Ajay comes with strong experience in managing education businesses differently. Banking on his marketing intelligence, innovation and doing things differently, he has a lot of feathers in his cap. He has founded lot of brands and successfully launched various new products while serving companies like Datapro, NIIT, KarROX, RUMI and Usha Martin. Last 6 years he has been involved in M&A activities in education space and was a key founding member of RISE INDIA. Ajay has been on the forefront of Skill Development & Training Industry and has been instrumental in designing & implementing some path breaking initiatives in partnership with Industry in the areas of skilling unemployed youth in India. Ajay has been awarded the prestigious DNA Education Award for his outstanding contribution to Education Industry. Ajay has done MBA with dual specialization in Finance and Marketing from one of the oldest & premier Business Institute in India.

@ajayRiseIndia

Arpit is an education technology thinker and innovator. He consults many leading educational institutions across India, Middle-east, Africa and APAC on using technology as a strategic tool for efficiency and success.

An ambitious edupreneur, Arpit has founded two education focussed ventures -

Serosoft Solutions: An award-winning educational technology company focussed on ERP solutions for education (Academia ERP)

CampusMall: A multi-channel brand licensing company focussed on school and college merchandise (www.campusmall.in)

He believes that the education sector in India, Middle East and APAC needs to transform to ensure big strides in overall development in these countries, and technology will prove to be the biggest enabler of such a transformation in the coming years. An avid speaker on education technology, he has also authored the ERP policy brief for Association of African Universities, which serves as a guideline for institutions to adopt automation.

Arpit is an MBA from the prestigious Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta and holds and engineering degree from the renowned Purdue University, USA. Prior to focussing on the ed tech sector, he worked with JP Morgan London as an investment banker and at Accenture Consulting as a strategy consultant.

Anand Sudarshan is Founder & Director, Sylvant Advisors Private Limited, which provides strategic advisory services in the education sector to Indian & global institutions, large enterprises, and investors. In addition, Sylvant also incubates, invests in, and advises start-up & early stage companies. He is currently an independent non-executive director of NIIT Limited, the pioneer in education & training. He also serves on a number of other private company boards, as well as government committees on policy advisory in education.

Till June 2012, he was Vice-Chairman & Managing Director of Manipal Global Education (MaGE), with whom he had a distinguished career from May 2006. A pioneering global education entity headquartered out of Bangalore, MaGE is the largest higher education & related services entity out of India. Anand was instrumental in leading the team that built MaGE through expanding its global footprint to 6 campuses, in addition to propelling it as the definitive leader in technology-driven higher education out of India. Notable among the several milestones & achievements MaGE had during Anand’s tenure, are new campuses in Malaysia, Dubai, Antigua and India; an award-winning technology learning platform, EduNxt; a pioneering banking academy, probably the largest of its kind in the world; and expansion of MaGE’s multi-country footprint through organic & inorganic strategies. Post moving out of a full-time position, Anand served as an independent non-executive director of MaGE from July 2012 till September 2013.

Anand Sudarshan has been a recognised leader in the education sector since the last 9+ years. He is an active member of FICCI’s (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry) national committees on Higher Education & School Education, is the Chair of its national committee on innovation & start-up’s, and is the Co-Chair of FICCI’s Karnataka State Council. He has in the past been a member of CII’s (Confederation of Indian Industry) national committee on Education. He is a founding member of EDGE (an education sector forum and think-tank) and the Vice-Chairman of EDGE’s Vision Group. He is also a trustee of Head Held High Foundation, which is doing seminal work in transforming rural poverty through empowering youth with low or no education through a dynamic combination of focus on training such youth, and creation of jobs through accelerating the rural economy.

Prior to his stint at MaGE, Anand was an entrepreneur & a senior executive at companies in the Information Technology industry, co-founding the Microland Group, and later driving Adea Solutions International. Anand holds a Bachelor of Engineering (BE) degree in Electronics and Communications Engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Trichy, India, and a PGDM (MBA) from the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, India. Anand, his wife Padmashri & their son Dhruva live in Bangalore, India.

