VCCircle

Deepak joined 3i in March 2007, bringing two decades of work experience starting with the World Bank in Washington DC, followed by a stint with a major Indian business conglomerate, where he was involved with corporate planning and establishing green field projects. Deepak worked with Citigroup since 1989 in various roles including structured financial solutions for State Governments, Capital Markets, Financial Institutions and public/private Corporations. From 1996 he was involved with global equity offerings by Corporations in Europe and Asia.

Deepak was a member of the Banking & Finance Committee of the Bureau of Indian Standards (ISO afiliate 2005-06). He was also a member of the committee established by the Government of India to recommend corporate governance norms for independant directors (2006). Deepak has a Bachelors degree with honours in Economics from St Stephens College, Delhi University, and a Masters in International Trade & Finance and Diplomacy, from the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, Washington DC.

Mukesh founded Myntra in July 2006 with the vision of creating a marketplace where people can design and find unique, innovative gifts and products and where creative people can showcase their designs in order to monetize them. Mukesh has more than 10 years of experience in multiple early stage start-ups in Silicon Valley [NexTag, eWanted, Centrata, newScale] in various product management and development positions. Mukesh holds a B.Tech. degree in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.

Mukesh believes that there is no end to the number of products that can be custom made one at a time at affordable cost for end consumers. His vision is to continuously innovate and expand the product offerings that customers can tailor to their individual tastes. Mukesh aims to build Myntra as the leading brand in the personalized products space through a combination of the widest product range, great quality and awesome buying experience.

Krishna Srinivasan is Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of ISGN, the second largest provider of mortgage solutions to the $3 Trillion US residential lending industry.

Prior to joining ISGN, Krishna ran his own venture, Neptune Technologies - a premier technologies, services and systems architecture consulting service company until it was sold to a 3i ventures’ company, Sandhill.

Krishna has a Masters in Computer science from St.Joseph’s College, India. Keenly interested in studying political sciences, he is a scholar at the Princeton University.

Dr. G.S.K Velu who has over 18 years of experience in the diagnostics and healthcare industry, and has worked in several multinational companies such as Ciba Corn Diagnostics, Chevron Diagnostics etc., in the capacity of Director (South Asia). He completed his graduation in Pharmaceutical Engineering from BITS Pilani and Post Graduated in Business Administration from Loyala Institute of Administration (LIBA) Chennai and Ph.D in Pharmacology from Indian Board of Alternative Medicines, Calcutta. He is also in the honorary faculty of Sri Ramachandra Hospital and Research Institute (Deemed) University.  He is also in the Board of Several Diagnostics and Medical Devices Companies in India and elsewhere.  He is the Founder and Managing Director of one of the most successful medical device and diagnostics company, Trivitron.  He contributes with his expertise in corporate marketing and diagnostic sales. He has been awarded the Entrepreneur of the year 2006 by Modern Medicare Magazine  which is a leading healthcare magazine.

Sachin Maheshwari is a Director for Zephyr Peacock India Management and is based in Bangalore. He is responsible for deal origination, evaluation, structuring and portfolio monitoring activities.

Sachin has over 12 years of investing, operating and consulting experience in India and the United States. Prior to joining Zephyr, Sachin was a Principal at Draper Fisher Jurvetson India and focused on investments across sectors in India. He also has experience in US investing from his stint at Opus Capital in the Silicon Valley.

In addition, Sachin has operating expertise from his roles at EFI, Inc. and Unimobile, a wireless startup. He later joined the Corporate Strategy group at EFI and worked on developing the channel strategy for EFI products. Sachin has also worked for Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in their San Francisco office.

Sachin received an MBA from the Wharton School where he graduated as a Palmer Scholar. He also holds a B.Tech. degree in Computer Science from IIT Kanpur.

Mahesh started his career in the energy sector and went on to build his entrepreneurial interests in Information Technology and Environmental space. He is experienced in the Emissions trading markets and was co-founder, with Anil Chalamalasetty, of Lytag Asia, an environmental solutions company focused on Coal Gasification and transforming waste from thermal power plants into light weight building products. Within Greenko, he is responsible for driving the vision, business development and new project initiatives of the Group. Mahesh is a regular speaker at Carbon Market & Clean Energy conferences around the world and is a graduate in Mechanical Engineering from Karnataka, India.

