Abhishek Sharman

Abhishek has 11 years of experience in private equity. He has played a key role in investing and portfolio management of 15 companies and has also managed a few exits. Previously was Principal at India Equity Partners (IEP), a USD 350 mn India focused private equity fund. Served on the boards of IKYA Human Capital, ILFS Education, Sagar Ratna Restaurants, RG Stone and Axiss Dental. Also played a significant role in investments in Manappuram Finance and ColdEx. Prior to IEP, he was with the SUN Group, an emerging markets private equity fund with USD 2 bn in AUM. Abhishek serves as a member of the economic affairs sub-committee of the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII). Holds Management degree from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Calcutta and Engineering degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi.

Abhay Pandey

Abhay is a Managing Director with Sequoia Capital India. Prior to joining Sequoia Capital, Abhay was head of Real Estate and Infrastructure investment banking at DSP Merrill Lynch where he led capital raising for the largest Indian companies in these sectors including the largest Indian initial public offering for DLF Ltd. Prior to that, Abhay worked at McKinsey & Co, in Mumbai and Johannesburg. At McKinsey, Abhay worked with a number of leading Indian corporations in the Media and Entertainment and Manufacturing sectors. Abhay received an MBA from IIM Calcutta and a B. Tech. in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT Bombay.

Aditya Joshi

Aditya Joshi is a Principal in the Consumer team, and is based in Mumbai, India. Aditya joined Apax Partners in September 2010. He has participated in a number of key deals including Zensar Technologies, Chola, GlobalLogic and iGATE Patni.

Prior to joining Apax, Aditya worked at The Blackstone Group, where he focused on investment opportunities primarily in the Indian TMT, consumer, and business services space. Prior to joining Blackstone, Aditya worked at Morgan Stanley in the corporate finance team in India.

Aditya holds an MBA from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and is a Chartered Accountant and member of The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India

Amit Jain

Amit Jain is a Managing Director in the Private Equity Group and is based in Mumbai. Before joining Blackstone in 2011, Mr. Jain worked at McKinsey & Company focusing on infrastructure and financial projects in India. Prior to that, Mr. Jain worked at Hindustan Unilever limited ("HUL") where he worked primarily in the manufacturing and supply chain area, setting up and operating manufacturing plants in HUL. Mr. Jain received a B.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Kharagpur where he received the "Institute Silver Medal" and a P.G.P. (equivalent to an M.B.A.) from the Indian School of Business ("ISB"), Hyderabad where he was awarded the "ISB Scholar of Excellence."

Angshuman Bhattacharya

Angshuman Bhattacharya is a Managing Director and leads consumer products, food and agribusiness for the strategy & diligence practice at Alvarez & Marsal, India. He has over 16 years of experience in industry and consulting, advising companies in areas spanning strategy formulation, supply chain optimization, and mergers and acquisitions. He has advised some of the largest multinational & Indian corporates and advised leading large & mid-cap Private equity funds. Angshuman has also been an active participant and speaker at CII and FICCI and has published various papers on issues related to the Food and Agribusiness sector in India.

Prior to joining A&M, Angshuman was a director at KPMG India’s global strategy group, leading consumer, food and agribusiness. Prior to that, Angshuman has worked in the food industry for Kraft Cadbury and in consulting capacity at the Tata Strategic Management Group in the consumer and retail sector. Angshuman earned an MBA from S.P. Jain Institute of Management & Research, Mumbai and has an degree in electrical engineering

Anuj Rakyan

Mr. Anuj Rakyan is the founder and Managing Director at RAW Pressery – India’s first cold-pressed juice company.  RAW Pressery aims to be India’s leading clean-label food & beverage company, by creating honestly healthy products using superior technology and unique distribution methods.

Under the leadership of Anuj Rakyan – RAW Pressery has grown into a national beverage brand over the past 18 months, spanning five cities and available across modern trade, general trade, horeca, institutional and direct-to-home. Recently, it attracted a seed investment from Sequoia Capital and became the first company in India to acquire the unique HPP technology, which increases shelf-life and maintains nutrition in natural products.

