Mr Akshay Bector is the Chairman & Managing Director of Cremica Food Industries Limited. Under the “Cremica” brand the company has become #1 in Mayonnaise and #3 in Tomato Ketchup in India. The company leads the industry with Focus on Quality and Innovation. Under Mr. Akshay Bector’s leadership the company has been able to maintain one of the highest growth rates in the industry.

After completing B.E. in Industrial & Production Engineering, Mr Akshay Bector started his carrier in 1987. Establishment of a modern Bread plant followed by a world class Biscuit plant was his initial endeavors. He kept on expanding the business and soon joined hands with Mc Donald’s to become one of their biggest suppliers in India. He was also instrumental with key initiatives with Mc Donald’s and the Mc Donald’s Bun Business to the company was set up under his leadership. His focus on Quality and Innovation were the key factors for Exponential Business growth. His efforts led to the JV with two companies. One with Quaker Oats Company (USA) for manufacturing of Ketchup, Mayonnaise  and other Liquid Condiments and the other with EBI Foods (UK) for manufacturing of Battering and Breading pre-mixtures. This brought in new Competences within the Group and Strengthened the Brand.

His Leadership qualities and Business acumen are well recognized in the Industry. He has served as the Chairman of CII Punjab. He is the founder of YPO Punjab Chapter. Currently he is Chairman of CII NR Agriculture Council and Member of various Punjab Government Committees.

In the “3rd National Convention on Entrepreneurship 2013”, he was awarded “Entrepreneur of the Year” and in “Mc Donald’s APMEA 2013 Supplier Business Forum” the Company got “ Mc Donald’s Asia Pacific Award for Innovation”.

Amith Agarwal is the whole-time Executive Director - and one of the founder members of StarAgri. An entrepreneur with the right blend of managerial and business acumen, Amith plays a key role in realizing StarAgri’s vision of integrated development of India’s rural ecosystem.

He is responsible for managing corporate tie-ups, legal and financial matters and business development activities at StarAgri. Under his stewardship, StarAgri has evolved into a market-leading brand, building trusted long-term partnerships and creating value amongst various stakeholders. He drives the human resource and leadership development responsibility in the company with a key focus on building a professional organization.

He is a sought after management professional in the areas of warehouse receipt and collateral finance and is known for creating unique channel partnerships in the rural finance business. He has established numerous successful relationships with leading financial institutions for their rural lending and financing business. Known for his flair and drive in driving relationships and deploying innovative ideas, he is driving the creation of a global mindset within the company. His dual experience of dealing with rural India and corporates alike is helping in bridging the information divide and modernizing the rural sector.

Amith has attended an Advanced Management Development Program (MDP) at Harvard Business School and holds an MBA from Mumbai University. An innovative thinker and visionary, Amith’s views are often published in leading Indian and international magazines.

"Ananthan is a Senior Investment Officer with International Finance Corporation (World Bank Group) in the Manufacturing, Agribusiness & Services group and leads Agribusiness investments for IFC in South Asia. He has over 17 years of experience across Private Equity, M&A / Corporate Finance and Client Coverage in a wide range of sectors in India. Prior to joining IFC, Ananthan has worked with Standard Chartered Bank, Kotak Investment Banking and IL&FS. He holds a PGDM from Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad and Bachelor's degree in Engineering from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani."

CA Arvind Kumar Agrawal is a Graduate in commerce, Fellow member of The institute of Chartered Accountants of India, Diploma in Information System Auditor (D I S A) as post qualification Course, QMS Lead auditor course (Based on ISO 9001) from Nigel Bauer & Associates, U.K.

CA Arvind Kumar Agrawal is a practicing Chartered Accountants having vast experience in the following fields: Audits, Taxation, Company matters, Project funding and implementation, System Development, Business Process Definitions. CA he is heading as Proprietor of Chartered Accountants firm M/s. Agrawal Arvind & Associates, since1997. He is expert in Agro Finance, system and Process Developments. He played a major role in the upliftment of farmers of Chhattisgarh by supporting them in implementation of innovative and mechanized farming. He conducted Seminars on Farm economics at different platforms. He is also in Boards of several Companies.

