Speaker Bio:  

Adit Parekh
Investment Manager, Blume Ventures
Adit has over 5 years of entrepreneurial, technology, management consulting and venture capital experience. He spent 4 years working with start-ups and SMEs in the Biotech, Telecom, Logistics and Travel space. The Biotech firm in the bay-area was angel backed while the Telecom firm in Bangalore got acquired by SemIndia. He was part of the investment team at Aavishkaar, a social venture capital fund along with currently being a member of the Mumbai Angels, one of India&rsquot;s leading angel groups. Adit pursued his Bachelors in Electrical Engineering from Brigham Young University and completed his MBA from Goa Institute of Management. He is an avid trekker and backpacker and has spent considerable time in the Himalayas.
Robin Alter
CEO, Kreeda Games India
He co-founded Kreeda Games India, an online game publisher in Bombay India which license, operate and localize massive-multiplayer online games. As CEO, he also leads Professional Services, Sales, Marketing and Game Design. Previously, he founded Descriptive, a Management Consulting Firm focused on building technology blueprints for Media and Telecom companies across Asia whose clients included Telstra, China Telcom, Optus, SingTel, Reliance, MTNL and others. He has been consulting in the Content Management and Content Architecture Space for the last 8 years and has worked at IBM as an Sales & Marketing Manager, Analyst, and Enterprise Systems Architect. Has spent 6 Years in technology implementation in K-12 Education and 10 in Entertainment, Telecom and Finance industries. He is a B.S graduate of Carnegie Mellon University.
Sandeep Goyal
IAN Angel Investor & Chairman & Co Founder, Dentsu India
Sandeep Goyal is the Group Chairman & JV partner of Dentsu India. A well-known name in the world of media & communication, Sandeep was earlier Group CEO of Zee Telefilms, and before that President of Rediffusion DY & R. In 2009, Goyal launched www.lastminuteinventory.com, the world’s first online media trading exchange, in partnership with Dentsu, Star TV, Zee Group & TOI Group. An MBA (FMS Delhi ’84), Sandeep is an Honors graduate in English literature (gold medalist) from Panjab University. Sandeep has been on the governing bodies of the Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI), Indian Broadcasting Foundation (IBF), Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI), Media Research Users Council (MRUC) over the years. The first Indian on the global jury of the Emmy Awards (2002), Sandeep himself, through his agency, has won a number of accolades at the New York Festival, Cannes Advertising Awards, One Show and London Advertising Festival. A regular contributor to The Economic Times, Financial Express, Business Standard, Business World and other publications of repute, Sandeep is a much sought after speaker in industry forums.
Karan Mohla
Senior Associate, IDG Ventures India
Karan has over 7 years of industry experience including 2 years of investing experience. Prior to joining IDG Ventures India, Karan worked with QVT Finance LP, a US based hedge fund and was a founding member of their Asia-Pacific practice. Karan earlier worked in the technology banking group at Jefferies & Company (formerly Broadview International) in Silicon Valley, where he helped several emerging technology companies in capital raising, mergers & acquisitions as well as strategic partnerships. Later, he helped start the India office where he advised and executed financing strategies for companies in the Technology, Media, Telecom, CleanTech and Education sectors. He has successfully completed over 20 transactions covering M&A and capital raising for corporates across India and the US. Karan holds a Bachelors degree in Business Administration (BBA) from the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and an EMBA from INSEAD, where he was the youngest graduate in the program&rsquot;s history.
Amit Patni
Amit Patni, IAN Angel Investor & Co-founder and Chairman, Nirvana Venture Advisors
Amit is a promoter shareholder of Patni Computers, exited stake at value of $1.2 billion. He has over 22 years experience in Technology, Software & Projects. He is the founding MD of Patni Projects; incubated power projects aggregating 1000 mw. He is the founder & MD Raay Software, set-up healthcare software product co. and exited IP. He is an MBA from Babson College, Boston, USA.
Vikhyat S
Co-Founder, Groffr.com
Vikhyat is the co-founder of GrOffr.com and Verkko.in. Groffr.com is the first group buying site internationally to focus on planned purchases like real estate, cars, heavy white goods etc and has been funded by the Indian Angel Network. Verkko.in is a cluster of closed-community alumni networks and acts as a pseudo job portal for premium management institute graduates. He has spent 4 years funding real estate companies (including residential, commercial and warehousing) while he was a part of Kotak Real Estate Private Equity Fund (an $ 800mn domestic and international fund dedicated to real estate venture capital) He is a computer science graduate with a patent and 7 published papers (international journals) in his name. He is also an MBA from IIM Kozhikode.