Prior to founding RAW Pressery, Anuj spent the past decade building operations and growing brands in the diamond and jewelry industry with Gitanjali Gems and Nirav Modi Jewels. Anuj began his career as an investment banker with Morgan Stanley and moved from the financial world to brand consulting at FutureBrand in New York. He graduated in economics from Duke University in North Carolina and finished his schooling at Cathedral & John Connon School in Mumbai.

@AnujRakyan

A Mahendran

Mahendran is a seasoned entrepreneur and the CMD at Global Beverages & Foods Pvt Ltd. Earlier he was MD, Godrej Consumer Products and led the company's internationalization efforts. In his earlier role as the MD of Godrej Sara Lee, Mahendran played a pivotal role and nurtured the Good Knight brand into an acknowledged 'Super Brand'.

Prior to his association with the Godrej Group Mahendran was a partner with M/s RGN Price & Co before joining Transelektra Domestic Products Limited, as an Executive Director in 1987. On Transelektra's takeover by the Godrej Group in 1994, he was nominated as Managing Director of the Company by the Godrej Group and continued in this capacity after Sara Lee Corp. acquired a 51% stake in 1995.

Mahendran is a founder member and President of the Home Insect Control Association (HICA) and an acknowledged authority on household pest control. He is also a Promoter-Director of Harvey Heart Hospitals, Chennai, a super-specialty hospital in cardiac care, and a founder member of the Great Lakes Institute of Management. 

Mahendran served on the board of the Multi Commodity Exchange (MCX) and is on several industry forums such as FICCI, CII, Crop Care Federation of India and the Pest Control Association of India. 

Mahendran graduated from Madras Loyola College in 1976 and proceeded to complete his Chartered Accountancy in 1979.

Bhavna Thakur

Bhavna Thakur is Managing Director, Capital Markets and Exits for Everstone Capital Advisors. Prior to joining Everstone in 2015, Bhavna had over 17 years of corporate finance, investment banking, M&A, and capital markets experience. Previously, Bhavna worked with Citigroup, Morgan Stanley in Mumbai, and Paul Weiss, Wharton & Garrison LLP, and Davis Polk and Wardwell LLP in London and New York, respectively.

Bhavna holds a BA LLB (Honors) from National Law School of India, and a Masters in Law from Columbia University.

@bhavnathakur264

Gaurav Jain

Gaurav in his role as MD provides strategic support to the business to ensure that ColdEX growth story continues and that we have a sustainable business model. Gaurav's key role today is to steer the group on a pre-determined growth plan, develop and foster relationships with investors and strategic clients and mentor the leadership team. He was nominated for Forbes India Leadership Award 2012.

Hemendra Mathur

Hemendra has over 20 years of experience in private equity, management consulting and investment banking. Hemendra has significant experience of investing in Indian agribusiness in sectors such as food ingredients, animal feed, fertilisers, seeds, organic foods, spices, wheat milling, restaurants and catering. He is on the board of many early-stage companies in the food and agri sector. He is also associated with many incubator and mentoring networks for advising start-ups in the agri domain.

Prior to his VC stint, he has worked as management consultant to many Indian and multinational companies, government and multilateral organizations in the sectors pertaining to food processing, agribusiness, consumer goods and retail. He has extensive experience of working in India, South Asia, Europe and USA.

Hemendra in his career has worked with SEAF, Yes Bank, Rabobank, KSA Technopak, and ORG MARG (Nielsen). He is a management graduate from IIM (Ahmedabad) and Agricultural Engineer from Rajasthan Agricultural University.

@hemendramathur

Jasmine Kaur

The Green Snack Co. is a venture in the health food space which seems to have successfully turned a few myths on their head. First, that healthy food can't be tasty and second, that packaged food can't be healthy. Equipped with her knowledge of Nutrition & Dietetics, Jasmine, a business school graduate decided to switch from her professional calling of Banking & Retail to her personal raison d’être and set out, a year and a half ago, to purse her passion for creating a brand and a product line that is revolutionary in terms of ingredients, technology as well as format, and can truly cater to the massive unmet need for authentic healthy snacking in the country.
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The company has pan India distribution and the products are available in more than 15 cities – via retail, online and Horeca channels. Under Jasmine's leadership, the Green Snack Co, recently got felicitated with the "2016 India Food & Beverages Entrepreneurial Company of the Year Award'' at Frost & Sullivan - 2016 India Best Practices Awards.