In Social life, he is an active Jaycee Member, graduated as an Excel Trainer (CNT) from JCI University, Chesterfield, USA and conducted more than 100 workshops on different subjects related to life and required for capacity building. He is also a part of program on livelihood up gradation of World Bank, run by Madhya Pradesh Government in capacity building measures.

Arvind Gangoly is the CEO and co- Founder of Schedulers Logistics which is a niche cold chain logistics and solutions provider in the Food and Pharma space. He has used his experience in  supply chain management to build up an organisation that is providing a reach to over 100 towns in India and neighbouring countries. After taking a pre-mature release from the Army in 2006, he has worked with fairly large grocery retail companies namely TESCO, Aditya Birla Retail and Foodland Retail. He has been instrumental in setting up of a number of control measures during the nascent stage of business of these companies and that was of significant help in containing loss. He was honoured with Global Tesco Values award in the year 2010.

He is a Post graduate in Materials Management  with a degree in Foreign trade and has been a senior logistician with the Ministry of Defence, Govt of India, prior to his joining the retail industry. He also has the distinction of working as a Logistics Head with the United  Nations for their  Operations in East Africa for close to 3 years.

 Deepak I. Shahdadpuri is the Founder and Managing Director of DSG Consumer Partner and Beacon India Private Equity Fund. Deepak has over 15 years of private equity and venture capital experience and is an active angel investor focusing on consumer businesses with a strong emphasis on food and beverage value chain. Before this, Deepak held senior roles at Gem India, Reuters VC, Bain & Company and Ernst & Young. Deepak is on the board of Baker's Circle, Impresario, Eazy Diner, Exito Gourmet, India Lends, Indostar Capital, Indian Home Gourmet, Mswipe, Saffronart, Saraf Foods, Sula Wines and Veeba Food. Deepak’s investment experience also includes RBL Bank, OYO Rooms, Cleartrip, Redmart, F&B Asia and Furtado’s School of Music.

Deepak serves on the board of Magic Bus, a non-profit organization helping develop underprivileged children through sports, and on the advisory board of Dawn Capital, a UK focused Venture Capital Fund. He has an MBA (Distinction) from INSEAD where he graduated on the Dean’s list, a LLB (Hons) from King's College London and a FCA from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England & Wales.

@dishahdadpuri

Dev Lall is Managing Director & CEO of Bakers Circle (India) Pvt Ltd. The company specializes in reverse manufacturing and R&D that enables clients to reduce costs using the frozen route.

It currently serves 1200 outlets across the country with expansion plans in the Middle East and North Africa. Prior to founding Bakers Circle, Dev was with Hyatt International, New Delhi where he was in charge of pre-opening operations of Hyatt properties and was also overseeing operations of 8 points of sales at their different properties, service procedures, training and development of man power.Dev completed his Bsc. Institutional management & MBA in International Business from Johnson & Wales University, USA

Girish Nadkarni - Girish Nadkarni has over twenty two years of experience across private equity, M&A, managing large companies, corporate finance, treasury and risk management, business strategy and setting up of businesses.

Mr. Nadkarni primarily focuses on originating and evaluating investment opportunities, over-seeing the portfolio and creating exit opportunities. He has strong consumer, agri-business, rural infrastructure and telecom sector expertise. He has led investments in Parag Milk Foods, Staragri Warehousing and Collateral Management and NCDEX. He also actively manages investments in Green Infra and DARCL.

Prior to joining IDFC Alternatives, he worked for Rallis India Limited (a Tata Group Agri company). Previous to this, he was with Tata Chemicals and played a key role in the acquisitions of General Chemicals, USA and controlling stake in Rallis (2007-09). He has played key role in more than a dozen M&A and buyout transactions such as VSNL, Hughes Telecom, Escotel Mobile, Nagarjuna Oil and divestments such as Idea, Tata Honeywell, Tata Telecom (Avaya) and Information Tech Park.

Dr. G.N.S.Reddy is Managing Director for Akshayakalpa Farms and Foods Pvt Ltd, an automated dairy farm specializing in organic milk production. Besides, he is currently incharge of BAIF Programmes in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka where he is additionally holding responsibility of an Executive Vice Chairman of BAIF Institute for Rural Development - Karnataka and BAIF Institute for Rural Development -Andhra Pradesh. He has completed his B.V.SC from Bangalore Veterinary College with Advanced Training in Large Herd Management and Oestrus Synchronization from INRA, France.

