VCCircle

Mr Devendra Surana, a renowned Industrialist, Managing Director, Bhagyanagar India Limited and Director – Surana Ventures Limited and Surana Group of Companies. Surana Group of Companies, having a 350 Crore Turnover, manufactures Solar Photovoltaic Panels, Auto Electricals, Wind Power and Copper Products.

Mr Devendra Surana is completed B.E. (Mechanical) from Osmania University (EMCET Entrance Rank – 28) and MBA (PGDM) from Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (Chosen as the Brain of the Batch). He has presented papers and lectures at various colleges and institutes of repute like Institute of Public Enterprise, Osmania University, FAPCCI etc.

Mr Devendra Surana travelled extensively all over the world including US, Canada, Europe both east and west, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, entire South East Asia, China and Japan to participate several international fairs & attended Hanover Fair and Wire and also participated in Europa Telecom Exhibition, Budapest, Hungary; Telecom Asia-9; Asian Copper Forum at Singapore; Wire Singapore; World Trade Fair at Singapore, Intersolar Munich 2009.

Mr Devendra Surana adopted Bolarum town for community activity - started a library, Community Hall, Charitable Clinic in Bolarum and constructed and donated Surana Auditorium to Federation of Andhra Pradesh Chambers of Commerce & Industry. Mr Devendra Surana also donated a Guest House with 12 rooms in Rajasthan. Gulab Chand Rotary Hall being donated by the Surana Group.

He is a Founder President for Young Entrepreneurs Organization (YEO) and Past President for Rotary Club of Moulali/Rotary Club of Hyderabad Deccan. He is also an a sports person and he served as a Captain for Management Games, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, Captain for Chess Team, Mechanical Engineering, Osmania University,Hyderabad and Captain for Chess Team at School.

Mr Devendra Surana is unanimously elected as President of FAPCCI for 2012-2013 at its 95th Annual General Meeting held on June 15, 2012.

Karthee is Managing Director, India and Israel, and is based in Bangalore, India. Karthee has over 16 years of experience in the wireless and multimedia industries and has worked in product development and management roles at various semiconductor startups. Prior to his current role, he worked as a management consulting intern at Boston Consulting Group and as an associate at the venture capital firm, JK&B Capital.

Karthee currently manages and actively serves as a board observer for Qualcomm Ventures investments in Apalya, MapMyIndia, Kirusa, Tessolve and Waze. Karthee holds an MBA from the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago and an MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan.

Vamshi leads Apalya's efforts in Corporate Strategy and Business Development. Over the years, Vamshi has garnered a lot of respect in the Mobile TV space in India helping make Apalya synonymous to Mobile TV in India. Prior to starting Apalya, Vamshi worked at Cisco Systems in Information Technology management in the San Francisco Bay Area. Prior stints include AT&T, USA and Ernst and Young, USA

Sandeep is the co-founder of Peepul Capital. Prior to the launch of Peepul Capital in 2000, he had 10 years of experience in Strategy Consulting with PriceWaterHouse in San Francisco and with Andersen Consulting in London.

Sandeep has been one of the early participants in the rapidly evolving Indian Private Equity industry having been active for over ten years. He takes overall responsibility in defining and executing Peepul Capital's strategy. In that role he has spawned and built a number of entities as well as driven migration through their lifecycles.

Sandeep received a BS in Computer Science and Finance from Utah State University and an MBA from IMD (Switzerland).

Sudesh Menon, has led both start ups and large multinationals in India and globally. An experienced and distinguished professional with International experience, Sudesh is widely credited with pioneering the concept of sustainable community water systems in India.  Sudesh co-founded Waterlife which has grown rapidly and occupies a unique and leadership position in the Water Space.

Before coming back to India, Sudesh was country head for General Electric based in Kuala Lumpur. He is credited with some of the major strategic initiatives across Asia and bringing a solutions approach to some of the largest businesses. He was also instrumental in the start up team that brought GE Fanuc Automation into India and successfully grew the business.

Sudesh is a B.Tech from IIT, Kharagpur and holds a degree in Management.

Santanu is CEO and MD at TalentSprint, a high growth venture he co-founded in the area of professional skills development, employability, and inclusion. He drives strategy, growth and execution, and is building a high performance organization where world-class professionals can deliver exceptional value to customers and all stakeholders. The vision is to transform TalentSprint into a global leader by 2015.