Jinesh Shah

Jinesh Shah is the co-founder of Omnivore Partners, a venture fund investing in early stage Indian start-ups developing breakthrough technologies for food, agriculture and rural livelihoods.

Omnivore invests in the following domains:
1) Agriculture Technology
    - Digital platform, big data solutions
    - Precision agriculture, Internet of Things
    - Remote Sensing, UAVs, farm automation
    - Sustainable inputs
2) Innovative Food
    - Branded products, novel ingredients
    - New food processing technologies
    - Value chains linked to farmers
    - Traceability, food safety and nutrition solutions
3) Rural Livelihoods
    - Water management
    - Fintech for farmers
    - Efficient energy tech
    - Supply chain tech
Jinesh is a Director for multiple Omnivore-backed startups, including Stellapps Technologies, Barrix Agro Sciences, Retigence Technologies and FR8. Previously, Jinesh was the Vice President and CFO at Nexus Venture Partners, one of India’s leading early stage venture capital funds, where he lead the finance organization and also few select portfolio investments. He earlier served in Finance roles with Datamatics (leading Treasury/M&A), Patni Computers (initiating the IPO process), and HCL Technologies (founding the BPO business).

He is a Chartered Accountant with B.Com from R. A. Poddar College and an MMS (Finance) from the Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies (JBIMS).

Kingshuk Basu

Kingshuk Basu is Chief Executive Officer of Conscious Food, India’s pioneering organic and natural food company since 1990. Conscious Food is a well-loved, national brand which offers 100+ high quality products across categories to provide its customers a healthy kitchen solution. Prior to this, Kingshuk was Executive Director Operations with Spencer's Retail responsible for the business in all stores and regions across India. He has also served as Director Global Business with WinHolt Equipment and as Senior Business Manager with Daymon Worldwide at Kroger. Kingshuk holds a B.Tech. in Electrical Engineering from IIT, Kanpur and MBA in marketing and supply chain management from Michigan State University.

Krishanu Chakravarty

Krishanu Chakravarty is a global business leader with 20 years of domestic and international experience in fmcg and agri commodity. He has worked at leadership positions in 3M and Olam International in India and overseas. Currently he is working as CEO of Farmer Fortune India Private Limited spearheading the supply chain of food and agro commodity wing of STAR AGRI.

Krishanu has a strong track record of setting up, turning around and heading business verticals across different phases of business- start up, growth, stability and maturity. During his stint as Business Head Spices for Olam International, he served as Executive Committee member of World Spices Organization.

With his extensive experience of African and Indian markets and customer interface across the globe he has played an instrumental role in formulating innovative strategies to gain competitive advantages through green field projects like building Packaged Food Business from scratch in West Africa for Olam International as well as through Merger & Acquisition route as in case of Spices business.

Lokesh Bharwani

Lokesh Bharwani is the Founder of Mad Over Donuts, a donut and coffee brand which has carved out a niche for itself in the quick-service segment of the food and beverage space in India. Prior to starting Mad Over Donuts, Lokesh had been involved in several start-up environments including a telecommunications company in the US and a medical tourism company based out of Singapore. During his time serving in the Singapore Armed Forces, Lokesh saw an opportunity in the food and beverage industry and created the Mad Over Donuts brand, enlisting the help of professional consultants in Singapore. He chose to launch the first Mad Over Donuts store in India and is looking to expand the current network of over 45 stores in Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Delhi & NCR to other cities in India as well as overseas.

Born and raised in Singapore, Lokesh is a graduate of a premier business school, Babson College in the USA and specialized in entrepreneurship, finance and economics.