George Alexander Muthoot is a chartered accountant who qualified with a first rank in Kerala and ranked 20th overall in India, in 1978. He has a bachelor degree in Commerce from Kerala University where he was a rank holder and gold medallist. He was also awarded the Times of India group Business Excellence Award in customised Financial Services in March 2009. He served as the Chairman of the Kerala Non banking Finance Companies Welfare Association from 2004 to 2007 and is currently its Vice Chairman. He is also the Member Secretary of Finance Companies Association, Chennai. He is the founder member for The Indus Entrepreneurs International, Kochi Chapter and is now a member of the Core Committee of The Indus Entrepreneurs International Kochi Chapter.

His insight for understanding of gold loan business and professional zeal has been the catalyst behind the Company's meteoric rise to the present level of being India's largest gold loan company.

Nikhil Kumar is the Joint Managing Director of TD Power Systems Ltd, which is into manufacturing of AC Generators and executing power plant projects. TDPS started manufacturing AC generators upto 30 MW under license from Toyo Denki Seizo K.K. (Toyo Denki). Presently, the company owns this technology and has further developed inhouse capability to manufacture generators upto 40MW.

Nikhil has over 20 years of related work experience. He is responsible for overall management of TDPS’ operations, planning, technology, alliances and marketing.

Vikas Keyal heads the Bengaluru office of Vaish Associates. He has been associated with the Firm since 2008 and was instrumental in setting up its corporate practice at Bengaluru. Primarily a transactional lawyer, he specializes in mergers & acquisitions, restructuring of business, asset & share purchase deals, takeovers, joint ventures andstrategic alliances, structuring of complex investments and general corporate advisory. He also has a wide range of experience inprivate equity, angel and venture capital round financings. His extensive business law and transactional experience includes corporate governance, exchange control regulations advisory, entity formation and maintenance, and the drafting and negotiation of a variety of commercial agreements and undertaking due diligence. In addition to his general corporate practice, he also works on Infrastructure Projects and has substantial experience in advising clients on power projects and CDM benefits in relation to for renewable energy.

He has advised Continental AG, Gestamp Group, Illinois Tool Works, Inc.,Gamesa, Vestas, Tyco Electronics Limited, TE Connectivity Ltd. and several other multinational companies in a cross section of industries. Among Indian companies, he has representedNational Stock Exchange, Fortis Healthcare Ltd.,Enercon,Religare Group, MotilalOswal, Wockhardt, Cello to name a few. Among investment funds, he has represented Oak Hill, TVS Capital, Sequoia and Intel Capital.

Krishnan Ganesh is the Founder & CEO of TutorVista.com (www.tutorvista.com), a personalized, 24/hour online tutoring and test prep service. Ganesh founded TutorVista.com in 2005 and serves as the company's CEO. He is responsible for overseeing all aspects of the company's business operations.

Ganesh created TutorVista.com to help provide students, from kindergarten to the graduate level, with individualized learning programs taught by world class experts. These experts are based in India, known as the educational hotbed, and are responsible for producing the world leaders in all subjects across the board.

A seasoned entrepreneur, Ganesh has a strong history of starting green field ventures and helping them develop into robust and successful entities. Ganesh began his career as Founder & CEO of IT&T Limited, India's premiere IT and network services company, where he took the company public in 2000. After eight years at IT&T, he then went on to become the CEO of Wipro British Telecom/Bharti British Telecom where he turned around a drowning company on the brink of bankruptcy into a cash break even company. His next venture was as CEO & Founder of CustomerAsset / ICICI OneSource, India's top BPO company, where he developed the company's staff from zero to 4,000.

Ganesh has a post-graduate degree from the Institute of Management in Calcutta as well as a Mechanical Engineering degree from Delhi University. Ganesh currently serves as a member of the visiting faculty at Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies (Mumbai), Indian Institute of Management (Calcutta) and Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad. As an educator, he has also conducted workshops on the topics ranging from Managing Exponential Growth, Entrepreneurship Challenges in Today's World, and Motivating Employees in High-tech Industries.