From 2003-2008, Santanu served at Virtusa Corporation as Senior Vice President, Global Delivery Operations, and Head, Indian Operations. From 1999-2003, Santanu worked in Boston as Chief Technology Officer of Openpages and Viveca, a B2B technology startup. He began his career in New York at the famed IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. His work on technology spans 20 international papers and 2 United States patents.

Santanu received a B.Tech. from IIT Madras and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor where he received the prestigious Rackham Pre-doctoral Fellowship and IBM Canada Fellowship. He is a Distinguished Fellow of IDRBT (set up by the RBI), a Distinguished Fellow of the Skoch Foundation, Vice President of ITsAP, and Director of TiE Hyderabad. His views and opinion pieces have appeared in the Economic Times, Financial Express, Business Standard, Hindu Business Line, Times of India, Hindu, and BBC online.

Mr. Saldanha is a member of Blackstone’s portfolio operations group and is responsible for that group’s activities on behalf of portfolio companies of the Private Equity Group that are based in India.

Prior to joining Blackstone, Mr. Saldanha was Executive Director and a Member of the Board of The Times of India Group where he focused on helping build organizational capability, culture and competitiveness for its Newspapers, TV Channels, Internet, and Radio businesses.  Prior to that he was Managing Director of Haldia Petrochemicals Ltd.

Prior to that Mr. Saldanha was with Hindustan Lever & Unilever Plc for thirty years, spending almost ten years in Latin America.  Mr. Saldanha was Technical Director of Unilever Venezuela; and Vice-President – Supply Chain for Unilever Andina, (Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador), rising to be Chairman and CEO of Unilever Peru.  He was also a Member of the Unilever Latin America Board.

Mr. Saldanha graduated with a Mechanical Engineering Degree (BE Mech) from Pune University.  He has gained wide international experience as a Founding member of the National Board of Advt Self Regulation (Peru); a Founding Member of the National Board for e-commerce (Peru); President of the International School in Valencia, Venezuela; and a member of the Dutch-Peru and UK-Peru Chambers of Commerce.  He was a Founding President of Save the Children India, and President of the Delhi Management Association.  He is currently on the Board of Bennet Coleman and Co, (the largest media group in India), and that of Asian Electronics.

Vikram is a seasoned healthcare strategy consultant with over 12 years of global healthcare industry experience. His passion to redefine healthcare delivery in India prompted him to found NephroPlus, a chain of premium Dialysis Centers. 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. Prior to that Vikram worked for two years as a business analyst at ZS Associates, a worldwide leader in sales force management consulting.

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. He is based out of Hyderabad, India and enjoys international travel, bollywood movies, roller blading, and sky diving.

Ranjith Boyanapalli, is the Founder & CEO of buytheprice.com, the first shopping portal ever to introduce ecommerce 2.0. Launched in March 2010, Buytheprice.com has shown rapid growth and enormous acceptance thanks to its unique concept of distributing value back to the consumer and clear focus on products of leading brands in digital and consumer electronics. In his earlier stint as the Head of eTailing, eYantra, he built a unique b2bc ecommerce model that enables various corporate employees to buy company merchandise and other white goods via intranet portals, which was a huge success.An alumni of CEG, guindy and IIM Indore, He has spent close to 5 years in the ecommerce domain, and is well experienced on merchandising mix, online advertising, consumer acquisition and overall brand building strategies.

Vijay Mahajan is the Founder and Chairman of the BASIX Group. Vijay is a distinguished alumnus of both the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (1970-75) and the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (1979-81) and was a mid-career fellow at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public International Affairs, Princeton University, USA. Vijay co-founded Professional Assistance for Development Action (PRADAN) in 1983, Sa-Dhan in 1998, Andhra Pradesh Mahila Abhivrudhi Society (APMAS) in 2000 and Microfinance Institutions Network (MFIN) in 2009. In 1995, Vijay conceptualised BASIX as a “new generation livelihood promotion institution” and it was set up in mid 1996. Vijay served on the Rangarajan Committee on Financial Inclusion and the Raghuram Rajan Committee on Financial Sector Reforms. Vijay co-authored a book “The Forgotten Sector” and has written over 75 articles. Vijay serves on the Boards of major Indian development organisations and has been a member of various committees set up by Government and Regulatory institutions. Vijay is the Chair of the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), a global microfinance forum, comprising nearly 40 bilateral, multilateral and foundations in development

Sanjeev Sehrawat is Sr Director, Private Equity at ICICI Venture.

