AditiAvasthi, 33, more popularly known as ‘Chief Embiber’ is the founder and CEO of Indiavidual learning – a Mumbai-based ed-tech start-up.

embibe’s evolution and growth stems from Aditi’s passion for education and her desire to guide aspirants of massively competitive complex exams (MCCE) to fulfill their dreams. The journey that led her to setting up embibe has been an enriching one. She feels that the biggest challenge in mass education today is the tendency to underperform or drop out because students are often unable to realise their true potential.

An engineer herself, Aditi also has an MBA from the prestigious Booth School of Business in Chicago. She garnered experience in diverse fields such as marketing, product innovation and mobile commerce before setting off on the path of entreprenurship. She has headed top projects with globally-renowned companies such as Siemens, TCS and Barclays. While scaling the corporate ladder quickly, Aditi secretly continued to cherish her dream of creating something revolutionary for the education sector in India. In 2012, she decided to pack her bags and come back to India and do what she truly believed in, culminating in the founding of embibe.

Aditi was recently featured in Fortune India’s “40 under 40”, March 2015, mentioned amongst the most influential young people in the country who are causing a true disruption through technology and innovation. This is a reflection of her success story and the significant contributions she will continue to make in the Indian education space.

Ajit joined Acumen as India Director after over 20 years of experience in advisory, strategic consulting and entrepreneurship. Acumen was founded in 2001 and is changing the way the world tackles poverty by investing in companies, leaders and ideas. It invests patient capital in businesses whose products and services are enabling the poor to transform their lives across Africa, Latin America and South Asia. Acumen is one of the earliest global impact investors to have made investments in India and has built a strong local portfolio of companies across healthcare, education, energy, agriculture, water & sanitation and affordable housing.

Ajit previously served as Advisory Partner & Leader (Life Sciences) at Ernst & Young for over six years. At EY, he was a strategic advisor to the leadership of some of the leading Indian and global life science and healthcare players with the focus being business transformation and growth. Prior to his time at E&Y, Ajit was President of Piramal Healthcare, one of the leading pharmaceuticals companies in India, where he built the international business from inception in 2002 to $300M by the end of 2008. Ajit held multiple leadership roles across strategy, M&A and business leadership. During his tenure at Accenture’s Strategic Services practice in UK and India, he led the development of one of the firm’s largest and most successful internal projects - the Offshore Development Centre in 2001, which has now grown to about 100,000 people across multiple cities in India.

Ajit holds an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University, USA and an undergraduate degree in Computer Technology from PSG College of Technology.

@ajitmahadevan

Ashish Gupta is the COO and Global Business Unit Head, Financial Services of Evalueserve. He has been with Evalueserve since its inception in December 2000 and has spearheaded Evalueserve successfully to create the largest pure-play KPO Company.

Prior to joining Evalueserve, Ashish was the founder and CEO of Ties2Family, a community building portal that provided various services to Indians in India and overseas, growing the company to 25 employees and 100,000 customers. Ashish has also worked at McKinsey & Co. in Delhi as an Engagement Manager. He spent five years at McKinsey, working with clients in India, the US, Europe and China; he was a core member of the firm's ecommerce practice.

Experience as a speaker
Ashish has spoken at many events over the last few years and is regularly quoted on TV and in print media as an ITES industry specialist. An in-depth knowledge of the ITES industry and various business sectors makes Ashish a frequent invitee at various national and international conferences and Embassy meetings.

Honours and Awards
  • Evalueserve won the Award of India Business Law Journal in the category ‘Legal Process Outsourcing’ in November 2010, and in 2009.
  • Evalueserve won the‘EDGE 2010’ Award in September, for organizations that use IT for maximising business impacts.
  • Best CIO Under 40 years was presented to Sachin Jain, CIO, Evalueserve (2009) by 9dot9 Media.
  • Ashish Gupta, Global COO, Evalueserve won Best Young Entrepreneur' Award by Planman Media (2009).
  • Evalueserve has been awarded the ‘Innovation for India Award 2008’ by the Marico Innovation Foundation.
  • Evalueserve has been shortlisted as one of six finalists for the Global Entrepolis @ Singapore Award, presented by Wall Street Journal Asia and the Economic Development Board of Singapore (2007).
  • Evalueserve won the NASSCOM IT Innovation Award for its Innovative Business Model (2007).
  • Evalueserve has been recognised as one of the fastest growing technology companies in India under the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 India 2006 and 2007 programme and as one of the 500 fastest growing companies in Asia under the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 Asia 2006 and 2007 programme.
  • Red Herring Magazine named Evalueserve as one of its Red Herring 100 Asia for 2006.
  • Evalueserve won the HR Excellence Award by the Amity International Business School, India (2006).

