Aakrit Vaish is Co-Founder & CEO of Haptik, one of the world's leading mobile personal assistant platforms. Aakrit started the company from his house in 2013, and as of of November 2016, it employs close to 500 people and has marquee investor partners such as Times Internet and Kalaari Capital. Aakrit has been responsible for pioneering the concept of chat based assistance way before companies like Facebook and Google launched assistants in 2016. Prior to Haptik, Aakrit was an early member of the team at Flurry, one of the world's largest mobile analytics and advertising platforms, acquired by Yahoo in 2014. Aakrit received his BS in Industrial Engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign and was named as a contender to the Forbes India 30 under 30 list in 2015.

@aakuvaish

18 years in different facets of Marketing. Seasoned Marketer with proven expertise in creating loyalty programs, implementing CLCM strategy, rewards management, campaign management, branding and digital media. Strong understanding of data and analytics. Work experience across in different industries namely - Banking, Insurance, Telecom, Automotive and Retail.

Abhishek is currently a Partner with AT Kearney and is a member of the Consumer & Health Practice based out of Mumbai. Abhishek is an experienced management consultant and has worked with many leading companies and organizations to help them address their toughest business challenges. Over the last 19 years - based out of Mumbai and New York - his client engagements have focused on Go to Market Transformation (Sales & Marketing), Business Strategy and Operations Improvement.

Abhishek has published numerous studies on Consumer & Health in India and is widely quoted in local / global media. He is a member of several industry associations and regular speaker at leading conferences. He has also been on the Jury Panel for leading industry awards in India. Abhishek has an MBA from Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad and Bachelors in Electronics Engineering from Punjab Engineering College (PEC) Chandigarh

Aditya has more than 17 years of experience and has handled large complex projects with operations in US, Europe, Middle East and Asia (Singapore & China). He has supported leadership teams of multinational companies, family owned businesses, government and private equity clients in a variety of industries including media and entertainment, retail and consumer, transportation and logistics, oil and gas and infrastructure to develop an experiential customer journey roadmap.

His area of expertise includes Digital Consumer, Cross-sell, Up-sell strategy, Deal Advisory, Chief Information Officer Advisory, Infrastructure advisory services, transportation and logistics and entertainment and media.

Arnika Dixit -Vice President-Marketing, Head of Central Marketing Organization, Ameri-can Express, India. Arnika currently leads the integrated marketing organization for American Express in India and is part of India Business Leadership Team. She leads a team of marketers working across all Lines of Business of American Express in India: Consumer Services, Global Corporate Payments, Merchant Services and Global Prepaid. Functionally, she is responsible for Customer Marketing, Brand and Marketing communi-cations, Loyalty, Digital Capabilities such as Online and Cross Border commerce, Social & events. Arnika has held multiple roles within American Express starting from Member-ship Rewards, Customer Engagement to Product Management, Lending and Insurance. Arnika  is a post graduate in Management and is a bachelor in Honors in Economics.

Bijaei Jayaraj is the Founder & CEO of Loylty Rewardz Mngt. Pvt. Ltd. In a short period since inception, he has grown Loylty Rewardz into one of the largest consumer relationship management and consumer behaviour analytics companies in India.

With a team of over 500+ professionals who have expertise and capabilities to develop and manage large-scale turnkey loyalty solutions, Loylty Rewardz manages loyalty programs for a growing consumer base of over 1 Billion profiles in India under its flagship brand – Max Get More and enjoys more than 70% market share of all debit cards issued in India. Loylty Rewardz currently processes over 2.5 billion transactions yearly and has awarded more than 30 billion loyalty points to consumers in India till date.

Bijaei has raised over INR 160 crores as Venture Capital Investment for Loylty Rewardz since its inception, with the Series B investment coming from Canaan Partners, a globally reputed Venture Capital firm. Bijaei is also one of the few prominent entrepreneurs in India to have offered multibagger exits to his Venture Capital investors.

