News Corp VCCircle Food & Agri Investment Summit 2017
Food & Agri Investments: A hard nut to crack?
The food and agriculture sector has remained largely on the periphery of the startup space and private investment activity in India despite the sector supporting close to 60% of the population. In the past three years, most entrepreneurial activity and investment has remained focused on consumer-facing food startups and not necessarily farm ventures, which, indeed, are in the dire need of disruption, innovation and committed investments.
While digitization, big data analytics and artificial intelligence are being heavily used in the farm sector in countries such as Israel, China and the US, India has yet to warm up to these ideas.
Over the years, a disproportionate amount of private capital has flowed into food tech ventures such as FreshMenu and Faasos. These ventures, however, were more about tech than food. Also, because of the mushrooming of ‘me-too’ startups in the segment and lack of imaginative ideas, there aren't too many success stories to write home about. In the past 15 months, a lot of funded startups, such as TinyOwl and Eatonomist, shut shop or pivoted because of the absence of a sustainable business model. Even those that have survived, such as Zomato and Swiggy, are far from turning in any profits in the near future.
On the farm front, most entrepreneurial activity and investment has been focused on seed-tech initiatives or in areas such as organic farming, packaged foods, drinks, dairy, food processing, supply chain logistics and farm equipment. Besides these, sundry initiatives have been seen in weather forecasting and the monitoring of soil and farm yields.
It’s only a handful of investors, such as Proterra, Mandala Capital, Pioneering Ventures, Rabo Equity, CX Partners, impact funds like SEAF, Aavishkar; Ankur Capital, Menterra and venture agritech funds like Omnivore Capital, with few exceptions such as Blackstone investing in Nuziveedu Seeds that have taken bets on the sector.
The entrepreneurial and investing community concedes that there is immense scope for disruption in efforts to augment farm yields and to surmount the disparate challenges in the journey from farm to the fork.
Likewise, rising disposable incomes and changing consumer tastes as well as awareness with regards to the quality of food products is throwing a lot of opportunities for entrepreneurs, and hence, investors, too, in consumer-facing retail food business.
What is, then, holding investors and entrepreneurs back? Why is everybody aiming for the lowest-hanging fruit? Why, even with that, success is hard to come by? What went wrong with food ecommerce enterprises? What could the government do to inspire more private participation in the sector?
To debate these issues and more, News Corp VCCircle is hosting the 9th edition of the Food and Agriculture Investment Summit in Mumbai in October. The summit will feature leading food entrepreneurs, PE and VC investors, agricultural experts, consultants and food and beverage innovators.
9.00AM – 10.00AM
Registration & networking
10.00AM – 10.10AM
Opening address by Jaideep Mehta, CEO, NewsCorp VCCircle
10.10AM -10.40AM
Chief Guest address by
Nara Lokesh - Minister for IT, Electronics & Communication, Panchayat Raj and Rural Development, Government of Andhra Pradesh
10.40AM – 11.25AM
Panel 1 - Overview of Agri & Food Investments 2017: Is enough capital available for disruption?
After hitting a five-year low in terms of the PE Investment which came in last year, investors remain hopeful to see startups bringing in the scalable ideas from their farm to the table. Private sector investment was on the increase when global and domestic prices of agri-products were on the rise. But now with falling commodity prices, even this is slowing down. With a market size of $260 billion posing as an opportunity, fragmented land resources, large number of small farmer makes accessibility to capital as a challenge. In a largely agrarian economy like India, why aren’t investors interested in becoming a part of the next potential green revolution?
Pablo Erat - Partner, Pioneering Ventures AG
S Venkatraman - Partner, Rabo Equity Advisors Pvt. Ltd.
Ramesh Ramachandran - Senior Vice President - Strategy and Precision Farming, Mahindra & Mahindra
Vipul Mankad - MD, SEAF India Investment Advisors
Manish Mehta - Managing Director, Samara Capital
Ritu Verma - Co-founder & Managing Partner, Ankur Capital (Moderator)
11.25AM – 11.40AM
Networking Break
11.40AM - 12.25PM
Panel 2 - New Frontiers in Food Investments
As investors move on from the food tech and the traditional agribusiness, they see high potential in newer avenues like online milk delivery, food processing and organic farming, all three being a different ball game altogether. Doodhwala and Milk Basket which promise to deliver fresh milk from the farm within 12 hours of placing the order have grabbed the attention of investors as they compete with milk veterans like Mother Dairy and Amul. Due to higher profit margins compared to non-organic food items, organic farming promises high market potential as it is expected to grow into a $2billion market by 2020. The food processing industry with contributes to 14% of India’s GDP alone has now been allowed 100% FDI which looks to attract investment with the growing consumer spending on food and exports.
Vivek Nirmal – MD & CEO, Prabhat Dairy Ltd.
