Abheek Anand is a Principal at Sequoia Capital India, where he helps lead early stage technology investments for the firm. Previously, Abheek was a Product Manager at Facebook in Menlo Park, where he ran several products on the ads team. Before that, he was the co-founder and CEO of Tagtile, a technology startup that was acquired by Facebook. Abheek has a B.Tech in Computer Science from IIT Delhi, an MSCS from the University of Maryland, and an MBA from Stanford University.

@abheek

Adhil Shetty serves as the CEO of BankBazaar.com. Also the co-founder of the company, he has set for himself an incisive vision – that of making BankBazaar.com the go-to brand for investors and loan aspirants – which is shifting the contours of how loans, cards and insurance products are consumed. BankBazaar.com was born in 2008 as the result of a frustrating personal search for a loan. Thus, they conceptualized a marketplace that made the process of taking financial products much more transparent and simple.

Frustration turned into a multimillion enterprise in the eight years that BankBazaar.com has been in existence. Adhil credits a strong management team and a driven workforce for this unflagging growth. Adhil held decisive positions at Deloitte Touche Tomahatsu’s US East Alliance and Cisco Systems before he dived headlong into scripting the BankBazaar story.

@adhilshetty

Amit Kumar Agarwal is the Co-Founder & CEO of NoBroker.com. Amit founded NoBroker.com to revolutionize house hunting not just by eliminating brokerage but by making it convenient and hassle-free with the use of cutting edge technology and innovation.

He looks after overall vision and direction for the company. Out of 13 years of his total work experience, he spent 8 years in management consulting division of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in their Banking and Financial services vertical. In this period, he consulted top Indian and foreign banks for formulating their business strategy (entry & portfolio strategy) and enhanced their on-ground profitability (through large-scale pan-India implementation, impacting hundreds of branches). He led consulting teams, worked directly with CXOs , and won many accolades. This led him to head the strategy function in ANZ Bank reporting to India CEO. Here, he formulated India strategy and was instrumental in getting the bank, the very coveted two additional India branch licenses from RBI. Having won badminton championship in school, his passion is to play squash.

Amit is an alumnus from IIT-Kanpur and IIM- Ahmedabad.

@AmitKumarA

Mr. Anand Ladsariya, a first generation entrepreneur, is the CEO and promoter director of Everest Flavours Ltd.,  manufacturer and exporter of Menthol, Peppermint Oil, flavours and fragrances. He is a topper and gold medalist from Bombay University and Post Graduate MBA from IIM, Ahmedabad. He is also involved in various social activities. He is ex-Chairman of CHEMEXCIL, a premium export promotion organisation established by Ministry of Commerce, Govt. of India, for promotion of exports. He looks forward to risk adjusted investments keeping in mind capital preservation, sound returns and growth possibilities. He is sector agnostic and invests in good teams and ideas with huge growth potential.

He is an active Angel Investor with Mumbai Angels, Indian Angel Network, Venture Nursery, Morpheus and many such platforms.. He has been actively investing since 2008 and has invested in over 95 start-ups till date and actively mentors and guides the promoters to reach the next level. Many of his start-ups have been extremely successful. He was also part of the Planning Commission’s “Committee on Angel Investment and Early Stage Venture Capital”, guided by the Vice Chairman of Planning Commission.

Archit is an IIT Guwahati alum with a BTech in Computer Science. He holds a Masters in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Started in 2011, ClearTax aims to simplify financial lives of Indian taxpayers, both Individuals and Businesses.

ClearTax is India’s leading tax filing platform. ClearTax is used by over 1.5 Million Indian Taxpayers to e-File their Tax Returns making it India’s largest player in the space. Taxpayers just have to upload their Form-16 PDF, and their Tax Return is prepared automatically by ClearTax software within seconds.
ClearTax is also building a platform for GST filing and compliance.

Besides Individuals, over 10,000 CA firms and thousands of businesses across India use the ClearTax platform for Tax & TDS returns. ClearTax provides a platform for startups to launch and manage their businesses. ClearTax also provides all tax compliance services for B2B's and SMB's.

ClearTax is Y-Combinator’s first India focused investment. ClearTax raised $12 Mn in Series-A round of funding from SAIF Partners in 2016. It also counts Sequoia Capital, Max Levchin, Scott Bannister, Neeraj Arora, Ruchi Sanghvi and Naval Ravikant as it's investors.