He was honoured with best Veterinarian award instituted by the Karnataka Veterinary association in 1998, DesaSnehi Award from India development Foundation in 2008 and has also received Indira Gandhi paryavaran Puraskar from Govt of India on behalf of BAIF Institute for Rural Development-Karnataka.

Kartik Srivatsa is the Co-Founder Managing Partner of Aspada that manages a group of early stage impact investment funds focused on improving agricultural supply chains and delivering affordable healthcare, education and financial services to the emerging middle class segment in India backed by investors such as Soros Economic Development Fund, Omidyar Network and Google. Prior to Aspada, Kartik was with Lightspeed Venture Partners, a global venture capital firm with over $2 billion under management, where he was a founding member of the India office. Earlier, he was a management consultant with McKinsey and Company. Kartik received a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.

@kartik_srivatsa

A Management Post Graduate from Mumbai University and a senior alcoholic beverage industry professional with successful track record of over twenty four years of working experience in Marketing, Business Development, Production, Distribution, Brand Management and International Business and Joint Ventures across India, Middle East, Africa and other international markets.

Manish is with TVS Capital since June 2008 and currently focuses on investments in sectors like agriculture, food processing and restaurants. He brings with him nine years of professional experience across multiple industries - food, food service, consumer, capital goods, power and oil & gas.

Manish has joined TVS Capital after spending two and half years in equity research for global sell side equity research houses as part of Irevna (A division of CRISIL Ltd.). Prior to joining Irevna, he was with Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited for almost two years in the commercial role.

Manish has done Executive program in Strategy from Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta (India). He is a CFA (from CFA Institute, USA), Chartered Accountant (India) and a Company Secretary (India). Manish has All-India merit ranks in Chartered Accountancy and Company Secretary program. He is also a University ranker in graduation course and is a national scholarship holder.

Mark Kahn is the co-founder of Omnivore Partners, a venture fund investing in early stage agriculture & food technology companies in India. Omnivore supports entrepreneurs developing solutions to improve farm productivity, increase agricultural sustainability, modernize agribusiness supply chains, and promote farm-sourced food products. Omnivore seeks to transform Indian agriculture through technology innovation, impacting the lives of farmers and rural communities.

Mark is a Director for multiple Omnivore-backed startups, including Skymet, FrontalRain, Arohan Foods, Eruvaka, and YCook. Previously, Mark was the Executive Vice President (Strategy & Business Development) at Godrej Agrovet, one of India's foremost diversified agribusiness companies. At Godrej Agrovet, Mark was responsible for corporate strategy, M&A, R&D, and new business incubation.

Earlier in his career, Mark worked for Syngenta and PFM.  He earned a BA (Honors) from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he graduated as a Baker Scholar. Mark is a member of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) National Council on Agriculture and the CII Innovation & Entrepreneurship Council.  He also serves on the board of Heifer International India.

Pankaj co-founded InI Farms in 2009. He started his entrepreneurial journey in 2003 with InI Consulting focused on Agriculture, Technology management and entrepreneurship development, Infrastructure and India Entry.

Prior to this, he worked as a consultant with McKinsey & Co and as a software developer with Verifone. His consulting experience spans over 13 years having advised companies in media, pharmaceutical, oil and gas, agriculture, logistics, supply chain, light engineering and chemicals.

Pankaj holds a Bachelors degree in Computer Science from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur and is a Gold Medalist from Indian Institute of Management Calcutta.

Pankaj has over 23 years of experience in the logistics industry and was most recently the Head of Corporate Logistics at Mahindra Logistics. He has previously worked with AFL/DHL and has managed clients in Healthcare, Technology, Retail/FMCG, Telecom, Industrial, Automotive and Defence sectors. Pankaj is a graduate in Commerce and holds an MBA degree.

Peter Frykman builds technology and teams to end poverty. As a graduate student at Stanford he developed innovative laser manufacturing technology to make drip irrigation appropriate and affordable for small-plot farmers. He founded and led Driptech to sell over 25,000 acres of affordable irrigation in India, China, and Africa. Today, as Board Director and trusted advisor, Peter guides Driptech and other social enterprises on human-centered design, product development, marketing, fundraising, and team-building. He is based in Pune, India.

