Abhishek Awadhiya leads Digital Payments and Telecom business verticals for Google in India. He closely works with the largest players in the payments eco-system (telcos and wallet aggregators) in strategic engagements to leverage digital in business building, customer acquisition/retention and new product development. Prior to his current role he was leading Strategy and Sales Operations for Google in India. Before Google, he has spent 6+ years at McKinsey and Company focusing primarily in Internet, Technology and Telecom sectors. He has done his MBA from Indian School of Business Hyderabad and B.Tech in Electrical Engineering from IIT Madras.

Alok leads Cisco Investments in India and is on the Board of several companies, ranging from early stage to pre-IPO organizations. Prior to Cisco, he has worked with top global companies – both in the US and in India - in various business leadership roles including sales, marketing, product management and strategy. He started his career with the Tata Administrative Services (TAS) and then worked with Bain and BellSouth/AT&T in the US. He has also been an entrepreneur early in his career.

Alok is a published author including a recent paper in Knowledge@Wharton on emerging market innovation. Alok has a B.Tech (EE) from IIT-Delhi and an MBA with Honors from Wharton Business School.

Anand Lunia is a Founding Partner of India Quotient, an early stage fund focusing on pre-revenue startups.

Anand was previously an Executive Director at Seedfund. With over 15 years of experience as entrepreneur, venture investor and corporate executive, Anand leads investments in tech, internet, education and retail ventures. Anand was also the co-founder of Brainvisa (One of India’s leading e-learning companies) where he created the business plan, led the team in fund raising and eventual exit of 5x for the investors. Anand also served as Executive VP – Operations of Hurix Technologies (A Deloitte Fast 50 company focusing on publishing services), and was responsible for 800 people strong operations, sales and marketing. He has previously worked at Asian Paints, ICICI Treasury and Lionbridge. As an active Angel Investor, Anand has invested in successful startups like Inkfruit, a crowdsourcing apparel company and Faasos, a fast food chain.

Anand holds an MBA degree from IIM Lucknow and a Bachelor of Engineering degree. An active charter member of TiE, Anand loves to motivate entrepreneurs and help them with all startup challenges.

@anandlunia

Abhinav Haldia is the Country Director - India for Lenddo - the global leader in using non-traditional digital data for credit scoring & verifications with a vision of “Improved financial inclusion for at least1 billion people around the world".

Abhinav has over 13 years of experience in the Indian Financial Services Industry, with earlier stints at HSBC & CIBIL. He has been instrumental in bringing some of the largest banks in India to the non-traditional data side and mainstream the usage of these datasets for financial inclusion, enhanced risk mitigation and better understanding of customer behaviour.

Asit Oberoi is Group President & Global Head for Transaction Banking Group at YES BANK. He heads the Product and Sales streams across all Transaction Banking Products in the Bank. Additionally he is also responsible for the Corporate Current Account offerings of the bank. In his role he engages extensively with corporate clients across all business segments Pan India.

Under the product management gamut, he is the chief sponsor of all the Digitization efforts in the B2B and B2B2C Segments including creating cross sell across the value chain. The roll out of innovative products and customized solutions is a special area of interest.

Under his leader YES BANK has won many awards from leading global agencies including from ‘The Banker’- London, Global Finance London, Asian Banker and from Indian agencies like ‘The Banking Frontier - Finnoviti Awards and Skoch. Asit is responsible for the management of the Policy framework and its related matters, operational risk and Information risk management across his functions.

Asit is a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Mumbai and a Chartered Accountant. He brings with him over 20 years of experience in Banking & Financial services industry spanning across Fidelity International, Standard Chartered Bank, ANZ Grindlays Bank & Bank of America. He has General management experience which includes leading teams in a range of Finance & Operations functions. He also has experience in new business set ups. He is regularly invited to speak at various national and international forums related to Banking products, innovation & technology.

