Ajay Pahwa is the Chief Executive Officer, Kaya Ltd., since November 2009. An MBA from IMD Lausanne (Switzerland), Ajay also possesses a Bachelors degree in Commerce from Delhi University. His hospitality training includes a Diploma in Hotel Management from Institute of Hotel Management (Delhi) followed by Oberoi School of Management (Delhi). He also completed a Certification Course in Chain Store Management from the Cornell University (USA).

Ajay's experience over the past 22 years has been in hospitality and retail restaurant businesses. He has been with Yum Restaurants International since 1995 in Operating Roles in Far East, UK, and Middle East and North Africa. Most recently he was based in Dubai as General Manager- Pizza Hut and Taco Bell for Middle East, North Africa and Turkey. His prior experience includes roles at Grand Hyatt Hong Kong and New World Harbor View Hotel, Hong Kong. Ajay began his career with the Oberoi Group of Hotels in management roles in Mumbai and Delhi. He brings 20 years of international experience and a honed understanding of retail, customer service and hospitality segments.

Balu Nayar is one of the co-founders of Morpheus Capital, focussed on investments in Indian consumer businesses. Earlier, he was Managing Director of IMG India and played a key role in the conceptualization, business modeling and monetization of the IPL. Prior to that, Balu was with Yahoo as Regional Director for Yahoo’s Connected Life businesses across India, South-East Asia & Australia, after heading Hutchison Telecom’s VAS division, where he was involved with building the MVAS sector in India. Earlier, Balu set up the marketing division at STAR TV, in addition to business development operations related to the launch of Sky DTH television services in India. A graduate of the IIT Kharagpur and IIM Bangalore, Balu is also involved in mentoring start-ups in the area of media and technology.

Baqar is currently the CEO of Cotton County Retail, and handles a network of more than 600 EBOs, selling apparel to the mid market consumers. Baqar has more than twelve years of experience including ten years of Management Consulting, with extensive work in industries such as Retail & Consumer Products, Food & Grocery, Textile & Clothing and Real Estate. He has worked on over 45 projects in geographies including India, S. Asia & Africa and with European & American retailers & brands.

Baqar has led several Retail Startups and Rollout (Strategy & Implementation) projects for some of the largest business houses in India and South Asia, and across various retail segments, formats and categories. He has strong operational experience of end to end project implementation/ execution. He has also worked with leading international brands/ retailers on their India entry strategy.

Baqar has also consulted clients in the Education and Healthcare sectors.

Bijou Kurien has about 27 years of experience in Indian Industry. A post graduate in Management from XLRI, India, he joined Hindustan Lever Ltd., as a management trainee in 1981. After a successful stint of 6 years in various capacities in Sales, Marketing and Projects, he joined Titan Industries Ltd, India’s leading manufacturer and marketer of watches and jewellery. He also headed the team which established Timex Watches Ltd. in India.

 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

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

@Deepesh_o3

With great leadership qualities, Dharmendra Manwani co-founded Mindspring, Inc, a New York-based successful management & technology consulting firm. He also provided his consulting expertise to various Fortune 500 companies, which include New York Stock Exchange, ATT Broadband, JPMorgan Chase, Societe-General, and Schering - Plough. Currently, Dharmendra is associated with Columbia Business School where he mentors management graduates on retail service industry and ventures. He is the leading light for Jean - Claude Biguine-House of Beauty, as its Chief Executive Officer for India.

Divya Sehgal joined IVFA in 2010 and is based in Mumbai.

Prior to IVFA, Divya was the Chief Operating Officer of Apollo Health Street (AHS), a leading healthcare outsourcing firm with worldwide operations. Divya was a founder of AHS and led it to be among the top five firms in its space globally. As COO, Divya managed a global team of executives with responsibility for business strategy, sales and marketing, organization development and service delivery.

