Abhilash Thirupathy is the Director of Gold Farm - AK Surya PowerMagic Pvt. Ltd., which provides farmers with products and services through a convenient platform ensuring a positive impact on their lives. Prior to being associated with Gold Farm, Abhilash co-founded Rx HealthcareMagic Pvt. Ltd, a cutting edge platform promoting an interface between healthcare seekers and healthcare service providers.

A dental surgeon by profession, Abhilash has always been at the forefront of creating entrepreneurial value through his innovative and out of the box ideas. He is also an alumnus of Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow.

@abeyaby

Afsal cofounded Delyver.com, India's first hyperlocal on-demand marketplace in 2010, much before the words 'hyperlocal' and 'marketplace' became common parlance in Indian startup community. Scaled it up to 1000+ merchants in Bangalore across multiple categories and executed 4 Lac+ deliveries to customers. Delyver got acquired by BigBasket.com, India's largest e-grocer, in 2015.

Afsal currently leads the Express Delivery business within BigBasket. Express Delivery is a new offering from BigBasket which provides the convenience of ordering daily essentials and top-ups and getting them delivered within 60 mins. This service is currently present in 10 cities.

Afsal is passionate about creating new products and building execution-ready teams. He is also an Angel Investor and his investments include BabyGoGo (Parenting and Babycare App for Mothers) , Hansel.io (Realtime MobileApp Crash Analytics) and BestDoc (Healthcare Collaboration Platform). Afsal graduated from Govt.College of Engineering,Kannur and did his MBA from IIM,Lucknow.

Arjun completed his undergraduate degree in Engineering in 2010 from Cochin University of Science and Technology. On graduation, he joined Infosys and worked as an SAP Consultant for 2 years. Pursuing his dream, along with 3 of his batchmates, he started a Data Analytics startup, Profoundis, in 2012 as the co-founder and CEO.  

Profoundis created Vibe, which is a B2B Data Intelligence Solution for Sales and Marketing. As the CEO, Arjun has raised more than 750,000 USD in 2 rounds from investors in US and India. He is also a graduate of Microsoft ventures, Startup Chile and Blackbox Silicon Valley Connect programs. Vibe has more than 100,000 users and 400 companies from 180 countries. The team has grown from 4 to 63 in less than 4 years.

Arjun is an active IEEE volunteer for the past 10 years. He has been serving on the boards of some of global engineering causes, having received international awards and recognitions for his contributions to the network.   Arjun is an avid traveler, having travelled over 15 countries in 5 continents and lived in 13 cities including some of the best startup eco systems. He is also a regular speaker, blogger, music and games lover.

@rarjunpillai

Kinemach Engineering and Machines Pvt Ltd is a product and service company which is involved in R&D and Sales of Agro Machines by which they sell their own patented products and as a service provide R&D services such as Reverse Engineering, New Product Development, Design validation etc.

Ashwanth is a Mechanical Engineer and has done his B.Tech ME from Cochin University. He has grassroots level knowledge about the Indian Agriculture and rural community and holds patent for his innovations in the area of Agricultural Machines. He has a good understanding about the jugaad or frugal innovation techniques of Research & Development at small and medium scale industries of India with limited resources to adapt Indian conditions where he was also involved in several projects of product innovation and reverse engineering.

He is presently the CEO of Kinemach Engineering and Machines Pvt Ltd which was founded by him along with his friend Jerish John in 2014. The IIM Ahmadabad and Mahindra Group have invested in his venture.

C Balagopal recently retired from Terumo Penpol Ltd., the company he founded 28 years ago,  post his 6 years successful stint as Indian Administrative Service officer in states like Manipur and Kerala. Today, Terumo Penpol operates the largest blood bag manufacturing facility in the world.  In 2013, he sold his shareholding to Terumo Corp., Japan after a successful partnership with them spanning 14 years. TPL is today respected for the quality of its life saving products which are sold in more than 50 countries across the globe, and dominates the market in India.

Balagopal now divides his time between mentoring and investing in startup ventures, especially those engaged in healthcare, community development activities, and writing. Currently he is the Charter Member and first President of TiE Kerala. He also serves on the ethics committee of Rajiv Gandhi Center for Biotechnology. C Balagopal is also mentor to Medical Technology Business Incubator, SCTIMST.

@balagopal68

Deepak is the Co-Founder and CEO of Equity Crest which is India’s trusted platform for connecting promising young companies with high quality investors in order to fulfill their capital needs. He has 19 years of experience in investments & finance across angel investing, ventures, fixed income and financial management. Deepak holds a B.Tech from IIT Bombay & MBA/MS (Finance) degrees from United States.