Srikumar Misra – Founder, MD & CEO, Milkmantra
Bikram Mahajan – Director - Neev Fund, SBICAP Ventures Limited
Sameer Varma – Founding Member, Tuscan Ventures Pvt. Ltd
Sumer Juneja – Director, Norwest Venture Partners (Moderator)
12.25PM – 1.10PM
Panel 3 - Farming as a Service (FAAS)
Disrupting the age old ownership mode, providing technology based services to 85% of the Indian farmers who own less than five acres of land by way of the paper-use model is drawing a lot of interest from the industry. Big wigs such Mahindra & Mahindra, TAFE and John Deere have already started experimenting with a pay-per-use model for their farming equipment including tractors. Will this new service intervention at farming level bring in newer avenues for business? How will it empower farmers with smaller holdings to access best in class technology to improve productivity? Will FAAS be the next big idea in agri services space?
Abhilash Thirupathi – Co-founder, Goldfarm
Alekh Sanghera – Co-founder, farMart
Atindriya Bose – CEO, Trringo
Kushal Agarwal – Partner, Aspada Investment Advisors (Moderator)
1.10PM – 2.00PM
Networking Lunch
2.00PM – 2.45PM
Panel 4 - Agri – Tech Innovations: Role of IoT, Big Data & Analytics in bridging the gaps
Emerging agri-tech innovations in big data, IoT, satellite imagery, sensor technology has the potential to add value starting from selecting the right agriculture inputs, monitoring the soil used, market price tracking, weather forecasting and controlling irrigation. Using satellite imagery and remote analysis farmers can increase their productivity and drop their input cost dramatically. Startups such as Cropin and Satsure are using data analytics to integrate satellite, weather and IoT to study the parameters governing crop growth and soil health. What are the latest trends in this space and how is technology being embraced by the agri community?
Jinesh Shah – Founding Partner, Omnivore Partners
Amardeep Sibia – CEO, SatSure Ltd
Krishna Kumar – Founder & CEO, CropIn Technology Solutions Pvt Ltd.
Ranjith Mukundan – Co-founder & CEO, Stellapps Technologies Pvt. Ltd
Hemendra Mathur – Venture Partner, Bharat Innovations Fund (Moderator)
2.45PM – 3.30PM
Panel 5: Seamless & Efficient Logistics: The game changer
The supply chain associated with the food sector is going through rapid transformation as there is huge potential in the agriculture input retail as well as output retail at the consumer’s end. We have Agrostar, India Post resolving the agri input retail for the farmers and you have Crofarm, Ninjakart kind of companies building supply chain-based retail models, resolving the other end of supply chain issues. Also, with GST coming in, the sector looks to overcome previous inefficiencies has a huge growth potential. Hence, private investments in the sector have also seen an uptick with Loadshare, Rivigo kind of startups raising big rounds of funding, and are in news for even bigger rounds expected. With a tax friendly environment, will we see some big-ticket investments coming in the fragmented food logistics sector? What does this mean for food and agriculture startups relying heavily on efficient logistics ecosystem?
Rajat Gupta – Founder CEO, Tessol
Thirukumaran Nagarajan – Co-founder & CEO, Ninjacart
Rajinder Balaraman – VP, Matrix Partners
Karthik Jayaraman – Founding team member, WayCool Foods and Products Pvt Ltd
Sonal Shah – Executive Director, SMC Capitals Ltd (Moderator)
3.30PM – 3.45PM
Networking break
3.45PM – 4.15PM
Showcase Session
We bring our Showcase session, a curated platform that brings a set of handpicked innovative food & agri startups to make an elevator pitch to select jury of angel investors, houseful of VCs & fellow entrepreneurs. This is also an opportunity to early stage, pre-revenue, startups as well to grab investor attention. Click here to apply for showcase.
Jury:
Jinesh Shah – Founding Partner, Omnivore Partners
Rajinder Balaraman – VP, Matrix Partners
Srini Vudayagiri – Partner, Peepul Capital
4.15PM – 5.00PM
Panel 6 - Building indigenous food brands: What goes in?
Home-grown brands such as Bira, Epigamia, Vahdam Teas are competing against established foreign brands which enjoy a heavy market share but within a short period of time have found their footing in an otherwise largely monopolistic market. Is their focus on product differentiation making them look like an attractive investment? What goes into building an indigenous brand?
Anuj Rakyan – MD, Raw Pressery
Siddarth Menon – CMO, Drums Food International
Vivek Abrol – CEO, Maiyas Beverages and Foods Private Limited
Saurabh Bajaj – Senior Principal Associate, Proterra Investment Partners
Srini Vudayagiri – Partner, Peepul Capital (Moderator)
Nara Lokesh serves as the Minister for Information Technology, Panchayati Raj and Rural Development in the Andhra Pradesh Cabinet. He is currently working to position Andhra Pradesh as a technology hub of the future and is working to create an innovation driven environment. By taking several radical decisions in the Rural Development sector, he has accelerated the reach of development benefits including roads, LED lighting, water piping, etc. to the remotest of villages across the state.