Mangesh Pathak

Mangesh is one of the founding partners of Ambit Pragma, a fund with specific focus on offering growth capital to mid-market firms in select industry verticals.

In his 20 years of professional career, Mangesh has worked with companies like Asian Paints, Reliance Infocomm and GSK Pharmaceuticals in various supply chain roles before co-founding Ambit Pragma.

Mangesh leads the investments in the Logistics sector for the fund.

During last 8 years, Ambit Pragma has made 7 investments, 3 of which are in the logistics field.

Mangesh is an MBA from S. P. Jain and an Engineering graduate in Electronics and Telecommunications.

Manish Mehta

Prior to joining Samara Capital, Manish worked with the Private Equity Fund at Lehman Brothers in New York. Before that, Manish was a Principal in a $10 billion multi-strategy hedge fund at Barclays Global Investors. Manish also briefly worked in Real Estate Private Equity at Grove International Partners (Soros Fund) where he was covering India investments primarily in the hotel sector. Manish began his finance career with Lehman Brothers in 2001 in New York.

Manish earned his Masters in Business Administration from the Harvard Business School where he graduated with Distinction. Manish also has a Master of Science in Transportation & Logistics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and received his Bachelors degree in engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Roorke where he was the top ranking student in his class. Manish is also a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA).

Michael Andrade

MICHAEL ANDRADE is the Business Head for Agriculture at HDFC Bank, one of India's leading banks which is rapidly expanding into rural area's. At HFDC since 1997 and experience with two multinational banks before that, he has over 25 years in the banking sector. His work has seen him involved in banking in rural markets since 2001 as well as managing and developing businesses in the area of co-operatives, warehouse receipts, farm lending and rural payments systems supporting agri-supply chains. He holds a Bachelors of Science and an MBA from Mumbai University.

Mragank Jain

Mragank is a Director with Standard Chartered Private Equity (SCPE) in India. He has been involved with several of the fund’s investments in Agriculture, Financial Services, Healthcare, Engineering, Travel and  Technology, Shipping and other sectors. Prior to SCPE, Mragank worked Private Equity, Management Consulting and IT consulting areas.  Mragank has an MBA from Indian Institute of Management Bangalore and is a Chemical Engineer from Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi.

Murali Parna

Post-graduate in Food Technology, MBA from IIM, Ahmedabad and Senior Management leader with 24+ years of diverse experience in Chain store management, Retail operations, Marketing, Advertising & Communication, Category Management, Supply chain management and above all developing a customer focused and motivated team to deliver results.

Have worked with some of the best organizations, domestic & globally in diverse fields eg. Walmart, Metro C&C, Lintas & Godrej Experience has been with start-ups, growth organisations, small and large organisations. Currently heading Sagar Ratna Restaurants Pvt Ltd., the largest Indian restaurant chain with 90+ restaurants and impact livelihoods of 3000+ employee families in the F&B industry.

Working with passion, commitment, sincerity, having a strategic mind and a good listener are some traits which describe me.

Nandini Chopra

Nandini Chopra is a Managing Director with Alvarez & Marsal Corporate Finance in Mumbai, with more than 20 years of experience in M&A, sales and divestitures, joint venture advisory, private equity raises, IPOs, debt syndication and valuations.

Her primary areas of concentration are in M&A and PE advisory and valuations. She has worked with clients across a range of industries, and specializes in Consumer and Retail. Before joining A&M, Ms. Chopra spent 15 years with KPMG India in the Corporate Finance practice, where she most recently served as Partner. There, she led M&A transactions in the consumer and retail sector and successfully closed marquee cross-border transactions, assisted large Indian corporates in private equity fund raises and India entry assessment & partner search assistance for global companies.

In her prior experience, she also set up valuations practice covering M&A valuations, financial reporting, litigation and dispute valuations, tax and regulatory valuations and PE portfolios. In this role, she led the swap ratio determination for mega mergers like the Vedanta Group consolidation globally and Satyam Computers with Tech Mahindra.