Education
Ashish did his MBA from Carnegie Mellon University in 1994. He holds a B.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.

Mrs. Avnita Bir, Director-Principal, Podar Schools, is a well-known educator. A postgraduate in Economics from Delhi School of Economics, Mrs. Bir has worked in the field of Education for over three decades across various institutes. She is a member of the Governing Body of CBSE, the leading education board of the country. She has been a member of Education Reforms Committee. Ms. Bir is also a member of the India Jurisdiction at the Global Education Leaders Program (GELP). Passionate about children, education, economics and technology, she has been able to combine all her interests into her professional life. Her dedication to the cause of good education propelled her to author two books on Economics in her early years in the profession. Mrs. Avnita Bir is the recipient of the prestigious National Award for Teachers, conferred by the Hon'ble President of India. She has also been honored by the President of Singapore for her contribution to the education sector. She was awarded the Microsoft Mentor School Award for Innovation in Education. She also received the FICCI Outstanding Woman Achiever Award for her work in the field of education. More recently she was invited to Google, to speak at the Google Global Education Symposium at the Google Headquarters in Mountain View. She has been appointed as a member of the Advisory Board of Google's GlobalEDU.org initiative.  Mrs. Bir has been driving change at R N Podar School and it has just been selected as the Ashoka ChangeMaker School in the first cohort of Ashoka ChangeMaker Schools in India. Having been an active proponent of appropriate edtech in schools and the classroom along with innovative pedagogy, Mrs. Bir has been acknowledged for and rewarded several Leadership and Mentorship Awards. She writes a guest column on parenting for the Times of India group and has been covered widely in media like BBC, New York Times, Times of India, NDTV, Times Now etc for her thoughts on education.

@avnita

Dilip was till recently, Managing Director & CEO of the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC). The NSDC is a Public Private Partnership whose objective is to skill 150 million people in India by 2022 by fostering private sector investment and initiatives in training and skill development in 20 high growth sectors and the unorganized segment.

During his over five years at NSDC, the NSDC approved the funding of over 250 organisations and 38 Sector Councils. The NSDC partners trained over 5 million persons and placed over 62% of them. The 38 Sector councils created over 1500 competency standards and collaborated with over 2000 schools in 13 states as well as 31 universities to introduce industry led assessment and certification in the institutions.

He is Chairman of the Board of Management of the Sant Longowal Institute of Engineering and Technology and  also on the Governing Council of a Management School. Prior to NSDC, Dilip was Director General of the advocacy group for the automobile industry in India, Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM).  He also represented SIAM on various Government Committees as well as on the board of the National Skill Development Corporation and the Steering Committee of the International Motorcycle Manufacturers Association.

Before joining SIAM, Dilip was Deputy Director General responsible for Industry Sectors and Associations Council (ASCON) covering, Agriculture, Life sciences and ICT in the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). Dilip was the CII spokesperson and coordinated CII’s international work relating to the ASEAN.

Prior to his last assignment in CII, Dilip was part of an India team working on the competitiveness of Indian industry with Professor Michael Porter, Harvard Business School. He worked in industry prior to joining CII.

@DilipChenoy

Gaurav joined Kaizen in 2015 and leads the fund’s Education Technology investments. Prior to joining Kaizen, he co-founded Saba and helped build it into a $150 million public company and a global leader in Talent Management software solutions. With 25 years in building technology and scaling global product and service operations, Gaurav helps portfolio companies shape defensible growth strategies. Gaurav holds BS and MS degrees in Computer Science from Stanford University.

Gayathri, as co-founder and CEO, has built LabourNet into a respected social enterprise, by anchoring on values of growth, transparency social protection and inclusion. LabourNet has won numerous awards in the last few years for its model and contribution to society.

She has been extensively involved in policy issues & community mobilizations relating to Livelihoods, Social Security and the informal economy. Gayathri has a Doctorate in development studies with more than 20 years experience in both national and international organizations. She is been awarded with "Entrepreneur of the year - 2015" in Service Business - Training by Entrepreneur India Magazine.
Gayathri has held several advisory posts in the govt including,

  • Member Adhad(UIDA)
  • Member - BOCCW, Govt of Haryana

Presently she is
  • CII member, National skill committee & South Region skill committee
  • Member, Mentor council for construction
  • Chairwoman, Indian Woman Network(IWN) Southern Regional Council Karnataka
  • Member, Rashtriya Mahila Khosh(RMK), Ministry of Women and Child Development
  • Member, Recognition of Prior Learning Projects, DGET

Before joining LabourNet, she has held senior positions at International Labour for eight Organizations and other multilateral organisations for eight years. Prior to joining ILO, she consulted with UNDP,UNICEF, NORAD, Eork Bank etc.. She has more than 30 publications in the areas of labour and employment and gender issues to her credit.

