Zenith Society
Conferences & Events
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Sasha Mirchandani
Sasha Mirchandani is Managing Director and Founder of Kae Capital and Co-founder Mumbai Angels, India's first Angel Investment Group. Prior to this Sasha was at Blue Run Ventures as Managing Director for the India operations where he focused on consumer, internet, mobile, media, entertainment and knowledge process outsourcing. Earlier, he was at Mirc Electronics (Onida) where he was Head of Corporate Affairs and new business. Prior to that he was CEO and Founder of Imercius Technologies, a BPO focused on the healthcare space. Sasha sits on the Boards of Hathway Cable and Datacom Limited, Fractal Analytics, Algorhythm Tech, Akasaka Electronics Limited, Mojo Entertainment Private Limited, Brightlifecare, FortunePay and Mumbai Angels Venture Mentors among others. Sasha completed his Business Administration from Strayer University and MMDP program at IIM, Ahmedabad. He is a Charter Member at TiE Mumbai. He is also an Advisory Board member of Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International studies (SAIS) in India, Past President of Entrepreneurs Organisation (EO) Mumbai and is a member of the Mumbai Chapter of the Young Presidents Organisation (YPO).
Mehul Patel
Mehul Patel has within a short span of time created a mark for himself as a New Media consultant of repute. He has been instrumental in co-founding and managing several innovative enterprises in the New Media and Social Media space like KIPL.Net - A Turnkey New Media, Digital and Social media consulting firm, Mozomo.mobi – a designer mobile content / Mobile VAS firm, he has been a part of D7TV – a mobile TV start up based out of San Francisco California, he is also a founding partner of – Network Prive
He was recently rated as Top 100 influencers in India on Twitter / Social Media by Pinstorm - http://pinstorm.com/ii/
MumbaiBoss has termed him as one of Mumbai's resident Celeb Twitter – http://mumbaiboss.com/tag/mehul-patel/
He has several cutting edge technology and digital trend forecasting write ups to his credit and is a regular guest columnist for leading publications like Sun UK, Bombay Times, Men's Health and Mid-day
Mehul has over 13 years of experience in managing Digital, Web 2.0, Social Media Marketing & Value Added Service businesses. He has launched and managed several new and established ventures and services across Digital media and has managed large teams and partnerships across India, Asia and USA.
He has been quoted as the innovator of the Designer Mobile Content by Mobile Monday Finland.
His firm provided Digital solutions and support to Masti.com, cheecoo.com and uthplanet.com (All of these companies have failed and Mehul will share some awesome stories about these companies)
Rahul Chidgopikar
Rahul is an electronics engineer from Mumbai University and MBA from IIM Indore. He has worked in IT and Auto industries before taking the plunge in the entrepreneurial world. In early 2011, he founded IZZI Deals, a location-based mobile coupons startup in mobile VAS. After struggling to get the service live with telcos, he pivoted a couple of times. However, lack of co-founders, a crowded segment and high burn rate ultimately resulted in the shutting down of his startup in Sep, 2012.
Speaker Profiles
Mumbai Speakers
Vikram Bhagat
A motivational speaker and corporate trainer, Vikram Bhagat, the founder of Ventures over the last 12 years has been training for multinational companies and financial institutions. He has to his credit more than 4500 sessions for over 37,800 participants across India. With a degree in Psychology, Vikram began his corporate career managing responsibilities from client servicing to business development and human resourcesduring his tenure with Quadrant Communications, Contract India Ltd, Lowe Lintas
Advertising. Vikram is known for his engaging, enthusiasm, high-energy style, sense of humor andability to make learning fun. With a lot of platform hours to his credit, he constantly strives to add innovative things to
his trainings. Time and again Vikram’s participants have found that the informationlearnt has helped them both in professional as well as personal life.
He specializes in the areas of Business Etiquette, Presentation Skills, Sales, PersonalEffectiveness, Interpersonal Skills, Team Building, Conflict Management, Corporate Finesse to mention a few.
