Speakers - Mobile Applications Conference

Speaker Bio:

Arvind Rao

Chairman,CEO,Co-founder, OnMobile

Arvind Rao is the Co-founder and CEO of OnMobile Global. With his passion & motivation, Arvind has transformed OnMobile from a start-up with big dreams to the No.1 Telecom VAS player in India. He plays an instrumental role in forging new partnerships with telecom, media & corporate customers, conceiving new business models, identifying and negotiating inorganic growth opportunities. Prior to OnMobile, he played many important roles including being Managing Director of Technology investments at Gilbert Global Equity Partners, New York, a Principal with the Chatterjee Group, an affiliate of Soros Fund Management and was also at McKinsey & Co, specializing in IT, telecom and electronics sector. Arvind holds a B.Tech from IIT, Mumbai and MS from University of Wisconsin-Madison, he did his MBA in Finance from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and has more than 20 years of global experience in the wireless telecommunications, private equity, venture capital, and emerging market sectors.

Beerud Sheth

Co-Founder and CEO, Webaroo(Smsgupshup.com)

Beerud is a co-founder of Webaroo. Prior to Webaroo, Beerud founded Elance, the pioneer of the world&rsquot;s largest online services marketplace. He played various leadership roles at different stages of the company&rsquot;s growth, including developing product and business strategies, product management, marketing & business development, and remains on the board of directors. Prior to founding Elance, Beerud worked in the financial services industry; modeling, structuring, and trading fixed income securities and derivatives at Merrill Lynch and before that at Citicorp Securities. His graduate research, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology&rsquot;s Media Lab, involved developing autonomous learning software agents for personalized news filtering.Beerud earned an M.S. in computer science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology & a B.Tech in Computer Science IIT Bombay, where he was awarded the Institute Silver Medal.

Sandeep Singhal

Managing Director, Nexus India Capital Advisors

Sandeep Singhal co-founded Nexus in 2006 along with other successful entrepreneurs with prior investing experience. Prior to Nexus, Sandeep was Co-founder & CEO of Medusind Solutions where he is currently a Board member. He was also Co-founder & Managing Director of eVentures India. He has held senior roles at McKinsey & Company, Digital Equipment and EDA Systems. Sandeep holds an MBA from The Wharton School with a dual Major in Finance and Marketing, and a BS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. He is on the Board of TiE Mumbai, and is actively involved with the Entrepreneurs Organization and the Wharton and Stanford India Alumni Associations.

Nitin Bhandari

AVP - New Products and Partnerships, Vodafone

Nitin Bhandari is Associate Vice President at Vodafone India Limited. In his current role, he is responsible for driving the development of new products & partnerships for the Enterprise segment. His current focus includes M2M, Cloud, Mobility and Hosted Product Ecosystems. Nitin specializes in new product conceptualization, operating models, technology trending and benchmarking paradigms. Nitin has spoken at a number of industry events across Asia, Europe and America. He is widely quoted in industry publications. In the past, he co-authored “GB924 - Service Model Framework” published by the TeleManagement Forum. He was also the contributing editor of “Telecom Billing Dictionary” published by the Althos Publishing. Prior to Vodafone, Nitin held the position of AVP at Frog Design where he was responsible for managing the Innovation strategy practice for the APAC region. Earlier, he worked as Consulting Partner at Wipro Technologies where he was responsible for the Business Advisory practice for the Telecoms & Media industry vertical. Nitin holds a B.Tech (Honours) in Computer Science and Engineering from the Institute of Technology-BHU.

Pratick Thakrar

Founder and Managing Director, Imagine Worldwide

Pratick founded Imagine Worldwide as a leading sales and marketing company for emerging platforms. Pratick was previously the global digital lead at Mediaedge:cia running both Sony Ericsson and Ericsson and global project director at Starcom MediaVest for UBS. Prior to Starcom, he worked across Asia Pacific, including Australia’s leading radio group – Austereo, Turner Broadcasting and New Corporation. He began his career at ITV in the early 90’s. In a Digital career spanning some 17 years, across 4 mediums and numerous markets, he offers invaluable experience to clients who dare to differentiate their brand via digital channels.

Rajat Kulshrestha

CEO, India & Middle East, PlayUp

Rajat, an indian-australian, is a distinguished entrepreneurial leader and technologist with extensive hands-on experience across a wide array of senior management roles in Asia Pacific. With a background in aerospace engineering and theoretical physics, he brings immense intellectual rigor to his management style. Prior to joining PlayUp, Rajat worked as the Chief Online Architect for one of the largest media companies in the Australia & NZ region. Earlier, he was the CTO for a couple of successful technology startups. He also led the Technology & Research for Microsoft (ANZ) as the National Technology Officer and headed Microsoft Research (MSR) in the region. In Dec 2008, Rajat moved to India to run the Technology and Operations for the Indian subsidiary of PlayUp, and is now playing an instrumental role in building and sustaining the company’s progress as the CEO for Indian Sub-Continent & Middle East Business.