Avinash is a Portfolio Manager with Acumen India, where he leads Acumen’s investments in both the Education and Agriculture sector portfolios. He has been with Acumen for over two years and also serves as a Director on the Boards of various Acumen education investees including Ignis Careers, Vikalp and Seed Education. Over the past four years, Acumen has invested over USD 4.6 million in six innovative impact enterprises operating in the education space in India.

Avinash has over 4 years’ of hands on experience in the Indian education space and has been an active thought leader. He’s written a number of articles and spoken at numerous education conferences and summits, such as the 3rd India Education Entrepreneurship Day organized by TiE; USAID Read Connect 2015; 2015 India Education Conference; and the NSDC Bi-Annual Partner Meet.

Prior to joining Acumen, Avinash co-founded TAO Education, a Delhi-based education technology start-up that built an online learning platform for K-10 students. Earlier, he worked with the Citibank Corporate and Investment Banking team as a relationship manager for top MNC clients. Avinash holds a MBA from FMS, University of Delhi and a BE (Electronics and Communications) from NSIT, University of Delhi.

Deepak manages Aarin Capital (www.aarincapital.com), which has made 15 large & mid-size, and a similar number of seed investments. Aarin’s investments include focused molecular research, implantable & external medical devices, mobile-medicine, gene testing, test-prep, software products, eCommerce and tablet based platform learning in India & overseas.

Deepak works closely with, supports and leverages networks to help founders grow and create value from ideation through to exit planning. He has also structured, set-up & raised capital for funds anchored by Aarin and for co-investments.

From early 2008 to early 2010, Deepak was CFO at a Sequoia funded tech start-up, later sold to a leading mid-tier Indian outsourcer. Since mid-2000 Deepak headed strategic initiatives at Infosys and was its first CRO.  He deployed +$100m in various initiatives, including cross-border acquisitions, led pricing on outsourcing deals and implemented SoX404. He started his career in 1990 with the Big Four.

Aarin is a proprietary fund co-founded by Dr Ranjan Pai (Manipal Education & Medical Group), and Mohandas Pai (Chief Advisor to the Manipal Group, Board Member, also formerly of Infosys).  Deepak set up the fund and has been with it since. Additionally, Aarin has anchored funds in IT, both early stage and venture capital, Digital Media and Financial Services, the confluence of mobile and consumer, in derivatives and also late stage and listed equities.  

Deepak is an honours Commerce graduate from Delhi University and is a Chartered Accountant (1989). He is keen on science fiction, plays golf and does yoga. He also invests in his own capacity and works closely with founders helping them build their businesses.

Dr Bindu Rana is the founder and CEO of MEM. She has an illustrious career spanning 30 years in the field of education and has innumerable achievements. She has :

• Been the architect of the largest private sector Research & Development initiative in the field of education in India.
• Built path breaking research based teaching and learning methodologies that have brought about a transformational and defining shift in the way curriculum and pedagogic thoughts have evolved in the industry today.
• Led to the creation of the most valuable research repository of intellectual property, ever created in the history of the education industry in India, across the private and public sector, over the last decade.
• Been instrumental in conceptualizing and creating more than 800 books ranging from Kindergarten to Grade X, 850 concept- based board games that help children learn all the primary concepts, 1,350 application–based projects connected to real life experiences, 4,000 assessments, a question bank with more than 47,550 questions based on different skills and levels, 25,000 lesson plans, both in the written and graphic forms, online content on Parenting Tips, English language enhancement modules and more than 60 award winning training videos for facilitators.
• Created thought defining innovations that include the learning methodologies 'Little Millennium', 'Millennium Learning System' 'E-DAC' and 'Scaffolding Learning System' that were created for different socio-economic audiences and contextualised to align with the needs of the learners in modern times.
• Built a formidable Research and Development team of over 200 exceptionally passionate and motivated individuals and achieved unprecedented benchmarks in productivity, generating one of the largest knowledge banks of educational tools and materials in India.
• Clocked over 75,000 training man-days guiding teachers with innovative teaching learning and pedagogic strategies.
• Led one of the largest chains of private schools in India with the overall responsibility for their P&L growth and success outcomes and managed a team of over 2000 people.