Prior to founding Loylty Rewardz, Bijaei worked with MasterCard Worldwide as the Head of MasterCard’s relationship with the largest bank in India, the State Bank Group. While at MasterCard, Bijaei was twice conferred with the MasterCard SAMEA Star Award (South Asia, ME & Africa) & once with the APMEA Star Award (Asia Pacific, ME & Africa) for his contributions to MasterCard businesses worldwide. Previously, Bijaei was the Head of Jet Privilege, the loyalty program of Jet Airways. He has also worked in the advertising industry with McCann Erickson Worldwide in Dubai, UAE.

Bijaei earned his degree in business management as a part of the Founding Class of the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad.

CVL Srinivas (Srini) is CEO - GroupM, South Asia since January 2013. GroupM is the world’s largest media investment management company and is part of the WPP Group. Srini has championed a transformation program at GroupM India to make it a future ready organisation. Under his leadership GroupM India has won a record number of new businesses, incubated several path breaking initiatives in digital, mobile, content, data analytics and won numerous prestigious awards.

Srini is a media industry veteran of over 20 years. He was part of the startup team at HTA-Fulcrum India's first dedicated media agency that was created for Unilever. After the formation of GroupM, Srini helped set up Maxus across Asia Pacific as its first regional CEO. Srini had a successful stint with Madison Media and played a key role in scaling up this local agency to a leadership position.

He is a Mechanical Engineer from BITS Pilani and Post Graduate in Business Management from XLRI Jamshedpur.

cvlsrinivas

His journey from having being born in a small village in Haryana – India; to having worked in major cities of the Indian sub-continent and South East Asia, gives Dalveer Singh an edge when it comes to understanding the dynamics of the emerging markets. The fusion of culture and the contemporary clearly reflects in his ideas and solutions.

It is his extensive travel across the length and breadth of India and other parts of the world that fuels his comprehensive knowledge on emerging markets and drives his ability to come up with deeper consumer insights.

He has been a pioneer in successfully implementing and replicating the Indian model on Rural & Low Income Consumer Marketing in 10 other emerging markets including the sub-continent (Bangladesh, Sri Lanka), Morocco, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines and South America (Brazil, Mexico & Argentina). This makes Dalveer the one single name today that clients identify with to reach the growing segment of consumers in the emerging markets.

After having served at leadership positions across the Indian subcontinent and South East Asia at agencies like Ogilvy Action, 141 Worldwide and at Reliance ADAG, Dalveer channeled his expertise to successfully set up Dialogue Factory – a GroupM experiential marketing agency aimed at breaking market clutter through Talkability, Word-of-Mouth and Brand Advocacy. Here he has been creating memorable brand experiences for consumers and building business for some of the high-profile clients like Unilever, Colgate, L’Oreal, Pepsi, Lenovo, Dell, Citibank, HSBC, American Express, Castrol, Flipkart, Titan, Kellogg’s and Google by helping them create stronger consumer connect across geographies.

By challenging the traditional and breaking conventions over the last two decades, Dalveer has turned many a start-ups into stars across business categories. In his eventful career, of which he has spent 16 years with WPP, Dalveer has garnered glory at various Advertising & Marketing award shows for his strategic acumen and path-breaking work.

Apart from marketing, exploring new places and learning from life is Dalveer’s raison d'etre.

@dalveers

Harish Bijoor is a Brand thinker and practitioner. He runs a unique boutique consulting outfit branded “Harish Bijoor Consults”, a brand name that has a consulting presence across the markets of Hong Kong, Seattle, London and the Indian sub-continent. He has spent his career across aggressive realms of FMCG, Telecom and Consumer Durables. He is considered a marketing practitioner and thinker who is ahead of the consumer thinking curve, year on year.

He is an actively sought public speaker in the country at forums that relate to General Management, Marketing, Sales, Retailing, Consumer Behaviour, Techno-branding  and allied areas. He has recently published a book titled, “Marketing Trends – Smart Insights into the world of Indian Business” He is currently involved in his second book on core-branding. The book is titled, “Brand Irrationals: a fundamental journey into brand-think” Harish has simultaneously been commissioned to write a book on “Customer Service mechanisms” at play in contemporary marketing contexts.

Harish is actively involved in research relating to Rural Consumer Bahaviour, Rural Retail Networks and Trade mechanisms at play. The current research exercise he is involved in spans a 6-year period covering 84,850 consumers across India.