Prior to joining ICICI Venture as ‘Senior Director’, Sanjeev spent 14 years in ICICI Bank with his last assignment being the Retail Business Head (West) for the Retail Banking Group. Prior to Retail Banking Sanjeev worked in Home Finance, Retail Liabilities & Business Banking, Corporate Banking where his areas of expertise included Treasury Sales, Structured Finance, Corporate Credit Risk Management, Loan Portfolio Management and Corporate Sales.

Sanjeev is a B.Sc. (Hons.) with a Post Graduate Diploma in Management with specialization in Finance and Strategy from IIM, Bangalore.

Mudit Kapoor is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the Indian School of Business (ISB). He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Maryland, College Park. His primary research interest is in Development Economics. Some of his recent research projects are a study of Chit Funds (an indigenous finance industry in India) as an innovative access to finance for low-income households; the impact of interest rates on household consumption; and the impact of financial constraints on firm productivity.

Vish founded IMImobile in 1999 with a vision of harnessing the intellectual resources of India to develop an IPR centric technology company. While recognising the potential of the rapidly evolving mobile data space, Vish was aware that fast growth needed to keep pace with ever changing technology. Vish therefore set out to build a company which would liberate mobile operators and media companies of technological complexities thus enabling them to realize the huge revenue potential. A pioneer of the 'managed service model', IMImobile delivers turnkey technology solutions allowing customers to focus on their core business development. Today IMImobile has become one of the leading players in the Mobile Value-Added Services market. Vish has extensive experience in the technology domain and was previously involved in setting up an Indian hi-tech consumer services company in the healthcare sector. Vish is a Chartered Accountant and a Company Secretary.

Mr. Jakkampudi Adiseshaiah Chowdary has been associated with Information Technology for well over two decades now. JA, as he is popularly known, is often considered one of the chief architects of the Information Technology industry in India.

Mr. Chowdary is credited with developing the IT industry in the states of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu in his capacity as the founding Director of STPI Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai.

He was one of the prime movers in establishing the IT industry in Hyderabad and Vizag. He is one of the key architects of Hi-Tech City & Cyberabad in Hyderabad and also played a major role in founding the IIIT at Hyderabad. As a member of the IT Task Force set up by the then Chief Minister of A.P for implementing IT for the government, Mr. Chowdary ensured a healthy growth of the industry in the state.

In his long and illustrious career, Mr. Chowdary also contributed to several reputed organizations like the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), the Corporate Research & Development wing of Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL), Department of Electronics, Software Technology Parks of India (STPI), Metamor Enterprises Solutions (India), PortalPlayer Pvt Ltd & NVIDIA Graphics Pvt Ltd. He is currently with TalentSprint as its Co-founder & Executive Chairman and is also the Chairman of Monarch Infotech Services Pvt Ltd.

Recognition to his work has come by way of the Meritorious invention award from National Research & Development Corporation (NRDC) for his invention of "On-line Pollution Monitoring System" for Thermal Power Stations, the Silver Jubilee Award from the Hyderabad Management Association (HMA) for his outstanding contribution to the growth of Indian Software Industry and a special award from Hyderabad Software Exporters Association for his outstanding contribution to the IT Industry. He also received the UDYOG RATAN AWARD for the year 2007 from Delhi Telugu Academy for overall achievements and his magnificent contributions to the betterment of society in the field of IT Industry.

Dr Ramesh Babu MD FACC is Chief of Cardiology, Medwin Hospital.  Dr. Ramesh Babu founded Medwin Hospital almost 20 years ago when corporate healthcare is almost nonexistent in the country.

Dr Ramesh Babu brings in 22 years of expertise in clinical medicine, entrepreneurship, administration and clinical research. He did his post graduation in Internal Medicine, postdoctoral fellowship in Cardiology from Post Graduate Institute, Chandigarh, and Interventional Cardiology Fellowship from University of Alabama, Birmingham, Alabama, USA.

He had an excellent academic career and he was the Best Outgoing Student from the University.  He is a life member of Association of Physician's of India, Cardiological Society of India and Fellow of the American College of Cardiology. Besides being an active and leading practicing Cardiologist, he is one of the leading Principal Investigators for global clinical trials in Cardiology in the country.  He is also the President of TiE Hyderabad Chapter and Founding chairperson of the Hyderabad 10 K Run Foundation.  

