Abhishek Gupta

Abhishek Gupta heads Marketing at The MobileStore (TMS).
The MobileStore (TMS) is India's largest telecom retailer, with over 900 stores, spread across over 125 cities. He leads TMS’s brand and format strategy and communication all customer touch points. He also drives the loyalty initiatives for TMS.  He has been a speaker at various seminars as well as guest faculty for management institutes. He was recentlyrecognized as one of 25 most outstanding marketing professionals of the country by World Brand Congress and CMO council of Asia.

Prior to this, he has worked with Bharti Retail Limited for five years - where he was instrumental in launching the brand Easyday in the country.  In his last assignment with Bharti Retail he was heading Store Experience.
He has also worked with Spencers Retail Limited, ICICI Bank and Shoppers Stop Limited. He started his career with Shoppers Stop Limited (SSL) as a management trainee. His last assignment at SSL was heading the marketing for the western zone.  In ICICI Bank, he has handled different roles – from Sales to Product management for the mortgages division of the Bank. He has an overall experience of more than 14 years.

Abhishek is a Mechanical Engineer from University of Pune and a management graduate from ITM Business School.

Abraham Alapatt

Abraham Alapatt is a Marketing & Customer Service professional with over 18 years of professional experience at senior-strategic levels spanning across: Ogilvy & Mather Advertising, an international Internet Solution Provider start-up, Reliance Capital, DCB Bank & Future Generali Life & General Insurance companies.

During this period, he has led the Advertising, Marketing, E Commerce & Customer Service teams across these enterprises.
He currently leads the Marketing and Customer Service functions of India’s largest and respected integrated travel services company – Thomas Cook (India) Limited.

Abraham’s strengths are in the areas of marketing/brand strategy formulation, implementation and management; integrated brand and corporate communication; advertising; PR/media relations; market research, customer service and customer-centric marketing from ideation to process engineering.

Abraham’s articles, opinions and interviews feature in various Brand & Marketing forums, portals and publications such as Campaign India, agencyfaqs, exchange4media, mxmindia, Brand Equity, 4Ps etc.

He was a speaker at the World Brand Congress, Mumbai in 2010 and the Great Indian Marketing Summit in 2012 and been on various Marketing and Customer Experience forums.

He has judged the “Effies” in India for 3 years in a row as well as been on the jury for Pitch Magazine’s Golden Mikes Radio Awards, Campaign India’s Digital Crest Awards 2013 and EEMA 2013 among others.
Abraham was also one of only eight “Futurist CMO” Hall of Fame inductees from across India for 2011-12 and in October 2013 was voted among the "50 Most Talented CMOs of India" by the Asian CMO Council and World Brand Congress 

Ajay Modani

Ajay is the Co-founder & COO at Capillary Technologies. An entrepreneur with deft influencing skills, Ajay has an unusual ability to identify opportunities, believes in “making things happen” and consistently achieves goals and objectives.A graduate from IIT Kharagpur with a B.Tech in Industrial Engineering, Ajay has worked with Danieli, a multinational company as a technical coordinator for Myanmar & Indian projects in the field of building plant for the steel industry.

He was the youngest manager in the company to be given the responsibility to set up a plant. At Capillary, his expertise spans over Operations and Client Servicing.

Ajay’s significant contribution at IIT includes conceptualizing and pioneering the first ever technical fest in the Industrial Engineering and Management Department. He also served as the General Secretary Technology, Radha Krishnan Hall of residence and led the hall for one academic year in technology events. Inspired by a family of proficient businessmen, he comes with the intricate knowledge of the workings of the business world. He is also enthusiastic about travelling and has a keen interest in books.

Alok Saraogi

Alok Saraogi is the Head of Brand Marketing and Corporate Communications with Ashok Leyland, India’s second largest commercial vehicle manufacturer.
With over 20 years of experience spanning FMCG, services and advertising, across automobile, retail, aviation, Internet services and advertising. Immediately prior his current assignment, Alok was head of the brands portfolio at Futurebrands (the marketing services arm of the Future Group) managing the portfolio of private labels across apparel, FMCG and consumer durables.

As the Global Brand Com head for Jet Airways, Alok led the airline’s international foray in to new markets - including Europe, America and ASEAN. At Jet Airways he also led the project to re-position the airline, re-design its brand identity and implement it across the network.
In earlier roles as the Head of Strategic Planning at Bates Bombay and also Contract, Delhi, he was responsible for new business acquisition, consumer research, insights mining, creative ideating and providing counsel to clients across FMCG, financial products, retail and service industries.

He looked after National Alliances and Client Servicing for Indya.com, one of the most recognised horizontal portals in India and has also worked with leading communication agencies such as Lowe Lintas, Contract, Leo Burnett and Bates.