@Bindu_Rana

Gopal has close to 24 years of professional services experience.  He is currently the Senior Vice President at Manipal Global Education(Manipal). He is responsible for Digital Initiatives across the company as well as the Consumer business. Earlier he was with Manipal Health Enterprises where he was responsible for operating the various hospital units & incubating new growth engines which include Technology based Healthcare Delivery. He has been with the Manipal Group since April 2014. Prior to Manipal, he has spent over 15 years at Infosys and 7 years in Kotak.  At Infosys, Gopal has played various roles ranging from managing a business, developing corporate strategy as well as business development. His last role there was as Vice President, Products & Platforms.

Gopal has an Engineering Degree in Computer Science, from BITS, Pilani and a PGDM from IIM, Calcutta. He has also done a public policy course at The Takshashila Institution. He is part of the executive team of Beyond Carlton an NGO focused on Fire Safety.

@gops85

Himanshu Aggarwal is the CEO of Aspiring Minds, he co-founded in 2008. Aspiring Minds is a global job skills credentialing leader set up with a vision to create a merit driven talent ecosystem and enable efficient job skills matching by crafting credible and intelligent assessments. The flagship product AMCAT, is the world’s most widely-taken employability test helping over 3 million candidates find the ‘right’ jobs every year. Backed by state-of-the-art, research, big data and machine learning algorithms - it allows adaptive, standardized and reliable measurement of generic employability skills (language, cognitive, behavior) and a wide range of functional skills using simulated assessments. With its extensive job-skill taxonomy mapping 900+ job roles, big data around jobs and capabilities, Aspiring Minds enables individual and corporations make the right talent decisions. Aspiring Minds enables job seekers to evaluate their job skills, earn industry recognized credentials and find appropriate career and learning opportunities. We also help companies dramatically improve their quality and efficiency of hiring and are today associated with more than 3000 corporations with more than 100 fortune 500 companies. Aspiring Minds is a 500+ people strong organization with operations in US, China, India, Middle East, Philippines and Sub-Saharan Africa. For more information, log on to www.aspiringminds.com or www.myamcat.com

Prior to Aspiring Minds, Himanshu was part of the research and development team at Network Appliance Inc., a leader in network attached storage devices. Based out of Boston and Research Triangle Park, NC, Himanshu helped design the next generation of intelligent, large-scale storage technology. He holds 8 US patents from his work at Network Appliances.

Himanshu holds a Bachelor of Technology in Computer Science and Engineering from the renowned Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi. He is a recipient of the prestigious NTSE scholarship, a National level scholarship program organized by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) administered by the Indian government.

@himanshu0820

Dr. Indu Shahani, Principal of H.R. College of Commerce & Economics from 2000 to 2016, was appointed Sheriff of Mumbai for 2008 and 2009. As the Sheriff of Mumbai, she launched the 1298 Women's Helpline against domestic violence and harassment with the help of leading NGO’s. Dr. (Mrs.) Indu Shahani has over four decades of teaching experience at the college and university level where she has played the lead role in nurturing managers with a heart, through student - empowered teaching - learning model.

While Dr. Shahani continues to be Chief Mentor of colleges of the HSNC Board, from August 1, 2016, Dr. Shahani has taken on new responsibilities as President & Chair - Academics of the Indian School of Design & Innovation (ISDI), ISDI | WPP School of Communication and the Indian School of Management & Entrepreneurship (ISME); and is the Founding Dean of ISME.

She was Member of University Grants Commission from 2011-2014. Dr. Indu Shahani who is the first Indian to be appointed Vice-Chair on the Board of the Governors of the International Baccalaureate and has over a decade of experience with the IB worldwide 2001 - 2010. Dr. Indu Shahani has been nominated on leading boards of large national and global companies that has provided an impetus for ‘academia - industry collaborations’ the subject of her PhD from University of Mumbai. She was awarded the Honorary Doctor of Letters degree by the University of Westminster in London.

Dr. Shahani is a Visiting Faculty Member at the UC Berkeley, NYU Stern, USA and she is a Lead Speaker at various conferences in India and abroad. She has also developed many linkages for student and faculty exchanges with leading universities in USA, UK, Europe, South Africa, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand.