She spent five years with SBI Capital Markets, the investment banking arm of India’s largest commercial bank, State Bank of India. At SBI Capital Markets, she worked on large capital market raises including IPOs and rights issuances. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from BITS Pilani, India and an MBA from XLRI Jamshedpur, India. An Indian national, she is fluent in English and Hindi.

Nikhil Sen

Nikhil Sen belongs a one-organization man, who has moved on to becoming a successful business entrepreneur with Unibic Biscuits India. He has risen from the role of a Management Trainee in Britannia through the sales team culminating in his appointment as Head of domestic as well as exports sales. He also managed the marketing function of one of India’s most visible and vibrant companies. In early 2000, after business leadership stints in the SBUs, he went ahead to lead one of India’s most trusted brands and most sought after Food companies as Chief Operating Officer.

Mr. Sen is a strategist of repute. He is credited to have co-authored the strategy of re inventing brand Britannia and launch of Tiger brand in the mass market. His strategic initiatives include “Britannia for a life time” which made the brand relevant to various age groups through a detailed cohort analysis. This resulted in Britannia successfully straddling both ends of the spectrum i.e. health and staples on the one hand fulfilling hunger appeasement and snacking and indulgence fulfilling oral gratification on the other.

Prabir Talati

Prasad.P

Prasad P. has been with FASAR team of YES BANK since 2008. His previous professional assignments have been across food & agri value chain including start-ups and organised players ranging from BASF Chemicals, Reliance Retail amongst others. He has functional expertise in upmarkets sales of agri-inputs to handling procurement of agricultural commodities besides agri exports.

Prasad is trained in agriculture and agribusiness management; and has a Bachelors degree in agriculture from GB Pant University, Pantnagar and later in Agribusiness management from MANAGE, Hyderabad.

Prashant Parameswaran

Mr. Prashant Parameswaran, Managing Director, Kottaram Agro Foods, has packaged the humble Ragi (Finger Millet)  into tasty, delicious, healthy, breakfast options under the brand name SOULFULL. The company was formed in 2011.

Post his Mechanical Engineering from PSG College of Technology, Prashant successfully setup business units from scratch in India in the field of distribution and retail under the Kottaram Group umbrella. He is armed with an MBA from Babson College and experience with international firms like Limited brands and Information Resources Inc.  ; where he was a Director supporting the Marketing Strategies team at Safeway Supermarkets out of their California headquarters till 2009.

Rahul Garg

Rahul Garg is the principal at Premji Invest, Bangalore.  At Premji Invest he is a part of the Investments team looking at PE and Mezzanine Investments with key sectors of interest include BFSI space including transaction processing and payment solutions space, Agri and Food processing, Retail, Domestic Consumption themes and Conventional Power.

Previously he worked at ICICI Bank in various profiles including AGM corporate banking group, Head-Origination, equity linked products, Team Leader - structured trade and treasury products, RMAG and others.

Rahul is a MBA Finance from MDI Gurgaon and B.E., Mechanical Engineering from Delhi College of Engineering.

Raj Ganguly

Raj, is Senior Agribusiness Specialist in the Food and Agriculture Global Practice of World Bank and is spearheading Agribusiness development in South Asia. His work area includes sustainable agriculture and agribusiness development including Climate Smart agriculture, agri-value chains and agri-enterprises. He brings a rich blend of experience from Agribusiness private sector and multilateral development organisations and works for building effective partnership between market actors and development stakeholders towards co-creating rural prosperity. His training includes agriculture graduation from Banaras Hindu University, post graduation in horticulture from BAU, Ranchi and Post graduate diploma in agribusiness from MANAGE, Hyderabad, besides several exposure to value chains and markets in South Asia.

Rajesh Srivastava

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.

Rakesh Sony

Rakesh is the Director and head of India operations of Proterra investment partners. Proterra Investment Partners is an alternative investment manager focused on private equity investments in the natural resources sectors of agriculture, food, and metals and mining. It manages ~$2.2 bn across various strategies. 

Rakesh has over 18 years of experience of investments in mid market private equity space. Prior to Proterra, he was the partner at Motilal Oswal PE. Rakesh is a qualified CA and a graduate from St Xavier's Kolkata.

