SPEAKER'S BIO

 

Naren Nachiappan comes to Jivox from Wind River (NASDAQ:WIND), where as Vice President and General Manager, he was a part of the executive team responsible for reigniting growth and adding over $100 million to the top line in three years. Naren was directly responsible for taking the Device Management business from a concept to a multimillion-dollar revenue rate in under 9 quarters. At Wind River, Naren established the company’s first product development team in Bangalore, India, with a zero percent attrition rate through his three-year tenure. Earlier in his career, as CEO of Proceler and as Senior VP at VenturCom (acquired by Citrix), he was responsible for pioneering several industry innovations such as “the first support for automated application acceleration using hybrid SoCs” which resulted in Proceler’s nomination for the 2001 MPR Analysts choice award, and the first flight-essential certified UNIX for avionics applications on the Boeing 777. Naren graduated cum laude from Harvard University and holds an MBA from the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business.

 

 

Rajeev has been fortunate of having a great blend of Sales, Marketing and traditional & New Media Communications experience. He has been credited with several firsts in his Digital experience in India.
      Rajeev started his career in Sales and Marketing and worked in companies like Bata, before moving to Advertising. He worked in Mainline Advertising and was quick to jump to Interactive when Internet became a channel of communication in 1995 in India.
      Working in Combit Advertising Network, acclaimed as India’s first Virtual Advertising Network, Rajeev was instrumental in launching key firsts in India like the First cyber boutique, First Hindi Language site, First Movie booking site way back in 1996.
      In 1999 Rajeev joined TBWA Interactive and within a year moved to Ogilvy Interactive (in 2000) looking after the Delhi Office.
In Ogilvy Rajeev handled accounts like Nokia, American Express, Ministry of Tourism – Govt of India, Seagram, among others.
Rajeev was a part of the team when Nokia kicked-off its first India presence in India. He helped Nokia build the India strategy and laisioned with the local client and the APAC Ogilvy team. He worked on the Nokia account for over 5 years, before he moved to Ogilvy’s Head Office in Mumbai.
      After spending 6.5 years at Ogilvy, Rajeev worked for a year in TribalDDB (06-2007) as a National Head for Digital Solutions, at the time when the Agency reached the final of the Cannes as the only Indian digital agency (in 2007).
      In April 2008, Rajeev moved to RMG Connect India to Head it’s Digital operations and has constantly been building valuable relationships with clients and helping their brands realise the true potential of the Digital Media.

      Rajeev loves to go for long walks and play doodle pro with his 3 yr old daughter.

 

One of the earliest Internet entrepreneurs in India. Co-founded Homeindia.com, an e-retail venture, way back in 1998. Grew the business till 2007, making it a fashion portal serving customers all over the world, before the company was sold.

      After divesting the stake in Homeindia.com, Sanjay took up the position of COO at an 800-person team, at Compare Infobase Ltd., another Internet company. At Compare, Sanjay had a different set of challenges, and he was able to put up structures and systems and working methodologies, to take the business from relative unstructured growth, to more sustainable, planned progress. Sanjay also strategized the business model, and shed few activities and people, and retained more relevant divisions, converting them into strategic business units.

      Sanjay has done his Bachelors in Electrical Engineering from Mumbai, and has an MS from the University of Southern California. Before venturing into the Internet space, Sanjay had an initial 10 years exposure in an Electrical Engineering business, covering activities of manufacturing, services and systems engineering.

      With this rich experience of 20+ years now, Sanjay has just launched his new entrepreneurial venture in the space of Social Media management services, in the name of "Social Wavelength", in his new company, Social PR

 

Biren Ghose is currently an Executive Director at EROS INTERNATIONAL FILMS and CEO & President at Kahani World Inc. Formerly Biren was Chief Operating Officer at one of Asia's largest animation studios UTV Toons. He also worked with Disney, BBC, Teletoon, Cinegroupe, Funbag, Decode, Teleimages, Futurikon & Fox. He was instrumental in creating an original series for Walt Disney Television in 2002 from development to screen. And was part of strategy planning group at UTV that led them to broadcasting and motion pictures heights.

Biren was ealier a co-founder with UTV of a broadband streaming company in 1999. He was at the Corporate Planning function at UB where for 13 years he transitioned across various assignments. UB is the world's #2 Spirits company. He helped grow major brands like Kingfisher! Strategised UB's forays in Biotechnology & Engineering.

      Biren has been a prolific speaker on convergence, entertainment, animation and new media at a variety of inter-national forums having spoken at Kid Power Asia, Kidscreen Summit; NASSCOM Annual Conferences.
      He is an advisor to Copenhagen Business School on computer games. Co-founder of iGITA [Game Industry Trade Association of India] & Chaiman for Animation & Gaming. Animation Magazine voted him one of Asia's 'top toon titans' in April 2008.