Archna Shukla is a journalist with close to two decades of experience with leading publications such as The Indian Express, Mint, The Economic Times and Business Today. At VCCircle, she leads the editorial teams across vccircle.com, techcircle.in

Deepesh Garg has over 17 years of deal-making experience. He co-founded o3 Capital in 2007 and has been a key strategic leader and financial advisor to a range of companies in the Consumer and Internet & Digital Technology practice. Deepesh is a B.S. graduate from Rajasthan University and holds an MBA degree from K.J. Somaiya. 

@Deepesh_o3

Trained In Lateral Thinking By Edward de Bono, The Father Of Creativity & Nobel Economics Prize Nominee. He has a planet named after him !NLP Master Practitioner , Endorsed For NLP By Sue Knight One Of The Global Pioneers In NLP , Author Of NLP At Work. Conducted 284 Mind Map Seminars - Probably A WORLD RECORD ! Mind Map seminars done for Execs of Many Fortune 500 Cos , IITs, IIMs, Harvard Business School , Wharton Business School , Johns Hopkins , Oxford , & London School of Economics ( LSE ) Alumni. He Is The City Brand Ambassador of IIMnetWORK ! Founded by IIM Alumni. We organize seminars for professional development. Has over 600 Testimonials on his website Including One From A Guiness World Record Breaker. Probably the Most Endorsed Trainer In The World On Linkedin.

"Dharmendra Rai' gave rise to over 8 Million Reference Pages on Google. Speaker at The World HRD Congress 2012. One of the Most Connected People on the Planet. He Is one of the most influential people in the world on Social Media. Member of Mensa International ( An International High IQ Society ). Appeared on CNBC, Times Of India, Business World Magazine , DNA , Zee Business and Channel V.

15 Years Work Ex With Cos like Morgan Stanley, Alliance Capital. Last Position - National Sales Head , Benchmark Mutual Fund , Now Goldman Sachs. Joined the elite list of extremely rare human beings in the history of planet earth , who have been A TED x Speaker Not Just Once But 4 TIMES ! Spoke on Creativity & Mind Mapping & Invisible Selling . It was an honour for him to speak at a platform that has had Tony Buzan , Anthony Robbins , Ray Kurzweil , Bill Gates , Bill Clinton , Stephen Hawking , Richard Branson & Monica Lewinsky.

Currently at the helm of four companies in the Financial Services & Consultancy space, creating and growing businesses is not new for Harshad. He made his beginnings as a Management Executive with Larsen & Toubro, where he was assessed to be a high level performer and selected for their esteemed Management Leadership Program. His passion for finance, however, called him to move on to creating his own investment advisory and wealth management company Intercontinental Investments (2005), followed by Excelman India (2006). Further, with his interest in investment banking and desire to help early-stage ventures, Harshad founded ah! Ventures (2009) and CLUB ah! network (2012). In the past 10 years, Harshad has grown his ventures into reputed, self-sufficient businesses that fuel their own growth.

While his investment banking knowledge gives him an edge in evaluating businesses and investment opportunities, it is his extensive experience in creating super specialised, highly motivated teams and lean, optimised workflows and processes that Harshad is known best for. Harshad is known to be an astute problem solver and brilliant negotiator with the ability to think on his feet, while being meticulous and detailed in everything he undertakes. Among other things, he brings to the table the ability to create and build brands and bring about winning partnerships capable of handling whatever curveball the market throws at them.

Besides his interest in finance & investments, Harshad is also deeply involved as a director with the Ajit Lahoti Charitable Foundation, one of Pune’s leading charitable institutions helping Chronic Renal Failure patients minimize their hardships by better kidney disease management. He is a Fellow Member of Aspen’s India Leadership Initiative, a unique values-based leadership program designed to help leaders move from “success to significance”. He has invested in over 40+ startups till date and is a regular speaker at many startup events in India & abroad.

Harshad travels extensively, loves yoga & salsa dancing and lives in Mumbai & Pune.

He has more than 12 years of work experience in banking and financial services industry and considered an expert in payments industry. Prior to Citrus, he was working with ICICI bank for 7 years, wherein he was part of founding team of Retail cross sell and Investment banking division in the bank. During his last stint with the bank, he led the whole initiative of stitching a joint venture between ICICI bank and First Data in Indian market. This was a unique JV ever done between a bank and an independent payments company.

In last 4 years, he has grown Citrus in to 300 member+ strong team and raised over USD 30 million so far. Citrus counts its investors base from Sequoia Capital and E-context Japan to Ascent Capital in Series C round. He has graduated from Sydenham College, Mumbai and a qualified Chartered Accountant.

Kunal is a serial entrepreneur and an investor with over 24 years of global experience in varied corporate and entrepreneurial roles. He co-founded Carnation Auto - India’s first and largest independent Multi-Brand Auto Solutions company.