Palat Vijayaraghavan founded Lawrencedale Agro Processing during March 2009 after being witness to the numerous troubles which the farmers go through in managing the life-cycle of their harvest.

The farmers, especially those with land-holding of less than 5 acres, are at the mercy of numerous intermediaries, when they (farmer) want to sell the produce. Vijayaraghavan, along with three partners, innovated to walk with the farmer in the entire life-cycle of the harvest and get them beneficial forward market linkages, besides offering a host of farmer services to improve the quality of the yield while reducing dependency on chemical pesticides.

With this foundation, Vijayaraghavan refined the fresh produce post-harvest management processes to drastically reduce the supply chain losses along the farm-to-fork link which enabled the retailers to increase their focus on the front-end. Innovating further, He has put in place a series of technology processes to drastically reduce the contaminants from the fresh produce and make them Safe To Consume.

An Automobile Engineer by education, Vijayaraghavan is a long-time resident of Ooty, and has been active in preserving the natural environs of the ecological biosphere of Ooty through eco-friendly landscaping and improving the town's infrastructure.

Vijay, a passionate and hands-on manager at Lawrencedale Agro, is also active in various facets of society development in Ooty and is actively involved in Road Safety Awareness.

Rajesh Srivastava is the Chairman & Managing Director of Rabo Equity Advisors, managing 2 Rabobank sponsored private equity funds of US$120mln and US$150mln, both focused on food and agribusiness. The new Fund has Rabobank, CDC Group, UK; Asian Development Bank; Generali Insurance, Italy; FMO, The Netherlands; Proparco, France; IFU, Denmark as its investors. He has so far closed 12 investments, all in different sub-sectors.

Before setting up the private equity business, he was Managing Director (Corporate & Commercial Banking) of Rabobank India. Concurrently, he was Regional Head, Asia for food and agribusiness for over 5 years based in Singapore. In Rabobank, he is credited with setting up several new products such as Strategic Advisory, Renewable Energy, Carbon Credits and Micro Finance. Before Rabobank, he was with Lazard Brothers’ Venture Capital arm where he set up the largest VC Fund of the time for SMEs. Starting his career with Bank of Baroda, he has over 36 years of experience in corporate and investment banking.

Rajesh is regarded as a pioneer in establishing a private equity market for food and agribusiness sector and for advocacy on policies on agriculture/food processing. Amongst others, he sits on the CII National Committees on Agriculture, Food Processing and Innovation, Chairs CII Northern Regional Committee on Agriculture and Food Processing, and the Board of Sasakawa India Leprosy Foundation.

He is an Economics and Law graduate and a post graduate in Western History.

Started career with Unilever Group in India as Management Trainee in 1987. Worked as part of Finance & Animal Feeds Division for 5 years in the covenanted management category. Was listed as an outstanding performer.

Joined Hong Kong based textiles & garments group in their Indonesian operations as G.M. (Operations) in 1992. Worked with them for 7 years in Indonesia & USA. Credited with huge cost saving initiatives and diversifying the customer base of the company.

Joined as Senior Vice President (New Initiatives and Finance) with Lalbhai group in Ahmedabad in 1999. Reduced leverage and reduced cost in RM by 300 basis points.

Joined Nilons Group as Director & CEO in March 2004. Have grown the company by a factor of 33x in 10 years, making it the fastest growing processed food company in India. Shareholders wealth grew by 35x in 10 years.

Sanjay Sacheti is the Country Head since the year 2003 for Olam's Indian business which comprises of supply chain management of various agri commodities like Cashew, Coffee, Cotton, Rice, Sugar etc. He has been with Olam since the year 2000, and has experience of around 22 years in the areas of Finance, Commercial and agri commodity management.

He is a Chartered Accountant and a Company Secretary, and has prior experience of working with corporates like Hindustan Unilever, AgroTech Foods and the Tata Group. 