Alok Mittal
Managing Director, Canaan India
With a broad range of hands-on experience founding, funding and supporting early-stage technology companies, Alok Mittal joined Canaan India in March 2006. Alok focuses on investments in digital media and mobile companies, as well as innovators in managed software services and other IT enabled businesses. Prior to joining the venture industry, Alok co-founded JobsAhead.com, a leading web-based recruitment business, which was acquired by Monster.com, the global leader in online recruitment. He also brings strong Telecom experience to Canaan having worked for Hughes Software Systems prior to that. Alok is also a co-founder of Indian Angel Network, and on the board of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) in Delhi. During the course of his association with Canaan India, he advised Canaan Partners in their investment in Bharat Matrimony, iYogi, Cellcast, UnitedLex, Chakpak and MotorExchange. Alok earned a BE in computer science and engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and a MS in computer science from UC Berkeley.
Mahesh Murthy
Founder and CEO, Pinstorm
Mahesh Murthy has spent 27 years helping large brands with marketing counsel and startups with funding.17 of those have been in the online world. After dropping out of college, Mahesh sold vacuum cleaners door to door, worked with Grey in India and Ogilvy in Hong Kong. He then moved to a Silicon Valley firm, CKS Partners as Creative Director, GM and Partner – where he helped create the first commercial version of Yahoo and the Earth’s Biggest Bookstore campaign for Amazon.com. Mahesh returned to India to run Channel V, a rival to MTV, till its sale to Newscorp in 2000 and then founded Passionfund to invest in startups. Some of his investees include Geodesic, Compassbox, Inkfruit, Cypherix, Indiaproperties, EBS, Doolally, and Webdunia. While running search campaigns for his favourite charity in 2003, Mahesh believed there was a need for a performance-driven digital brand management firm - and set up Pinstorm in Bombay. Mahesh has a passion for early-stage investing and set up Seedfund, today a leading early-stage venture capital fund in India. Seedfund already has 14 investments, including Carwale, RedBus, AFAQs and Vaatsalya. Mahesh speaks at conferences around the world on marketing, digital brand management and entrepreneurship.
Rahul Chowdri
Vice President, Helion Ventures
Prior to joining Helion in 2007, Rahul Chowdhri had 9 years of experience working in strategy consulting, business planning, software product management and project execution roles in India and US. Rahul was a Group Program Manager at Microsoft India. Between 2005 and early 2007, Rahul led the Microsoft Dynamics product planning and Office Live program management team. At Microsoft, Rahul also helped develop business strategy to build a web and mobile based business targeted towards Indian small businesses. Prior to this, Rahul was an Associate Director at marketRx Inc., based out of New Jersey. At marketRx, Rahul was involved in business planning & development, running operations as well as managing the product for market research focused business unit. Before joining marketRx, Rahul was a Senior Product Manager at i2 Technologies in Dallas. At i2, Rahul managed product features and handled key customer accounts for Distributed Order Management & Event Management products.Between 1998 and late 2000, Rahul was a Management Consultant at Boston Consulting Group in India.
Samir Kumar
Managing Director, Inventus Capital
Samir has been an early-stage venture investor in India since 2001. Prior to co-founding Inventus, along with Kanwal Rekhi and another partner, Samir led the India venture investing team for Acer Technology Ventures, where he made early-stage investments in the technology space. Prior to his venture capital career, Samir spent 15+ years in the IT industry in India in various sales, marketing and product management roles. He started his working career with Computer Point in 1986, before moving onto Wipro Infotech in 1988, where he spent 10+ years. Samir then spent 2 ½ years with Planetasia from 1999-2001. Samir is an active Charter Member of Tie Bangalore, where he has been elected to the Governing Body. Samir earned his B.Tech from IIT-Bombay in 1984 and an MBA from IIM, Bangalore in 1986, where he was awarded the Best All-Round Outgoing student.
Sameer Brij Verma
Vice President , Nexus Venture Partners
Sameer has several years of investing and operational experience in India and US. Prior to joining Nexus, Sameer was a founding team member at Reliance Ventures where he was instrumental in developing the strategy and execution of the firm mandate to invest in cutting edge technology startups. While at Reliance Ventures, Sameer led investments into many innovative companies including Tessolve Semiconductor, Stoke, E-Band Communications, Wellspring Healthcare, Reverse Logistics / Greendust and One97 Communications. Sameer holds a BS in Computer Engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago where he was an International scholar and a Founders scholar. He has been associated with EastAngels, Indian Microelectronics Academy and UK India Business Council: Next Generation Network as an advisory board member.