Garima Batra is a Project Leader at the Boston Consulting Group's India office in the Public Sector and Development Practice.

She has worked on numerous assignments in the Mumbai, Delhi and London offices of BCG since 2005.  Over the last 3.5 years, Garima has focused extensively on the education sector across ECE (Early Childhood Education), K-12, and higher education segments. She is deeply passionate about  the cause of education quality improvement in India and is currently leading BCG's work with the Govt. of Haryana on a state-wide 'Quality Improvement Program'(QIP). The program has already shown some early evidence of impact through improved student learning outcomes basis third party assessment results.

Garima also has experience supporting the set-up of a new private university, the Shiv Nadar University, where she worked for a period of about 2 years. She holds an MBA from INSEAD and a B.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT Delhi.

Harsh Shetty is the CEO of Central Square Foundation. Harsh has 16 years of experience in diverse sectors such as education, healthcare, investment banking and technology.

His last stint in education was with his entrepreneurial venture Firefish, an education technology products company that creates online education programmes for students across India. Before founding Firefish, Harsh worked at the Pratham Education Initiative in a variety of roles including leading new initiatives, operations, business development and advocacy.

Prior to joining CSF, Harsh was associated with World Health Partners, where he worked extensively with the central and state governments to improve delivery of health services. He has also worked with Living Good in Kenya and Uganda, i2 Technologies (now JDA) and Citigroup.

Harsh has an undergraduate degree in Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology- Madras and an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth where he graduated as a Tuck Scholar with High Distinction.

Recognized as an online edupreneur and visionary e-learning innovator in a career spanning more than 13 years, Harman Singh is the Founder and CEO of WizIQ, the most comprehensive cloud-based education platform in the world. With WizIQ, Harman has successfully leveraged technology to replicate the classroom experience online making it more accessible, for both students and teachers. He spearheads both strategic and tactical direction, and contributes significantly towards developing WizIQ’s vision and business strategy.

Harman has a Master’s degree in Computer Science from North Carolina State University, located in Raleigh, N.C., USA. He was one of the co-founders of AuthorGEN, the company which evolved into WizIQ.

Singh is recognized for his expertise in conceptualizing, planning and developing specialized solutions for the online learning industry. His leadership and determination has enabled WizIQ to consistently excel at developing and implementing solutions that create value for working professionals, instructors and corporations. Under his able leadership, the company has received multiple leading awards for its innovative solution, including the Global e-Learning Awards 2012 for the 'Best Virtual Classroom Provider’ from the World Education Congress (WEC). His visionary entrepreneurial approach and its innovative implementation also won him the LMA-Trident Award for “Best Young and Innovative Entrepreneur of 2011”.

@hsingh77

Mr.Himanshu Gupta is the Joint Managing Director and the driving force behind the S.Chand Group. He finished his schooling from Modern School, Barakhamba Road, New Delhi and completed his graduation from Delhi University in 1999 and joined the family business in early 2000.

He was instrumental in transforming the family run business into a professionally run group by acquiring the best talent and implementing modern practices in the traditional business. Now the group boasts of being the largest educational publisher in the country with revenues expected to cross 100 million$ this year (2015-16). The Group is also diversified into digital and other services by having companies like D.S.Digital, which caters to the school students by providing smart class services to approximately 3,000 class rooms in India and abroad with more than 4,000 hours of digital content. The group has also acquired significant minority in companies like Edutor, which is a educational platform to provide content through tablet and other mediums and also into Smartyvity, which is a stem learning company. They also want to expand into Digital learning through more investments and acquisitions.

Himanshu Gupta was also involved in raising first private equity capital in the publishing industry from renowned PE Funds like Everstone and now recently International Finance Corporation. These funds have helped the group in a new growth path and created history in the publication world. He was also involved in the acquisition of Vikas Publication House and their division Madhubun Educational Books, which is a leader in the Hindi text book space. The group also acquired New Saraswati House (India) Pvt. Ltd., last year, which is the leader in the regional languages and supplementary books.