Delhi Speakers
Anand Vemuri
Anand Vemuri is a Senior Associate at Orios Venture Partners, an early stage venture capital fund, and a founding member of 91springboard, a startup incubator/coworking space. He previously led new product development at Caldera Medical, a successful Southern California medical device startup, and has an additional failed medical device startup under his belt. His previous experience includes stints as a researcher at Abbott Vascular / Stanford University and as a marketing analyst at GE Commercial Finance. Anand holds a BS in engineering from Harvey Mudd College and a Masters in mechanical engineering from Stanford University. Since his move back to India, Anand has been very involved in the Indian startup ecosystem and looks forward to helping other entrepreneurs through his work at Orios.
Vivek Kumar
Vivek has now been an entrepreneur for the last 6 years and he has recently started his third venture. Prior to becoming an entrepreneur he has worked with THE NIELSEN COMPANY for over 10 years in research, marketing, and retail. He has co-founded a market intelligence and handholding company, an ecommerce portal, an online consulting company and currently now SME networks. SME networks, is an ECO-SYSTEM to ENABLE and EQUIP SME’s and startups. Vivek graduated from College of Business Studies, and his post graduation was from Mudra institute of Communications Ahmedabad (MICA). Vivek loves working with entrepreneurs and wants to remain one himself.
Rutvik Doshi
Principal, Inventus (India) Advisors
12 years internet operating experience in India & U.S. Google-India, Bangalore eCommerce start-up CEO. Rutvik has participated in India's fast emerging internet ecosystem since 2007, first with Google-India where he launched several products including Voice Search, Google Mobile App, SMS Channels and managed Google News globally, and most recently as the CEO of ecommerce startup Taggle in Bangalore. Before Google he spent 6 years in the U.S. building internet management software for CA Technologies and a startup. Rutvik holds a B.Tech from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur and an MBA from INSEAD, France. He also holds 6 patents.
Bengaluru Speakers
Rehan Yar Khan
Entrepreneur since 1991, in the Floriculture, Telecom & Ecommerce Space.
Started 1st business in final year of undergrad in 1991: Fresh Floritech importing seed material into India, with virtually nil investment.
From 1998-2003 founded and ran highly profitable VSG India, an enterprise callback provider. Businesses amazing disruptive success brought about pressure from carriers to change govt. regulations forcing closure.
2004: Launched Flora2000, targeted at the US market, offers premium floral and allied gifts for delivery in the US and Overseas. Established 180 country delivery network. Unique model of B2C business for the US managed entirely from India. Grew from 0 to 70+ employees. Remain as Non-Executive Chairman
Ranked as one of India’s “Hottest Angel Investors” by VC Circle. Regular speaker at Startup and VC events. Regularly covered and interviewed in the Media
Founder Indian Angel Network (IAN) Mumbai Chapter, National IAN Board Member. India’s largest Angel Network with 200 members. Member Harvard Angels India. Any future investments will be through Orios.
Responsible for Leading Investment in companies like Druva, Jigsee, Sapience, Groffr & Ola Cabs, all of which have raised a Series A/B at stepped up valuation within a span of 2 years.
Personal portfolio of 18 investments, 8 board seats.
Ravi Gururaj
Ravi Gururaj has over twenty years of technology product development, management and technology marketing experience and manages the Cloud Portal Business Manager product group at Citrix. Ravi is a member of the Citrix CTO Office, is responsible for regional coordination of the Citrix Startup Accelerator Program in India and serves on the Citrix India R&D engineering leadership team.
Ravi is Charter Member of the Bangalore Chapter of TiE, a member of the TiE Bangalore Chapter’s Governing Body, a Founding Member of the Harvard Angels of India, on the Nasscom Product Conclave volunteer committee and other industry and community forums. Ravi is a frequent speaker on the topics of enterprise-grade virtualization, cloud computing, and entrepreneurship at industry, academic, start-up ecosystem and open source community events.
