reputed MNCs as well as Indian companies, in the agribusiness sector for over three decades, Rakesh is a hands-on professional. He is well versed in the various agricultural practices throughout India and other neighboring countries of South Asia.
He has experience of marketing various farm inputs, leading extension activities among farmers, as well as developing business for precision farming technologies; while working for companies such as DCM Shriram, Chambal Fertilizers & Chemicals Ltd., the Indian arms of Dow AgroSciences & Aventis, and Trimble, Inc. In addition, he has business experience of his own growing high-value vegetables in Central India.
He received his bachelor’s degree in agricultural sciences from CCS HAU Hisar, an MBA from MDU Rohtak, and is currently pursuing a PhD from Punjab Technical University.
He has been associated with two immensely popular incubation programs in the food and agri-tech sectors in India as a judge and mentor. During 2015-2017 with IIM Ahmedabad’s Centre for Innovation, Incubation & Entrepreneurship (CIIE), and during 2016-18 for a-IDEA, a tech business incubator of NAARM (National Academy of Agricultural Research Management) Hyderabad, he guided young entrepreneurs in preparing their business plans.
His other interests are sports, yoga, Hindi literature, and meditation. He swims and plays basketball regularly. He was a national level swimmer during university days and in 2018, won 4 gold medals in the Delhi State masters swimming competition.
Shiraz is a business development leader and private equity partner with over two decades of experience in consumer-facing and real estate industries. Shiraz has proven expertise and relationships across global equity capital markets with an insightful, balanced and pragmatic approach to investment structuring.
Swarandeep Singh Kambo, FRSA, is an investor, a community builder, and an intra-preneurial problem-solver. Currently, he works as a Specialist - Sustainable Finance at The CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS).
Additionally, he is a Venture Capital Scout with Saison Capital, the corporate arm of Credit Saison, a Tokyo-listed 30b AUM consumer finance company. He is also the Founder & General Partner at Lykke Capital, an angel syndicate, which operates on Angel List Angel Fund (a SEBI-Registered Fund).
His last role was at UNLEASH as its Global Community Manager, Accelerator Manager, and Fundraising Associate. In this role, he got equipped with the necessary skills to accelerate and help social ventures fundraise to address the Sustainable Development Goals. He worked with 200 very early-stage ventures through their pre-accelerator program, UNLEASH+, and helped 75 of them to raise $4m in grants from our network of funders, including Gates Foundation, Queen’s Commonwealth Trust, Deloitte, and Chemonics. He also served as the community leader for a community comprising of 3,500 talents from 167 countries, 350 institutional partners.
Prior to UNLEASH, Swarandeep was Investment Manager for Madrid-based Axon Partners Group’s $15m growth-stage VC fund, India Opportunities Fund, and its $550m maiden Fund-of-VC-Funds, Aurora.
He has been awarded fellowships such as Climate Reality (U.S.), Royal College of Arts (UK), Startup Leadership Program (International), UNLEASH (Denmark), WEF Global Shapers (International), and StartingBloc (U.S.).
Sudhir Bhatti is the Co-Founder & CEO of GrowthPlug, a healthcare SaaS helping hundreds of healthcare practices in the US. Earlier, Sudhir was the Head of Marketing at CyberCube, a Symantec Ventures company providing cyber risk analytics to the insurance industry, and led product marketing at Informatica and VMware in data center operations and cloud data management. Sudhir holds an MBA from the University of Southern California and an MCA from the University of Jammu.
Leader with 25+ years of experience in managing large businesses for multinationals such as Cisco Systems, Lucent-Alcatel and HP; at India and Asia Pacific level. Started new initiatives, and transformed business for these organizations. Passionate about the potential of startups and millennials, with a belief that startups and millennials will steer the direction of world economy!