With a view of ploughing back to the society, he has started major initiatives like Prevent India, Prevent NCD Foundation and the Health promotion Awareness Project India for the prevention of cardiovascular diseases and other Noncommuciable diseases.

Sofi Bergkvist is the Managing Director of ACCESS Health International, India. An economist with a focus on efficient health care delivery, Sofi has a Master of Science degree in International Economics from Stockholm School of Economics and has studied at the MBA program at McGill in Montreal. She manages the health care initiative collaborating with the Centre for Emerging Markets Solutions (CEMS) has a special interest in health finance. Prior to this, Sofi was a health care analyst for a private equity firm with investments in India. She has also worked in management consulting on outsourcing of public sector services, with UNFPA in Malawi and carried out a cost-effectiveness study of the national Road Map for reduced maternal mortality. Sofi has also worked as an advisor to the European Commission's Delegation to the United Nations on sustainable development issues.

Abhay Deshpande , Founder and CEO of Reasoning ,  is a serial entrepreneur who is well known in the Indian start-up circuit as the e-commerce enabler. With over 14 years of experience in the Indian e-commerce business Abhay today heads Reasoning, the company behind India's No. 1 e-commerce platform, MartJack.

Deepak I. Shahdadpuri is the Founder and Managing Director of BCP Advisors, advisors to the Beacon India Private Equity Fund ($320M under management including co-investment pool).  Prior to that he was Managing Director at private equity fund GEM India Advisors, and worked with Reuters Venture Capital and Bain & Company. Deepak is a FCA (ICAEW) and qualified as a UK Chartered Accountant with Ernst & Young.   Deepak currently serves on the board of Baker's Circle, Bhayana Builders, Impresario, Indostar Capital Finance, Sula Wines, Saffronart, Vatika and Trak.  Deepak also serves on the Advisory Board of Dawn Capital, a UK focused VC Fund. Deepak has an MBA with distinction from INSEAD (Dean's List) and an LLB (Hons) from King's College London.

Sunil is a Director at Ascent Capital Advisors. Ascent Capital is one of the oldest and most experienced Private Equity teams in India and manages a corpus of around $575 mn over three private equity funds.

Sunil has considerable experience in financial markets having worked as an investment professional and fund manager both in Indian public and private markets for almost two decades. He  has been with Ascent Capital since Sept 2003, where he has been associated with several young and fast growing businesses at the Board level dealing with strategic, financial and general management issues.

Sunil's earlier stint as a  Principal Consultant at Infosys Technologies has given him international experience in client interactions and IT business consulting in the financial services domain. Prior to that he had worked close to a decade with Unit Trust Of India across investment management functions spanning credit and equity markets in India.

Sunil holds a B.Tech degree in Mechanical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai and a Post Graduate Degree in Management from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

Sateesh Andra is a Managing Partner at Ventureast, primarily overseeing the Ventureast Tenet Fund. He has worked in or with venture-backed technology start-ups in U.S/India for the past fourteen years.

Prior to joining Ventureast, Sateesh was Venture Partner and was one of the founding members of Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ), India. He helped launch Hyderabad Angels, a platform to provide seed capital to start ups. As a private investor earlier, Sateesh has also invested in early stage American and Indian venture capital funds.

He is actively involved with TiE-ISB Connect - an annual networking event for entrepreneurs and investors, TiE Buddies - focused on teaching of entrepreneurship and business to children.

Sateesh has a B.Tech degree from JNTU, Hyderabad, and a Master's in Electrical Engineering from SIUE.

A Technocrat par excellence , Mr,Suresh Chukkapalli, the founder Chairman of Phoenix is a visionary who started his career as an entrepreneur in the field of Automobiles turned Industrialist by setting up industries in the field of Steel, Cement and Power as part of founder Director of the US $1billion Lanco Group.

Mr.Suresh Chukkapalli has vast experience in the fields of Real estate , Power and Mines. He established Phoenix Group to develop land mark projects in India and abroad. Under the able guidance of Mr.Suresh Chukkapalli Phoenix grew from fold to folds. He injected a culture of self belief and confidence in the people working for Phoenix. He does things differently which created many a mile stones by Phoenix.

With his versatile domain knowledge in the fields of Power, Mines and Agro , Mr.Suresh Chukkapalli is also venturing into establishing major Power projects and mines.

