Speaker Bio:  

Vishwanath Alluri
Chairman,CEO and Founder, IMImobile
Vish founded IMImobile in 1999 with a vision of developing an IPR centric technology company. While recognising the potential of the rapidly evolving mobile data space Vish was acutely aware that such fast growth does come with limitations; namely in the ability to quickly develop and manage the ever-changing technology. Vish therefore set out to build a technology company which would liberate mobile operators and media companies of technology complexities and so enable them to realise the huge revenue potential. A pioneer of the ‘managed service model’, IMImobile delivers turnkey technology solutions thus allowing customers to focus on their core business development. Today IMImobile has become one of the leading global players in the mobile Value-Added Services market and the managed service approach is more popular than ever. Vish has extensive experience in the technology sector and was previously involved in setting up an India hi-tech consumer services company in the healthcare field. Vish is also a qualified Chartered Accountant and a Company Secretary.
Sunil Rao
Head of Forum Nokia, India
Sunil Rao is the Head of Forum Nokia-India. At Nokia, Sunil is responsible for evangelizing new technology platforms, strategy and growth opportunities with Nokia third party developers to create a vibrant Nokia ecosystem.Sunil was heading the Ecosystem development for Symbian Software which was acquired by Nokia in 2008. Prior to Nokia and Symbian, he has lead sales and marketing efforts at Talisma software, Wipro technologies, Mphasis BFL and HCL Perot. He has a distinction of working in North America, Europe and Asian Markets
Rakesh Verma
MD & Co-Founder,CE Info Systems, Mapmy India.com
Rakesh is the Managing Director and Co-Founder of CE Info Systems. In 1994, Rakesh pioneered the digital maps and GIS (geographic information systems) industry in India by setting out on the unprecedented task of digitally mapping out the entire country. And since 2004, he has revolutionized the consumer navigation market in India by releasing products and services under the brand of MapmyIndia, starting with the internet portal MapmyIndia.com, and most recently launching in-car and mobile phone GPS navigation. Today, his organization stands as the true leader in the mapping and navigation space, possessing the most comprehensive, accurate and unparalleled repository of digital map data for India. And his vision of enterprises and consumers benefitting from his maps have come true as well – with over 500 leading enterprises to name as customers, and millions of consumers benefitting from MapmyIndia navigation products – be it over the internet, on the mobile, or in-car. Rakesh obtained a Bachelors of Engineering (Mechanical) from BITS Pilani, India in 1972, and an MBA from Washington State, USA in 1979. He has over 35 years of wide operations and management experience in industry, 12 of which have been spent with leading companies such as General Motors.
Mouli Raman
CTO & Co-Founder, OnMobile
Mouli has more than 19 years of engineering and management experience in the software industry. As CTO, he is in charge of defining and engineering OnMobile products and customer service. Prior to his current role as CTO of OnMobile, Mouli worked for Infosys Technologies, Ltd. He was the Associate Vice President & Head of the Internet Products Group. During his tenure at Infosys, Mouli was responsible for engineering and delivering several mission-critical applications for Fortune 500 companies and two successful Internet products. He brings considerable focused expertise in the areas of wireless and mobility.
Shiva Bayyapunedi
Founder, and Director, Apalya
Shiva leads Apalya efforts in Operations and Technology. Shiva has been instrumental in charting the course for Apalya technology platform since its inception helping evolve Apalya technology to the needs of the business. Prior to starting Apalya, Shiva worked in Project Management at Wipro. He was a core member of the team driving the Symbian/S60 initiative, developing and generating S60/Symbian business. Shiva prior experience includes work at GETS, USA and Nokia, Finland in the field of real time systems, telecom and mobile technology
Sridhar Ranganathan
VP of Product Management, InMobi
Sridhar heads the Product efforts at InMobi since 2008 and brings with himself extensive experience in high technology product management. He is responsible for the vision, strategy and design of InMobi’s products and also oversees the architecting of the company’s service strategies. Through his business acumen and determination, Sridhar has been steering the company to constantly innovate as a mobile advertising space and knows how to leverage market opportunities in economies good and bad. Prior to InMobi, Sridhar headed the Local and Maps businesses at Yahoo! India and has successfully launched consumer internet products in India. Sridhar came to Yahoo! from Zoho Corp (previously AdventNet) where he built and managed many products in the network management space. Armed with a Naval Architecture degree from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, Sridhar started his career in ship management with Essar Shipping before moving onto Brij Datalink, a software services startup. Early in 2001, around the time the internet bubble burst, he joined AdventNet where he plunged headlong into product management. Sridhar holds a management degree from XLRI, Jamshedpur. Over time he’s learnt and lives by one rule: know why you are doing what you are doing - focus on doing a great job and the rest will automatically follow.