Prior to Apollo, Divya served as a consultant at McKinsey, as an investment banker at ANZ and as an entrepreneur at Emedlife. His consulting work at McKinsey involved portfolio and business strategy, acquisition advisory and operational restructuring across a range of clients. His work in the corporate finance team at ANZ Investment bank included M&A and valuation advisory. His entrepreneurial stint involved setting up Emedlife, one of the first corporate healthcare advisory firms in India, raising capital from the Dabur group, growing it to leadership status and then eventually merging it with the Apollo group.

Divya holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and a Post Graduate Diploma in Management from Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.

Gaurav Jain , Founder CEO, has been a retail enthusiast all his life. He comes from a family with retail consumer background and has always been passionate about this sector.

Gaurav has an MBA from IMT Ghaziabad and B.E. from MNREC Allahabad. Prior to Mast Kalandar, he worked for about 5 years in IT industry. He has had good stints with Planetasia (Microland) and then with Wipro Technologies. He has handled various sales & marketing roles for various geographies like the US, Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia. His strengths have always been to create new opportunities and execute them.

In one of the IT assignments, he got to work with Australian food chains, which made him to start his entrepreneurial journey in retail sector in India.

Gaurav a keen eye for detail and likes to work on processes & systems, which make the operations efficient and scalable.

His hobbies include reading, photography and traveling.

Kanwal Singh is a co-founder of Helion and has over 23 years of experience in the areas of venture investing, marketing and business development across multiple sectors in India. In addition to his role at Helion, he serves on the boards of NGPay, Hurix, Amba Research, HummingBird, YLG Salons, Qwikcilver, Mast Kalandar, Yepme, Attano and LifeCell.

Prior to Helion, Kanwal spent four years as a director and co-head of The Carlyle Group's India venture operations. Before this, he worked as Head of Marketing for Intel South Asia. He joined Intel from Hindustan Unilever Ltd. where he spent over 10 years in various functions including sales, marketing and product innovation.

Kanwal has a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from Punjab University and an MBA in marketing and finance from the Faculty of Management Studies, New Delhi.

Kazi Arif Uz Zaman is a Managing Director in the private equity team of Everstone Capital Advisors and has primary responsibility for coverage of Southern India from Everstone’s Bangalore office.

Kazi has been with Everstone for over 7 years and has over 18 years of experience in private equity, M&A and investment banking. Kazi previously worked with ICICI Venture and ANZ Investment Bank in Mumbai, London and Singapore. He holds a degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT Kharagpur, Post Graduate Diploma in Management from IIM Ahmedabad and is a CFA charter holder from CFA Institute, U.S.A.

Keshav Baljee is currently President of Royal Orchid Hotels Limited. He is deeply involved in driving the expansion process of the group, to achieve its immediate goal of a pan-India presence by 2010. He not only designed the group’s ambitious expansion strategy, he is also instrumental in turning the group into a hotel development company from an operating one. His involvement in expansion extends to include evaluating and selecting from the funding sources in the market. His role in the company diversified when he recently took on the role of directing various PR, HR and marketing initiatives within the organization.

An alumnus of the Wharton School, USA and the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad, Keshav has a strong academic background in finance and corporate strategy. He has a background as an Investment Banker, and has worked with Lehman Brothers and UBS in the mergers and acquisitions department prior to returning to India.

Kiran has been a pioneering figure in the Indian venture capital industry. He started the venture capital business of ICICI and managed it during the first eight years. Later, he was a partner at Draper International, a venture firm based in San Francisco, which invested in India and the US.

Prior to starting the Kaati Zone venture, he was a co-founder of Jumpstartup, a venture firm that invested in technology businesses both in India and the US. During his career, he helped several entrepreneurial businesses by providing start-up and early-stage capital and brought the initial successes of venture capital industry to public markets. Kiran is a chemical engineer from IIT Kanpur and holds a post-graduate diploma in management from University of Mumbai.

Harinder Sawhney is Executive Director of JM Financial's Private Equity Fund. He has been with the Fund for about 3 years and is managing investments in microfinance, retail, farm equipment, offshore logistics, etc. His prior experiences transcends both buy and sell side in India and the US.