Dr. Indu Shahani has been acknowledged worldwide as a visionary thought leader for her significant contribution to education and value-based leadership. Dr. Shahani has received many awards, prominent among them are ‘Roll of Honor’ award towards her outstanding contributions in leadership and to Education and Partnerships with Deakin University in India; ‘Excellence Award for Humanitarian Service’ by the Rotary Club of Bombay; ‘Women of the Decade Achievers Award’ by ASSOCHAM Ladies League Mumbai; ‘Citizen of Mumbai Award’ by Rotary Club of Bombay; ‘Excellence in Education Award’ at the FLO Great Women Achiever Awards; and ‘Achiever of Excellence - Women Achievers 2012’ by Bombay Management Association recognising her contribution to society at large.

@InduShahani

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.

An edupreneur, she is regarded by many as the change agent for schooling in the state of Gujarat. As Chairperson of Kalorex, she has been instrumental in founding and managing several premier schools. Kalorex, since its inceptions in 1995, is a name synonymous to professional and excellence in schooling. It has in its umbrella, the Delhi Public Schools, Calorx Olive International School at Ahmedabad and Calorx  Public Schools across the Western Belt of India with 40+ educational Institutions. Kalorex has recently forayed into the international territory with fresh footprints in the UAE. Kalorex is recognized as a quality conscious group with a focus on Innovation and use of Technology in Learning. The one of its kind, sector specific Calorx Teachers’ University is developing a creed of teachers to fill the quality gap of Human Capital.

She is a postgraduate from York University and executive alumni from London School of Economics. Holding a post-graduate degree from Utkal University and is a Graduate of Management Education Programme IIM, Ahmedabad.

Her concern for the marginalized and those with special learning needs is evident through the projects Visamo Kids and Prerna - a school for dyslexics.

Recipient of several awards, among them, the prestigious Secular India Award from the President of India, Shri Shankar Dayal Sharma & Woman of the year by American Bibliography Society, North Carolina.

An avid outdoor person, she has tried her hand in adventure sports like sky diving, parasailing, snorkeling, skiing, trekking and white water rafting. Has participated in a few running marathons, is an enthusiastic cyclists and has attempted cross country rides. Besides herself participating in cylothons, has been promoting the cause of green earth by encouraging young riders from ages 3 -16 years to pick up their cycles and ride.

@Manjula_Pooja

Monica is a director at Omidyar Network India Advisors where she manages the firm’s Education initiative’s investments in India. Prior to joining Omidyar Network, Monica was a partner at Kaizen Private Equity where she was involved in fundraising, investor relations, deal sourcing, due diligence, education operations, board roles, investment monitoring, and exits. 

Before working in capital markets, Monica spent 16 years in the education sector and was the founder or co-founder of three entrepreneurial education ventures. She also conceptualized and set up the Global Pathways Institute (GPI), Mumbai and the American National College (ANC) in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where she was instrumental in forging relationships with several U.S. universities that offer programs in Asia.

Additionally, Monica’s family trust runs 12 nonprofit schools and colleges in Saurashtra, Gujarat, where the schools have helped raise the literacy of women to 93%. Given her experience, Monica is well-networked in the education sector in India, with easy access to senior level professionals in the education sector.

Monica graduated from Thunderbird School of Global Management with an MBA in International Business, and she also received an M.Com. and a B.Com. in accounting and finance from Sydenham College of Commerce and Economics.

Mr. Nirav Khambhati is the Chief Executive Officer of Tata ClassEdge since February 2014 and Tata Interactive Systems since August 2015. Prior to joining Tata ClassEdge, Mr. Khambhati was Vice President – Chairman’s Office at Tata Sons, a position he held from October 2005 to February 2014. During his tenure at Tata Sons, Mr. Khambhati led a number of international projects and collaborations in the fields of telecommunications and aerospace. He has served as Director on the Boards of companies within and outside India.

Prior to joining Tata Sons, Mr. Khambhati led the telecom practice of TCS in the Asia Pacific region and worked as the head of control or repair center at Tata Teleservices. He was appointed an officer of the Tata Administrative Service in 1997.