Bala has donned all kinds of hats from being a serial entrepreneur to a venture capitalist – he has done it all! With his endless reservoir of energy and passion to ideate, strategize and execute, Bala has over 16 years of experience in the world of start- ups. He is currentky the cofounder of MoneyTap, India's first consumer credit line.

Bala was one of the co-founders of Angelprime (now Prime Venture Partners), a seed – stage fund based in Bangalore. From 2011 - 2016 he was deeply involved in companies such as ZipDial (acquired by Twitter), Ezetap, SmartOwner, Vidgyor, Happay, HackerEarth, Synup, Healthify.me, Quizziz and more.

Bala has built three companies, one of them being Snapfish, bought by Hewlett Packard in 2005. As General Manager and MD for Snapfish International, he led its growth into becoming the world's largest online photo site with 100M+ users, and expansion into 20+ countries in Europe and Asia Pacific. \

In his early days, he was a co-founder of iSelect and then Wyatt River Software that was acquired by SafeNet and started his career as one of the early engineers who built Digital Link, which went public in 1993. He has also worked with Mr. Nandan Nilekani, Chairman, UIDAI, and played a key role in defining the application strategy and developer ecosystem on Aadhaar from 2010- 2011.

His insatiable appetite to see the world has taken him on personal adventures across 80 countries in the world and driven him to acquire fluent spoken Spanish and French and a surprisingly effective grasp of German, Portuguese and Italian. He has climbed the Kilimanjaro, trekked the Andes, Alps and the Himalayas, motor-biked across the African continent, up the highest motor able road in the world at Leh, ridden boats, camels and ramshackle trains - in the quest for experiencing those indescribable moments which have made him what he is. He shares his love for the world and adventure with his wife, Dana and their three kids.

In 2006, he was recognized by University of California, Santa Cruz with its highest honor for alumni as a "Distinguished Alumnus". He obtained his bachelor's degree from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.

Mr. Daykin Creado is the Chief Technology Officer at ItzCash Card Ltd and is responsible for establishing & implementing the company’s technology roadmap, strategy & vision. He comes with experience in running enterprise wide, transaction processing intensive, mission critical applications. Prior to ItzCash, he served as Vice President – IT at HDFC Bank Ltd running enterprise architecture, service oriented architecture and payment related direct banking channels.

Mr. Creado comes with strong business technology experience. He has managed and implemented myriad of projects for direct banking channels such as core financial switching (BASE24), Visa/MasterCard/Diners/RuPay/NFS/Cashnet interchanges multi factor authentication, RBI compliance & mandates, point of sale merchant acquiring, e-commerce payment gateway, government payment and integration projects, UIDAI integration, e-KYC, inbound & outbound contact centres, PCI-DSS and many more. He was responsible for roadmap, adoption and implementation of service oriented architecture (SOA) as well as solution engineering and architecture at an enterprise level.

He was also involved in a roll out of applications for managing on-boarding of customers for retail assets and various other business intelligence projects such as credit underwriting, 360 degree view of customers etc. Prior to HDFC Bank Ltd, he held roles at Sybase Inc and NIIT Ltd. Born and raised in Mumbai, he holds a Masters degree in Microbiology from the University of Mumbai.

Dhiraj Nayyar is Officer on Special Duty and Head, Economics, Finance and Commerce, NITI Aayog, Government of India, At NITI Aayog, he is responsible for all policy matters related to the Department of Economic Affairs, Department of Revenue, Department of Financial Services and Department of Commerce. Dhiraj trained as an economist at St. Stephen's College, Delhi, Merton College, Oxford and Trinity College, Cambridge. After a stint teaching development economics at the University of Cambridge, Dhiraj switched to journalism. He was Opinion Editor of The Financial Express, Deputy Editor of India Today, Editor-at-large at Firstpost.com, India Columnist for Bloomberg View and Managing Editor of The Quint. He was also CEO of the Think India Foundation, a media-active think tank. In 2013, Dhiraj was awarded a Bastiat Prize in journalism by the California-based Reason Foundation. He is the editor of two books, Surviving the Storm: India and the Global Financial Crisis and Dogs and Us: Collected Short Stories. 