Siddhesh Joglekar
Product Manager, Rediff.com
IIM Cal Alumnus, Internet and Consulting enthusiast, Active blogger (http://strat.in ), Internet professional at rediff.com - India largest Web Based Portal, Siddhesh is an exceptional performer in everything that he undertakes. As a Product Manager at Rediff, Siddhesh steers Rediff Blogs - Blogging service of Rediff.com and Rediff MyPage - Social Networking initiative for Rediff.
Kumar Shiralagi
Managing Director,India, IndoUS Venture Partners
Kumar Shiralagi is a Managing Director at IndoUS Venture Partners (IUVP),based in Bangalore, India. Prior to joining NEA-IUV in 2007, he was the head of Intel Capital India, the venture capital group responsible for Indian investments. As the Country Director, he drove Intel India investments and had a very successful run in making and managing investments and Exits.Notable companies in the portfolio were NIIT, Subex Systems, Futuresoft, R-systems,IndiaInfoline etc. and past Boards he has served on include Sasken Communications, Tejas Networks, Sharekhan, Nipuna, Deccanet, Real Image Media Technologies to name a few. Prior to joining Intel in 2003, he was the cofounder and Chief Operating Officer of Lytek Corporation in Arizona.He has worked in Motorola in various areas ranging from technology development to corporate strategy and investments. After completing his Engineering in Electronics and Communications from National institute of Technology (formerly KREC),Karnataka, he worked in Electronics and Radar Development in 1984-85 in Bangalore.  He earned his PhD and MS in Electrical Engineering from Arizona State University and an MBA from Thunderbird, the American Graduate School of International Management.
Samir Kumar
Managing Director, Inventus
Samir has been an early stage venture investor in India for the past nine years.Prior to co-founding Inventus, Samir built and led the India venture team for Acer Technology Ventures - a $260 million cross-border venture fund investing in early-stage technology and services companies across India, the U.S. and the Asia Pacific.Samir has financed a number of successful Indian and Indo-US companies resulting in three profitable acquisitions to date including his 2006 co-investment in Kaboodle initial round with John and Kanwal. Prior to his venture career, Samir was an early member of two startups in India, and was part of the early team at Wipro. He helped Wipro grow revenues from ~$4M in 1989 to over $200 million in 1998. Samir earned a BSEE from IIT-Bombay and an MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.
Sachin Maheshwari
Principal,Draper Fisher Jurvetson, India
Sachin currently serves on the Boards of Catura and mGinger. Sachin has over 10 years of investing, operating and consulting experience. Prior to DFJ, Sachin spent two years at Opus Capital where he focused on investments in consumer internet, wireless and software. In addition, Sachin brings both technology and business expertise to DFJ. He has had engineering and product management roles at EFI, Inc. and Unimobile, a wireless startup acquired by EFI. He later joined the Corporate Strategy group at EFI and worked on developing the channel strategy for EFI products. He also worked for Boston Consulting Group in their San Francisco office. Sachin holds 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.
Shekhar Kirani
Vice President, VeriSign India
Shekhar has been in the high-tech industry for more than twenty years with experience in two successful startups, several angel investments, and now as head of VeriSign India. Shekhar was part of the management team that setup and scaled LightSurf Technologies. LightSurf was one of the very first company to create end-to-end mobile picture messaging. LightSurf was acquired by VeriSign in 2005 for over $250M. Before LightSurf, Shekhar was part of the management team of Starfish Technologies. Starfish created one of the early mobile synchronization software. Starfish was acquired by Motorola for over $200M in 1998. Shekhar has a PhD from University of Minnesota and MSc from IISc, Bangalore. Shekhar holds more than 10 patents in his name. In his free time, he works closely with entrepreneurs at early stage companies helping them to succeed and scale.