He had previously served as Vice President at Heritage Foods Limited and was instrumental in doubling the revenue and foraying into major Tier I and Tier II cities in South India. He is credited to have laid the foundation for a comprehensive operations framework to deliver best-in-class customer service, drive innovation and ensure the high level of quality that Heritage Foods is today known for. He continues to serve as Non-Executive Director of Heritage Finlease Limited. During his earlier tenure at World Bank from August 2004 to January 2006, Lokesh was involved in several World Bank supported capacity building Projects in e-governance, connectivity solutions etc. across the globe.
Lokesh earned an MBA from the prestigious Stanford University Graduate School of Business and holds a BSc. with specialization in Management Information Systems from Carnegie Mellon University.
@naralokesh
Mr. Vipul Mankad has longstanding experience of managing Venture Capital / Impact Investment funds. He has managed full Fund life cycle and has led many successful transactions across multiple industries and stages in different emerging markets.
Vipul joined SEAF (an international investment management group that provides growth capital and business assistance to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in emerging markets) as Global Investment Officer and is also a member of its “Global Investment Committee”, responsible for investment related operations of Funds managed by SEAF across different markets.
At present he manages SEAF India Agribusiness Fund, a $41.8 million fund investing in small and medium-sized enterprises in India’s agribusiness space. Besides India, he is also responsible for providing oversight to funds in Bangladesh and Tanzania.
Prior to joining SEAF, Vipul worked at leadership positions, like President of SIDBI Venture – India (VC arm of SIDBI- National level DFI supporting SME , sponsored by Government of India), VP with Gujarat Venture -India (supported by the World Bank) and with prominent Development Bank in Gujarat (GIIC).
He is an MBA and Chemical Engineer. He also holds a Diploma in Finance from ICFAI (India).
Dr. Pablo Erat, Partner at Pioneering Ventures, is an entrepreneur, investor and a passionate triathlete. He has over 15 years of strategy consulting experience and strong entrepreneurial track record within various industries. He has over 8 years of leadership experience in the incubation and development of industrial-size agricultural and food supply chain investments in India.
Throughout his career, Pablo has incubated and successfully led companies in the area of consulting, digital commerce, technology, and food processing. Within consulting, he co-founded the strategy consulting firm Executive Insight and became a recognized thought leader within the development transformative strategies and competence based organizational models improving strategic decision making and fostering cultural change, organizational learning and innovation. Pablo simultaneously lectured on corporate strategy at the Department of Management, Technology and Economics at ETH and his innovative ideas and concepts have been published in numerous industry and academic journals and presented at international forums and conferences.
Pablo joined Pioneering Ventures a project CEO in 2009 with the initial assignment to lead the incubation of Citrus International, India’s first and only industry scale orange juice concentrate manufacturer. Under his leadership, the project team developed the business turn-key solution, acquired Proterra as lead-investor and HDFC and PepsiCo as co-investors.
In his current role as a Partner at Pioneering Ventures, Pablo is focusing on investor relations, corporate communication and strategic guidance of venture development. Examples of new ventures are MilkLane, a company which aims to become India’s largest aggregator and supplier of high quality milk and FarmLink, a company modernizing the entire supply chain for F&B with the aim to become the largest and most preferred supplier of value-added fresh produce for industrial scale off-takers.
Pablo at the age of 34 decided to radically change his habits and start living a more healthy and active life. On this journey, Pablo discovered endurance training and became a passionate triathlete. Despite a demanding job, including long working hours, extensive responsibility and heavy travel, Pablo managed to transform himself from an unhealthy business professional to a multiple amateur Ironman champion with a personal best of 8 hours and 50 minutes. Over the past 10 years, Pablo has completed 20 full distance Ironman races, became European Champion in long-distance triathlon and Swiss Champion in ultramarathon cycling in the “couples’ category” together with his wife Lucia.
Pablo earned his Master's degree in Strategy and Organization as well as his Doctorate at the Institute of Management (IFB) at the University of St. Gallen (St. Gallen, Switzerland).
Ritu Verma is one of the co-founders at Ankur. She is passionate about bringing innovation from lab to the market and did that for a decade across corporates - Unilever and Philips. She has also worked globally investing in IP led renewable technologies. She has a PhD in physics from University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from INSEAD. If Ritu had any spare time she’d love to travel to all ends of the earth and read a few books.
@rituverma01
Jinesh Shah is the co-founder of Omnivore Partners, a venture fund investing in early stage Indian start-ups developing breakthrough technologies for food, agriculture and rural livelihoods.