He envisions of transforming the Group into ‘Total Knowledge Corporation’. For his distinguished contribution to the Indian publishing industry he has been awarded with the ‘Young Publisher Award’ by The Federation of Educational Publishers in India and was the Vice President of The Federation of Indian Publishers. He had also co-chaired the publishing committee of FICCI and is known for his path breaking ideas and innovations for the publishing industry.

Today, the Group comprises of more than 2,500 thousand professionals, 4,000 Authors and 15,000 book titles which cater to the need of more than 20 million students by selling more than 40 million books to more than 30,000 institutions. S.Chand Group is poised to be India’s largest content and service provider in the near future with a vision to be a 500 million revenue company in the content and service space in the education sector in the next 5 to 7 years.

Imran is a General Partner at Gaja Capital (www.gajacapital.com). Gaja is India’s leading mid-market growth capital firm. Gaja’s aim is to help create India’s next generation of market leaders in sectors such as Education, Consumer, Financial Services and Healthcare.

Imran has 19 years of experience in Private Equity, Pharmaceuticals and Technology services. Prior to Gaja, Imran worked in a variety of roles of increasing responsibility at Dr. Reddy’s and Wipro Technologies.

At Gaja, Imran leads investments in the Education and Consumer clusters. He has been closely involved with Gaja’s investments in Kangaroo Kids (Pre-K and K-12), SportzVillage (Sports management), EuroKids (Pre-K and K12), John Distilleries (AlcoBev), CL Educate (Supplemental Education), Indus World Schools (K12), Educomp (Education- diversified) and Millennium Schools (K12). Imran has post graduate degrees in software engineering from BITS-Pilani and an MBA from IIM-Bangalore.

Karthik founded India’s fastest growing EdTech company in Higher Education helping Universities offer ELITE BBA/MBA programs powered by the Avagmah Technology Platform. Angel invested by K Ganesh (Founder of Tutorvista), Neeraj Bhargava  and VCs eg Network 18, Lionrock Capital, Avagmah is creating a revolution in eradicating bad quality in Higher education in India.

Avagmah helps Universities take their education programs online and laces them with top quality video courses developed in the studios of Avagmah delivered by Leading Faculty who are from the Top B Schools in India, and is delivered to the smartphone of the learner via the Avagmah app. Avagmah is the first and only company to partner with a Central Govt. of India University - Pondicherry University as an Education Technology Service Provider, and counts UCLA Extension - California among its partners. Avagmah has seen a meteoric growth or 15x in student numbers supported by his cofounder Sankar Bora who was ex co-founder Myntra.

Before founding Avagmah Karthik founded 24x7 Learning a leading eLearning Service provider and before that he has worked in leading technology companies including viz HCL-HP, Microland etc. He is an Engineer from NIT Kurukshetra and has completed his PG Diploma in Business Management from Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, New Delhi.

Karthik is a Member of the eLearning Standards committee - Bureau of Standards, Govt. of India and a Charter member of TiE.

@kskarthik

Ms.K.Vaijayanti heads Resource and Research vertical of Akshara Foundation. A trained economist she has worked in health sector and decentralisation prior to venturing into education field. In education she has extensively worked on issues ranging from Early Childhood Education to School education in Indian context. Most of the research works have been evidence based policy research in education sector. She has authored and co-authored several research papers in the domain. She also heads ASER- Karnataka since 2009. Has been a member of several committees set up by Govt of Karnataka on Elementary education, Human Development and ECCE. Vaijayanti had a privilege to be a convenor for the preparation of new curriculum framework for ECCE- Karnataka.

Nikhil Barshikar is the Founder and Managing Director of Imarticus Learning, India’s leading Financial Services and Analytics professional education institute offering comprehensive classroom and online programs to professionals and learning management and training delivery solutions to large scale organizations.

Nikhil holds a joint MBA from Columbia University and London Business School, and spent the first fifteen years of his career across a smorgasbord of roles within Investment Banking across India, UK, Japan and the US with Lehman Brothers and Nomura.

In his last stint at Nomura (erstwhile Lehman Brothers), he served as an Executive Director-the youngest in the history of Lehman Brothers, and Head of Nomura’s Offshore Strategy for Asia and established operational support for the local domestic FII business and the local asset management venture. He was a key member of the Global Equity Operating Committee, India Strategic Project Management Office and Prime Financing working group. He also served the steering committees of India Strategy PMO, CLS implementation, Global Prime build out and Global Risk.