Ravi joined Citrix Inc. in 2010 through the acquisition of VMLogix Inc, a Bain Capital Ventures & Trilogy funded cloud computing start-up which Ravi founded here in Bangalore. Prior to VMLogix, Ravi was Managing Director of the India Development Center of Trilogy Inc. of Austin, Texas where he helped recruit & develop the engineering team from 18 to 200+ of the best engineers from the top computer science programs in India. Previously, Ravi was Director, E-Commerce Initiatives at Trilogy, Inc., Austin and Founder & General Manager of UberWorks Inc., a Trilogy incubated universal wallet and shopping cart infrastructure software which was acquired in 2000 by Network Commerce Inc. Earlier he held senior product roles at Dialogic Corporation an Intel subsidiary where he helped launch their IPLink Telephony product offering, and also founded two other software start-ups which designed and licensed reusable software components for application developers worldwide.
Ravi received an MBA with high distinction from Harvard Business School, where he was elected a Baker Scholar, and graduated with honors from the University of Pennsylvania, as a Benjamin Franklin Scholar in the Management and Technology (M&T) program, receiving a BSE in Computer Science & Engineering from the Moore School and a B.Sc. in Finance from the Wharton School. Ravi was also a research exchange scholar at the University of Edinburgh and was schooled at La Martiniere for Boys in Kolkata.
Rashmi Rajan Padhy
Year 2002: Started an Event Organizational Group. Organized our own events and popularized in my home town, Cuttack. The name of the event was F.L.U. ( Frnds, Life n U). It was a youth event having fun and games for the youth. Closed down after being betrayed by a friend, who took over the group only to ruin it.
Year 2003: Joined a MLM company called Pioneer E-Bizz later known as Smart Value. Was the leader in Orissa state and had limited success as well. I stopped it after I joined Infosys. I also realized, the MLM models are not something which I would be doing later due to its nature of rewarding the leaders only and not those who join late. It helped me a lot in polishing my presentation skills and personality development.
Year 2004: Started a company called as Home Solutions. Looking at the service sector and aiming for a retail revolution. The concept was appreciated and had quite a few customers. It required more time investment which I could not do after I joined Infosys and was forced to close it. I would start this with a new name soon.
Websites:
www.zumali.com – E-Commerce website catering to US and Canada customers.
www.sawaal.com – A new concept in the education niche. Target mass are Indian students.
A lot other small websites; which I would not bother mentioning it here.
Piyush Gupta
Piyush Gupta is VP-Business Development at Eko India Financial Services and currently heads HR. Eko is a rapidly growing company which developed a disruptive and low-cost mobile technology that enables banking services at next-door retail shops for partners like SBI, ICICI and Yes bank. Prior to that Piyush cofounded RouteGuru - a landmark intelligent driving directions technology that earned global recognition. He also worked with Accenture India after graduating from Cochin University of Science & Technology, Kerala
Kartik Desai
Kartik Desai is the founder of What’s up Bharat, a social enterprise developing an integrated online platform and social network for democratizing art, new media and programs relating to freedom of speech and governance in India (www.whatsupbharat.com), an initiative based out of Delhi, started in August 2011.
Previously, Kartik was Vice President at Lok Capital, a social venture capital firm incubating microfinance and related businesses, where he helped raise over $40 million from development finance institutions to invest in social businesses in India providing financial, education and healthcare inclusion. Prior to this, he worked for three years at Merrill Lynch, first in the investment banking group and then in the private equity team, executing capital market, M&A and PE transactions in India and previously for the BTS Group as a management consultant serving Fortune 100 companies in the US. Kartik has also worked with the UNDP in West Africa, with the Rockefeller Foundation in New York and was a member of the start-up team of the Global Information Clearinghouse and the Indo-Pak peace delegation in 2004.