Omnivore invests in the following domains:
1) Agriculture Technology
- Digital platform, big data solutions
- Precision agriculture, Internet of Things
- Remote Sensing, UAVs, farm automation
- Sustainable inputs
2) Innovative Food
- Branded products, novel ingredients
- New food processing technologies
- Value chains linked to farmers
- Traceability, food safety and nutrition solutions
3) Rural Livelihoods
- Water management
- Fintech for farmers
- Efficient energy tech
- Supply chain tech
Jinesh is a Director for multiple Omnivore-backed startups, including Stellapps Technologies, Barrix Agro Sciences, Retigence Technologies and FR8. Previously, Jinesh was the Vice President and CFO at Nexus Venture Partners, one of India’s leading early stage venture capital funds, where he lead the finance organization and also few select portfolio investments. He earlier served in Finance roles with Datamatics (leading Treasury/M&A), Patni Computers (initiating the IPO process), and HCL Technologies (founding the BPO business).
He is a Chartered Accountant with B.Com from R. A. Poddar College and an MMS (Finance) from the Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies (JBIMS).
Kushal is Partner and CFO at Aspada Investment Advisors. Kushal leads the agriculture portfolio at Aspada and serves on the boards of most of their agri-focused companies. Further, he leads the initiatives on fund raise - both debt and equity for the entire portfolio. Kushal is passionate about working with organizations in their formative phase and is closely involved with portfolio companies in their strategic and financial planning, process implementation, performance management and risk management. His previous engagements include Financial Controller at an e-commerce start up and significant stints at ITC – one of India’s largest conglomerate and PWC. Kushal is a meritorious Chartered Accountant from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and a graduate in commerce from St. Xavier's College, Kolkata.
S. Venkatraman is a Partner & Head of Mumbai office with Rabo Equity Advisors, the Investment Advisor to India Agri Business Fund 1 and 2. This is the first private equity fund in Asia dedicated to the Food & Agribusiness sector. At Rabo Equity, Venkat is the senior member of the investment team, involved in deal ideation, origination, evaluation, investment, execution and portfolio management.
Venkat has a B.Tech from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay and an MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.
Venkat has over 22 years of work experience which comprises
Six years with Rabo Equity Advisors Pvt. Ltd
Eight and half years with Rabo India Finance Ltd (100% subsidiary of Rabobank International), where he headed the Food & Agribusiness Research and Advisory team (FAR).
7 years in the consumer marketing space, spread across Johnson & Johnson and Marico Ltd, both based in Mumbai (India). 1 year with Essar Steel in the Project Management team
Venkat has a sound understanding of the sector dynamics across food and agribusiness sectors (F&A). He has authored publications in all these sectors. He has also spoken at various industry forums and showcased his sector knowledge. He has also advised various domestic and international corporates on entry strategy, market study and implementation assistance in the F&A space.
Bikram has over a decade of experience in private equity with investment experience spanning North America, Europe and Asia with a specific focus on India.
Bikram holds an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta and a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the National Institute of Technology Allahabad.
Hemendra has over 20 years of experience in private equity, management consulting and investment banking. Hemendra has significant experience of investing in Indian agribusiness in sectors such as food ingredients, animal feed, fertilisers, seeds, organic foods, spices, wheat milling, restaurants and catering. He is on the board of many early-stage companies in the food and agri sector. He is also associated with many incubator and mentoring networks for advising start-ups in the agri domain.
Prior to his VC stint, he has worked as management consultant to many Indian and multinational companies, government and multilateral organizations in the sectors pertaining to food processing, agribusiness, consumer goods and retail. He has extensive experience of working in India, South Asia, Europe and USA.
Hemendra in his career has worked with SEAF, Yes Bank, Rabobank, KSA Technopak, and ORG MARG (Nielsen). He is a management graduate from IIM (Ahmedabad) and Agricultural Engineer from Rajasthan Agricultural University.
@hemendramathur
Ramesh Ramachandran is Senior Vice President - Strategy and Precision Farming at Mahindra and Mahindra’s Farm Equipment Business. His role encompasses both strategy development as well as identifying and incubating new revenue opportunities, both organically and inorganically. With agriculture poised for great change, Ramesh is closely involved in leveraging emerging digital technologies to deliver new product and service solutions to farmers. He strongly believes in the transformative power of technology in addressing business and social challenges.
Ramesh has close to 25 years of experience in innovation, marketing, strategy and P&L management. This includes 9 years with Unilever’s ice cream and Frozen Foods business in a variety of UK and European roles as well as 6 years in the London office of a boutique innovation and venturing consultancy where he helped Fortune 500 and FTSE 100 clients identify, prototype and incubate new ventures. In the early part of his career Ramesh worked with Shell in India where as part of the India start up team he worked across sales, marketing and business development to set up some of their initial businesses reporting eventually to the MD.
Ramesh has an MBA with distinction from INSEAD, an MMS from S.P Jain Institute of Management and Research and a B.Sc (Hon) from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University.
He is a long distance runner with a passion for Indian percussion.
Mr. Anuj Rakyan is the founder and Managing Director at RAW Pressery – India’s first cold-pressed juice company. RAW Pressery aims to be India’s leading clean-label food & beverage company, by creating honestly healthy products using superior technology and unique distribution methods.