Before joining Equity Crest, Deepak was Investment Director at Intel Capital- where he spent 8 years driving venture deals.  At Intel, Deepak was an early investor in companies that went on to create more than $1B in value. He led investments in companies including Sasken (IPO), Future Software (Acquired by Flextronics), Omnesys (acquired by Thomson Reuters), Career Launcher, Tejas Networks and Savaari Car Rentals.

Deepak has also been playing in the seed stage eco-system for some time. Early in his career, he helped develop and roll-out a seed investment program for emerging markets for Intel Capital. More recently he has been an active angel investor with more than a dozen investments to his name.

A visionary and an able business administrator, Dr. Velumani proves amply clearly to industry that , “Focus gives Success”. Born in a small village near Coimbatore, South India, to a landless farmer, today he owns and operates this Industry leader, Thyrocare, a brand worth over Rs. 2000 crores. Began as a mathematician, became a Pathologist, after his PhD in Microbiology from BARC/ Mumbai University in Thyroid Biochemisty. As a Research scientist and Teacher he worked for 14 years in BARC and then in Business he has become an administrator.

An infecting motivator, has succeeded in converting educated as employable, graduates as professionals, individuals as entrepreneurs, vendors as partners, family members as wealthcreators and of course by his unique way of transforming intimidating problems into opportunities for prosperity.

@velumania

A Management Professional with a technical background and two decades of experience in Industry/Infrastructure consulting, Public private partnerships and project/venture financing. Experienced in IT Industry, especially in the e-governance domain.

Has handled senior management portfolios in government as well as private organizations. Currently the CEO of KSUM and Director of ICFOSS and formerly the Special officer for IDZ , IIITK Pala and ICT Academy Kerala . Was the Director of Kerala State IT Mission and prior to that worked as the Chief operating officer of Vizhinjam port and Vice President and Head, PPP & Project Advisory of INKEL. Has handled varied roles like Deputy to Global head, Initial Learning Program, PMO Global ILP, Risk Officer, Quality manager, Audit &Compliance Manager and BDM - Kerala at Tata Consultancy Services.

Has worked as Assistant Director, Project Advisory in Opus Financial Services (investment Bank) and Vice President Projects in ICICI KINFRA Ltd. Has worked as District manager Bongeigaon , in FCI.

Education
Holds a PhD in Project management from Faculty of Management Studies, University of Kerala, and Masters in Business Administration from Institute of management in Kerala and Bachelor of Technology in Mechanical Engineering from College of Engineering Trivandrum.

Other relevant information
Certified Professional on Business Excellence Leadership Program (TQMS), ISO procedures, Lateral & systems thinking tools & Financing of Projects.
Awarded Young Innovator at Tata Consultancy Services on Innovation Day 2006 for process innovations.

Hithendra Ramachandran, is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of Carpediem Capital, a private equity fund focused on investing in SMEs in the Consumer and Services sector. He has been part of the team that has built two of India’s largest HR Services firms. He was the founding member of IKYA Human Capital Solutions Limited, now a subsidiary of Thomas Cook (India) Limited. As a key member of the founding team he was member of the board and was instrumental in driving management decisions that helped the company grow from inception to Rs. 1,000 Crs in five years. He was earlier part of the initial team of PeopleOne Consulting, which was eventually sold to Adecco, a swiss based US$ 30 Bn HR Services firm. Hithendra is a Post Graduate in Management and has completed an executive program in Management from IMD Lausanne. Mr. Ramachandran serves on the board of Carpediem’s portfolio company, Adinath Agro Processed Foods Private Limited.

James Joseph is the founder of JackFruit365™- an initiative to create an organized market for Indian Jackfruits, 80 percent of which is reported to be wasted every year.

James has over 20 years of Manufacturing, Sales and Marketing experience in India, North America, and Europe with Globally reputed organizations like Microsoft, 3M and Ford. In his last role as the Director, Executive Engagement at Microsoft India; he was responsible for strengthening Microsoft’s relationship with the senior executives of top 200 enterprises in India. Prior to this role James was responsible for the manufacturing industry marketing for Microsoft UK. James is a recipient of several awards including Circle of Excellence, the highest award for Sales and Marketing employees across the world at Microsoft, Start-Up Entrepreneur of the Year at TiEcon Kerala 2013, New Age ICON d’ YOUTH Kerala 2011, etc. In addition James serves as a guest lecturer at IIM Kozhikode and regularly speaks at KSIDC and TiE events to promote entrepreneurship among youth in Kerala.