He has a Master’s in International Affairs from Columbia University, a Bachelor’s in Economics with a dual major in Finance and Management from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and is fluent in Hindi, English and French. Kartik has written articles and op-eds for publications including the Indian Express and VC Circle, written multiple academic and professional papers and spoken at conferences and seminars on social enterprise, freedom of speech, youth issues and international relations in India, the US and Switzerland. He was born and raised in Delhi and spent 15 years in Geneva and New York before returning to India in 2005
Pankaj Diwan
Pankaj is the Founder CEO of Renaissance Softlabs (P) Ltd. He has over 15 years of rich experience in ICT Industry and has been
responsible for delivering solutions to global leaders. He is an avid follower of technology and has a broad range of technology expertise in
domains such as Mobile Apps, Auto ID technologies and Cloud computing.
Pankaj is an IT advisor to several large Business groups in INDIA in conceptualizing and implementing their overall IT strategy.
Pankaj has a strong passion for Education for Employability. He has been the founder of IDEALABS-The Incubation Programme, an
incubation centre to build Industry ready resources which has trained and placed over 10,000 candidates. He has been an advisor to Andhra
Pradesh State Council of Higher Education and is on the board of several prestigious Engineering and Management Schools.
He holds a degree with distinction in Electronics and communication Engineering from Osmania University
Hyderabad Speakers
KC Ramakrisna
TBA
Pradeep Mittal
Pradeep Mittal is a Board Member at Truthlabs which is the first people private forensic lab in India, Not for profit NGO and has resolved more than 2000 cases across India. He also serves as a Director at Magna Infotech and Goose Technologies with over 20 years of industry experience including 12 years in USA. He is a member of Hyderabad Angel Ventures and is a member of the Executive Council and Finance and Mentor Committees at TiE Hyderabad. He holds a Bachelors degree in Electronics and Communications from Jawaharlal Nehru Technology University, India and a Diploma in Management Information Systems from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India.
Hitesh Vadlamudi
Hitesh is Co-Founder and Vice President of Zytrix Labs. He has several years of experience in technology space focusing on Mobile, Social media and cloud. He helped with mobility road map to several enterprise customers across the globe and also helped a number of startups with their mobile apps. He first started his entrepreneurship in college where he built a product that helps manage JNTU affiliated colleges. After exiting from this business he worked for Sasken and other mobile OEM's. Prior to Zytrix he was involved with couple of Startups in mobile space. Apart from technology, Hitesh also ventured into different business areas like manufacturing, constructions and more. He is the first trainer in Hyderabad who started offering Android and iOS courses both to corporate customers and to ameerpet crowd. He boasts of training more than 1000 students till date and he continues to do that as a passion.
His day job is to build Zytrix as a mobile services giant and on the side he is helping few startups which are in very early stage especially on the technology road map and execution side. Couple of those startups include &Beyond, DigiFlap and others that cannot be mentioned here.
Srinivas Chilukuri
Srinivas is a prolific innovator and energetic entrepreneur. He is Managing Director for Flexeye IT Services, Hyderabad. Prior to Flexeye, he was part of senior management team at Catalytic, Founder and CEO for Blually Software. He is also a member of Hyderabad Angel Investors.
His expertise in leadership style is punctuated by high integrity, communication, relations and a client-centric philosophy. He has an encyclopedic understanding of practical and theoretical of technologies and highly just as importantly, business and management.
He is a seasoned innovative guru in Media and Entertainment vertical, delivering High Quality applications and products across many channels including Web, RIA, Mobile and Wireless, Games for Mobile/Console, Futuristic UI, Digital Content Creation for TV and Motion Picture for corporate giants and technical leaders like Viacom group of companies, France Telecom, Microsoft, Verizon Wireless, AOL, NASA, Cisco, Autodesk etc.,
Producer for ground-breaking implementation of a World’s Top Rated Mortal Kombat game for the first Linux based mobile phone.
Srini received his Bachelor of Engineering from Gulbarga University and crowned from Topcoder with numerous other certifications.