Alok is a known speaker at seminars and conferences across the country and frequently invited to speak on subjects ranging consumer behavior, marketing insights and the digital space. He has been recognised as among the 50 Most Talented Brand Leaders of India at the Brand Leadership Awards of the World CMO Council in February 2013. In the same year he was also nominated Marketer of the Year – Auto Commercial Vehicles – at the Leadership Awards by the International Advertising Association.

You can reach out to him on Twitter at twitter.com/alosara

Bijaei Jayaraj

Bijaei Jayaraj is the Founder & CEO of Loylty Rewardz Mngt. Pvt. Ltd. In a short period since inception, he has grown Loylty Rewardz into one of the largest consumer relationship management and consumer behaviour analytics companies in India.

With a team of over 500+ professionals who have expertise and capabilities to develop and manage large-scale turnkey loyalty solutions, Loylty Rewardz manages loyalty programs for a growing consumer base of over 1 Billion profiles in India under its flagship brand – Max Get More and enjoys more than 70% market share of all debit cards issued in India. Loylty Rewardz currently processes over 2.5 billion transactions yearly and has awarded more than 30 billion loyalty points to consumers in India till date.

Bijaei has raised over INR 160 crores as Venture Capital Investment for Loylty Rewardz since its inception, with the Series B investment coming from Canaan Partners, a globally reputed Venture Capital firm. Bijaei is also one of the few prominent entrepreneurs in India to have offered multibagger exits to his Venture Capital investors.

Prior to founding Loylty Rewardz, Bijaei worked with MasterCard Worldwide as the Head of MasterCard’s relationship with the largest bank in India, the State Bank Group. While at MasterCard, Bijaei was twice conferred with the MasterCard SAMEA Star Award (South Asia, ME & Africa) & once with the APMEA Star Award (Asia Pacific, ME & Africa) for his contributions to MasterCard businesses worldwide. Previously, Bijaei was the Head of Jet Privilege, the loyalty program of Jet Airways. He has also worked in the advertising industry with McCann Erickson Worldwide in Dubai, UAE.

Bijaei earned his degree in business management as a part of the Founding Class of the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad.

Bedraj Tripathy

Bedraj Tripathy started as a grass root sales professional, moved to the field of brand communications and then stepped into the corporate world.

During his over 20 years of experience, he has been instrumental in managing and building a few coveted brands around the world. He has a wide range of experience, retail, BFSI and technology, both in B2C and B2B segments. He has been working with a premier institute in India and one in US to demystify ‘experiential marketing’.

He has a vast exposure in India as a market as well as UK, US and SEA. Currently he is working as AVP, Integrated Marketing, Godrej Interio (the furniture division of Godrej & Boyce Manufacturing Company Ltd.)

Bidyut Nath

Darshana Shah

Darshana Shah holds a Master degree in Marketing from NMIMS .She has over 14 years of work experience with 6 years in the IT and 8 years in the retail sector. Thus her work experience spans from stepping into the IT Industry to establishing herself in the retail sector. With expertise in varied areas like operations, marketing, brand building, private brands marketing, retail communications. She has worked with retail giants like Shopper’s Stop, Future Group (Pantaloons and Big bazaar) & Reliance Retail.

Darshana is very passionate about travelling and meeting different people across the globe and learning about their culture & heritage. She loves dancing and is a certified Indian classical dancer (Bharatnatyam). An avid reader, she enjoys reading fiction and also loves experimenting with continental cuisines in her spare time. 

Deepali Naair

Deepali Naair's 20 years’ experience, is in the area of Marketing, Brand Management, Product Development & Digital Marketing.
She began her career with Tata Motors, then a stint at BPL Mobile, when the 1st mobile phone was launched in India. She worked at Draft FCB-Ulka, then at Marico as Marketing Manager for Saffola and Mediker. From 2006 she was with HSBC Global Asset Management India as VP & Head of Marketing. Apart from successfully managing marketing for India operations, she led the Communication for the Global relaunch of HSBC Global Asset Management Brand, which used to be HSBC Investments.

In 2009, she joined L&T as part of the start up team as Country Head for Brand & Corporate Communications. She has been instrumental in designing the brand strategy & digital strategy for L&T Insurance, as she also heads the e-commerce channel for L&T Insurance. She also looked after customer service there. She has recently joined Club Mahindra as their Chief Marketing Officer in October 2013.

She gets invited regularly to speak on ‘Digital Media’ at various Seminars and Conferences. In April 2011, she was invited to USA, for a presentation on “Social Media in India”. She was a panelist at the Roundtable for India Insure Summit, June 2011 on “Digital Branding”. In April 2012, she was a speaker at the 1st Asian ‘conference on social media & mobile marketing for insurance’ hosted by Asia insurance Review in Singapore.