John Mathew is an entrepreneur, programmer and designer. He is one of those rare coders who can design. He along with his 5 friends co founded Riafy Technologies in 2013 straight out of college. Together they create beautiful pieces of code that make people's lives easier. He is a joint patent holder on relational intelligence; a system used to power their apps.

They launched Cookbook in September 2013. It's a cooking app that let's people discover recipes they would love to eat. In just under two years, the company has received 12.5 million downloads, spanning 157 countries and 20 languages. They're also the first company in India to be honoured with both the Top Developer and Editors' Choice badges on Google Play.

John attended Google I/O in 2015 where Cookbook became one of the first companies from India to be showcased. He is also one of the young entrepreneurs to be part of TEDx.

He and his team believe that technology makes sense only when it can touch people's lives. Hence they focus on building experiences, not just products.

@john_mathew

An astute finance and investment advisory professional who believes in strong ethical and professional conduct of business. Before founding Springforth he had over 14 years of wealth and investment banking experience with Kotak Mahindra Bank, CITI Bank and HDFC Bank. He was responsible for teams and profit centres through his career and has sharp business instincts and wide network that helps put clients and the organisation on strategic optima.

He is a CFA Charter Holder from CFA institute USA and did his Masters in Business Management. He was pre-placement mentor for IIT-Chennai and guest lecturer for Business Schools in Osmania University.

Apart from being an academician and executor, he is an accomplished orator and enjoys theatre & traveling. He has a voracious appetite for learning and is fascinated by the domains of Behavioural Economics and Financial Quant.

@kalyansivalenka

Krishnan Neelakantan is Senior Director - Investments & Growth Strategy at Ankur Capital. Krishnan has extensive experience in financial markets and investment research, as well as social development consulting. He spent 17 years in equity markets, starting as an equity research analyst at ICICI Securities and then taking on the roles of Market Strategist and Head of India Research at CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets; as one of the leading advisors to foreign institutional investors (FIIs) investing in Indian equities, he and his team were regularly rated at the top in the annual Investor Polls conducted by Asiamoney and Institutional Investor. He then changed tracks to join Samhita Social Ventures as Managing Director to build-up the organization’s profile as a specialised social consulting firm. Krishnan remains on the Board of Directors at Samhita, is on the Board of Mentors for IvyCapital Ventures and is a Patron of Adarsh, a Kochi-based NGO focussed on children with disabilities. He B.Tech degree from IIT, Bombay and a Post-graduation in Business Management from the XLRI, Jamshedpur and has completed executive development programmes of London Business School and University of Chicago, Booth School of Business.

Fondly familiar to most in the Financial, Investor and Entrepreneurial world as Nats, Mr. Natarajan is the Managing Director & CFO of Helion Ventures With over 26 years of experience in the diverse fields of Finance & Accounting, Taxation, Planning, Sales and Marketing, HR, Nats served proven leadership roles in Organization Building & Scaling, Governance and Compliance.

As the CFO & MD since inception of one of India’s oldest and home grown Venture Firm, Helion raised 3 funds aggregating over US $ 600 Million, invested 73 investments across various sectors and stages in India and the US, Nats lead over 200 share holder agreements and17 exits. Apart from Due Diligence, Deal Structuring and Closing, Nats continues to work for rapid scaling of portfolio companies by helping in governance, finance, business planning and operational efficiencies. In addition, he is also responsible for Internal Fund Finances and Investor Relations. Before joining Helion, he was Global CFO and Head of support services at Tavant Technologies Inc., a US$60M software services. Prior to Tavant, he worked 10+ years in Wipro group of Companies across all functions. Wipro electronic Peripherals was accorded the Best IT Usage award by NASSCOM in the ICT category in Sept 2003, for initiatives led by him as CIO.

Payal leads all the early stage funding activity at Axilor. Prior to Axilor, Payal led Acumen's business development efforts in India, managing fund raising and Acumen's India partner network. She was instrumental in launching their corporate partnership program and bringing on board the first corporate donor to support Acumen's India activities. During her tenure, she also served on the Steering Committee of ANDE India, an industry body aiming to support the SGB ecosystem in the country. Prior to Acumen, she was part of Sequoia Capital's India team for a five year period, starting with the research team and then as part of the investment team. She began her career at McKinsey's India Knowledge Centre, supporting studies in the media & entertainment sector. Payal has completed her post-graduation from Symbiosis Centre for Management & HRD, Pune.