Kanwal Singh is a co-founder of Helion and has over 20 years of experience in the areas of venture investing, marketing and business development across multiple sectors in India. In addition to his role at Helion, he serves on the boards of Jigrahak Mobility, Hurix Systems, Amba Research and Humming Bird Suites.

Prior to Helion, Kanwal spent four years as a director and co-head of The Carlyle Group's India venture operations. At Carlyle, he helped define the strategy for Carlyle India, invested in over half a dozen companies and worked closely with the portfolio companies to help them accelerate their business. Before this, Kanwal worked for over 13 years in the marketing and business development functions of Intel Corporation and Hindustan Unilever India. As Head of Marketing for Intel South Asia, he spent about three years building the Intel brand in India which included corporate branding, channel and OEM marketing and PR. Kanwal joined Intel from Hindustan Unilever, a subsidiary of Unilever, where he spent over 10 years in various jobs including sales, brand management and product innovation.

He has a Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Punjab University and an MBA in marketing and finance from the Faculty of Management Studies, New Delhi.

Sashi Reddi is the founder and executive chairman of AppLabs, the  world’s largest software testing and quality management company. Since its founding in April 2001, Sashi has grown AppLabs from a 3 person outfit in a shared office space in Philadelphia to its current size of 2,000 employees in the US, UK, and India.

A serial entrepreneur, Sashi has started two other companies prior to AppLabs. His first company was EZPower Systems, a developer of products for building and maintaining large-scale web applications. EZPower was acquired by DocuCorp and then eventually by Oracle. EZPower technology continues to be a part of Oracle’s document management offerings. Following EZPower, Sashi founded iCoop, a group purchasing dotcom company. He began his career consulting on technology and strategy to Fortune 500 companies in the travel, financial services, automotive and consumer packaged goods industries.

Sashi is also the founder and chairman of FXLabs, a leading developer of high quality game products for PC’s, consoles, and online. He is also the founder and chairman of Sricapital, a venture capital firm.

Sashi received his BTech degree in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi. He went on to gain an MS in Computer Science from New York University and later a PhD from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

Vishal Gupta, a Managing Director at BVP India in Mumbai. Vishal joined BVP India in 2006 and focuses on investments in energy, financial services, healthcare services and infrastructure.

Prior to joining BVP India, Vishal was a senior manager in the treasurer’s office at Reliance Group, Vishal helped the firm establish a private-equity fund that invested in such companies as Celebrity Fashions, Adlabs, and other firms in the healthcare and financial-services sectors. Previously, served as an executive assistant to the CEO a joint venture of HCL Tech and Deutsche Bank in India.

Vishal holds an M.B.A from the Indian Institute of Management in Calcutta, is a chartered accountant and has a B.A. in commerce from GS College, where he was ranked one of the top 750 students in the country. He is also a member of Mensa and has been a nationally-ranked table tennis player.

Mohan brings in extensive operational, technology and investment experience, having worked at leading global organizations in various senior positions and personally investing in technology start-up companies. Mohan is based in NVP India’s Bengaluru office and serves as an advisor on investments in next-generation technologies, Healthcare and Education. Mohan advised NVP’s investment in Borqs, a leading open source mobile application software provider and integrator based out of Beijing and the U.S.. He also advised NVP's investment in Perfint Healthcare, which develops Image-guided robotic solutions for oncology.

Prior to joining NVP India, Mohan served as Corporate Vice President of Mobile Devices Software at Motorola where he was instrumental in creating mobile platform middleware, user interface technology and applications across 3GSM, CDMA and WiFi / WiMax mobile phones.

Mohan has also been an angel investor and is active in helping start-up companies in the areas of mobile solutions, content and applications, namely Allgo Systems, Azingo, Quantum, SpaceTime and Mitoken.

Shyam has over 14 years of experience in the Indian infrastructure sector. He began his career as an investment banker with ICICI Securities (ICICI's investment banking JV with JP Morgan) handling private equity placement, debt syndication and M&A related deals in the energy and telecom sectors. Subsequently, he moved to the Infrastructure group of ICICI Bank and after that to Infrastructure Development Finance Company (IDFC), to undertake project finance activities in the telecom sector. He joined IDFC Private Equity in its formative days and has made over 11 investments in a range of infrastructure sectors - power, telecom, oil&gas, roads, ports, airports, shipping and logistics. In the last 5 years, he led 3 successful IPOs of his portfolio companies - GMR, GSPL and Ashoka.