Shiv Chaudhary
Senior Associate, NVP India
Shiv serves as an advisor on growth equity investments in Indian companies across a wide range of sectors at NVP. Before joining NVP India in 2009, Shiv worked at Morgan Stanley&rsquot;s Investment Banking Division where he specialized in M&A and corporate advisory work for a variety of companies in the financial services, healthcare, infrastructure, media, real estate and consumer sectors. Prior to Morgan Stanley, Shiv held positions at Black Arrow Capital Management, LLC, a global equity long-short Asia focused hedge fund, Franklin Templeton Investments and Prudential ICICI Asset Management Company.
Viswanath Ramachandran
Founding Exec & Chief Technology Officer, Webaroo (SMS Gup Shup)
Vishy leads the development, testing and deployment of Webaroos software products and services. Prior to Webaroo, he worked in various engineering and management roles at Netscape,Siebel and Digeo. Vishy has a Masters and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Brown University and a Bachelors degree in Computer Science from IIT, Bombay. His Ph.D. research has been published in international journals and conferences and his prior work in the industry has been granted patents.
Ashwin Raguraman
Vice President, India Innovation Fund
Ashwin Raguraman is Vice President, India Innovation Fund, an early stage venture capital fund supporting innovative start-ups in the ICT and Life Science & healthcare sectors. In his earlier role at NASSCOM, Ashwin headed the Innovation Initiative and was entrusted with a mandate to increase innovation in the Indian Information Technology Industry. Apart from playing an instrumental role in the creation and operationalization of the India Innovation Fund, he was also responsible for the creation of a Special Interest Group on Embedded Systems and an Auto Component-Information Technology cluster. In a career spanning over 11 years, Ashwin has also played business and operational roles at Wipro Technologies and Maersk, Singapore. Ashwin has been a member of a Government committee, the SIP-EIT committee to evaluate start-ups for providing funding for International patents and the CII committee on Security and Imaging. By education, he holds degrees in Mechanical Engineering and a masters in business studies.
Atul Phadnis
Founder, Chief Executive, What's-On-India
A Digital Television Specialist & Entrepreneur with more than 15 years of experience in Advertising and Television. Currently in an Entrepreneurial venture in partnership with Sequoia Capital & Nexus VP to create India&rsquot;s largest Consumer TV Guidance and EPG powerhouse in a swiftly transforming and digitalizing TV industry environment. The What&rsquot;s-On-India company has launched India&rsquot;s first consumer TV Guidance satellite channel in 2010 on Cable and DTH as well as an EPG Metadata Content business that powers more than 20 million set-top-boxes across DTH, Cable & IPTV. Rated among the &rsquot;Top 5 Hottest Start-ups to watch in 2010&rsquot; by FORBES. Also, voted among &rsquot;Top 10 Young Turks of 2010&rsquot; by CNBC-TV18. Prior to this entrepreneurial venture - had a successful career in Advertising (Rediffusion-DYR, MindShare, Starcom Worldwide) and Television Ratings (at TAM India).
Ashish Bhatnagar
Co-Founder & CTO, mydala
Prior to co-founding mydala.com, Ashish was Director Engineering for ibibo.com where he was one of the founding members. He was responsible for the product architecture and was a core team member in defining the overall vision and strategy for the business. Prior to ibibo, Ashish worked as Head of procurement Automation for Bechtel, the world&rsquot;s leading EPC Company. While at Bechtel, he headed large complex procurement automation over web environment and on client server technology. From 2002-2005, he was a Senior Project Manager with IIS , where he was heading large size complex Government projects. Prior to that, Ashish worked with HCL Technologies and was involved in building and architecting customized product solution for various clients in the field of Web and Client server. From 1997-2000 Ashish worked with Venture Infotek where he designed solution for Credit Card Manufacturing system and implemented it for various clients. Ashish did his Bachelors in Engineering (Electronics) from Delhi College of Engineering and has also done his Master in Computer Applications and Business Administration . He has also done various certifications as Microsoft Solution Provider, Six Sigma Yellow Belt Certification and training from Harvard Business School.