Mr Dhananjaya Tambe is Chief General Manager (IT-Transformation, Collaboration and Marketing) and is responsible for the Innovations, Social Media, Project Management, marketing of I.T. products, etc.
He joined State Bank of India as a Probationary Officer in 1987 in the Ahmedabad Circle of the Bank. After serving in the Baroda Main branch of the Bank for five years in various divisions, such as Personal Banking, International Banking and Small & Medium Enterprises Banking, he was transferred as Accountant at GACL Ranoli branch of the Bank for one year.
 
In 2015, he was elevated to the rank of Chief General Manager, and was posted as Chief General Manager (IT-Operations) of the Bank at the Global IT Centre at Belapur. He holds rich experience in vertical, among others, Financial Inclusion and Government Payment Schemes, the back office operations of Core Banking System, Pension Payment System, the Complaint Management System, the User Acceptance Testing, management of Human Resources of IT Department, Human Resources Management System, the physical infrastructure of the IT Department, and the Reconciliation and Settlement Systems.

Harshil started Razorpay after discovering the dismal state of online payments in India. He graduated from IIT Roorkee in 2013 and worked at Schlumberger before quitting his job to start Razorpay.

With an idea to change the way online payments function in India, Harshil quit his full-time job. By early 2014, Razorpay was conceptualised with a vision to simplify online payments. Razorpay is one of the only two India-focused companies to be selected for the prestigious Y Combinator (YC) programme where Harshil and co-Founder Shashank gathered industry expertise & insights from some of the biggest VC’s and entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley.

After the three-month programme at YC, founders and CEO’s of some of India’s most famous unicorns invested into Razorpay’s vision of simplifying payments. These include InMobi, Freecharge and Snapdeal founders, along with internet entrepreneurs & investors Justin Kan and Tikhon Bernstam among others. Along with the reputed investors, the company is also backed by Tiger Global Management, Matrix Partners and Mastercard.

Harshil was recently featured in an eclectic list of 30 promising young Indian talent under the age of 30, by Forbes magazine. While Harshil is a mechanical engineer by degree, he has been coding since his schooldays and has worked on multiple software projects in college.

@harshilmathur

Krishnan Dharmarajan heads the Centre for Digital Financial Inclusion (CDFI), Institute for Financial Management and Research as its Executive Director. The Centre aims to develop and scale digital payment innovations and digital financial products and platforms aimed at poor or otherwise excluded population segments. CDFI partners and supports various organizations, including Government agencies in India at the Central and State levels, in evolving program implementation frameworks that leverage technology to provide benefits to the poor. The emphasis has been on re-imagining service delivery to the poor around innovations in the financial space.

Prior to joining CDFI, Krishnan was Commissioner (Systems), CBEC, Govt of India where he worked on  conceptualization and establishment of the Goods and Services Tax Network. Krishnan also worked for five years at the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India as Principal Consultant and Advisor for India’s National e-Governance Plan, where he was variously responsible for Program Monitoring, Strategic Planning, Capacity Building, Institutional Restructuring and Multilateral Funding for large e-governance programs.

This was preceded by 18 years of work spanning establishment of nation-wide indirect tax systems, telecom regulation, revenue administration and systems engineering.
Krishnan received Government’s commendation for development of a mobile banking framework for the unbanked in the year 2010. He is recipient of the President of India’s award for distinguished service in the year 2006. Krishnan took early retirement from the Indian Revenue Service in 2014. He is a Computer engineer and a post graduate in management.

Krishna was part of the original Lightbox team, having joined Sandeep since the Sherpalo days. As a thought partner to the founders, he drives performance at the portfolio companies by tracking and benchmarking their key operating drivers against peers, as well as supports exit planning and execution.