He was a member of CII National Committee on Transport and Infrastructure Committee of Bombay Chamber of Commerce. Currently, he is a member of CII National Committee on Shipping. Shyam received an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Calcutta, and a BE (Mechanical) from Anna University, Chennai. Shyam is married and has a 4 year old daughter. He is an avid cricket fan and opens the bowling for IDFC's cricket team at local tournaments.

Jacob joined New Silk Route Advisors in April 2007 and focuses on private equity opportunities in the Indian sub-continent out of the Bangalore office.

Prior to joining NSR, Jacob was one of the Partners of the India Consumer Growth Fund which aimed to take advantage of the opportunities created by the strong consumption growth in the Indian economy. Previously, in 2003, as President of the Indian operations of Laureate Inc.

Previously, Jacob worked for the Tata Group as an officer of the prestigious Tata Administrative Service.

In mid 2000, Jacob was named COO and SVP of Tanishq, a fine jewelry business. Previously, in 1996, Jacob became Chief Marketing Officer of the watch business at Titan. His team rejuvenated the flagging watch business with the launch of multiple new brands that are India’s largest volume and youth watch brands. Under his stewardship, a widely respected annual poll ranked the Titan brand as India’s top consumer brand in 2000.

In 1993, Jacob joined Titan Industries to lead a pioneering attempt to take an Indian consumer brand into international markets. The Titan watch brand sells in over 35 countries and is one of the world’s top ten watch brands by volume.

Jacob has a degree in engineering (B.E. EEE) from the National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirapalli and an MBA from XLRI, Jamshedpur. He was voted “Exceller of the Year” – the outstanding graduating student by his class at business school. He received the Distinguished Alumni Award from NITT in 2008.

Srivatsa Krishna, topped India (1 out of about 500,000 candidates) in the National Civil Services Examination in 1994, was awarded President's Gold Medal and joined the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), India's top management government cadre. He was thereafter a member of the Government of Andhra Pradesh's core IT and infrastructure strategy team in India. He has worked in various positions of significant executive public leadership, most important of which was running the city of Hyderabad, the 15th largest city in the world, as the Joint Chief Administrator and District Magistrate. He was part of the leadership team which created one of Asia’s largest IT and investment clusters there which has been globally acclaimed by Goldman Sachs, Businessweek, The Economist, and TIME as a marvel of Modern India. In 2009 he led a study commissioned by the highest levels of the Government of India on infrastructure and related private equity and investments policy for the country on behalf of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), The World Bank Group.

He went on to become the first serving IAS officer to complete the MBA Program at Harvard Business School and thereafter did an Advanced Executive Program at Wharton Business School-IFC as well. While at Harvard he co-authored an independent research study on clusters, competitiveness and economic development in India with University Professor Michael Porter and on engendering disruptive economic growth with the global innovation guru Professor. Clayton Christensen. He was mentioned by the United States Infrastructure Advisory Council as one of the most powerful Infrastructure strategy thinkers in the world. The World Economic Forum at Davos honored him as one of its Top 100 Global Leaders for Tomorrow in Davos in 2003, for his achievements in creating new infrastructure and attracting new investments. (Past awardees have included Bill Gates, Tony Blair, Mukesh Ambani, and Jeff Bezos).

Srivatsa is an invited member of McKinsey and Company's Global Infrastructure Advisory Board, which is one of the most influential consulting practices in the world today and is also engaged with Narayana Hrudayalaya, Bharatidasan Institute of Management and Indian Institute of Science (CISTUP) at their respective Board levels.

More recently in the Strategy, Finance and Risk Management Vice Presidency at the World Bank in Washington D.C he was co-heading investing the World Bank's annual capital budget portfolio of about $2b, performance management, finance and budgeting and designed, financed and executed large infrastructure projects in China, India, Jordan, Sri Lanka and the Middle East etc. Working in the Middle East he led the design, creation, investment, execution and management of several infrastructure projects valued at about $75b including creation of a new island and a country for the Maldives, several toll roads, two airports, inland container depots, ports and an ultra mega power plant. He also worked on a project reshaping the course of the Arabian Canal, a $61b project, which is considered to be the single largest infrastructure project in human history to create several water front cities and living space in excess of 200m sq m.