Mr. Khambhati was recognized as a Young India Leader by the British High Commission in 2013.

@NiravKhambhati

Pankaj Makkar is currently the Managing Director of Bertelsmann India Corporate Centre. He led the setup of the Corporate Centre in 2011 and has been active in helping define and execute the growth strategy for Bertelsmann and its divisions in India. He currently runs the Bertelsmann India Investment fund, which is Bertelsmann strategic investment vehicle investing in venture and growth opportunities in Media, Education, Digital and BPO sectors. His others projects include evaluating the investing landscape for the divisions and helping divisions execute growth / expansion plans.

Pankaj sits on the board of various portfolio companies and Bertelsmann India Corporate Services.

Pankaj joined Bertelsmann Inc. in 2009 in the company’s Bertelsmann Entrepreneur’s program. As part of the program, Pankaj initially worked on projects including Random House (US), ZD group on their education initiatives. He actively worked with Dr. Thomas Rabe and the team to look at entry strategies for the group for India and assigning priorities to various projects in India.

Pankaj worked from 2003 to 2007 with the Malaysian conglomerate – The Usaha Tegas Group and helped the group invest in various sectors in India and South East Asia. Working with various top executives of the group, he led key investment projects in the Television, Radio, TV Distribution, Internet, Telecom and Real Estate sectors for the group’s divisions including Astro All Asian Networks, Maxis Communications, Measat Satellite Systems, Powertek and UT Real Estate.

Pankaj holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a bachelor’s degree in Commerce (Hons.) from Delhi University. He is also a member of Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and has spent around 3 years (2000-2003) in audit, accounting and consulting assignments for his family firm SSA India for Indian and International clients.

Prabhat Jain is the Director of Pathways School. He was born to a Delhi-based traditional Jain family, and joined his family-run stone business where he was instrumental in expanding the business.

In 1999, he decided to make the foray into the education space. With a focused vision to create an institution second to none, Mr. Prabhat and his brothers did an extensive research on school education. This enticing journey of 'unlearning and learning' spanned over 2 years and the model of a world class international school evolved in 2003 named the Pathways World School.

Mr. Prabhat is member of various bodies and councils in the field of education. He was instrumental in raising private equity for the company in 2009-10 for further expansion. He aspires to continue his research and gradually expand the school chain in different parts of India.

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.

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).

Ruchira Shukla has over 20 years of experience across private equity investing, strategy consulting, and investment banking across Asia, US and Europe. Her sector focus spans across consumer internet, healthcare technology, edutech, cleantech and telecom.

Ruchira studied at IIT Delhi and IIM Ahmedabad in India. She also graduated as Palmer Scholar from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and is a Chartered Financial Analyst. Currently at IFC, she is the Regional Lead, South Asia for Venture Capital Investments.

@RuchiraShukla

Sandeep's passion for investing in innovative companies drove him to establish Kaizen Private Equity. As the Founder of the fund, he has been instrumental in driving the overall strategy and building the firm's knowledge and client network across the globe. Sandeep’s passion is to work closely with entrepreneurs who have a deep sense of purpose and a solid plan for identifying and owning emerging white spaces and leveraging initial ownership to build highly valuable differentiated and sustainable companies. One of his professional commitments is to promote and improve the overall human wellbeing in emerging markets by investing in opportunities such as education, wellness and smart living. Sandeep has been a part of the venture capital and private equity industry since 2002 and has been credited with numerous successful transactions in the United States and in Asia. He sits on the boards of various education companies and is a frequent speaker on emerging education trends globally. He has an MBA from the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University.

@sandeep_k_aneja

An investment-banking veteran with a knack of concluding large, complex transactions. Sanjay has over 20 years of experience, with a deep and on-ground understanding and exposure of handling more than a 100 mid and large sized transactions, across multiple sectors.

Over the years, Sanjay has developed an expertise of concluding complex transactions that require a nuanced perspective of the client’s business, as well as, the macro environment impacting the client’s decisions. Sanjay is a passionate supporter and enabler of the entrepreneurial eco-system in India. He encourages aspiring and budding entrepreneurs through angel investments in early & concept stage companies. Sanjay is a charter member of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) and the Indian Angel Network. He is also a Fellow Member of RICS (A global real estate body).