He has been investing in the Indian startup sector for the last six years. He loves to meet teams that leverage technology to bring new business models to markets.
Trained at IIT and battle hardened at start-ups in the US, he returned to India to get an MBA from the Indian School of Business. He worked at Tata Teleservices where he was instrumental in setting up new lines of business (M2M communications and Mobile Healthcare). He also executed distribution partnerships with HCL and HUL to expand company’s footprint for data and voice businesses. Prior to joining Tata Tele, Krishna was a management consultant at Boston Consulting Group where he advised clients in developing strategy & execution.

@krishnavinjamur

Lizzie Chapman is ZestMoney’s crusader-in-chief, leading its mission of helping Indian consumers to upgrade their lifestyle by owning their favourite products today and pay in the future. Her global fintech experiences have guided ZestMoney’s journey to become India’s fastest digital EMI solution for fast growing e-commerce businesses, lenders and consumers.

Nitin Nayar is a Managing Director at Warburg Pincus India Pvt. Ltd. He is based in Mumbai and joined Warburg Pincus in 2003 and has been working with the firm’s Indian affiliate since 2004. He is involved in the firm's investment advisory activities in India and evaluates opportunities in the technology and media sectors. Prior to joining Warburg Pincus, Mr. Nayar was business development manager for Epoch Partners, a boutique U.S. investment bank and worked in the technology investment banking group at Merrill Lynch in Palo Alto. He is a director of MXC Solutions India Private Limited (Car Trade) and Capillary Technologies. Mr. Nayar holds an A.B. from Harvard College and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

Prayank is a Principal with Accel in India. He has more than a decade of experience across investing, product management, product marketing and engineering. Prayank focuses on investments in commerce (B2C/B2B) and mobile sectors at Accel. Has led investments in MechMocha, Bizongo, Quiklo and Mubble. And, is closely involved with Accel India's investments in TaxiForSure (now merged with Ola Cabs), BookMyShow, MySmartPrice, Power2SME and a number of mobile businesses. He is also currently looking at growth investments from Accel India.

Prior to joining Accel, Prayank worked at Adobe Systems and Standard Chartered Bank. He has an integrated master's degree in Mathematics and Computing from IIT Delhi, and an MBA from Indian School of Business, Hyderabad.

Twitter: @prayanks

Puneet is a founding member of IFMR Trust and its group companies. He serves as a Director on the Trustee Company that manages the governance of the IFMR Trust Group. He has played multiple executive roles across the IFMR Trust Group since 2008, the last one being as the CFO of IFMR Holdings, an entity that has promoted IFMR Capital and IFMR Rural Channels. Prior to that Puneet was a part of IFMR Rural Finance,  an entity that conceptualised the KGFS model, used by IRCS as well as built a strong technology platform to offer multiple financial services to customers.

Puneet represents IFMR Trust as a promoter director on the board of several group companies and also serves on the board of IIT Madras’ Rural Technology Business Incubator.

His formal career began with ICICI Bank where he worked for a period of 7 years in various roles and capacities. Amongst other roles, he coordinated the work of the micro finance practice at ICICI Bank and his responsibilities included identification and development of new channels and products for reaching out micro financial and rural financial services. He has worked extensively towards the creation of facilitative infrastructure for the delivery of micro financial services in India and has worked with microfinance related equity funds to help them raise capital.

He is a commerce graduate with a Master’s degree in Rural Management from Institute of Rural Management Anand.

Rahul Chandra is a co-founder and Managing Director of Helion and has 20 years of venture capital investing and corporate development experience in technology product and services companies in India and the US. He serves on the Boards of Seclore, Shubham, UnitedLex, Mindworks, Wooplr, CrownIT, Railyatri, Moengage, Rapid Value and Toppr, and manages investments Ezetap.

Between 2000 and 2006, Rahul was based in Silicon Valley as part of the investment team at Walden International, a global venture capital firm with more than $2B under management. Between 2004 and 2005 he also led the M&A efforts at e4e Inc., a Santa Clara, CA based BPO company with more than 4,000 employees across the globe.