Riyaaz Amlani

Riyaaz Amlani is an entrepreneur and a restaurateur based in Mumbai, India. He is the CEO and MD of Impresario Entertainment & Hospitality Pvt. Ltd. and the President of NRAI (National Restaurant Association of India). He is often referred to as eatopian, hospitality wiz and a coffee baron.

Starting out as an outsider to the hospitality industry, today Riyaaz is highly respected and well-known in the restaurant business in India. Having sold shoes as a teenager, Riyaaz completed his education in UCLA with a Masters in Entertainment Management. Paving his way through the business, he soon started working as the entertainment consultant for many location based entertainment centers. During this period, Amlani contributed to the building of India’s leading Family Entertainment Centers as well as set up a wellness centre. He soon took over the reins of a leading media company, but gave it all up to open a café partnership with Kiran Salaskar. His vision was a cafe that offered an experience beyond the ordinary. This gave birth to his maiden venture Mocha, considered a pioneering venture in the café industry.

Riyaaz Amlani has been recognized as the ‘Best Restaurateur’ by 'Time Out Food Awards 2011'. All his restaurants have not only won various awards in India including Best New Restaurant, Best Bar, Best European Restaurant and Best Coffee Shop, but have also been acknowledged internationally by being nominated for UK’s Restaurant & Bar Design Award as well as shortlisted for Miele’s Top 50 Restaurants in Asia and recognized in Time Out Mumbai’s Top 10 Best Restaurateurs in India.

Rohan Mirchandani

Rohan Mirchandani is a Co-Founder and CEO at Drums Food International, makers of Epigamia Greek Yogurt, India’s first branded Greek yogurt, and Hokey Pokey ice cream. Rohan moved to India from the United States, where he grew up, in 2013 to pursue Drums Food’s foray into the FMCG space. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Finance & International Business from NYU’s Stern School of Business and an MBA from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Sadananda Maiya

Maiyas Beverages and food is a 4 years old company founded by Dr. P. Sadananda Maiya who was also the founder and Managing Director of MTR Foods Limited. He sold MTR FOODS to Orkla, a Norwegian conglomerate in 2007. Since then, he has spent the past few years in researching new techniques in Food processing and Cooking. The result is MAIYAS BEVERAGES AND FOODS PVT LTD. Currently we are having 7 landmark restaurants in Bangalore and one of the them is at International Airport.

He is done his Mechanical engineering & he joined MTR foods where he developed several products which is still popular worldwide he is the first person to use Nano technology in food and beverages. Result is Xpress Rasam (1 min Rasam first time in the world). also products like Curd rice, Curd wada, Banana milk shake, cold filter coffee, Sugarcane juice with 1 to 2 year shelf life, without using any preservative or additives.

Sarath Naru

Sarath is the Founder and Managing Partner of Ventureast, one of India’s longest-standing venture capital institutions investing in pioneering sectors since the mid-90s. Ventureast manages over $300 million having made close to 100 investments. Sarath has successfully pioneered investments in new sectors and investing approaches that many others have shunned. But, he has also collected enough tips on perhaps what not to do, as one aspires to build a great company.

In the past, Sarath sold soap at Procter & Gamble USA, and worked in British American Tobacco subsidiary (VST Industries, Hyderabad). As an entrepreneur, he has built a trading business between India and the USA, covering engineering & fashion goods, and printing related services. He has a B.Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and an MBA from Booth, University of Chicago. He has been associated at Board level positions with the IVCA, ABLE, IITM R&D Park, ICRISAT, Ascent Capital, etc.

Sonal Shah

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.

Srishti Ojha

Srishti Ojha is the founding partner of Verist Law. Srishti graduated in 2002 from National Law ?School of India University, Bangalore,? with a B.A.LL.B.(Hons.) and a gold medal in international law and holds an LL.M. from New York University School of Law?.

Srishti has several years of ?advisory and ?transactional experience ? ?including listed buy-outs, securities laws, regulatory and advisory including exchange control regulations and ongoing corporate compliance.