Under the leadership of Anuj Rakyan – RAW Pressery has grown into a national beverage brand over the past 18 months, spanning five cities and available across modern trade, general trade, horeca, institutional and direct-to-home. Recently, it attracted a seed investment from Sequoia Capital and became the first company in India to acquire the unique HPP technology, which increases shelf-life and maintains nutrition in natural products.
Prior to founding RAW Pressery, Anuj spent the past decade building operations and growing brands in the diamond and jewelry industry with Gitanjali Gems and Nirav Modi Jewels. Anuj began his career as an investment banker with Morgan Stanley and moved from the financial world to brand consulting at FutureBrand in New York. He graduated in economics from Duke University in North Carolina and finished his schooling at Cathedral & John Connon School in Mumbai.
@AnujRakyan
Sumer serves as an advisor on growth equity investments in Indian companies across a wide range of sectors, including telecom, technology, financial services, infrastructure and manufacturing.
Before joining NVP India in 2009, Sumer was a founding member of the Goldman Sachs’ Asian Special Situations Group in India, a balance sheet investing group with over $4 billion under management. In this role, Sumer originated and evaluated investment opportunities in a broad range of industries, conducted due diligence and had board level involvement with such companies as Bharti Infratel, IRB Infrastructure Developers Ltd., IL&FS Transportation Networks Ltd. (ITNL), Cremica and OnMobile.
Prior to this role, Sumer was an analyst for the Industrial and Natural Resources Team in the Investment Banking Division of Goldman Sachs. In this position, Sumer actively drove all aspects of the M&A process including financial analysis, due diligence and public and private buy-side and sell-side transactions. Transaction experience included acquisition of Paladin Resources by Talisman Energy, acquisition of Domnick Hunter by Parker Hannifin and advising Thames Water, a UK water utility, on the divestiture of its international assets valued at over $2 billion
@sumerjuneja
With a wide experience in the dairy industry since his early days, Mr. Vivek Nirmal today is an Industry veteran and the youngest CEO & MD of Prabhat Dairy Limited, also serves on its Board of Directors. Before being named CEO in 2006, the young Nirmal was Prabhat’s Director Sales and was responsible for all of the company’s Sales Operations across India, including end-to-end management of Prabhat’s Supply Chain, Sales Activities, Service and Marketing Support in all markets. He also headed Prabhat’s (NPD) New Product Development division and played a key role in the continued development of Prabhat, positioning it as “Partners in Progress” for all major MNC’s and SMU’s through strategic approach and supplier relationships, ensuring flexibility in response to an increasingly demanding marketplace. With the support from family members (Sarang Nirmal - Chairman, Kishor Nirmal - Director & Arvind Nirmal-Director), pre-eminent team of top notch industry seasoned professionals, unmatched qualities of innovation, leadership and dedicated approach have changed the landscape of entire dairy industry regionally. Mr. Vivek Nirmal is now focusing in the areas of Finance, Procurement, Projects and backward integration for the welfare and development of farmer community.
Mr. Vivek Nirmal, the mouthpiece of the Industry is also the member of CII - National Council on Dairy. He has led many CSR activities. ‘Sustainability’ as a topic is very close to his heart and that is what moves him! One has to go through the journey of the Nirmal family since 1998 to understand how they have taken cautious steps to bring the company to this level. Under Mr. Vivek Nirmal’s guidance, today Prabhat Dairy Limited is the most trusted and respectable brand and has made its presence felt all over India and is now spreading its wings in the international markets as well.
Rajat is the Founder CEO at TESSOL, a VC backed Cold chain technology startup in Mumbai. He is passionate about building solutions for a farm to fork affordable and sustainable cold supply chain in the country. He has worked across continents with a large conglomerate like Robert Bosch and several early stage startups like 3Tier, Flodesign, Promethean Power. Avid reader and a music enthusiast, he holds a mechanical engineering from IIT Delhi and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.
@ragupta13
Mr. Krishna Kumar, Founder & CEO at CropIn Technology Solutions has a strong technical background and has worked extensively with technology all through his illustrious career in the corporate world. He has had a distinguished graph of growth while working with GE where he began with a profile in technology and went to take a role of leadership in Information Management Leadership Program. This tech whiz had an epiphany when he saw the plight the farmers have been facing due to lack of information and changing climatic conditions. It is this conscientious effort that led him to cut short his remarkable corporate career at GE and embark on a startup journey of his own.
A natural ability to lead, a sensitivity and sense of responsibility towards the society directed him to venture into a startup where he used his technical prowess and people skills to develop CropIn.
At CropIn, Mr. Krishna Kumar has made it possible to help the farmers connect to technology in one of the simplest ways and monitor their farms with data collected through this platform. His six sigma green belt certification only fortifies his efforts in this direction.