Piyush is a graduate from IIT Kanpur and Stanford University. After completing a master’s program at Stanford University, Piyush returned to India to set-up Aurus Network with the vision of enabling a million teachers connect with a billion students using technology. Piyush and the team developed a cutting edge technology which enabled various education & training institutes to deliver HD quality live classroom sessions at extremely low internet speeds (as low as 100 Kbps). This led to setting up of 100s of remote classrooms across the country where students could come and attend the live classes being delivered from top cities. Later, the team launched SuperProfs (stands for “Super Professors”) to make the classes of the best professors/teachers for various competitive exams available to students online itself, so that the students could attend the classes from their home. Today, more than 15 lakh students use SuperProfs every month and study from India’s Best Professors!

Piyush has been awarded the prestigious MIT Review Innovators Under 35 award (India) and is a co-author of 8 international publications, including 2 journal papers and 1 best student paper award winner at ACM Multimedia (Germany), along with being a co-author of 1 US patent.

Pooja's has deep interest in developing solutions that engage young people through education and skills. She has worked extensively in the areas of Industry engagement for TVET. Through her work she wishes to create opportunities that connect stakeholders towards “Skills for All”.

Currently, she oversees policy advocacy and global business expansion for IL&FS Education Group. IL&FS has impacted more than 13 million people through Education and Skills since 1997. These learning technologies, knowledge products and training services are highly relevant for countries in need of transformational solutions for students, teachers, educators, parents, youth, employers, policy makers etc.

Prior to this, she was Director for Skills Development at FICCI, where she strengthened the Skills Forum leading to setting up Sector Skills Councils and collaboration with 10+ countries.

She has done her Post Graduate in Social Work from the University of Delhi. Pooja is also an Aspire Circle Fellow and working with like-minded Social Leaders to create deeper engagement within the development sector.

@pooja_chirps

Mr Prasad Gadkari has 18 years of experience across private equity, principal investments, mezzanine capital, project finance and corporate advisory. He currently serves on the boards of education & healthcare enterprise Manipal, healthcare benefits administrator Medi Assist, infrastructure services company GVR, student living provider MIS, container logistics major Seaways and water solutions provider Doshion. He has delivered seven profitable exits at IDFC utilizing varied strategies across IPO, secondary, buy-back and swaps.

Prior to IDFC Alternatives, Mr Gadkari was with GE, responsible for company’s strategic and financial investments in India, Middle East and North Africa in infrastructure related industries.

Before GE, he worked with IDFC Ltd, where he led financing and fund raising for project finance deals. Mr Gadkari also acted as an advisor to Government departments such as NHAI, Port Trusts and Railways on devising appropriate privatization policies and handled several sell-side mandates for the Government.

He started his career at Larsen and Toubro with their project advisory group. Mr Gadkari holds an MBA from NMIMS, Mumbai, and is a CFA Charter holder.

Prachi is the Director India, Education, Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, a private foundation dedicated to transforming the lives of children living in urban poverty through better education and family economic stability. Since entering India in 2006, the foundation has committed more than INR 856 crores to drive social progress for India’s children.

As Director, Education, Prachi heads the foundation’s India education portfolio which focuses on large scale school system transformation and high quality education service providers. The portfolio reaches more than 7 lakh children every year and includes more than 30 for-profit and not-for profit organizations

Prachi is on the board of several for-profit social enterprises and advisory committees to state governments and education departments. She is passionate about the area of data driven education and has spearheaded the foundation’s work in multiple ways, including: incubating service providers, creating role model states for classroom based assessments and embedding student learning based accountability in all portfolio companies.

Before joining the foundation, Prachi worked at Boston Consulting Group in Gurgaon, India. She has also worked extensively in the telecommunications sector at Qualcomm and Motorola. Therefore, Prachi has over 15 years of diverse set of operational and leadership experience in India and US.

Prachi has a bachelor’s in electrical engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, a master’s degree in electrical engineering from University of Southern California, Los Angeles and a master in business administration from the University of Chicago.

Parth J. Shah is founder president of the Centre for Civil Society. CCS advances social change through public policy. Their work in education, livelihood, and policy training promotes choice and accountability across the private and public sectors. To translate policy into practice, CCS engages with policy and opinion leaders through research, pilot projects and advocacy.

Parth taught economics at the University of Michigan before returning to India to start CCS. He has published academic articles in the areas of development economics, welfare economics, business-cycle theory, free or laissez-faire banking, and currency-board systems. He has edited Morality of Markets, Friedman on India, Profiles in Courage: Dissent on Indian Socialism, Do Corporations have Social Responsibility?, and co-edited Law, Liberty, and Livelihood, The Terracotta Reader, and Agenda for Change. He writes regularly in newspapers and magazines.