Srini Vudayagiri

Srini is director (partner) at Peepul Capital which an India focused growth stage private equity fund with about $700 million under management.

Over his 25 years of professional career in financial services, Srini spent close to two decades in Private Equity in India and abroad. Being among the early professionals in Indian Private Equity industry, Srini has been closely associated with multiple marquee investments over the years. He led the early notable investments in education (Career Launcher), mobile telecom (BPL Cellular), power (Kondapalli Power) and web businesses (Netkraft) among others. Srini was among the founding team of CDC private equity operations in India (now called ACTIS) and Director of Intel Capital South Asia operations.

Srini was instrumental in setting up and running the fund management operations of Thomas Weisel Partners in India as its founding head of investments. Just before Peepul Capital, Srini built and managed the Indian operations of Lightspeed Ventures Partners as its founding Managing Director.

Sumer Juneja

Sumer serves as an advisor on growth equity investments in Indian companies across a wide range of sectors, including telecom, technology, financial services, infrastructure and manufacturing.

Before joining NVP India in 2009, Sumer was a founding member of the Goldman Sachs’ Asian Special Situations Group in India, a balance sheet investing group with over $4 billion under management. In this role, Sumer originated and evaluated investment opportunities in a broad range of industries, conducted due diligence and had board level involvement with such companies as Bharti Infratel, IRB Infrastructure Developers Ltd., IL&FS Transportation Networks Ltd. (ITNL), Cremica and OnMobile.

Prior to this role, Sumer was an analyst for the Industrial and Natural Resources Team in the Investment Banking Division of Goldman Sachs. In this position, Sumer actively drove all aspects of the M&A process including financial analysis, due diligence and public and private buy-side and sell-side transactions. Transaction experience included acquisition of Paladin Resources by Talisman Energy, acquisition of Domnick Hunter by Parker Hannifin and advising Thames Water, a UK water utility, on the divestiture of its international assets valued at over $2 billion

@sumerjuneja

Tarun Arora

Mr. Tarun Arora - Director - Finance and Operations The younger scion of the Arora family leads the young corporate team with his innovative and modern outlook,An Indian Business tycoon who is the Director of IG International Pvt ltd & Sanvi International guiding the company through diversification and growth to emerge as one of the Indian leaders in the fresh fruit industry. Tarun with business in his blood was groomed by his father Mr. G.C Arora (Chairman, IG International Pvt. Ltd.) at a very early age, he has travelled across the globe and has acquired diploma in private equity at “Harvard Business School” with MBA from MIT School of business. With more than a decade of experience in fresh produce industry, Tarun understood the need of developing end to end cold supply chain wherein he incorporated, IG Supply Chain Pvt. Ltd consisting of temperature-controlled warehouses holding a capacity of 20,000 pallets across nine facilities and plans to double this capacity to 40,000 pallets. In addition to the cold stores, IG Supply Chain operates a fleet of 70 trucks, out of which 50 are reefer trucks with trailers to ship product from ports to markets to plug any gap in the cold chain. Thus, Tarun is completely living upto the vision of IG International Pvt. Ltd. -  "An Indian company with the Global Outlook"

Tarun Khanna

Prior to joining the Investment Advisor in 2008, Mr. Khanna was a Director in the investment and corporate banking sector at Yes Bank, a reputed private sector bank in India. Here, he was responsible for originating M&A and capital raising transactions across North and East India for four-and-a-half years. He was an integral part of the start-up team at Yes Bank and served in a variety of leadership roles. He has originated several private equity transactions and has worked with several private equity funds, including with CVCI in two transactions. Prior to this assignment, he was with Citi’s Corporate & Investment Banking business for four years, before which he was with GE’s commercial finance business for 18 months. He has additionally served on the boards of the following Fund 1 portfolio companies - Barbeque Nation and NTL. He has an MBA degree from the University of Baltimore and a B.S. degree in Engineering from the University of Maryland.

Vinod Giri

Viraj Bahl

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.