@sanban007

Sandeep is the co-founder and Managing Partner of Lumis Partners. At Lumis, Sandeep brings an entrepreneur spirit, a hands-on investing experience in India, and over fifteen years of global operating experience.

At Lumis, Sandeep is focused on building portfolio across higher education segment and human capital services in emerging markets. He is an active member in this sector and leads several activities across various public/private organizations in this ecosystem.

He began his professional career with Technology Management Leadership program at GE. His prior experiences include quality and technology leadership roles across various businesses of GE; and senior operating positions at 3Com.

Sandeep completed his undergraduate studies in Computer Science from the Delhi Institute of Technology followed by postgraduate program from the London School of Economics.

Mr. Subrata Das leads SAP’s Public Services Industry Solutions in India & Sri Lanka. His focus areas are Future Cities, Public Security, Social Services, Tax & Revenue and Local Bodies. In his role, he works with the market unit in identifying, positioning and building replicable solution frameworks within the Indian Public services domain that can add lasting value to the governance process. Mr. Das focuses on promoting internal efficiencies, cloud computing, mobile governance and analytics. He is a regular speaker in different government forums. With close to two decades of  rich experience,  his career spans organizations like IBM and Oracle where he focused on the Public services domain. Mr. Subrata Das also leads the Internet of Things program for the Indian sub-continent. The program focuses on technology evangelism, solution conceptualization and build and partner enablement.

R. Sreenivasan, popularly called Sreeni, is a Co-Founder of Career Launcher (now CL Educate, founded in 1995), one of the largest education corporate of South Asia. He is a well known educationist, sought-after motivational speaker and entrepreneurial mentor, and he travels for about 200 days a year, across the country, facilitating youth, corporate and education leaders, mentors and other co-facilitators. He is an institutional builder. In addition to facilitating lakhs of youth into their dream careers since 1990, Sreeni spearheaded an innovative business school, IWSB, which focused on stoking entrepreneurial leadership. Along with setting up learner-centric schools in the hinterland, Sreeni also championed technology-facilitated education reaching masses since 2001. He is described as a true mascot of CL for his energy and enthusiasm.

Sreeni is at home with educationists, corporate leaders and entrepreneurs during the day while his evenings are in the spaces of creative and performing arts. He works actively with and advises many a movement in culture - SPIC MACAY, ITIHAAS, Barry John‘s Imago theatre etc. Sreeni is a sought-after photographer among the celebrated dancers of this country. SPANDAN, his month-long Festival of Performing Arts at India Habitat Centre (IHC) is an annual feature in Delhi Culture Calendar. The festival includes a Dance Photography Exhibition, pays tributes to living legends, and culminates with the World Dance Evening promoting the future bright stars of the nation. Sreeni has exhibited world over.

Sreeni ‘dances’ both in right and left brain arenas and has a serious body of work, having contributed to over a dozen books published – ranging from education, innovation, travel and performing art forms.

Sreeni is a fitness fanatic with an intense two hour routine every day – cycling, gym, swimming or yoga being integral to it. He enjoys mentoring fitness enthusiasts too. An inspirational book for youth in institutions and corporate - Young Leaders Success Code – published by National HRD Network in 2011 features a chapter – team leadership - dedicated to R.Sreenivasan along with the success stories of ten other young corporate leaders. Sreeni is an alumnus of JNU (MTech) and IIM Bangalore (MBA) with over 23 years of experience in the corporate world that includes TCS and Sony Corp apart from CL in the education world.

@sreenindia

Srini is a technology strategist with executive leadership experience in building teams, business development, operations, growth management, change management and process improvement. He currently serves as CEO of Educational initiatives (EI) where his mandate is to scale the company with the objective to permeate EI's scientifically developed assessment and learning solutions across all strata of society.

Srini has a rich experience of partnering with leaders to scale up businesses multiple times by focusing on core technology aspects. In the immediate past decade, he served as Vice President & Managing Director in Bally Technologies (NYSE:BYI) where he helped the company grow revenue by over 300% and stock price by over 700%. In earlier stints, he was with Manhattan Associates, Cadence Design Systems and Pepsi. Srini started his career in the Indian Army where he served for six years and had the experience of operational as well as ceremonial duties.