Sowmya is the founder & CEO of Clarity Communication having more than 20 years of experience in the Public Relations domain managing diverse clients across industries such as Real estate, Lifestyle, Finance, HR & Education, Agrochemicals & others. She decided to set up her own PR firm after a successful and rather long stint with medium to large size agencies, namely, Lexicon PR, Concept PR, Sahara Corporate Communication, Lin Opinion. Clarity PR was established in 2016 with vision to provide impeccable quality PR service to all our clients. She has had a successful run with the company's business growing incrementally every passing year strictly by word of mouth. Clarity Communication thrives on repeat business and clients are the best advertisement. Clarity PR has been able to make a positive mark amongst the clients due to professional, ready-to-go & commitment to time approach. Clarity good old business model has been successfully ran on cheaper, faster and better algorithm and it has worked thus far.
Sandeep is a finance professional with diverse experience in finance and business leadership roles across the Asia-Pacific region in FMCG, media, pharmaceuticals and lifestyle products. Sandeep has worked with Perfetti Van Melle, HT Media (Hindustan Times), Gillette and Ranbaxy. He spent 10 years with a European FMCG company – 6 years as CEO (Sri Lanka and Indonesia) and 4 years as Regional Finance Director. Now he runs his consultancy, Value-Unlocked, which operates in the strategy consulting and leadership coaching space. Sandeep is a chartered accountant and a certified internal auditor.
Siddharth is a Concept Sales specialist with over 12 years’ experience in selling everything from SIM cards to airports to digital payments. He started Paathshala.com and later worked with startups like Voicetap & Exotel along with helping others with their go-to-market strategy. He is currently a General Manager setting up healthcare category, along with building B2B payment products for SMEs at Paytm.
Dr. Sudhakar Bangera is a MBBS, MD (Pharmacology) and MMedSc (Clinical Trials Methodology) graduate with extensive work experience of 28 years. A multifaceted dynamic healthcare and clinical research professional having coordinated several hundred complex global programs (clinical studies) in various capacities as COO, Country Manager, Vice-President, Director, Project Manager and Professor in national and international organisations and institutions. Expert in delivering full scope BA-BE, Phase 1 to 4 clinical trials for pharmaceuticals, vaccines, medical devices, biologicals and cosmetics. Growth-oriented individual with an analytical bent of mind who likes to take up new challenges and believes in thinking out-of-the-box.
Shashank Kotwal is an independent consultant with offerings in the areas of Strategy Formulation, Business Excellence and Operations Analytics. With over 23 years of experience in various functions in Automotive (Mahindra & Mahindra), Engineering (Crompton Greaves) and Steel (Mukand) industry, he has facilitated both – SMEs and start-ups. He is also an adjunct faculty for Operations Analytics at Mumbai’s Chetanas institute. Shashank is an alumnus of the SPJIMR Mumbai and Production Engineering graduate from Somaiya College, Mumbai University.
Dr. V.K. Arora is a renowned entrepreneurship and business development trainer and consultant. He has conducted more than five hundred workshops and published more than twenty papers Pan India. His core strength is business environment scanning and strategy formulation/ implementation.
He is a Professor of Biochemistry and currently the Director, Centre for Innovation in Infectious Disease Research, Education and Training (CIIDRET) at the University of Delhi South Campus, New Delhi. His experience involves developing recombinant antigens and recombinant antibodies for novel diagnostic tests for infectious diseases. He has experience in phage display technology and human antibody libraries for developing therapeutic antibodies. He has a large number of US and Indian patents to his credit. He has received royalties for licensing technologies to industry while working in USA and India.
Vinish is Managing Partner at SenseAI, The Artificial Intelligence Fund. He has been involved with the Tech ecosystem as a Business Leader, an Entrepreneur, Investor and an Advisor. A startup person at heart, he leverages his own startup experiences and learnings from corporate world (Microsoft, Ericsson) to guide & nurture startups. He is an Angel Investor in multiple global ventures and is also an Independent Director on board of Varroc Engineering.
Vinish is Co-Founder of RANK Software, a Canadian venture in CyberSecurity Analytics that leverages Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence.
Having spent 15 years in USA and last 12 in India, he has a strong understanding of the nuances across different business environments. An alumnus of Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, Vinish received his MBA from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, USA and MS from Case Western Reserve University, USA. He is a sports enthusiast with a passion for running, cycling and hiking.