Srivatsa writes regularly for The Economic Times, Wall Street Journal, Business Today, Financial Times, Outlook etc and is currently a PhD Research Scholar at IIT, Madras and IIM, Bangalore, jointly, in the field of infrastructure PPPs. He has consulted for NASDAQ on emerging markets strategy, United Nations, UK Government, USAID and the Conference Board in the past. He has spoken on the TED stage, Harvard Business School Centennial Summit, and World Economic Forum, Davos. He is a serious aficionado of gadgeteering, a keen student of classical music and has recently sung playback for a major Bollywood production "Shanghai", which is partly inspired by his life story.

Anup is an entrepreneurial leader.

Before joining Nexus, Anup was the Group Chief Operating Officer at WNS, a leading global IT Enabled Services (ITES) company with revenue of more than $300 million, where he was responsible for global operations comprising over 20,000 employees across 7 countries. In his 8 year tenure, Anup played a key role in transforming WNS from an early stage company into a top tier global business which witnessed rapid growth and listed on the NYSE.

Previously, Anup was a Principal with eVentures India, a pioneer in the venture capital sector in India. At eVentures, he focused on developing services and consumer start-ups many of which have become market leading companies, such as CustomerAsset (acquired by Firstsource), Makemytrip (sale to SAIF partners) and Netmagic, along with Sandeep Singhal, a co-founder of Nexus. Prior to eVentures, Anup was a Management Consultant at Booz & Company, where he worked with a several industrial companies in India.

Anup graduated at the top of his classes from both IIM, Calcutta and IIT Kharagpur.

Surojit has been a part of the founding team of Brand Capital ,managing a leadership role in Karnataka. He has been involved with 45+ media investments over the last 7 years across varied sectors ( viz – Travel, Internet, Logistics, Media, Real Estate, Retail, Consumer Durables ) in Brand Capital. He has managed multiple engagements for Brand Capital over the last 7 years since its inception,  and has worked closely with the investee companies in redefining their marketing & branding strategies which has helped  in augmenting  business goals and performance of such organizations. He spends quality time analyzing innovative business concepts by new age entrepreneurs. He also mentors promoters to help them continue build a credible brand. In addition, he has spent 18 years with several leading organizations in the country (viz Indian Hotels Co Ltd , Shriram Group )  He holds his post graduate qualification from the University of Calcutta specializing in Marketing,  Accountancy, Taxation &  an MDP from ISB in  Private Equity, Strategy, and Executional Leadership. Traversing to new destinations is his hobby.

Pravan leads cleantech private equity investments in South Asia for the International Finance Corporation, a member of the World Bank Group. IFC's cleantech investments in India include Azure Power, Applied Solar Technologies, Husk Power Systems and Attero Recycling. Prior to joining IFC, Pravan was a Principal with ORIX Venture Finance in New York and was responsible for investments in venture-backed technology companies. Pravan has also worked with Metropolitan Venture Partners, a transatlantic venture capital fund in New York, and Global Bridge Ventures, an emerging markets focused venture capital fund in San Francisco. Earlier in his career, Pravan was an investment banker at BMO Nesbitt Burns and a credit analyst at the Tokai Bank in Chicago. Pravan holds an MBA from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

Rachna holds a Bsc (honours) degree in Economics, from St. Xavier’s, Calcutta and a Post Graduate diploma in Management from IIM-A. She has worked at two outstanding firms in her 18-year career – Madura Garments (1992-99) and Indus-League Clothing Ltd. In 1999, Rachna co-promoted the venture capital funded brand-marketing firm, Indus-League Clothing Ltd. (ILCL) along with 7 other colleagues. The Future Group, India’s largest Retail group, acquired Indus-League Clothing Ltd. in 2005 and Rachna took over as CEO of Indus-League Clothing Ltd in 2008.

Manish is currently the Chairman and co-founder of Teamlease Services, India’s largest staffing and training firm. The firm now has 250 training centers and over 75,000 employees in 770 cities/ towns across India.