@parthjshah

Rahul Keshav Patwardhan is the Chief Executive Officer of NIIT Limited, a global leader in skills and talent development, offering multi-disciplinary learning management and training delivery solutions to corporations, institutions, and individuals in over 40 countries.

Rahul is a Production Engineer and an MBA from IIM Calcutta. After having spent the first 20 years of his career with NIIT in diverse roles, Rahul returns to the company with 10 years of extensive Global experience in scaling managed services operations with Logica. With a proven track record and excellence in strategy, technology services management, training services & channel management, Rahul will spearhead the transformation of NIIT's global offerings and brand positioning in the realm of skills and talent development.

Prior to re-joining NIIT, Rahul was based at the Europe headquarters of Logica as MD, Global Managed App Services. By 2011, he oversaw a revenue line of USD 1.5B and a 12000 person globally diverse App Management workforce across all onshore European locations and offshore locations in India, Morocco, Philippines and Central/Eastern Europe. He then became the Global Productivity Leader, responsible for design & execution of a strategic program to improve delivery productivity and gross margins across the firm, globally. Earlier on at Logica in 2005, Rahul served as the Company's CEO of the India Offshore unit in Bangalore, as well as the Global Director of Applications Management delivery across Logica worldwide. He functioned as a key member of the global leadership team.

During his initial career, Rahul started at NIIT as a key member of the team in 1987 that conceived and implemented NIIT's Training Services Franchise model. He then led product management of the Individual IT Training business and drove strong annual growth. He also initiated training services Quality Management on industrial engineering principles, to ensure NIIT delivered Quality training consistently, while scaling up. Later, as NIIT's Corporate Planning manager, he developed and implemented a model for long-term strategic planning and budgeting for the company. In the early 90's he set up NIIT's operations across Asia Pacific, kicking off the globalization of Corporate & Individual learning businesses, and was instrumental in NIIT's start in China; apart from launching the Software & SI business in the region. He led the acquisition of significant multimedia learning deals in Singapore and Malaysia. During the last part of his 20-year career with the NIIT group, he was the President of Europe & APAC Software business in NIIT Technologies Ltd.

@rpatward

Mr. Rajasekar Babu is a true business personality with dynamism. He is one of the key visionaries behind various successful educational ventures like Oakridge, Vikas and Oi Play Schools and the key inceptor of People Combine Group.

Being the Managing Director of the company, Mr Babu has worked hard to provide the People Combine Group altogether a new identity in the business world. He has an insatiable desire to strive for excellence with a steadfastness to achieve.

Holding a graduate degree in civil engineering and a post graduate in management from Indian School of Business, Mr. Babu manages the Business Expansion, Fund Raising, Finance and Budgeting, Brand Management, Mergers and Acquisitions of the company. He is highly creative, design focused and an excellent organiser. Relation building is his forte and he is an opt solution finder. He has raised the turnover of the company manifold with a relentless quest for accomplishment.

Mr. Rajasekhar has also been recognised for his exemplary contribution towards the organisation. Not only that, he has also been awarded with Business Wizard of Andhra Pradesh by a leading Newsmagazine- India Today Group. On the life front, Mr. Rajasekhar is considered the most amiable and energetic soul to be with by his family and friends. He is also an avid book lover and loves to explore new places of the world.

@RajYarlagadda

Roopa is partner at Omidyar Network and managing director of Omidyar Network India Advisors, where she leads overall investment strategy and operations. In her role, Roopa helps Omidyar Network manage and develop the India-based portfolio across core initiatives.

Prior to joining Omidyar Network, Roopa spent 23 years with CRISIL, and was its managing director and chief executive officer from 2007. She led CRISIL's transformation from being India’s premier ratings agency into a diversified global analytical company. Under her leadership the company's market capitalization grew four-fold and revenues tripled. She led the company's expansion plans and CRISIL now has a presence in 150 cities across India and research centers in Argentina, Poland and China. Its client base includes some of the largest global investment banks and as well as tens of thousands of small firms and enterprises in India.

Roopa also worked for Standard & Poor's, Paris, as director, financial institutions ratings. She is regularly featured in the media as a prominent woman leader in corporate India. She has served as a member of several policy-level committees relating to the Indian financial system, and is an independent director on the board of Infosys, one of India's most respected software companies.

Roopa holds a postgraduate diploma in management from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A).