Rahul started Venture Capital investing in 1996 in India as the first hire at Walden's India office. In this role he managed investments for Walden's India dedicated Fund between 1996 and 2000.

Rahul has invested in more than 30 early-to-mid-stage companies such as Mindtree, Ikanos (IKAN), e4e Inc and Techspan (Headstrong). Prior to Walden, he worked in the Capital Markets Group at Lazard India, and in the Primary Market Department at the Securities Exchange Board of India.

Rahul has an MBA from University of California, Berkeley and graduated from Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani in 1993.

@rahulchandra77

Rajeev Agrawal is the Founder & CEO of Innoviti Payment Solutions. As the head of one of India’s most exciting financial technology companies, Rajeev is pioneering the use of design centric technology approach in solving real-world FinTech problems around payments processing and SME Lending.

Under Rajeev’s leadership, Innoviti has won numerous awards and accolades including Red Herring Asia Award, Business World Design Excellence Award, CTIA Emerging Technology Award, Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Award, The Economic Times Award for successful contribution towards Financial Inclusion, etc.

Rajeev has over 22 years of leadership experience. Prior to founding Innoviti, he was Vice President and Head of Broadband Communications Business at Sasken, Bangalore. He has done his B.Tech and Ph.D. from IIT, Bombay and is credited with the fasted Ph.D. in the history of IIT, Bombay.

Rajnish Khare is a senior Banking Professional, having 20 years of experience with HDFC Bank, Citibank, Standard Chartered, Reliance Retail and ICICI Bank.

He is currently, Head Digital Transformation, Social Business & New Media and Mobility Banking and is responsible for Digital, Social & Mobility Strategy for HDFC bank and inculcating Innovation as a culture & using innovation as a strategic differentiator to gain leadership position in chosen markets.

Earlier, he was Chief Innovation Officer for Citibank and prior to that Head - Remote Banking. Digital Payments & Business Innovations, at Standard Chartered Bank, a leading UK based Bank with strong presence in Asia. He specializes in Digital, Mobile, Social Strategy Formulations and Execution and has a versatile domain knowledge in BFSI sector.

He has extensive depth in Digital, Social, Mobile, Self Service Industry, Digital Payments, Business Innovations, Technology Space, Outsourcing Models, IT Networks set up & management and Purchase/Partner Management. 

Rajat Sood joined General Atlantic’s Mumbai office in 2007. He also worked in the firm’s New York office from 2009 to 2012 where he focused on investments in the Financial Services sector. Rajat played an active role in General Atlantic’s investments in IIFL Wealth & Asset Management, IndusInd Bank, National Stock Exchange, and PNB Housing Finance in India; Oak Hill Advisors and Pierpont Securities in North America; and Sura Asset Management and XP Investimentos in Latin America.

Prior to General Atlantic, Rajat worked at McKinsey & Company based in India, where he worked with clients in the financial services, retail, and health insurance sectors on a range of strategic and operational issues. Rajat earned his M.B.A from the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta where he was a gold medalist, and his Bachelors of Technology in Electrical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.

Ravishankar is the CEO and Co-founder of Active Intelligence, a Singapore based Fintech Company.  Active Intelligence is a platform that enables financial institutions to deliver their services using Intuition and Automation over channels of engagement. The company’s vision is to become the AI Saas platform for Financial Services.
He has been a Fintech Entrepreneur and Banker for over 20 years.

Shailesh is a Managing Director with Sequoia Capital India. Prior to joining Sequoia Capital India, Shailesh worked at Redknee's India subsidiary as the Managing Director and previously was Head of the Global Professional Services Group and held Product Management leadership roles. Previously, he consulted for Microsoft India and Tata Sons. He received an MBA from the Harvard Business School, and a BASC in Computer Engineering from the University of Waterloo.

Smita leads strategy and investments for Omidyar Network’s Financial Services initiative in India. She engages closely with innovative fintech companies and also has a board role in a few.