Deepali was recently recognized by Paul Writer as one of the top 50 CMOs for the prestigious Marketing & IT Recognition (M.IT.R). She is also the recipient of Indira Super Achievers Award in September 2010.
She has been a guest faculty at SP Jain Institute of Management & Research, Mumbai for a decade now. She has delivered guest lectures at MICA, Ahmedabad, SIMC apart from other B Schools in India and abroad. 

Girish Nair

Girish Nair joined netCORE as the Chief Operating Officer in 2005 and was appointed as the Chief Executive Officer in late 2011. During his tenure at netCORE, revenues have increased over 10 times in 8 years and employee strength has grown 5 times. At netCORE, he helped in setting up the Mobility division and also helped the company in becoming a leader in email and mobile marketing. Under his leadership, netCORE has won several domestic and international mobile marketing awards and recognitions. Girish has contributed to netCORE in a great way by making it an innovative and competitive workplace and bringing in a professional, open and fun loving culture into the organization.

Girish completed his Engineering degree at IIT Bombay, India and then did his Masters in Engineering, specializing in Robotics from Virginia Tech, USA. He also pursued engineering management studies at Stanford, USA. He worked in the Silicon Valley, USA for 15 years with different sizes of companies, ranging from startups to mid-sized companies to large public enterprises.

Girish started his career as a developer of automation products at Consilium (later acquired by Applied Materials) and soon after, helped build the mission critical automated material handling system at Intel’s factory in Ireland. He then became one of the youngest Program Managers at Intel, responsible for large factory automation projects.

Later, he joined what was then a relatively small start-up Webvan, where he was primarily responsible for the deployment, scalability and technology integration of the critical distribution centre at the heart of the business. Webvan grew to be one of the largest eCommerce companies in the US in 1999. Girish later joined Siebel where he was Senior Director and managed several diverse engineering groups. 

Kashyap Vadapalli

Kashyap brings to Pepperfry.com, diverse and rich experience in Marketing, Sales and Business Strategy. Prior to joining Pepperfry, Kashyap was the Chief Marketing Officer of eBay India and has had prior stints at Google and Tata Interactive Systems in marketing and business development.

An Electronics Engineer from Birla Institute of Technology, Ranchi and an MBA from IIM, Calcutta, Kashyap began his career in consumer goods sales and marketing with Cadbury.

At Pepperfry, Kashyap oversees all aspects of marketing including brand, digital marketing, social media, insights, creative, corporate communications and popular culture. He additionally leads the development of new categories and business segments for Pepperfry. 

Rahul Khanna

Rahul Khanna has over fifteen years of investing and operating experience in ICT across India and the U.S. Having returned from Silicon Valley in 2005, Rahul has played a key role in the development of the venture ecosystem in India and is well recognized as an active investor in several high growth companies.

Prior to joining Canaan India in early 2011, Rahul was the founding director of Clearstone Venture Advisors, a firm that manages investments in India for Clearstone Venture Partners. At Clearstone, Rahul was responsible for building the platform that would focus on early stage investments in verticals like financial services, telecom, media and education. While at Clearstone, he served on the Boards of Billdesk and Games2Win.

During his time in Silicon Valley, Rahul was Area Director Asia-Pacific at Sonim Technologies. Having joined Sonim during its inception, he was responsible for the company's global marketing and sales initiatives including key markets like China and India. Prior to spending time in the Valley, he was part of the team that launched Hutchison Telecom's mobile operations in India during the mid-nineties.

Rahul earned an MBA in 2000 from the Kellogg Graduate School at Northwestern University. He also serves on the Investment Committee of SONG, a social impact fund sponsored by the Soros Economic Development Fund, Pierre Omidyar and Google. 

Sandipan Ghosh

Sandipan is the F&B Industry’s besotted brand booster. In love with this industry since time immemorial, Sandipan has been credited with boosting the brand equity and profitability of every single brand he has been associated with, over his last 18 brand boosting years across multinationals like Electrolux, Ruchi Soya, Tiffany Foods, Mother Dairy, TATA , MTR Foods amongst others spread across the world! A seasoned-pun intended- branding and marketing veteran with an inimitable background in marketing and finance, Sandipan is the industry’s go-to expert for building brands and boosting business-as he enables organizations to turn around ailing brands, boost profitable ones, make P&L sheets happier by drawing and implementing his invincible marketing wisdom and his innate cognizance of the adage that ‘Every brand’s journey to one’s heart is only via the common man’s stomach.’