Mr. Sanjay Kaul is the Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer of the Company. He is a former Indian Administrative Service officer. Before joining NCML, he was the Director & CEO of the NCDEX Institute of Commodity Markets and Research, New Delhi and has worked as the Joint Secretary, Department of Food and Public Distribution, Government of India. He has around 28 years of experience at the district, state and country levels in development administration, of which ten years has been in commodity markets. Mr. Kaul has also worked extensively with policy makers, project leaders, international agencies and government ministries and also led multi-sectoral development projects and teams. He is a Graduate as well as Post Graduate in Economics from the University of Delhi.

Sanjeev Asthana is a recognized leader in Food & Agribusiness with over 25 years of experience in India & Internationally. He is the Founder and Managing Partner of I-Farm Venture Advisors(Investment and Consulting), Chairman Agriculture Skill Council of India (ASCI) and Chairman National Skills Foundation of India (NSFI). He Serves on the Board of Directors ‘NCDEX Spot Exchange Ltd’. Sanjeev serves on National Committees of FICCI, CII, PHDCCI and ASSOCHAM the National Chambers of Commerce in the Agriculture & Food Processing.

Sanjeev was formerly the President & Chief Executive of Reliance Retail, Director on Board of Cargill India, Commodity Trading(Asia Pacific) - Cargill Singapore, Country Head - ITC Global Holdings for Indonesia and Romania. Sanjeev has led investment upwards of US$ 500 Million and managed large scale Businesses in Asia Pacific, Europe and India.

His international affiliations are with International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) UK, Hivos Knowledge Programme, Netherlands, Enterprise Solution to Poverty (ESP) New York, USIndia Business Council (USIBC), Water Forum, Columbia University, USA .

He has served on the Committees of Planning Commission, NDC, Ministry of Panchayati Raj. The most recent one was as Chairman - Task Force of Planning Commission on Physical Markets for Twelfth Five Year Plan (2012-17).

He has made presentations at G-20 Consultation at Istanbul, Harvard University US, European Paraliament (Brussels), London Business School and leading International conferences in Montreal,
Vienna, Houston, Melbourne, Tokyo, Beijing, Singapore, Manila, Bandung etc and across India on a wide variety of topics such as Food Security, Agriculture Supply Chains, Nutrition, International Trade, PPP Models, Demand dynamics of emerging economies, Retail etc.

Sarang Nirmal, a quiet, yet effective Chairman, is known for completely changing the landscape of the regional dairy industry today. Through the now eminent company Prabhat-which is one of the INDIA’s leading Milk & Milk products company, this self-made millionaire revolutionized the way everyday people perceived about dairy products, and how the innovative dairy products offering should be part of everyone's daily diet. He built an empire based on the concept that farmer should not only be made a part of quality and clean milk collection but he should act as ‘PARTNER IN PROGRESS’ resulting in producing well-organized solid platform for manufacturing quality and international standards driven dairy products, and that they should be available in effective and affordable pricing for daily consumption to each consumer class. He was one of the first to believe in the "Collective Working" concept, and he actually executed this ideas through ‘PRABHAT QUALITY MISSION’ where each farmer along with his family is a part of the idea of clean and quality milk. Thus, the foundation that he built for the farmers were smaller as compared to earlier scenario but considerably now has revolutionized the movement which changed the dynamics of PRABHAT Group. His vision “To be a highly respectable and leading milk food company, that is committed to thoughtful and sustainable socio-economic development” now has become a legacy for each element associated with Prabhat.

What truly remarkable is that Sarang Nirmal brought the company to greatness in spite of all odds, adversaries which he is faced in beginning, the journey was not so easy, but with immense dedication & passion he successfully build and executed the ambitious plan which helped accomplished numerous milestones further strengthening the PRABHAT forever. His deep knowledge in Agriculture and bonding with the farmers facilitated him a lot. He found a need and serviced that need. Now, his ideologies and guidance had reinvented that company. Most people never have the opportunity to do that once in their lifetimes. Sarang Nirmal has performed it twice. First being the most important key strength in building foundation of Prabhat and second being the most loved Chairman by employees, stake holders and all the farmers associated with it, this is his legacy and way of working which made him earned the title of MOTE ANNA (Big Brother) among all the farming and dairy community.

In his respect and his numerous contributions during his tenure he has been felicitated by numerous awards from Government of India, many dairying and agricultural communities. His four guiding stars INTEGRITY - COMMITMENT - INNOVATION & PROGRESS today are the cornerstones of PRABHAT enriching and enhancing everyone’s lives.