Smita has over 25 years of experience in banking and finance. Before joining Omidyar Network, Smita served as senior program director at CAFRAL, a global think tank promoted by the Reserve Bank of India. Prior to her time at CAFRAL, Smita was business head, Gramshakti at FullertonIndia Credit Company, a Temasek subsidiary, where she set up a business model to offer loans and other third party products to rural customers.

She began her career with ICICI Bank, where she held various leadership positions including head of rural and agricultural insurance business, head of strategy, head of e-channels, head of CRM, and head of international resources.

Smita volunteers with the Indian Cancer Society and spearheads one of the largest pan-India projects for providing financial grants for treatment of poor cancer patients. She was also instrumental in conceptualizing and launching the first debt mutual fund for supporting cancer cures.

A Chartered Accountant, Smita graduated from Sydenham College in Mumbai and attended executive programs at Harvard Business School and MIT Sloan School of Management.

Sujatha Mohan, Head - Digital and New Initiatives has 26 years of experience in various industries, including banking and finance. She is responsible for making RBL Bank the partner of choice for its unique Open Bank and Platform strategies that facilitate technologically advanced end-to-end banking services. She provides leadership and direction in creating technology architecture, business orientation, process management and strong customer service in digital banking services.

Sujatha is a key enabler of the technology transformation of RBL Bank. She helped to set up key tech-driven systems that earned the bank many awards and accolades, including Asian Banker Award (2013 and 2015) and IBA Best IT Team Award, to name a few.

Prior to joining RBL Bank, Sujatha worked in various capacities at Oracle Financial Services Software Ltd (erstwhile iflex solutions), ANZ Grindlays Bank and SHCIL. She is an expert on multiple areas of banking, including emerging digital technologies.

T.R. Ramachandran is Visa's Group Country Manager for India and South Asia. He is responsible for all strategy development and business operations of Visa in India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Maldives and Bhutan.

Ram is also focused on driving the company's innovation strategy which includes growing eCommerce, mobile payments, deepening the acceptance footprint, and building an electronic payments ecosystem which is secure and reliable. He will be instrumental in enhancing cashless payments and supporting financial inclusion in the region. Ram brings a wealth of knowledge to Visa with more than 25 years' experience across retail banking, payment products, wealth management and insurance.

@TR_Ramachandran

Mr. TC Meenakshisundaram (TCM) is Founder & Managing Director of IDG Ventures India Advisors. He has over 32 years of industry experience, including 13 years of venture experience.

TCM serves on the Board of Lenskart, Zivame, Agrostar, Fintellix, e-Shakti, Creditmantri, Cloudcherry among others.

Earlier as part of Walden International’s team, TCM was involved with investments in Mindtree, Venture Infotek and Jobstreet.

Prior to IDG Ventures, TCM served as Chief Financial Officer and President - Corporate Services at Venture Infotek, a leading payments processing company in India. Prior to Walden International, TCM has worked for 14 years at Wipro where he last served as General Manager - eCommerce Division.

TCM is a Charter Member of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), Chennai. He is a Chartered Accountant by qualification.

Toshan is a Senior Partner in the Mumbai office of McKinsey & Company and joined the firm in 2002. Toshan leads McKinsey’s Payments Practice across Asia, helping traditional banks as well as fin-tech innovators think through their business models, operating strategies, technology issues etc. He also works extensively with private equity funds, SWFs and institutional investors on improving the value from their investments. His other interests include education and public policy. His expertise covers 2 main areas Financial Services & Payments and Corporate Finance and Transaction Advisory.

Toshan is an avid writer and has co-authored several external McKinsey publications over the last few years – ‘India Private Equity – Route to resurgence’ (2015), ‘Mutual Funds – Riding the wave of opportunity & optimism (2015)’, ‘Conglomerate value-creation in the next decade (2012)’, ‘India Banking 2010’, ‘Indian Asset Management Landscape 2012’, ‘Towards Superior Risk Management in Banking’(2009), and ‘New arenas in Indian banking (2013)’. Toshan also has significant buy-side experience, having worked with a leading private equity fund in India, focusing on investments in the financial services and infrastructure space.Toshan has done his Bachelors in Commerce from the University of Bombay and has received his M.B.A. from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad before joining McKinsey.