In his moments of leisure, he enjoys reading, travelling and interacting with people from different fields.
@Krishna2581
Abhilash is Co founder at Gold Farm, an Ag Tech start up based out of Bangalore. Gold Farm is a mobile app based tractor booking platform, supported by a rural distribution network. Gold Farm is primarily trying to address the problem of rising labour costs and labour scarcity for agriculture.
Prior to co founding Gold Farm, Abhilash was co-founder at www.healthcaremagic.com He was a day zero team member, who built the entire corporate engagement platform, including engagement with the top 5 Insurance companies in India. The company has since been acquired by a NASDAQ listed firm in the year 2014.
Abhilash completed his MBA from IIM Lucknow and also holds a degree in health sciences.
Thirukumaran Nagarajan, an Anna University-CEG and IIM K alumnus, has over 8 years of experience and has worked with companies like Axis Bank, Aavishkaar Venture Management, Taxiforsure (Head of Mobile Products) and Commonfloor. Thiru is a serial entrepreneur, before starting Ninjacart, he built Shout App (location based social network, which saw more than 10,000 downloads within 3 months) and EduRaft (an Education Information Platform based out of Chennai).
Ranjith Mukundan is the CEO & Co-Founder of Stellapps Technologies, a Internet of Things (IoT) company currently focused on the dairy supply chain. Stellapps has successfully deployed its proprietary hardware and software applications across India and abroad. Ranjith was previously with Wipro Technologies as the Global Head of the Telecom Value Added Services (VAS) Practice. He also oversaw a Centre of Excellence (CoE) focused on product innovation and intellectual property creation. Ranjith has over 20 years of software industry experience, including shadow P&L and technology consulting (e.g., to Nomura UK). He has a MS in Telecom & Software Engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago.
Alekh is co-founder & CEO of farMart. farMart is an on-demand agriculture machinery renting platform for farmers from farmers. Prior to farMart, Alekh was a digital payments consultant with MicroSave. He has cross country experience having worked extensively on variety of projects with international donors- Gates foundation, World Bank, UNCDF- and Government of India apparatus. Alekh was the core team member who helped established a new government payments division at MicroSave Consulting.
@alekhs22
Srini is director (partner) at Peepul Capital which an India focused growth stage private equity fund with about $700 million under management.
Over his 25 years of professional career in financial services, Srini spent close to two decades in Private Equity in India and abroad. Being among the early professionals in Indian Private Equity industry, Srini has been closely associated with multiple marquee investments over the years. He led the early notable investments in education (Career Launcher), mobile telecom (BPL Cellular), power (Kondapalli Power) and web businesses (Netkraft) among others. Srini was among the founding team of CDC private equity operations in India (now called ACTIS) and Director of Intel Capital South Asia operations.
Srini was instrumental in setting up and running the fund management operations of Thomas Weisel Partners in India as its founding head of investments. Just before Peepul Capital, Srini built and managed the Indian operations of Lightspeed Ventures Partners as its founding Managing Director.
Saurabh Bajaj works at Proterra Investment Partners based in Mumbai, where he is responsible for deal sourcing, investing, portfolio monitoring and effectuating exits. Proterra was spun out of Black River Asset Management (a division of Cargill) and is focused on food & agri investments. Prior to this role, Saurabh has worked in the M&A team at Louis Dreyfus covering investments in Middle East and Africa, out of their Dubai office and in the Investments Team of Olam International out of their Singapore office. He is a management graduate from IIM Calcutta.
Siddarth Menon is Chief Marketing Officer at Drums Food International, makers of India’s first Greek yogurt – Epigamia. At Epigamia, Sid’s role is to drive growth through strategic initiatives that bring the brand essence to life across online and offline channels.
He drives awareness, experience and advocacy of Epigamia through an integrated marketing approach and uses consumer driven insights to influence product innovation and roll-out strategy.
Before joining Drums Food, Siddarth headed the North business for Colgate-Palmolive where he generated market share growth through his detailed go-to-market strategy and execution. Prior to that he was spearheading growth in volume and revenue as Marketing Manager for Colgate Dental Cream, Colgate Palmolive’s largest brand.
Siddarth holds a B. Comm degree from MMK College in Mumbai and an MBA from JBIMS Mumbai.
Rajinder is an early stage investor with Matrix Partners India. Matrix has invested in several market leading companies in India such as Ola (local transportation), Mswipe (mobile POS), Quikr (online classifieds), Practo (digital health platform), Dailyhunt (mobile local language platform), Five Star Finance (SME lending), Limeroad (mobile social commerce marketplace), Razorpay (payments), Treebo (digital hotel chain) and OfBusiness (SME lending and B2B marketplace) among others.
Rajinder has had the privilege of working with some of these fantastic founders who have built fast growing marketplaces and is looking to partner with more founders across B2B and B2C sectors that target “Real India”. Rajinder has an MBA from Harvard Business School and did his undergrad at the University of Madras.