Mr.Suresh Chukkapalli is a well known personality in all the trade fields and is member of FAPCI, FICCI, and ASSOCHAM . He is also a Director on the Board of Sahara Asset Management Company Pvt. Ltd.

As a Philanthropist , Mr.Suresh Chukkapalli is Managing Trustee of Lanco Institute of General Humanitarian Trust and also founder of Shri.Chukkapalli Shanker Rao Charitable Trust , Phoenix Foundation and established Hyderabad Chapter of “Make a Wish Foundation” .

Aluri Rao is a Managing Director of Morgan Stanley. Mr. Rao joined MSPE Asia in 2008 and focuses on the group’s private equity transactions in India. Prior to joining Morgan Stanley, Mr. Rao was Director of Private Equity at ICICI Venture and one of the senior private equity professionals on the team. He has led numerous landmark private equity investments particularly in the healthcare sector. At ICICI Venture, Mr. Rao led transactions including the buyout of allied businesses of Ranbaxy Laboratories, the tie-up with Dr Reddy’s, roll ups such as Iven Medicare and Swiss Biosciences as well as growth investments in Avesthagen, Arch Pharma, Malladi, Bharat Biotech, Metropolis and Onconova amongst others. He served as a member of the board on several of these portfolio companies. He brings with him over  20  years of organizational building and corporate experience in India, UK and USA. Mr. Rao is Indian and is based in Hyderabad. He is a graduate of BITS, Pilani, and a Sloan Fellow from the London Business School.

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.

Konda Vishweshwar Reddy is an entrepreneur with an engineering background. He had spent more than a decade in United States, working initially as a  Design engineer in a defense electronics firm in United States. He later promoted Reddy Electronic Corporation which manufactures electronic subassemblies for Defense & Aerospace industry. In 1991, he sold his business and returned back to India.Back in India, he founded two technology and innovation related businesses and has been a serial entrepreneur ever since. He divested the major stake in Health Care India to the Apollo hospital group. He sold the major IPR’s of Citadel Research and Solutions (formerly known as Citadel Health) to GE and Wipro. He has been MD & CEO of GE-MSIT (1999-2003) and MD & CEO of Wipro-HCIT (2003-2005). With his deep knowledge in Healthcare Informatics, he was a significant contributor to Health Unite, the Government of India project on Standardization in Health Informatics.

Mr. Reddy is currently the Managing Director of Citadel Research and Solutions, a company in which he holds significant stake. Citadel owns a major stake in Medvarsity, an Apollo- NIIT joint venture company. He has also invested and acquired a major stake in Emedlife, a Delhi based Insurance broking firm from the Dabur group. Mr. Reddy is an angel investor in startup companies including Sristek, a CRO and Adventure trails India. Mr. Reddy is also a founder Director of Apollo Health Street – an IT, ITES Company. His other businesses include real-estate, algorithmic trading, mechanical design and  retirement homes.

Anjuli Sivaramakrishnan is the Partner in charge of the transactional and private equity practice of the Firm. Her practice areas include banking, finance, private equity, mergers, acquisitions, foreign investments and securities laws including structured finance, cross-border financing, project finance, asset backed securitization, regulatory approvals and debt restructuring.

Anjuli has vast experience and expertise in negotiating and preparing project finance documents, structured banking transactions, external commercial borrowings, derivatives, trade credits, syndicated loans, corporate and retail banking documentation. She has advised banks, non baking finance companies and housing finance companies on regulatory and compliance issues and all aspects of structuring and documentation of funded and non funded facilities, creation and enforcement of security interest. She advises clients on issues relating to banking law, foreign direct investment policy, foreign exchange laws and securities law.  Anjuli has hands on experience in conducting investor due diligences, business restructuring, compliance audits.

Anjuli has substantial experience advising clients from diverse sectors including but not limited to automotive, aviation, energy, financial services, private equity, infrastructure, oil and gas, pharmaceutical real estate and retail. 

Anjuli also acts as the lead counsel in India for several multinational companies including numerous Fortune 500 companies such as Areva Renewables, Asian Development Bank, Indian Oil Corporation, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, Wells Fargo Bank and Weston Solutions Inc. on a host of Indian law issues.

Anjuli regularly authors articles and makes presentations on diverse topics at various fora both internationally and in India.