A truly global marketing maverick, Sandipan synergizes his passion for all things food and branding in building billion dollar brands with a global food-print. As the Chief Marketing Machine behind the billion dollar Nutrela brand of the Ruchi Soya Industries Ltd, Sandipan has boosted the brand performance by clocking a 34% market growth within his first year at Ruchi. Under his brand stewardship, Nutrela has been the recipient of honors such as Master Brand and Power Brand Awards in 2013. Sandipan has also been accredited with spearheading the historical business transformation of branded food and edible oil business of Ruchi, by evolving the business strategy from commodity oriented modus operandi to a branded product format.

A laudable legacy which boasts of rich national and international lineage across brands like MTR Foods, Tata Chemicals, Mother Dairy, Dhara and Safal, Electrolux and Tiffany Foodsbefore returning to the Indian giant Ruchi Soya Industries Ltd. is what Sandipan calls his humble learning curve. Having spent close to two decades in strategic brand management, marketing and business management, it’s only befitting to have built an enviable portfolio of professional achievements globally acknowledged via international awards and recognition. Sandipan’s marketing genius has been celebrated by honouring him with over a dozen such accolades; some of which are the iconic Best Marketer Award 2004 by the Business Today Group, Brand Leader Award 2009,F.A.M.E. (Fabulous in Marketing Excellence) 2011 by Asian Leadership Awards, India’s Greatest Corporate Leader 2012, Marketing Professional of the Year by Golden Globe Tigers Award 2013 and has been recently hailed as one of the Top 50 CMOs in India by CMO Council in 2013.

Sandipan is often quoted in leading Indian business publications like The Economic Times,  Business Standard, Financial Times as well as popular marketing publications like IMPACT, AFAQS, Paul Writer, Exchange4Media etc. He also takes his brilliant marketing acumen to industry forums such as IMAI,  Exchange 4 Media, Afaqs, and now in Jury for Golden Envies, and also CMO Asia where he inspires the marketing fraternity with his tenacious dedication towards empowering profitable brands to become global power brands.

Sanjeev Agarwal

Mr. Sanjeev Agarwal, an Management Graduate, has a unique combination of experience encompassing FMCG, Banking & Finance and the Luxury Retail Sectors.

Starting his career with Unilevers handling Sales, Distribution and New Product launches, Mr Agarwal moved to Cadburys to handle Marketing & Brand Management. He then moved to Deutsche Bank and worked with them for over 14 years and was instrumental in setting-up the Retail & Private Banking Business of Deutsche Bank (DB) in India as the Director - Retail & Private Banking. During his stint with DB he had been acknowledged for having launched a number of innovative investment products.

He then moved to World Gold Council as Managing Director – India-subcontinent - where he conceptualized and launched a number of Gold Jewellery brands such as “Collection g”, “Gold Expressions” & “Bollywood Gold”. His most important contribution has been identifying & developing a new “gold buying day – Aksaya Tirthay” resulting in a increase in gold purchases by over 40 tons during this auspicious day from a level of 3-4 tons, within a span of 4 years from the date of launch. He also developed the concept of retailing of gold coins through the branches of the Banks in India, as well as the launch of the Gold Mutual Fund in India.

At Gitanjali Group, Mr Agarwal is spearheading a number of new business initiatives covering both the domestic and the international markets. The most recent innovating in the area of jewellery retail being the launch of a Gold & Diamond ATM machine.

Mr Agarwal Is an active member of a number of Associations & Trade Body and is a Member of the FICCI – Gems & Jewellery Group. He is also the Chairman of Indo-Armenia Business Council. He has also received the ‘Niyat Shree Gold Award’ from the President of India in 2012. 

Srikanth Velamakanni

Vishal Hanmattekar

Vishal is currently Director of Loyalty at Taj Hotels, Resorts & Palaces. He has over a decade and half of experience in creating and managing Loyalty programs and CRM initiatives with a special focus on data driven marketing and CRM in Social Media. He has designed and implemented loyalty programs across varied customer segments for major brands across Retail and Hospitality.

Yateesh Srivastava

Mr Yateesh Srivastava is the Chief Operating Officer at AEGON Religare Life Insurance Company Limited.

Mr Srivastava has nearly twenty five years of varied experience spanning general management, marketing research, advertising, internet entrepreneurship and marketing. Prior to joining AEGON Religare Life Insurance Company Limited, he worked as the Marketing Director with Centurion Bank of Punjab and before that was the Chief Marketing Officer of YES Bank. In his advertising career, he has worked with Lintas, Ambience Publicis and Triton Communications where he handled a plethora of brands spanning FMCG, automobiles, telecom, consumer durables and financial services.

At AEGON Religare, Mr Srivastava is responsible for the company’s product development&management, branding &communications, new business and policy servicing operations, sales operations, underwriting & claims, infrastructure &facilities, IT & BPM and customer service.

Mr. Srivastava has a Master’s Degree in History from the University of Delhi.