He is the head- Strategy and business development at Khedut Agro Engineering which is India’s largest manufacturer of automatic seed drills and innovative planting machinery. Here he is responsible to set corporate strategic directions (vision and Strategy) & support in decisions on key strategic issues i.e. market entry, acquisitions. He reviews the company’s overall strategy to ensure the organization anticipates and responds to changing business conditions. He serves as principal external representative of the company and develops successful alliances and joint ventures etc.

He has over 15 years’ experience in handling business development for banking, Financial institutions and Agriculture Retail. He is also a part of leading consulting firm  “GoldRoof Advisors”, has worked on both private equity transactions and structured finance deals, with specific focus on agro based companies.

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

Sunoor Kaul is a Director of Origo Commodities. Prior to founding Origo Commodities, Sunoor worked in investment banking with Bank of America in New York and with the General Electric Company in Bangalore and Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

At Bank of America's Healthcare Investment Banking division in New York, Sunoor executed several multi-billion dollar M&A deals and debt and equity offerings. At General Electric, Sunoor worked in various leadership roles in manufacturing, sourcing, materials management, logistics and finance

Sunoor holds a B.Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (India) and an MBA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (Michigan).

Mr Viraj Bahl is the Founder & Managing Director of Veeba Food Services  Private Limited. Under the “Veeba” brand the company is one of the fastest growing FMCG companies in the country. Veeba has re-wriiten the rules of the industry with extreme focus on Research & Development. In a very short span of time under the leadership of Viraj Bahl - Veeba has already become leading supplier to all the biggest names in the QSR industry of India and has a national distribution footprint.

After completing his Industrial Engineering from Singapore, Viraj Bahl started his career at Fun Foods - Viraj Bahl was a part of the promoter family of Fun Foods, they later made a complete exit by selling their shares to a German Food Major. At Fun Foods Viraj Bahl was responsible for all  aspects of the business. He personally spear-headed the explosive expansion of that company in retail and modern trade.

Viraj Bahl in his entire career has been awarded various awards from the industry & various organisations.

Vikram Puri is a post graduate in Agriculture (Plant Breeding & Genetics) from the Punjab Agricultural University, and has done his Executive Management from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (MEP).

With 30 years experience as an agribusiness professional, Vikram has been associated with several Indian companies engaged in the production & marketing of agricultural inputs and output.  He has held senior positions in marketing & business development, operations, Policy, Strategy and other key functions. He has received specialised training in Process technology (Seeds and Horticulture) from Sweden & Holland and has successfully handled technology transfers, Project Management & Commissioning of advanced Agribiotechnology Projects, design & financial restructuring of businesses & projects. He has also initiated Greenfield JVs with Asian & European companies engaged in Horticulture and Plant biotechnology, aimed at product delivery to Indian, European and South East Asian Markets.

Vikram Puri has chaired the CII (Confederation of Indian Industry) Agri Services Showcase in 2008 in Chandigarh, which is India’s premier biennial Agro Technology and Business Fair. Vikram has played a significant role in serving on the Agribusiness Committees of the CII, Chandigarh and Delhi Chapters as well as at the Bombay Chambers of Commerce & Industry. He is presently serving on the CII AgroTech 2014 Steering Committee. He is frequently invited to speak at various seminars on agribusiness around the country and at leading Management Institutes such as at NIAM, IIMA and Harvard Business School to share his rich & varied experience in Agribusiness.

Vikram Puri is Chief Executive Officer at Mahindra Shubhlabh Services Ltd.and also oversees the roll out of developing of a rural marketing network for Agricultural Products (Crop Care & Nutrition) at Mahindra Agribusiness. Over the eight years that Vikram has taken a leadership position at Mahindra Agribusiness, MSSL has emerged as the leading Indian Fresh Grape exporter to Europe and also developed a strong and growing position in the Crop Care  & Seed potato industry in India.

During his career, Vikram has been instrumental in executing India’s first large scale Contract Farming Program for production of Industrial Softwoods (60,000 acres) which is regarded as a showcase initiative that successfully delivered its corporate objectives in the farm forestry area.