Kunal leads the investment initiatives as well as operations at advantEdge Partners. Kunal has been actively mentoring and investing in startups in his individual capacity as well. He is passionate about partnering with companies across the digital spectrum including mobile commerce, digital media and other technology fields. Kunal is on the Boards of Rapido and Smartivity and is a Charter Member of TiE.

Kunal has global experience of working in companies such as Aptuit, InfoPro Solutions, Vodafone and Razorfish. He previously cofounded SimplyLook.com in the Bay Area and also led the investment for a US based PE firm into Laurus Labs which is a BSE listed entity. Kunal has a Bachelors degree in Economics (Honors) from Delhi University, an MBA from FSM, New Delhi and an MS from Kellogg and Medill School, Northwestern University.

Manoj Gupta is the Co-Founder of Craftsvilla, a leading ethnic online platform in India. Craftsvilla was established in 2011, with a vision of making the brand a go to destination for anything and everything ethnic. A passionate entrepreneur, Manoj and his wife Monica were inspired to make a difference to the lives of underprivileged artisans across the country As a co-founder of one of India’s fastest growing e-commerce platforms, Manoj is CEO of Craftsvilla.com Prior to Craftsvilla, Manoj was Principal at Nexus Venture Partners where he was helping early stage companies and passionate entrepreneurs to build scalable business. He has also been a board member with various ecommerce companies enabling him to get an in-depth understanding of the e-commerce industry. Manoj also started a Tech company in US in San Diego which was later acquired.

Manoj has completed his B.Tech, Engineering from IIT- Mumbai and MS in Electrical Engineering from University of Illionis at Urbana Champaign. He has CPhil in Electrical and Electronics engineering from University of California, San Diego and an alumina of IIM-A batch 2006 where he completed his MBA.

Manoj loves to travel and run.

Manish is the Co - founder and CEO of Purplle.com. Manish, graduated from IIT Delhi in 2007, and worked with Lehman Brothers, Avendus Capital and Fidelity Private Equity before starting Purplle.com. Founded in 2012, Purplle.com is India's leading market place for beauty and grooming Products and Services. Purplle has so far raised capital from IvyCap Ventures, Blume Ventures, Mumbai Angels and The Chennai Angels.

Mr. Nihir Parikh is the Chief Business Officer at Nykaa.com, an e-commerce store that is focused on beauty and wellness products. He is armed with a degree of MBA from INSEAD, MS from Stanford University and BE from Mumbai University.

He began his career as an engineer at Genentech Inc, USA. He has also advised startups in India including FitPermit, Giftery and Aurality.  After his stint at Genentech Inc Mr. Parikh moved to GE as a Business Development manager wherein his key expertise was focusing on strategy. He also launched a new business vertical called Enterprise Solutions.

At Nykaa, he leads the ecommerce business directing brand relations, product, technology, marketing teams and ensures their smooth functioning whilst making sure they meet the revenue target every month. His leadership skills and team building qualities ensure the teams are functioning towards the company’s vision and
achieve the desired targets thereby driving the company’s growth and success.

Rajeev is the Managing Director & CEO of RBSA Advisors, a Leading Global Independent Valuation & Transaction Advisory firm having 8 offices across India, Singapore and Dubai. RBSA has executed various assignments in more than 25 Countries as a Valuation and Financial Experts.

Rajeev Specializes in Mergers & Acquisitions, Financial Valuations, Due Diligence, Fund Raising Advisory etc. He has also been involved with some of the Major Mergers & Acquisition Engagements in India, as well as the Major Disinvestment and Privatization assignments on behalf of Government of India.

He is an Mechanical Engineer, MBA, CFA and a Qualified Valuer from ICAI. He has further specialized in Valuation and accredited himself as a Master of Valuation in Real Estate (Gold Medalist) and Master of Valuation in Plant & Machinery (Gold Medalist). Rajeev is also an Eminent Member of Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (MRICS), UK.

Rajeev heads the Financial Advisory and Investment Banking practice of RBSA. His role spans across various verticals ranging from Managing the Overall Development & Operations of the Company with Leadership roles across Business Strategy, Business Development, and Management of various Advisory Practices of RBSA. Rajeev is an active Speaker at various National & International Forums and Conferences on Valuation and Mergers & Acquisitions.

Rehan Yar Khan is Founder & Managing Partner of Orios Venture Partners, an early stage India technology venture capital firm, currently investing from its Fund II predominantly in consumer focused startups. Orios' portfolio includes Yumist, PrettySecrets, IntelligenceNode, PharmEasy and ZipGo. Rehan has previously led investments in OlaCabs and Druva. Rehan has been an entrepreneur since 1992 building 3 companies and was also closely involved in the establishment of Indian Angel Network and Harvard Angels.