@rbalaraman
Sonal heads M&A and Private Equity Advisory at SMC Group. She has experience of over 20 years across M&A, corporate advisory and strategic consulting. She has advised leading Indian and international companies across areas including M&A, Joint Ventures, Equity/Debt Fund raising and Growth strategy. She has also advised Government of India- Ministry of Food Processing and Ministry of Agriculture and several State Governments on agri/food strategy and its implementation. She has been an active member of Industry Panels for the consumer, food, agribusiness and financial services sectors, for leading Indian Industry Associations. Sonal holds a PGDM from IIM Kolkata and a Bachelor's Degree in Economics (Honours) from Hindu College, University of Delhi.
Srikumar Misra is an entrepreneur and the founder of Milk Mantra; he was with the Tata Administrative Service in London and quit his job in 2009 and returned to India to set up Milk Mantra in Odisha to address the large problem of consumer trust deficit with the integrity of milk and milk products.
Milk Mantra, India’s 1st VC funded Agri Food & Beverage startup is a conscious capitalist entrepreneurial white revolution and it’s ‘Milky Moo’ brand is one the fastest growing dairy brands in the country and has nearly 50,000 network farmers as part of its Ethical Milk Sourcing program.
Srikumar has been written about as 'India's New Age Milkman’; Stanford Business School did a case study on his fund raise; he was nominated on the Management Board of Odisha University of Agriculture & Technology, he is a Fellow of the Aspen Institute, USA as a thought leader and was selected as Fortune India’s 40 under 40 in 2016.
With a number of product innovations to address the evolving dairy nutrition market, Srikumar has also created a revolutionary product – the World’s 1st milkshake with Curcumin (active ingredient of haldi) and has a patent pending in India and US.
@srikmisra
Prior to joining Samara Capital, Manish worked with the Private Equity Fund at Lehman Brothers in New York. Before that, Manish was a Principal in a $10 billion multi-strategy hedge fund at Barclays Global Investors. Manish also briefly worked in Real Estate Private Equity at Grove International Partners (Soros Fund) where he was covering India investments primarily in the hotel sector. Manish began his finance career with Lehman Brothers in 2001 in New York.
Manish earned his Masters in Business Administration from the Harvard Business School where he graduated with Distinction. Manish also has a Master of Science in Transportation & Logistics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and received his Bachelors degree in engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Roorke where he was the top ranking student in his class. Manish is also a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA).
Vivek has over 15 years of work experience in FMCG space. He has spent his career with ITC traversing across functions: Sales, Marketing, Supply Chain & Product Development. He is now leading Maiyas Beverages & Foods Pvt Ltd in the capacity of C.E.O & is playing an instrumental role in transforming the organisation into a large professionally driven FMCG enterprise in Packaged Foods space.
Karthik Jayaraman serves as Co-founder, WayCool Foods and Products Pvt Ltd. He comes with over 19 years experience across engineering, automotive and management consulting, and was most recently heading business transformation, new business development and corporate strategy at Ashok Leyland.
Prior to this, Karthik drove large organizational transformation engagements at McKinsey and Company. He holds deep experience in setting up/ transforming business processes, across operations, sourcing and supply chain, and in organization structuring and leadership capability building.
Lrthik is alumnus of IIT Madras, Purdue University and Indian School of Business.
Sameer is part of the founding team at Tuscan. Sameer has over 10 years of experience in the shipping, logistics and transportation infrastructure space spread across Asia. Prior to his role at Tuscan, he worked at the Indian Head Office of Maersk Line – the world’s largest container shipping company – in Mumbai, responsible for the trade between India and the Americas. During 2005-2007, he was the asset flow and Procurement manager for Maersk Line’s activities in the Americas and Asia Pacific Rim based at Maersk Line’s regional head quarters in Singapore Sameer Started his career as part of A. P. Moller – Maersk’s elite Management Training Program.
Atindriya Bose is leading Trringo.com Limited, a digital business enterprise in the area of Farm Mechanization through a ‘Pay-per-use” platform approach. Trringo.com is a Digital organization which is part of the $ 19 billion Mahindra Group.
He has 22 years of experience in Consumer Products & Digital businesses spanning Consumer Electronics, Beverage Alcohol, e-Commerce and Digital media. He has been involved in Digital commerce businesses since 2003 and have helped establish a range of businesses in India with Rediff.com and Sony PlayStation.
With Trringo.com, he envisages to introduce Digital Innovation into a high impact area of Indian Agriculture. He leads the technology development strategy as well as business operations to establish Trringo.com to enhance access to Farm Mechanization by Indian farmers.