Upasana’s mission is to simplify payment acceptance for retailers in India. Her current focus is to bring a million retailers into the MobiKwik payments network. She is also in charge of bank partnerships, business operations, and talent acquisition at MobiKwik. Upasana comes with a strong background in payments as a senior product manager with PayPal in the Silicon Valley and prior to that with HSBC in San Diego, US.

In 2008, Upasana decided to return to India and contribute to the ecosystem back home. The year after she joined MobiKwik as its co-founder. From a handful of early employees to a headcount of around 250, Upasana has been chiefly responsible for holding things together at MobiKwik, keeping the team focused on the goal of building India’s largest independent mobile payments network.

Upasana graduated with Bachelors in Engineering from NIT Jalandhar and holds a Masters in Management Science from Stanford University. She has 13 years of extensive experience in Payments & Financial Services and has been an entrepreneur in India for over 6 years now. Away from web products and startups, Upasana can be found traveling to offbeat destinations or doing triathlons. Acknowledging her achievements in the tech startup ecosystem of India she was featured by Forbes under "Asia's Women to Watch in 2016".

@UpasanaTaku

Varad is a Partner at Dalberg Advisors, where he leads of the Financial Services Practice area. Varad has held diverse roles across private sector and government, working on issues of financial inclusion, sustainable development and base-of-pyramid (BOP) business models.

Varad has done extensive work in financial inclusion and fintech in the last few years, and writes a column in MINT (http://www.livemint.com/Search/Link/Author/Varad%20Pande).

Varad sits on the Technology Sub-Committee of the Reserve Bank of India’s Committee on Household Finances, and as part of this, is specifically looking at regulatory issues in household finance, including the concept of a fintech regulatory sandbox.
 
Varad recently led the design of a go-to-market strategy for a national payments app targeted at the mass market / low income segments. He also recently led a project to assess the future of digital finance in India—the Study used human-centred design methods to develop a deep consumer-centric, demand side perspective.
Varad has also led a long-term multiple stakeholder project with USAID, the Government of India, and private sector players for digital payments acceptance in India to facilitate and coordinate a Partnership of 35+ organizations with a common mission of expanding access to digital financial services for low-income communities in India. In addition, he led a global landscape study on P2G payments.

Before Dalberg, Varad was Special Advisor to India's Minister for Rural Development and Environment and Forests, where he drove the agenda on sustainable livelihoods, sanitation, environment and climate change. He was also a member of the Government of India’s Low Carbon Expert Group, a Principal Advisor to Abhijit Banerjee on the UN-SG’s Panel on the Post-2015 Agenda, and a Sherpa on the UN-SG’s Global Sustainability Panel. Varad led the implementation of the Prime Minister’s Rural Development Fellowship, which is connecting India’s youth with grassroots development.

Previously, Varad was a Team Leader at the Monitor Group where he led the set up a national economic development agency and led a project to scale-up market-based business models that create social impact.

Varad holds an MPA in International Development (MPA/ID) from the Harvard Kennedy School, an MA in Economics from University of Cambridge, and a BA Honours in Economics from St. Stephens College, Delhi, and sits on the board of Lok Capital, a major impact investor.

Venkatesh Hariharan is Director - Fintech at the Indian Software Product Industry Round Table (iSPIRT), a non-profit think tank focused on building a software product ecosystem in India. At iSPIRT, Hariharan is responsible for the FinTech Leapfrog Council (FTLC) a forum that works with some of India's largest banks to transform the financial sector in India. He is also a member of the Governing Board of the Software Freedom Law Center, a law firm that represents the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) communities.

Hariharan has served as Head of Public Policy and Government Affairs with Google, and as Corporate Affairs Director for Red Hat in the Asia-Pacific region. He has worked on key policy issues like Internet regulations, open standards, software patents, open source in government, and Indian language computing.