@rehanyarkhan

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

As an early investor in InMobi, InfoEdge and Shopclues, three of India's billion dollar technology companies, Sandeep Murthy is one of the builders of India's Internet economy. And he hasn't just seen the highs and lows play out as an investor, but actually roughed it out in operational roles including one as the CEO of Cleartrip in 2006 for three years.

Sandeep did his undergrad in both business and engineering from the University of Pennsylvania as well as an MBA at Wharton. After teaming up with a friend to build a digital music company and a few years of living the Bay Area dream, he moved to New York City to join InterActive Corp (IAC) where he helped launch Gifts.com. He started to explore the India technology opportunity and ultimately moved to Mumbai to manage investments for Sherpalo Ventures, a fund based out of Menlo Park in California.

Today he's a co-founder and partner at Lightbox, a Mumbai-based venture capital firm investing in Indian consumer technology companies. The firm’s most recent investments include Furlenco, Droom, Melorra, Embibe and Faasos. He works closely with entrepreneurs to build out internet-based models of consumption in India.

@sandeepm1

Sanjay is a Co-founder & Managing Partner at Blume Ventures (www.blumeventures.com). Blume has emerged as one of India's leading early-stage funds, having invested in over 50 startups since its inception in late 2010.

Blume's portfolio includes Taxiforsure (acquired by Olacabs), Zipdial (acquired by Twitter), Qubecell (acquired by Boku), Grey Orange Pte Lte, Mettl, Webengage, Hotelogix, Exotel, Rolocule Games, and Carbon Clean Solutions, amongst others. Many of Blume’s portfolio companies have secured follow-on financing from top tier global VCs including Tiger Global, Accel, Matrix, Bessemer, Cisco Ventures, to name a few.

Prior to Blume, Sanjay was also an active angel investor through Mumbai Angels. His angel investments include Inmobi, Appsdaily (formerly Onward Mobility), Little Eye Labs (acquired by Facebook), Tonbo Imaging and Svasti amongst others.

Sanjay’s experience spans the US and India, and ranges from management consulting (PwC and IBM Global Services), product marketing and operations (Sun Microsystems) and angel investing (thru Mumbai Angels). Most recently, prior to founding Blume, he co founded Loxodrome, a legal outsourcing company with dual-shore operations in San Francisco and Pune, India. Early in his career, Sanjay supported the growth of Kanbay (Nasdaq IPO in ’04), then acquired by Cap Gemini for $1.25BL in ‘06.

Sanjay has earned an MBA from UCLA’s Anderson Graduate School of Management and also holds an undergraduate major in Information Systems from BITS, Pilani.

@sanjaynath

TiE Mumbai Board Member, Serial entrepreneur with 2 exits turned Angel Investor with 62 start-up portfolio companies, Member with CIO Angel Network, Let'sVenture, Indian Angel Network etc. Currently working at CORE Media Group as Director CFO Program.

Key Portfolio Companies: Zippr, Box8, AdstringO, UnBxd, Consure Medical Device, Oyo Rooms, PrettySecrets.com, NaturallyYours.com, ROAST, Letsventure.com, MechMocha, Instasafe, Saffronstays.com, Faballey.com, CIO-choice.com, Klip.com, 47Lines, GoCoop, Blubirch, PayTunes, LogiNext, AmigoBulls, 1Group, Assured Risk Cover, Vitas
Pharma, RepUp, TalViews, Avaz, Allizhealth, Adsparx, Ecosense

Sateesh Andra loves entrepreneurs with grit, clarity and focus on execution. So, when he finds strong entrepreneurs, he rolls up his sleeves and becomes part-coach, part co-founder and part investor.

Technology start-ups with strategic focus and clear value proposition drive Sateesh. His investing, co-founding, leadership and engineering experience, for the past sixteen years in U.S/India, all veer around technology.

As the Managing Director at Endiya Partners, Sateesh serves on several boards including Darwinbox. Some of his past investments include Seclore, Little Eye Labs (Facebook) and Cleartrip. Most recently, he was Partner at Ventureast and DFJ.

Prior to DFJ, Sateesh was Founder/CEO of Euclid, a Silicon Valley start-up, in the IT Management Software space and was instrumental in raising VC funding ($35 M+), besides acquiring, and managing marquee customers and partners. He has also served in product marketing and engineering leadership roles at Tsqware (Conexant), LSI Logic, and VLSI Technology (Philips).

Besides helping evolve ideas into real businesses, Sateesh is involved with the Pullela Gopichand Badminton Academy with the objective of popularizing sports, and promoting awareness of chronic diseases in the corporate world. Sateesh was a top-ranked Table Tennis player representing A.P State in Nationals.