Aakrit Vaish

Business Operations Director & MD, India, Flurry

At Flurry, Aakrit is Managing Director, India, recently establishing an office in Mumbai. He oversees all business activities for the company in India, including worldwide advertising operations, business analysis, corporate forecasting and the company&rsquot;s customer center. His primary responsibility in this role is to maximize overall revenue for the company across its portfolio of advertising products by creating monetization and user acquisition strategies for iOS and Android application developers, the company&rsquot;s core customer-base. He regularly analyzes market and platform trends using Flurry&rsquot;s data set, which tracks more than three times the data volume of Twitter. Prior to Flurry, Aakrit worked as a Strategy Consultant for Deloitte Consulting, serving clients in the public sector. Aakrit has a BS in Industrial Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Ninad Chhaya

COO, Playcaso

An entrepreneur and an avid gamer at heart, Ninad has 16 years of experience in the interactive media space with more than 13 years in the field of gaming. At Playcaso, Ninad is the Chief Operating Officer and is responsible for overseeing complete operations and driving Playcaso&rsquot;s growth strategy to establish itself as a developer and publisher of global repute. Prior to setting up Playcaso, Ninad was the Executive Vice President at Jump Games, a Reliance Entertainment Ltd. venture, and has been instrumental in building the organization into a global brand. Ninad was the Creative Director and Co-founder of Indiagames Ltd. and played a key role in building the organization to become a leading global mobile game publisher in its early days. Ninad has extensive experience in creating and publishing games across platforms like PC, Online, Wireless including emerging platforms like iOS, Android, etc. Ninad is affiliated with associations like the NASSCOM Animation and Gaming Forum (NAGFO) and the FICCI Animation and Gaming Forum to help promote the gaming culture and developing the gaming industry in India.

Karthik Krishnaraj

Co-founder & Director, Arkenea Technologies

Karthik has over 16 years of experience in the area of customer acquisition, retention and growth programs. He joined Ogilvy advertising as a Trainee and worked for five years before moving on to the corporate world, where he has demonstrated strong skills in designing creative programmes that has produced high impact on the target audience and achieve the business objectives and enhance bottom-line for corporates. He has also played a pivot role in behavior change management among sales force. Karthik has led a team of consultants for developing analytics-based strategies for designing online and mobile based marketing campaigns for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) programmes for companies in the Financial Services, FMCG and Retail verticals. He is now a co-founder at Arkenea Technologies, which specializes in mobile solutions for Corporates and SMEs across US, UK and India.

Narayan Babu

CEO, Dexetra

Narayan is the founding CEO at Dexetra which has created the Android Market chart topper Iris app and Friday (app). He has been a technophile for quite a long time and has built most of the architecture for Friday and Iris. Running Dexetra for around 18 months, he has also got a fair taste of entrepreneurship, and an insight on how to (and not to) run a product company in India. After completing his B. Tech Computer Science from MG University, he worked with Bosch, in the Blaupunkt division for around 3 years, before taking the plunge.

Rakesh Deshmukh

Co-founder and CEO, MoFirst Solutions

Rakesh Deshmukh is the Co-founder and CEO of MoFirst. Under his leadership, the company has launched country’s first mobile trading platform. He got patent pending solution in mobile payments and developed first mobile QR code based payment solution. He is member of Asia Society and holds a BTech from IIT Bombay.

Kunal Lagwankar

Co-founder, NOVIX Technologies

Kunal Lagwankar is the Co-founder of Novix Technologies. A company for creating innovative solutions for Mobile and Internet Video Streaming. NOVIX was among the first companies to demonstrate LIVE TV streaming over GPRS network and has deployed Internet Video Streaming Solutions for many organizations. He is a graduate from VJTI, Mumbai

Girish Dhakephalkar

Founder & CEO, Shoonya Game Technologies

Girish Dhakephalkar is the Founder& CEO of Shoonya Game Technologies, a company focused on creating innovative interactive 3D audio-visual experiences. Shoonya’s ‘Krishna 3D&rsquot;, an interactive 3D virtual temple for the iOS platform was voted as one of the Top Ten Apps for India by Intel and YourStory.in. Girish holds a M.Sc in Computer Games Technology from the University of Abertay and has worked at Realtime Worlds in Scotland on the MMOG APB.