Pradeep is an Investment Director at Intel Capital India, and is responsible for investments in technology-related companies in India and South Asia. His portfolio in India includes companies such as One97/PayTM, Hungama.com, Nxtgen Datacenter, healthkart.com, Persistent Systems, etc. Prior to Intel Capital India, he was with Intel Capital in Silicon Valley and invested in enterprise software companies. He has over a decade of operating experience at leading technology companies in Silicon Valley, including starting his own venture-backed mobile software products company. Pradeep has a MS(EE) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a BE(EE) from the University of Bombay(VJTI), and is a Fellow of the Kauffman Fellows Program.

Prasad is the prime-mover and chief strategist at eLsys. His passion is in building solutions for common everyday problems employing modern electronics and internet technologies.. He is now passionate about facilitating next-gen accident detection and analysis systems in India. Prasad and his team developed and successfully crowdfunded a first of the kind technology in India around Internet of Things powered safety gadget with focus on connected cars and emergency management on Indian roads.

Prior to co-founding Elsys, Prasad gained over 15 years of experience in product design and development in high technology areas like fiber lasers systems, optical amplifiers and consumer hardware devices. Along with relevant small and startup company exposure Prasad has also gained experience at large corporations like Microsoft Redmond and Toro Corporation in USA working as their engineering consultant for new consumer product development initiatives.

@prasadpillai

Rajesh Nair has done his Production Engg from Regional Institute of Technology, Jamshedpur (now NIT) and joined Tata Motors as a Graduate Engineering Trainee. During his stint in Tata Motors, Rajesh also got the ‘BEST GRADUATE ENGG TRAINEE’ Award from Ratan Tata in 1996. Post his stint here, he joined SP Jain Institute of Management and did an MBA program specializing in Finance and Operations.

During his last 17 plus years in the management consulting domain, he has been with Ernst & Young for the last seven years. His area of expertise is Organization structuring, operational and people strategy.

Rajesh currently heads the Kochi office of EY and leads all service lines of Ernst & Young. Rajesh has spoken at various industry forums and is visiting faculty in several leading management institutes across India. He is the President of TiE Kerala Chapter. He reads and writes in his spare time, including a business column and devotes pro-bono time for helping start up organizations, MSMEs, and young entrepreneurs.

Rajesh was conferred the KMA - Kerala Management Association - Manager of the year award in 2013.

@rajeshnairtweet

Mr. Ranjith Menon is Executive Director at IDG Ventures India Advisors. He has been in the industry since 2000 and in the venture investment advisory since 2007.

Prior to IDG Ventures, Ranjith worked with Cyient (earlier Infotech Enterprises), India's premier Design Engineering and GIS Company. As Manager-Marketing he played a key role in conceptualizing and launching new service offerings for the Aerospace vertical, which is one of the largest offshore Aerospace practices out of India. Earlier in his career, Ranjith has served as a stress test engineer at Infotech Enterprises and also gained shop floor experience at Bharat Earth Movers Limited, India's largest earth moving equipment manufacturers.

@ranjith_menon

Samir is currently the Managing Director of Inventus Advisory Services India. He has been an early-stage venture investor in India since 2001.

Prior to co-founding Inventus, Samir led the India venture investing team for Acer Technology Ventures, where he made early-stage investments in the technology space.

Prior to his VC career, Samir spent 15+ years in the IT industry in India in Sales, Marketing and Product Management roles. He started his working career with Computer Point in 1986, before spending 10+ years in Wipro Infotech from 1988. He then spent 2½ years with Planetasia from 1999-2001, as Chief Marketing Officer.

Samir is an active Charter Member of Tie Bangalore, where he has been elected to the Governing Body for the past 5+ years. He has also been a Member of the Board of Governors of SINE - the technology incubator at IIT Bombay, since Jan 2013.

Samir earned his B.Tech from IIT-Bombay in 1984 and an MBA from IIM, Bangalore in 1986, where he was awarded the Best All-Round Outgoing student.

@samir_kmr

Sandeep is a Vice President at Eight Roads Ventures (India) and focuses on the healthcare and consumer sectors.