Sateesh holds a Bachelor's and Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering.

@sateesh_andra

Shreya Mishra is the founder & CEO of Flyrobe - India's largest online fashion rental service.  Shreya graduated from IIT Bombay with a degree in Mechanical Engineering in 2012, post which she worked at The Boston Consulting Group as an Associate for 2 years and then at private equity firm Everstone Capital for 10 months. Shreya launched Flyrobe in Sept 2015 with 2 fellow IIT Bombay batchmates. 

Sucharita is currently the CEO of IFMR Holdings, is a Trustee and Vice Chair of IFMR Trust, and has been a part of the IFMR Trust Executive Group since 2008. She is a director on the board of all IFMR Trust group companies and was the founding CEO of IFMR Capital, from its inception till 2012. She has recently been appointed as a member of the India Advisory Committee to the UNEP Inquiry into a Sustainable Financial System. Previously, Sucharita led the origination and structuring effort in credit derivatives and structured finance for corporates at Morgan Stanley in London where her work included developing innovative asset-backed financing structures in areas such as intellectual property and health-care receivables. She was also part of the credit derivatives team at Deutsche Bank in London, structuring credit-derivatives-linked repackaged investments for financial institutions. She graduated with an MBA from IIM, Ahmedabad, and has a bachelor’s degree in Economics from Delhi University.

Sumit worked with Oracle India before starting CommonFloor.com along with two of his friends. CommonFloor became the largest real estate portal dedicated to apartments and gated communities. Post acquisition of CommonFloor by Quikr, Sumit has been driving growth at Quikr. Sumit holds a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from IIT Roorkee.

Vikram is the founder of Eight Innovate, an India focused early stage venture fund. He is a mobile payments pioneer and a former silicon valley entrepreneur, who has been on both sides of the table as an entrepreneur and investor. Vikram has been invested in early stage ventures in India since 2007 and his portfolio includes leaders like Carwale.com, EzeTap, PayTM amongst others. He has MBAs from NYU (Stern) & XLRI.

Vishal is the founder and managing partner of Gandhi & Associates— a leading Indian law firm which focuses on mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, venture capital/private equity transactions, and business disputes.

Vishal specializes in transactional work and on business/commercial disputes. He represents both investors and investee companies. He is also often seen on national television providing his expert opinion on various new and emerging areas of law and on disputes involving large industrial houses such as Cairn India, Reliance Industries, Oil and Natural Gas Commission, etc.

Vishal has authored various publications including an article on “Key Legal Issues Relating to Joint Ventures in India” for the American Bar Association. Vishal frequently speaks on Indian law issues at various forums worldwide and his clients include US Polo Association, DDJ Capital, UIB Capital, Sun Mountain Capital, Avis Budget Group, Zimmer Inc, Cisco Systems Inc, University of Rio Grande, Qualcomm Inc, etc.

To contact Vishal, please e-mail him on vishal@gandhiassociates.com

Born on (14 July 1976) Vishal is an Indian entrepreneur and an angel investor who started his entrepreneurial journey at the age of 16. He is the founder and CEO of GOQii (pronounced Go-Key) and is famously known as the “Father of the Indian Gaming Industry”. In 1999 he founded the game development and publishing company Indiagames. Having taken the company to amazing heights, in 2012, IndiaGames was acquired by the Walt Disney Company for $100 million, post which he served as Managing Director Digital, Disney UTV.

By 2009 IndiaGames had approximately 300 employees and offices in Mumbai, Beijing, London and Los Angeles. Gondal sold a majority of stake holds (adding up to 76.29% of the company) to TOM online Games, a subsidiary of TOM Online Inc, in 2009 and retained his position as CEO

In 2008, Gondal launched Sweat and Blood Venture group to invest in startups at a seed level. The organization has invested in Instablogs and Docsuggest, among others. Amongst other achievements Vishal was listed among the top 50 executives in the mobile content space by the UK based 'Mobile Entertainment' Magazine alongside prodigies such as Steve Jobs. Additionally he has also presented at the INK Conferences in Mumbai.

For recreation he enjoys running Marathons, Ultras, Trekking & Sky Diving. His love for the outdoors and pushing oneself physically dates to his growing years when he was a national level volleyball player. Vishal is a long time TEDster, gadget & gizmo freak and a judge on two television shows 'The Pitch' on Bloomberg TV & 'Your Wish is my App' on NDTV. His passion for technology, fitness & gaming led him to his next venture GOQii which is focused on helping people make a change towards a healthier lifestyle and be the force of good.