Anil Joshi

Head Operations, Mumbai Angels

Anil heads the operations at Mumbai Angels, a leading Angel Investment forum in India. Anil’s professional experience includes involvement in corporate management functions in medium and large organizations, investment in startups, project management, joint ventures and business development. He began his career at Century Rayon, a B.K. Birla Group Company, at the shop floor and moved on to sales to head the Branch Office after receiving his MBA degree. He then moved to Business Access India Pvt. Ltd., specializing in consulting services to Scandinavian companies from diverse industrial sectors to establish their presence in Asian markets. More recently, Anil worked at Transasia Biomedical Ltd., India’s largest manufacturer and Exporter of biomedical equipment and Reagents for Medical Diagnostic applications. Before Mumbai Angels, Anil led new projects and startup investments at Artheon Group, a diversified business group focusing on Telecom, IT & Energy. Apart from Angel investments, Anil closely works with premium Indian institutes as mentor and has been involved with many start-ups and incubatees.

Ritesh Banglani

Vice President, Helion Venture Partners

Ritesh Banglani has 11 years of experience in venture capital, business planning, product management and field operation roles in India and abroad. Prior to joining Helion in 2010, Ritesh was a Vice President at IDG Ventures India, where he focused on early stage investments in internet, mobile and digital media businesses. He was a director on the board of Ozone Media, and an observer on the board of Kreeda Games. Prior to this, Ritesh was a Product Manager at Adobe Systems, where he managed the Shockwave and Contribute product lines, and focused on developing new monetization models for digital media platforms. Previously he managed the mobile games business of July Systems, a venture-funded mobile VAS company, and deployed popular mobile games offerings with US and European mobile operators.Between 1999 and 2003, Ritesh held various field operation roles with Synopsys Inc. in India, Singapore and Europe.Ritesh holds a B.Tech in Electrical Engineering from IIT Delhi and an MBA from INSEAD. He serves as Guest Faculty at IIM Bangalore, where he teaches Innovation Strategy.

Karan Mohla

Senior Associate, IDG Ventures India

Karan has several years of experience across investing and finance in India and the US. At IDG Ventures, he serves on the Board of Vserv and Kreeda Games. Karan previously worked in the investment banking at Jefferies & Co in Silicon Valley, where he advised emerging technology companies in capital raising, M&A as well as strategic partnerships. He was also a founding member of the Jefferies India office in 2006. Karan later worked with QVT Finance, a US hedge fund and was a founding member of their Asia-Pacific practice. He has successfully completed over 20 transactions covering M&A and capital raising for companies including Nokia, HP, NDTV, CheckPoint, Adani and Bennett Coleman. Karan holds a BBA from the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and an MBA from INSEAD.

Vaibhav Gupta

VP Technology , Airpush

Vaibhav is Vice President of Technology at Airpush where he manages the engineering team. Prior to Airpush, Vai was a Senior Developer at America Online where he launched various advertiser/publisher portals to buy/sell AOL advertisement inventory. Vai holds a Bachelors of Technology with specialization in electronics from BIT India. He is also currently pursuing a Master of Business Administration from IIM Calcutta. Born and raised in Bangalore, Vai is a web-junkie who’s passionate about emerging technologies. He won the "Most Viral Hack" Award from Yahoo, and is an active member of development groups like TopCoder and CodeJam.

Leo Bian

VP Marketing, UCWeb India

Mr.Bian has earned good experience in internet, telecom and IT industry, prior to UCWeb India, he worked at ZTE Telecom India and was responsible for mobile application, software and VAS business

Saptarshi Roy Chaudhury

VP Marketing, [x]cube LABS

With over 10 years of experience, Saptarshi is a digital marketing native, heading global marketing initiatives for [x]cube LABS, one of the leading mobile app development and consulting firm. While primarily busy with expanding [x]cubes business, Saptarshi also works with some of of the [x]cubes clients to help them market their mobile apps or provide consulting services on how mobile can be leveraged as a marketing channel. Prior to [x]cube, Saptarshi was heading search marketing for Ecselis, a Havas Digital agency. He has also been a speaker at various national and International conferences including Mobile Entertainment Summit, Los Angeles, iPhone Developers Meetup, Dallas, Search Camp India etc.

Badri Sanjeevi

COO, Mauj Mobile

Badri Sanjeevi is the Chief Operating Officer at Mauj Mobile and is the Group CFO of People Group. He brings with him over 17 years of extensive experience across fields like Strategic Business Planning, M&A Advisory, and deep functional experience in finance. Badri has acquired his bachelor’s degree from Madras University in 1994, where he was awarded the Best Student title. He is a Chartered Accountant, having cleared all exams with All India merit list and a Cost Accountant. He has also completed his MBA from the reputed INSEAD Business School in Fontainbleau, France. Badri started his career with Arthur Andersen in India and went on to work with leading organisations in UK like Deutsche Bank, T-Mobile and Deloitte MCS Ltd. He returned to India in 2008 to join People Group.