Sameer is the CEO of the India School Leadership Institute, an organization that currently support and trains with 200 urban government and budget private school heads to improve their management skills. ISLI aims to develop school leaders who drive high-performing schools that commit to academic achievement and character development of children from underserved communities. Prior to ISLI, Sameer had spent the last ten years working in various capacities in the field of education. Most recently, he worked as a Project Manager and Research Analyst with the Education Innovation Laboratory at Harvard University where he designed, implemented, and evaluated interventions to close the racial achievement gap found in the United States. He has also worked with Teach For America, Akanksha, and Adharshila Shikshan Kendra. Sameer earned his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from UCLA and also completed a Master’s degree in Economics and Education from Columbia University.

@SameerSampat

Shiv is the Chairman of The Global Education & Leadership Foundation (www.tgelf.org), which identifies, nurtures and supports ethical altruistic leadership potential at schools and colleges. The program reaches about 2,500,000 schoolchildren in 14 countries, and has trained over 70,000 teachers and around the world. Shiv is also a Trustee of The Nand & Jeet Khemka Foundation; a founding contributor to the Indian School of Business and the Public Health Foundation of India.

 Shiv was recently awarded the Dr. Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award by Tufts University, and the Outstanding Contribution to Education Prize at Wharton’s Reimagining Education Conference. He was elected a Global Leader for Tomorrow (GLT) at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 1997 and was invited to join the Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Education.

He serves on the President’s Leadership Council at Brown University and the Board of Overseers of the Wharton School, the Board of Governors of the Lauder Institute. As one of the founding investors, Shiv also sits on the Council of the Moscow School of Management Skolkovo, and on the Brookings India Initiative Council.

Shiv is Vice Chairman of the SUN Group, a private, family-owned investment group active in several transforming markets around the world, in several industries ranging from oil & gas to technology and infrastructure.

Shiv speaks seven languages including Russian, French, Spanish and Portuguese and is Chairman of the Aikido Aikikai Foundation of India. He is married to Urvashi Rana from Nepal and they have three teenage daughters.

Sid is a co-founder and partner at Lightbox. He moved to India in 2001 to found Evolv, a vocational training company funded by Singapore Technologies – their first early stage investment in the sub-continent. Over the next 6 years, Sid grew Evolv to 300 employees training and assessing over 20,000 people a year across 200 cities in South Asia, East Asia and the Middle East. In 2007, he sold Evolv to NIIT - Asia's largest training company. Sid worked with NIIT for the next 3 years, heading Evolv, as well as Litmus and Uniqua (NIIT's foray into assessments and JV with Genpact). Over ten years, Sid became a master in edtech, especially in the context of India, SE Asia and emerging markets.

An entrepreneur at heart, Sid left NIIT to get back in to the startup game. Over the next few years leading up to Lightbox, he has advised several startups, angel funds, and a very special NGO called Magic Bus.

At Lightbox Sid’s role is as much about building companies as it is about bringing people together to make new things happen. He writes regularly and passionately on the dynamics of the new economy and is an influential mentor and voice on entrepreneurship in India.

As enterprising at play as he is at work, Sid recently teamed up with restaurateurs and investors to launch a series of award–winning restaurants in Delhi.

Sridhar Rajagopalan, Managing Director of Educational Initiatives (EI), is an educational entrepreneur who has helped change the way student learning outcomes are seen in India. After a brief stint at IBM India, Sridhar co-founded and ran Eklavya School in Ahmedabad for 6 years. In 2001, Sridhar founded EI which researches and creates diagnostic assessments and offers ASSET, India’s largest diagnostic assessment for private schools. EI’s ASSET test is taken by over 350,000 students in India and neighbouring countries, the Middle East and Singapore. Mindspark, EI’s adaptive learning program is used by over 80,000 students in India, the Middle East and the USA. In 2006, India Today carried a cover story titled ‘What’s Wrong with our Teaching?’ based on EI’s study on student learning in India’s 5 largest metros. EI also works with government schools in about 20 of its 28 states. In 2009, EI’s Student Learning Study with support by Google, Inc. provided the most detailed picture yet of student learning levels in 19 Indian states. EI is or has been involved in largest scale student and teacher assessment projects aimed at measurable learning improvement in Bhutan, the city of Mumbai and the states of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana and Gujarat. EI’s partners in these projects include the World Bank, UNICEF and McKinsey & Co. Sridhar is a member of various central and state government committees related to assessment and learning including most recently the committee for devising model rules for the Right to Education Act in Gujarat. He is a member of NCERT’s National Expert Group on Assessment in Elementary Education (NEGAEE) and has been a member of the Joint Review Mission of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. He is a board member of Central Square Foundation, Delhi, a trustee of Pratham, Gujarat and a member of the Global Advisory Council of the GEMS group.