Earlier he co-founded India Life, an HR outsourcing company in 1996 that was acquired by Hewitt associates in 2002. Consequently he was Managing Director of Hewitt Outsourcing (Asia) in Singapore.

Manish is a member of the Prime Ministers Council on Skill Development and serves on various state and central government committees related to education, employment and employability.

Manish is an investor and board member of ICAP India (a joint venture with ICAP plc and India’s largest foreign exchange and fixed income brokerage), Gaja Capital (a private equity firm focused on the India’s domestic market) and India Insure (India’s largest institutional insurance brokerage firm).

He got his MBA from The Wharton School and is an alumni of Shriram College, Delhi and Mayo College, Ajmer.

Gaurav is a Computer Science graduate from IIT Delhi and brings almost 10 years of experience in the fields of Technology, E-Commerce and Internet Marketing.

A well known figure in the realm of start-ups, he has been an entrepreneur for almost half a decade. Before Bluestone, he served as the CEO of Chakpak, an online entertainment portal, which he co-founded in 2007. He grew Chakpak.com to over 3 Million unique users a month in less than 2 years and successfully raised two rounds of funding from Accel and Canaan Partners respectively.

Using his experience to his advantage, in this short span of time he has advised many start-ups in the fields of SEO, SEM and Product Strategies.Gaurav started his career with Tavant Technologies, a global IT services & solutions provider and subsequently worked with Amazon for around 4 years.At Amazon, he was responsible for building web products for the US E-Commerce market.

Gaurav believes that dreams can be easily fulfilled and his indomitable spirit is a source of inspiration for the team.

Mr. Silgardo is Senior Managing Partner at IIML and has over 28 years of experience across the financial services industry. Mr. Silgardo has worked on the corporate banking side of two multinational banks, namely Banque Nationale de Paris and ANZ Grindlays for over 10 years and subsequently headed Kotak Mahindra Capital Company, one of the largest domestic investment banks in India. Thereafter as Managing Director, Corporate Finance of ABN Amro and then PriceWaterhouse Coopers, he led M&A transactions with deal sizes ranging from $25 million to $500 million across sectors as diverse as telecommunications, media, fast moving consumer goods, and oil & gas. Prior to joining IIML, Mr. Silgardo set up the Investment Banking division of IndusInd Bank, one of the premier private sector banks in India. He was also involved in M&A and fund raising strategy and execution for various Hinduja group companies spanning the telecommunications, media, ITES, real estate and pharmaceutical sectors, as well as in the structuring and development of a proposed fund management business.

From June 2006, Mr Silgardo has been running the growth private equity fund which invests in rapidly growing mid sized companies across a wide range of sectors.

Mr. Silgardo holds an MBA in International Finance from University of Rochester, New York. Mr. Silgardo did his post graduate studies in Marketing from IIM Ahmedabad.

Hari Menon is the CEO of BigBasket.com,a company he co-founded in December 2011 with a vision of setting up India’s finest online food and grocery company. With operations having commenced in Bangalore, BigBasket.com plans to expand to another 10 cities over the next 3 years. BigBasket.com delivers the entire range of groceries, fresh fruits and vegetables, fresh meat, dairy products, processed foods, toiletries and personal care products. Their range has about 7000 products.

Before his entry into grocery e-tailing,Hari was the CEO of a vocational training company called IndiaSkills, a joint venture between City & Guilds, UK and the Manipal Education group. Prior to IndiaSkills, Hari co-founded Fabmall - a pioneer in internet and grocery retail.

An  aluminus of BITS-Pilani, Hari started his career with ORG Systems, subsequently moving on to work with many of the best and respected names in the country, including TVS Electronics, Wipro Infotech, Planetasia.com and Integrated Data Systems.

Sharat is responsible for all business development, sales, and marketing efforts at MobStac.

Prior to founding the company, Sharat spent over 3 years doing investment banking at Merrill Lynch in New York, where he worked in both the Corporate Finance and Leveraged Finance groups. In this role, Sharat assisted clients in deriving customized solutions to the corporate finance issues they were facing. His work spanned a diverse set of industries, including but not limited to, financial services, healthcare, retail, technology, etc., and also included executing multi-billion dollar financing and merger and acquisition transactions.