 

 

Anand Gurnani is the Co Founder, CEO & Managing Editor of the internationally acclaimed Animation Xpress Network, a B2B Media company focused on the Animation, Visual Effects and Gaming space.

      An authority on the Indian animation ecosystem, Anand is a speaker at forums across the world over, including MIPCOM Junior, NAB, Digicon, AYACC, NASSCOM Animation & Gaming Summit amongst others.

      He has also founded and organized several leading Industry forums and conferences through Animation Xpress, which include, AITF (Animation & Interactive Technology Forum), AFF (The Animated Feature Forum), IAI (Industry Academia Interface). The latest initiative he is driving is the launch of the Asia Pacific and China edition of Animation Xpress.

      A high school drop out, Anand began his career at the age of 15 and in the past 14 years has seasoned himself in businesses including Incense Sticks, Printing & Publishing, besides of animation and Media. Besides his full time occupation as promoter and worker at Animation Xpress, Anand is currently also immersed in writing, ideating, and co-developing 4 properties including a children’s picture book series, a novel, a comic strip, and a ‘live action’ TV soap as well.

      His others obsessions include Writing, Art, Travelling, Internet, Facebook and Food.

Kalyan is the Co-founder of Indyarocks.com, a leading entertainment based people network in India. Kalyan has significant experience in technology, marketing, sales and alliances. In 2001, he co-founded Innova Health Systems, a Tele-medicine company, which was later acquired.

Prior to Indyarocks.com, he headed the APAC sales and alliances for a U.S. based product company. Kalyan is an active TiE charter member and serves on the committees of TiE-ISB Connect and Hyderabad 10k foundation and LetsVote.in

      Kalyan has Bachelors in International Business from Nizam College, Hyderabad and has also earned his Masters in Information Systems from the Eastern Michigan University. During his Masters, he also served on the University Technology Advisory committee.

 

Gokul heads the online ad-sales for Rajshri.com. He has given the ad-sales effort at Rajshri.com a completely new direction with his infectious enthusiasm, innovative ideas and his unwavering faith in achieving them. Gokul brings with him an enriching experience of eleven years in the field of direct sales and online ad sales. Prior to Rajshri Media he was with Sify, handling the NRI portal, Samachar.com for one year. Gokul is also responsible for launching and handling the entire south region for Rediff's P4C activity for four years. Prior to this, he spent seven and a half years at Maxcom, handling direct sales.

 

Rajiv started his entrepreneurial journey right after graduating from college and has come a long way in the past 4 years. His first venture was a fresher jobsite Jobs4freshers.com. The experience left him rich in knowledge about digital media and marketing.

      He went on to leverage this knowledge to start WATBlog an analytical blog on Web, Advertising and Technology which quickly gained credibility and was voted as one of the best technology blogs. The success of WATBlog led him to start a social media-consulting firm WATConsult.

Over the last 3 years WATMedia the parent company has grown from strength to strength under Rajiv’s leadership and has ventured into its own branded digital media events in WATBlog Wednesday and WATBlog Panels as well.

Besides being an aggressive businessman Rajiv is also a startup and digital media evangelist. He is a part of Startup Event Proto.in, an active member of TIE (The Indus Entrepreneurs), a mentor at IIT Entrepreneurship Summit and an Alumni Advisor to the Jai Hind College Entrepreneurship Cell.
       Rajiv has a Bachelors in Management Studies from Jai Hind College and an MBA in Marketing Management from Welingkars Institute of Management. An avid movie buff, Rajiv is also passionate about reading with special inclination towards Robin Sharma’s books.

 

Nitish Mittersain, the 29 year old CEO and promoter of Nazara Technologies, is one of the young achievers, who embarked upon his entrepreneurial mission of building an online venture when he was merely out of college, and at the worst possible time, right in the middle of the dotcom meltdown. Today, Nazara is not only growing but it is also among the top three players in the field.
       Born in a business family, his business acumen was imbibed naturally and risk-taking, patience, and prudence came in at no price. He not only managed to raise Rs.20 lakh from a few willing investors, including his father, to incorporate Nazara Technologies but also proved those wrong who felt his business model was unsustainable. The first area that the company forayed into was an obvious choice- online gaming, through a gaming portal nazara.com. Nazara was an online gaming website equipped with localized content that was aimed at the Indian user market. Nazara.com was transformed into Nazara Technologies.
       He has been the recipient of several awards including the Young Achievers Award by the Indo-American society and has also held the post of Co-Chairman of the National I.T. committee at the Indian Merchants Chamber in recent years. He is part of a jazz band and plays instruments like saxophone, piano, etc.,and can even be spotted playing in places like Not Just Jazz ByThe Bay and the Bombay Gymkhana.