Nandini has over 18 years of experience of which 13 years are with KPMG. Nandini focuses on the Consumer and Retail sector and has worked on assignments in mergers & acquisitions, divestments, joint venture advisory, inbound entry strategy, financial restructuring, private equity and valuations.

Prior to joining KPMG, she spent 5 years in Investment Banking with SBI Capital Markets. She specializes in the Consumer Markets and Retail sectors with specific focus on the retail, FMCG and food and beverages sector. Her work includes M&A transactions and valuations as also assisting clients on their inbound entry strategies, market assessments, partner searches. Her retail clients include Tesco, Pantaloon, Shoppers Stop, Starbucks, Metro Cash and Carry, Dairy Farm among others. She is also a member of the CII National Committee on Retail.

Rahul, CEO and Co-Founder YLG, founded India's fastest growing salon and spa in May 2008. He brings 17 years of experience in diverse industries such as Retail, dot.com and Manufacturing. He has proven expertise in turning around retail business (He spearheaded Health & Glow's growth into India's No.1 Health & beauty Chain) and brings high level domain expertise in the Health, Beauty & Wellness sector. He has exposure to best practices from International Retailers.

Prior to founding YLG, Rahul was Head - Wellness business for the Future Group. He built the Health & Beauty Category, set up the beauty salon chain "Star & Sitara" for the company. He was instrumental in setting up India's first Gym Chain in Malls in a JV with Talwalkars for the Future group. He has played a key role in bringing about the Sachin Tendulkar - Future Group initiative "Sach". Before Pantaloon, Rahul headed the retail business for Arvind brands where he managed brands such as Arrow, Lee, Wrangler and Excalibur. His entry in retail began as the Business Head of Health & Glow, which even today continues to be the most successful format of its kind in India. Rahul has also dabbled with dot.com as Business Head for e-RPG Cricket Portal. Rahul started his career with the RPG Group, working at RPG Cables and Ceat Ltd, in various marketing & sales responsibilities.

He is a Post Graduate from IIM Calcutta and has a B.Tech (hons) from IIT Kharagpur.

Riyaaz Amlani is the CEO & MD at Impresario Entertainment and Hospitality Pvt. Ltd. The company began with its maiden venture Mocha - Coffees & Conversations, which has been IEHPL's claim to fame. The company also created Finale - Happy Endings, a rare B2B catering unit, which supplies desserts to caterers.

Highly respected in the Indian hospitality business as one of the youngest and most successful entrepreneur’s, Riyaaz is famous for his uncanny ability to provide a unique experience through each venture.Having completed his education in UCLA with a Masters in Entertainment Management, Riyaaz blazed through the biz and was soon at the helm of affairs of a leading media company. But gave it all up on a hunch to follow his dream of opening a café.

With no previous experience, he co-founded IEHPL in 2001 with a 500 sq. ft. Mocha in Churchgate. Today he has gone on to build 28 restaurants over nine years including Salt Water Grill,Salt Water Cafe,Smoke House Grill,DelItalia and Mocha ArtHouse to name a few.

Sachindra Rudra has studied and worked in India, the UK and the Americas.

Prior to joining Navis, Sachindra was with Piramal Healthcare Ltd in India where he looked after Strategy, Business Development and had P&L responsibility for an SBU. Before Piramal Healthcare, he was with McKinsey & Company, Inc. where he worked on solving a variety of strategic and operational issues for clients, both Indian and international. Sachindra started his career as a sales and marketing professional with Hindustan Unilever Ltd (the Indian subsidiary of Unilever).

Sachindra received his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM A). He also has a Masters degree in Economics from the London School of Economics, UK and a BA in Economics from Cambridge University, UK.

Sandeep Ahuja is Managing Director with VLCC Health Care Ltd. Prior to his current assignment Sandeep was responsible for VLCC’s foray in international markets, based out of Dubai and earlier led the Group’s subsidiary that manufactures and markets personal care products.