Most recently, Sandeep was a Principal with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) where he was part of the leadership of BCG’s healthcare practice in India. At BCG, Sandeep advised large Indian and international clients across sectors like pharmaceuticals, healthcare services, medical devices and FMCG/ OTC. Prior to BCG, Sandeep was with Matrix Partners as part of their India investment team focusing on investments in the consumer goods and services sector. Sandeep was also part of McKinsey & Co’s Pharmaceuticals and Medical Products Practice in India.

Sandeep holds a Post Graduate Degree in Management from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore where he was part of the Director’s Merit List and a B Tech from IIT Kharagpur where he was awarded the Institute Silver Medal and the A. C. Sarkar Memorial Gold Medal.

Siddhartha Das has been a General Partner with Ventureast, one of India’s longest-standing venture capital institutions investing in pioneering sectors, since 2006. With over 19 years’ corporate and venture capital experience with Intel Corporation, Siddhartha oversees technology related investments of the Ventureast Proactive Fund. Siddhartha was also part of the investment arm Intel Capital and has worked on some of the most successful venture investments in the telecom, consumer Internet and software technology sectors.

He was also a member of the Cornell University Industrial Affiliates program. He has been an executive member of the Manufacturers Association of Information Technology (MAIT) of India, was a member-representative of the American Chamber of Commerce (AMCHAM) in India, and a Charter member of the Bangalore Chapter of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), a global non profit organization for fostering entrepreneurship.Siddhartha has a B.Tech from IIT, New Delhi, and a PhD from Cornell University, New York. He is a mentor to many India based entrepreneurs, and is a speaker at forums organized by NASSCOM, CII, Asian Venture Forum, and IVCJ.

As CEO of Startup Village, Sijo provide leadership and vision in setting up the country’s first PPP model Technology Business Incubator.
Startup Village aims to bring together a powerful and vibrant ecosystem to reach out, identify, develop and accelerate the growth process of student startups. They have an ambitious plan of incubating 1000 companies over the next 10 years.

Sijo brings along management consulting experience with the two of the Big4’s, PwC & Deloitte. As a consultant with the Strategy & Operations practice, he have advised various public and private sector institutions on strategy, business plan, PPP, project feasibility, governance and urban infrastructure.

Fresh out of college and after a very brief stint with technology major Infosys, Sijo along with a few friends founded MobME, a young and vibrant startup in the Mobile VAS space. MobME today is the proud winner of many prestigious Innovation & Entrepreneurship Awards, the latest being the EMERGE50 by NASSCOM.

Soji speaks at college events and conferences in his efforts to evangelize technology & entrepreneurship. He also mentor students, young professionals, entrepreneurs and startups on various aspects related to business and productivity.

Dr. Sindhu Joseph Co-Founded CogniCor Technologies S.L in 2012 and serves as its Chief Executive Officer. Dr. Joseph is the inventor of 6 US Technology patents. She has developed the core technology used in CogniCor products. Dr. Joseph received training from Microsoft pre-incubation program in commercialization of technology in collaboration with Barcelona Activa, a public organization that prepare entrepreneurs transform an idea into a commercially viable product. She holds PhD in Artificial Intelligence and an experienced research Engineer.

@sindhutweet

Srikrishna Ramamoorthy is a Partner with Unitus Seed Fund. He brings both entrepreneurial and investing perspectives with extensive experience in impact investing and BoP start-ups. Srikrishna joined Unitus Seed Fund in 2012 to setup and lead India operations for the fund. With 23 investments to date, Unitus Seed Fund is the leading venture seed fund supporting startups innovating for the masses in India.

Sumit is a problem solver and a keen student of innovative business models. Before joining Kalaari, he was an investment banker at HSBC, specializing in corporate finance advisory including cross-border and domestic M&A, joint ventures, LBOs and capital market transactions.

At Kalaari, Sumit actively evaluates investment opportunities in the area of online products and services, especially in education, financial services and overall consumer services category. He also works closely with portfolio companies and enjoys contributing to the growth of startups. Sumit has an MBA from IIM Calcutta and a B. Tech from IIT Kharagpur. Portfolios he handles are Industrybuying, Superprofs, Triphobo, Vakil Search, Snapdeal,Robosoft, Magzter, Embibe, Haptik and Simplilearn .

Swarup has joined Omnivore Partners in January 2015. Previously, he worked at TechnoServe, developing agricultural value chains across India. After completing his MBA, Swarup worked at Merrill Lynch, making private equity investments in real estate. He started his career as a software engineer at Infosys and SAP Labs. Swarup earned a
B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Bombay and a Post Graduate Diploma in Management from IIM Calcutta.

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).