Surga Thilakan CEO iSTARSurga Thilakan, Co-Founder & CEO, oversees sales and operations along with the strategic directions at iSTAR. She is deeply interested in improving likelihood outcomes at the bottom of the economic pyramid though skill development interventions. Prior to co-founding iSTAR, Surga worked at Uijivan Financial Services Pvt. Ltd. (one of India’s largest MFIs) as head of marketing where she was instrumental in launching several new livelihood-oriented products. In her previous avatar, she worked at Goldman Sachs’ private equity group in the UK and Ernst & Young’s indirect tax advisory practice in India. Surga has an MBA form the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and is a Chartered Accountant.

@surga_thilakan

Tej is Country Head for dmg India. He is responsible for Daily Mail’s organic and non-organic growth in India. He has over ten years of experience in e-commerce, media, internet and B2B information industries. Work experience in both US & Asia Pacific region.

dmg India current portfolio includes, Skymet, iProf, India Today Group (Mail Today), Mailonline.in and ad : tech India.

Before joining dmg, Tej worked with Naspers as strategy head. During his tenure at Naspers, Tej launched and managed e-commerce b2c businesses and made several investments / acquisitions for Naspers. Previously, Tej held several key positions at AOL in the United States helped AOL’s expand its presence in Asia Pacific region, including India and China.

Tej holds bachelor’s degree in Economics from Bangalore University, an MBA from Alan Shawn Feinstein Graduate School, USA and executive education from The Wharton School. Tej holds bachelor’s degree in Economics from Bangalore University, an MBA from Alan Shawn Feinstein Graduate School, USA and executive education from The Wharton School.

@tej_kapoor

Umesh and Hippocampus have been actively involved in many social innovations in education.

Hippocampus currently operates more than 250 low cost pre-schools and 2 private schools in Rural India. Hippocampus’s framework for making libraries work for first generation learners has been adopted in more than 10 states and a few countries in India. Hippocampus was India’s first sustainable children’s library and has been in operation for more than 12 years.

Umesh was selected an Ashoka Fellow in 2008 as recognition of the work done by him and Hippocampus towards promoting reading. He was selected an Ashoka Globalizer in 2011. Umesh Malhotra founded Bangalore Labs, India's first IT infrastructure management firm. He started his career with Infosys Technologies and is a graduate of IIT-Madras. He loves dogs, trekking and the beach.

Vikam Jain with over 15 years of experience in strategy, operations, and technology consulting is Associate Director at FSG. During his time at FSG, Vikram has led the low-income housing (LIH) program in India. He is responsible for defining the LIH program agenda and managing relationships in the LIH ecosystem, including developers, housing finance companies, and government. As co-lead of the livelihoods program, Vikram has also worked on identifying opportunities to skill school dropouts and place them in jobs.

Prior to joining FSG, Vikram worked with Monitor Inclusive Markets (MIM), as lead of the low-income housing practice, where he led numerous engagements advising the government (e.g. Affordable Housing Task Force, Odisha Government) on conducive policy to catalyze the LIH sector.Prior to MIM, Vikram worked for McKinsey & Company, London as an engagement manager advising top-tier investment banks and retail banks on acquisitions. Vikram is a Bachelor in Engineering in Computer Science from Pune University and has done MBA from London Business School.

Vivek is the MD and CEO of Liqvid. The company derives its name from two words - ‘vid’ for ‘to know’ in Sanskrit and ‘liquidus’ for ‘fluid, flowing’ in Latin. The idea is to provide personalised learning through application of cutting edge technology.

Liqvid has developed a ‘mobile first’, digital language learning platform, and leverages it to provide cutting edge language learning and other solutions to enterprises, institutions and consumers globally. Liqvid follows a unique technology based, assissted learning methodology. It provides English learning solutions in India under the brand English Edge. This program has been deployed at over 5000 locations, delivering more than 1.5 million hours of instruction to more than 600,000 learners.

Before starting Liqvid, Vivek had co-founded egurucool, which  provided curriculum support and test prep courses for K-12 students in India. eGurucool emerged as the pioneer in the field of elearning in India, combining a unique learning methodology and a huge infrastructure of technology and content creation processes. The company raised more than $11 M from investors, which included Newscorp and IFC, Washington and was subsequently sold to NIIT, India.

Vivek has done his MBA from Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. He has a passionate interest in education and is committed to exploring how technology can help reach millions of people.

@vivek_liqvid