Sandeep’s wide and varied experience of over 2 decades spans marketing, brand communications, new market development and profit-centre management. Prior to joining VLCC, he was Director & CEO of Lexicon PR & Corporate Consultants Ltd., an affiliate of the Omnicom Group company, Fleishman-Hillard, Inc., one the world’s largest communications consultancies. He was largely responsible for establishing Lexicon as one of the top 10 communications consultancies in India and worked with a host of prestigious companies as clients, including Avon, Domino’s, Goodyear, Lufthansa, Timex and United Airlines.

A graduate in economics and a postgraduate in marketing & advertising, Sandeep started his career in advertising. Later, he settled down to a long and loaded stint at Escorts Limited, one of the largest engineering conglomerates in India, before taking up the challenge of establishing a full service communications consultancy from the ground up. He moved on to join VLCC in 2002.

Sandeep is also the Chairman of the Wellness Committee as well as a member of the National Executive Committee of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI) for two years running now.

Saloni Nangia is Vice President (Retail & Consumer Products) at Technopak, one of India’s leading management consulting organisations, specialised in retail, consumer products, fashion, healthcare, hospitality and consumer insights. Technopak is currently working closely with the Indian travelling consumer, travel retail and new airport developments in India.

Over the last 13 years, Saloni has worked in the areas of business strategy and India entry strategy with a wide range of Indian and International clients. She has worked on consumer insights, market research, business planning, strategy and implementation for consumer products and retail for clients in India, Asia, Europe and North America.

Saloni has a Master’s Degree in International Business from the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, New Delhi and is a Science Graduate from Lucknow University, India.

Mr. Satyen Jain, a Chartered Accountant and MBA, is a Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Company. Mr.Satyen Jain oversees the implementation of the ongoing projects and has a keen eye upon applying International standards in F&B, Hi-tech Connectivity, room facilities, soft furnishings and hardware at the Pride Hotel sites.

Seshu Kumar , Head , Rural Retailing , at ITC - International Business Division had graduated from IIM Ahmedabad 20 yearsback. He had an initial grounding in Sales and Distribution in Asian Paints Ltd. in Sales and Distribution before moving to the then fledgling Retail Industry as Manager - Retailing with Walt Disney India Ltd.

His tenure as part of a start up team with Walt Disney helped him learn all areas of Retailing including Systems, Processes for controlling chain stores, Visual Merchandising and how to create a fun experience in a retail store for the target segment i.e. children.

He followed up his start up experience in Walt Disney with a small stint as Consultant with KSA Technopak at KSA Technopak and then again joined a start up team in 2000 - this time in e-tailing industry with Fabmall.com (then Fabmart.com). Having quickly understood that Food Retailing is a bigger opportunity, Mr.Seshu Kumar spearheaded Fabmall’s foray into setting up the chain of Fabmall Supermarkets in Bangalore.

Mr.Seshu Kumar has joined ITC in 2004 and is spearheading ITC IBD’s initiative to set up a Chain of 700 Rural Hypermarkets over the next 10 years. During the last 6 years he had set up 24 Choupal Sagars and had built the Team, Systems and Processes to support the Mega Expansion.

T.S. Ashwin, Managing Director, Odyssey India Limited, the company that manages the ‘Odyssey’ chain of retail stores, is a first generation entrepreneur. From pursuing C.A., to a stint in Software as a Software Analyst and then onto retailing, Mr. Ashwin is someone who has now been part of the retail industry for more than 15 years.

The first ‘Odyssey’ store was set-up in 1995 in Adyar, a suburb of Chennai. Now there are over 50 stores across various formats spread over 12 cities in India.  While the expansion for ODYSSEY continues, he has now taken the company beyond books and music into niche and lifestyle segments of eyewear, premium writing instruments and toys with the launch of 3 new store concepts to retail them - STYLE i, EDITIONS and TOYOPIA.

Mr. Ashwin has since sold his entire stake in Odyssey India Limited to Deccan Chronicle, the media company, but continues to drive the business.