He is a former Executive Editor of Express Computer and the first Indian to be selected for the prestigious Knight Science Journalism Fellowship (1998-99) at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. During his fellowship at MIT, he investigated technologies that can be deployed for bridging the digital divide. He has written for leading Indian and international publications including MIT Technology Review, Upside, Slashdot, Economic Times, Times of India and many others.

Hariharan has delivered talks on technology and policy issues at World Foresight Forum, Open World Forum and at leading academic institutions like MIT, IIT Bombay, IIT Guwahati, IIIT-Bangalore, IIM Bangalore and many others. Hariharan is interested in the intersection of technology, society and policy, with a specific focus on democratizing access to knowledge.

Vijay Chugh was, till recently, the Head of the Department of Payment & Settlement Systems with the Reserve Bank of India and has spearheaded India’s vision and mission towards a modern payment system. During his 33 years of service, he has contributed to certain key areas corresponding to the following statutory mandates of India’s Central Bank, viz. Payment and Settlement Systems  and Core Banking Solution (financial infrastructure), Supervision and Regulation of commercial banks  (financial stability and financial integrity), and Rural credit and development  (financial inclusion). He was a Member of the Committee for Payments & Market Infrastructure, Switzerland, SAARC Payments Council and SEACEN, Malaysia and Chairman/Member Secretary of various committees including the Bharat Bills Payment System, MSME Trade Receivables Exchange (TReDS), Mobile Banking and other committees set up to promote digital payments.

Post his retirement, Mr Chugh is engaged as Advisor to The  World Bank (F&M) Group on their G2P Direct Benefit Transfer project (India) and the Social Benefit Delivery program (Nepal). He is also an Independent Director/Consultant with a CBS Solution provider, White Label ATM operator/ATM management firm, Pre-Paid Wallet Issuers, payment gateway company and mentor to some youngsters/start ups in the payment space.

Virender is currently the Co founder and CTO with Fintech startup in stealth mode - NIYO. NIYO solutions is disrupting the consumer banking experience at a global level with its innovative and market first solutions.

Virender is a seasoned technology professional with 16 years of experience in creating world-class software products. He has diverse experience in senior technology executive roles in startups and global organizations like MobiKwik, Makemytrip (MMYT), StudyPlaces.com, Exponential Inc, GE Medical Systems and Tata Consultancy Services. Virender is hands on technologist and has reputation for building scale-able solutions for e-commerce and payments domain. Virender is a leader experienced in managing and building high performance teams.

His specialties are Technology Executive, Mobile Apps, B2C Systems, Ecommerce, Online Payments, Online Media, Ad Serving, Java/J2EE, Open source, & Software Architecture.

As the Founder-CEO of Avenues India Private Limited, Vishwas has guided the company to become South Asia's No. 1 ecommerce service provider.

The company's first initiative, CCAvenue® was launched in September 2001 and it today provides payment gateway services to over one hundred thousand eMerchants across the world. ResAvenue®, the second initiative is the fastest growing Hospitality solution and more than 1500 hotel properties in the Middle East and Asia are using ResAvenue's state-of-the-art booking engine, distribution and payment gateway services. EventAvenue®, the third Initiative was India's first and the industry's leading online registration and payment gateway software that is used by event organizers, corporations, schools, universities, associations, temples, non-profit and government organizations, and more, for conferences, trade shows, sporting events, class admission registrations, donation collection, webinars and other event managements.

Vishwas has been featured extensively in many publications and has been bestowed with many awards including the Asia-Pacific Information Security Leadership Award by (ISC)2 the non-profit global leader in educating and certifying information security professionals, in Bangkok in 2007. Vishwas is also the Vice Chairman of the Payments Council of India which represents the digital payments industry in India. He is also an active speaker at many Internet related forums. He is also an active investor providing Seed and Growth funding to over half a dozen internet companies. Vishwas is a Commerce graduate and holds a Degree of Law from the Mumbai University

@vishwaspatel