Srini is a member of NCERT’s National Expert Group for Assessment in School Education (NEGASE). He has always been passionate about education and was instrumental in starting a school in a strife torn part of the country during his tenure in the Army. He has also been associated with EI since the company's inception. Srini holds a B.A. (Honors) degree in Economics from Delhi University and a Diploma in Management from IGNOU.

Steve Hardgrave is the co-founder and CEO of Varthana, a company dedicated to improving education for low and middle income families by providing financing and support to Affordable Private Schools in India.

Prior to launching Varthana, Steve worked as an investor at Omidyar Network and Gray Ghost Ventures, helping to develop and execute sector-based investment strategies around access to capital and affordable private schools.

Steve’s career began with a seven-year stint in Mexico, working first with a local community development organization, and later launching a successful microfinance institution. His mix of entrepreneurship, international development and investment experience has given him unique ability to identify dynamic, underserved opportunities and successfully execute on them.

Steve he holds a MBA from the Haas School of Business at University of California, Berkeley and a BA in economics from University of California, Los Angeles.

@steevhardgrave

Vijay Krishna Kolli is Head of Mobile Strategy and Market Development, Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) at Akamai Technologies. In this role, Vijay is responsible for establishing business relationships, working closely with mobile network operators across the region and driving Akamai’s thought leadership through out the region.

Vijay has been with Akamai for over five years. Prior to this role, he built products focused on mobile experience, responsible for product management, business strategy and operations at Akamai. He has also worked at startups and established companies, including 3Com and Motorola in North America in the mobile ecosystem for the last 16 years.

Vijay earned a Masters in Electrical Engineering and a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Chicago.

Vineet graduated from IIT Delhi in 1991 in Mechanical Engineering and is a first generation entrepreneur. In an entrepreneurial career spanning 25 years, Vineet has built several companies. He is currently the cofounder and Managing Director of Jamboree Education, India’s largest test prep company for exams such as GMAT, GRE and SAT. Jamboree operates 31 centres in 17 cities of India, Middle East, Singapore and Nepal.

Vineet is also a Founder and Trustee of Ashoka University. Vineet has been involved with the Ashoka effort since 2007 when a few friends came together with the idea of setting up a high quality University in India. Ashoka University is a philanthropic initiative founded by eminent business leaders and scholars and offers a liberal education at par with the best in the world. Ashoka has been one of the most exciting initiatives in higher education in India today and The Economic Times has termed it as “India’s answer to the Ivy league”. Vineet has played a key execution role at Ashoka and also serves as its Pro Vice Chancellor.

Vineet is also the Education Co-Chair at PHD Chamber of Commerce.

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

Will Poole is a serial entrepreneur and venture investor, focused on improving ecosystems that bring social and economic opportunity to low-income populations. In 2012, he co-founded Unitus Seed Fund, now the leading venture seed fund supporting startups innovating for the masses in India. In 2015, Will co-founded Capria Accelerator, the first global accelerator for impact VCs. Unitus Seed Fund is an affiliate of Unitus Group, a premier financial services group operating in India and other emerging markets since 2000.

Will co-founded Bangalore-based Vidyanext, whose mission is to change the way India learns. He is active in Social Venture Partners Seattle’s initiatives around social entrepreneurship including founding SVP Fast Pitch, and he co-founded SVP Bangalore. He serves on the investment committee of the W-Fund and on the board of Village Reach. Will was previously Chairman of NComputing, a leader in low-cost, low-energy computing, and a corporate vice president at Microsoft where he led several global businesses, including Windows. His career started by founding two startups at the dawn of the PC era, working in the early days at Sun Microsystems, and pioneering e-commerce at eShop which was acquired by Microsoft in 1996. Will is passionate about education from early learning to higher ed, where he advises Western Governors University and Brown University on technology and is a Trustee of Pinchot (formerly Bainbridge Graduate Institute). Will received a degree in Computer Science from Brown University.