Intralinks provides a leading secure enterprise collaboration and corporate file sharing solution that is trusted by 99% of the Fortune 1000. Intralinks simplifies cross enterprise document sharing by enabling users to easily share documents with anyone, anywhere while maintaining complete control over who can view, edit, print and download. Intralinks’ business file sharing tools even let users unshare documents after they have been downloaded to a remote device or personal computer. Intralinks offers a virtual data room solution that makes due diligence and post merger integration easier by allowing organizations, partners, counterparties and regulators to share and access documents quickly and efficiently without worrying about leaks or hacks. Intralinks’ deal management software accelerates the deal lifecycle by simplifying deal sourcing and marketing. And Intralinks’ document rights management software makes it easier to manage documents shared with contacts around the world. Intralinks solutions are used by enterprises in a wide variety of industries for partner collaboration, safety document distribution, SharePoint externalization, clinical trial remote monitoring and other applications.
SMC CAPITALS LIMITED
SMC Capitals Limited is the Investment Banking arm of the SMC group and is a SEBI registered Merchant Banker with a strong management team; financial sponsors and partners to assist clients achieve their financial and strategic goals.
It offers a wide spectrum of services including Mergers & Acquisitions Advisory, Corporate Advisory, Private Equity advisory, Debt fund raising, Management of IPOs, Rights offers, Open Offers and Delisting, Loans against Equity Shares, Business and ESOP Valuation Services.
As one of the premier investment banks, it serves the needs of clients by offering a world-class platform leveraging the team’s experience of working across Indian and international corporates, business houses, multilaterals and Governments. SMC Capitals attributes its success to company’s commitment of always putting client’s interests first. It has a strong team of professionals with proven track record across product segments .
While the team works across sectors, Food & Agribusiness is a focus sector for the organization with the team having worked extensively across segments including processed foods, agri logistics, food services and food retail, dairy, fertilizers, seeds, agrochemicals, animal feed and food packaging.
ABOUT SMC GROUP
Founded in 1994, SMC Group is one of India's leading investment solutions providers. SMC has a workforce of more than 3000 employees handling a wide spread network of branches, 2,400+ registered sub-brokers & authorized persons and serving the financial needs of a large base of investors efficiently. Over the years, SMC has expanded its operations domestically as well as internationally. Its domestic network includes regional offices at Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Bangalore and a growing network spread across 550+ cities/towns in the country.
Services offered by the SMC Group include institutional and retail brokerage of equity, currency, debt, commodities, derivatives; online trading; depository services; distribution of IPOs, mutual funds, fixed deposits, bonds and insurance; clearing; corporate hedging; IPO financing & margin funding; NRI & QFI services; investment banking; wealth advisory, portfolio management & research.
Founded in 2012, Maiyas is a leading South Indian packaged Food and Beverages company which straddles across six food categories namely Spices, Savories, Sweets, Instant Mixes, Beverages, Ready to eat and Frozen foods. With strong footprints in Karnataka, Maiyas is rapidly building higher consumer base in other four Southern states & Western geographies of the country. Furthermore, Maiyas also has presence in 12 countries across the world.
Company has (ISO 22000 certified) a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility located in Bangalore which produces Maiyas product portfolio with best in class quality standards.
Maiyas is recognized as one of the fastest growing consumer brand & has attained a fair consumer base in certain geographies within a short period. Its ongoing engagement with the consumers in understanding needs with changing times has facilitated in development of relevant product innovations which offers convenience & delivers same authentic taste as desired by the consumer. One such product innovation is : “1 Minute Rasam” which has been successfully launched in Karnataka with a promise to deliver same authentic rasam to the consumer within a minute. Maiyas is working ambitiously to develop such relevant innovations across product categories which would be launched in next six months across geographies it operates in.
Founded in 2012, Maiyas is a leading South Indian packaged Food and Beverages company which straddles across six food categories namely Spices, Savories, Sweets, Instant Mixes, Beverages, Ready to eat and Frozen foods. With strong footprints in Karnataka, Maiyas is rapidly building higher consumer base in other four Southern states & Western geographies of the country. Furthermore, Maiyas also has presence in 12 countries across the world.
Company has (ISO 22000 certified) a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility located in Bangalore which produces Maiyas product portfolio with best in class quality standards.
Maiyas is recognized as one of the fastest growing consumer brand & has attained a fair consumer base in certain geographies within a short period. Its ongoing engagement with the consumers in understanding needs with changing times has facilitated in development of relevant product innovations which offers convenience & delivers same authentic taste as desired by the consumer. One such product innovation is : “1 Minute Rasam” which has been successfully launched in Karnataka with a promise to deliver same authentic rasam to the consumer within a minute. Maiyas is working ambitiously to develop such relevant innovations across product categories which would be launched in next six months across geographies it operates in.
VCC Events opens up the avenues for participation. Join hands to be a part of India’s largest gathering of alternative investments leaders, industry stakeholders and Asia’s influential limited partners, general partners and marquee advisors. Your chance to actively participate and augment yourself as thought leaders.
Four Seasons Hotel, Mumbai
Date: October 27, 2017
Venue: Four Seasons Hotel Mumbai
Drop us a line and we will call you.