Prior to that, Sharat spent a summer on a venture capital initiative at Duke University working with entrepreneurs crafting business plans. Sharat has a Masters in Engineering Management (MEM) from Duke University, and a B. Tech in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras.

Sharat is also very passionate about politics and public governance. From October, 2008 to May, 2009 Sharat was on a break working at Janaagraha as the Head of Marketing and Communications for the very popular Jaago Re One Billion Votes Campaign, India's largest grassroots movement for voter registration to date.

Mr. Nagaraj Mylandla is the founder and Managing Director of FSS.

A banker turned entrepreneur, Mr. Mylandla is known for his expertise and vision for the Indian payments industry. He has pioneered and spearheaded the marketing and support of retail and wholesale payment solutions in India. He is credited with the implementation of transaction processing and switching solutions for over 35 banks and financial institutions in India and over 30 clients worldwide.

Prior to founding FSS, Mr. Mylandla worked with the Indian banking industry and has a CAIIB to his credit. He also had a stint with FDC in the USA and ACI in Omaha, USA.

In anticipation of the phenomenal growth and transformation of the Indian payments industry, Mr. Mylandla founded FSS in 1991.

Today FSS, under Mr. Mylandla’s visionary leadership, is the leading global payment systems company, offering business value in the areas of electronic payment, financial transaction processing solutions and services. The company is the preferred technology partner and co-innovator for several leading banks in India and global financial giants. Mr. Mylandla established FSS-ASP network FSSNeT, to provide a pan-India shared ATM network. Today, FSSNeT is one of the largest independent shared payment service providers in the region.

With over two decades of experience in the payments industry, Mr. Mylandla is focused on strengthening strategic partnerships with clients, increasing client relevance and evolving the company’s business model towards achieving strategic objectives of FSS. He also steers the global initiatives of FSS while heading the organization.

Mr. Vikram Vuppala is the Founder & CEO of a healthcare firm called NephroPlus. NephroPlus is a chain of quality kidney care clinics funded by Bessemer Venture Partners and is already a big brand name in South India. In addition to stand alone centers, NephroPlus partners with large leading Hospitals to set up and manage world class dialysis units. NephroPlus has 10 Kidney Care Clinics in South India where in they provide highest quality dialysis care in the country with patent pending innovations. NephroPlus is on track to grow to 100 centers in next 3 years across India.

Vikram is a seasoned healthcare strategy consultant with over 12 years of global healthcare industry experience. He has helped hospitals, dialysis centers, pharmacy benefit managers, healthcare distributors, consumer health, and pharmaceutical clients on various strategic issues such as business development, growth strategy, operational improvement, portfolio rationalization, redefining customer strategies, clinical trial strategy and M&A.

Prior to founding NephroPlus, Vikram was a strategy consultant at McKinsey & Company in their New Jersey office. He also founded an internal management consulting group at Abbott Laboratories helping key management on various strategic and sales force management issues.

Vikram did his Bachelors in Chemical engineering from IIT-Kharagpur, Masters in Computer Science from University of Illinois, and a full time MBA from the University of Chicago, Booth school of business.

Karthik is a Partner, heading investments in – Infrastructure, Alternate Energy and Engineering Services at Baring Private Equity Partners India and has over 10 years of experience in the engineering, manufacturing, energy and supply chain industries. Prior to joining Baring India, Karthik was a management consultant at Andersen / KPMG where he was instrumental in setting up and growing the automotive & manufacturing practice verticals. In this role, he has advised a number of clients on growth strategies, efficiency improvement & performance management. He has also led large client teams in implementation of these strategies and guided clients through changes in their organizations. An avid reader and bridge enthusiast, Karthik is a graduate in Mechanical engineering from IIT Chennai and has an MBA from IIM Bangalore.

Parag is a Director at Inventus Capital Partners, a venture firm that invests in entrepreneurs building global tech-focussed companies in India & US. He is based out of Bangalore.

Parag made a foray into venture capital after his MBA in 1993. He started off with ICICI Venture (in Bangalore) and followed that up with stints at GE Equity (in Gurgaon) and Intel Capital (in Bangalore). Parag also worked, for two years, with Genpact in a commercial role.

Parag has a B. Tech. (Mech. Engg.) from IIT, Delhi and is an MBA from IIM, Bangalore.