@harishbijoor

Kartik Jain is responsible for Advertising, Marketing Communication, Regional Marketing, Digital Marketing, Customer Analytics and Campaign Management for HDFC Bank, India’s second largest private sector Bank. Prior to joining HDFC Bank, Kartik has worked in sales, marketing and strategy roles with organisations in Insurance, Consulting and Consumer Goods.

Kartik was recognised as amongst the top 3 most influential CMOs by Pitch in 2015 and CMO with the Best Digital Presence in 2016. He was Marketer of the Year (Banking) at the IAA (International Advertising Association, India) Leadership Awards 2013. He was awarded Best CMO of the Year (General Insurance) by the CMO Council India in the 1st CMO Awards 2009. He is a British Chevening Scholar and  has a background in engineering from IIT Mumbai and business management from IIM Kolkata.

Manav is the currently the CEO of SAB Group, Indian media's first Public Listed company (BSE:530943 | NSE:SABTNEQ) with a market cap of over Rs. 2000 Cr.  With 17 years in Media with broad range of experience in business & operations, programming strategies & creative, sales solutions, He actively leads businesses across multiple verticals including broadcast, production, digital & print publishing, studio's etc. Reporting directly into the Board he is responsible for the group's growth across businesses and initiation of new business opportunities.

He is an adventure junkie. Does bungee to sky dive and has achieved various levels of certifications. As an Adventure enthusiast - he is a certified professional in Snow skiing, water skiing, para gliding, scuba and many more such adventure sports. He on one hand has this adventurous side also has this responsible side who believes in giving back to the society - a member of a music band which exclusively performs for pre - schoolers a look which is out of contrary to the corporate suit and the core of doing this is to impart entertainment knowledge & values.

@manavdhanda

Manisha Sood is the Country General Manager-India for Fitbit. Manisha has joined the company in August 2015, and was previously the Director, SMB for Microsoft India. At Microsoft, Manisha was responsible for leading the sales and marketing function of the Small & Medium Enterprise Business within India. Prior to Microsoft, she was at SanDisk where she was Country Manager & Director for the India & SAARC region for over six years. She has to her credit launching the SanDisk business in India and taking the brand to the leadership position. Manisha also evangelized Marketing for SanDisk in driving the brand's first ever TV campaign in the world which was later introduced in US and Latin America region. In her career spanning over 25 years, Manisha has been in country head roles for over a decade-and-a-half. Prior to SanDisk, Manisha worked with Kodak India Ltd. as General Manager, Digital Capture and Home Printing for 10 years and with Modi Olivetti as Business Manager. Manisha has over two dozen leadership awards and citations to her credit including the Top 10 Most Influential People in Photography award five times in a row for her incessant contribution to the Indian imaging sector. She was also listed among the 10 Women on Top in Indian IT by The Economic Times and Telecom's Women Team by the My Mobile magazine. Manisha holds a bachelor's degree in Chemistry from Bombay University and a Diploma in Computer Science from IITC Mumbai.

Winner of the 2016 “Digital Marketer of the Year”, 2011 Powerbrands Hall of Fame “Most Dynamic Marketing Professional of the Year’’ and “100 Most Talented Global Marketing Leaders” Award 2014. Manmeet joined Tata Starbucks Private Ltd in July 2013 as Director - Marketing and Category. She led the brand launch in Pune, Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad and is responsible for marketing, product management and loyalty.

Prior to that, as Marketing Director TAG Heuer and had her finger on the pulse of all India Marketing of TAG Heuer thereby, contributing to making it the leading brand of luxury watches in India.

Graduated in B.Com (Hons) from the prestigious Sri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC), Delhi University in 1999, before completing Post Graduation from the leading Marketing Communications institute - Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad (MICA) in 2002.

She has been extensively covered in various articles in leading newspapers and magazines and been a special guest speaker at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad, Mudra Institute of Communications Ahmedabad (MICA), S.P. Jain Institute of Management Mumbai, Symbiosis Pune (SCMHRD). She is also part of the Marketing Advisory Council of S.P. Jain Institute of Management.

@ManmeetVohra

Neha Motwani is the Founder and CEO of Fitternity, India's largest discovery and booking platform for fitness services. She started Fitternity in 2014 with a simple mission to make fitness easy, accessible and affordable. Through the platform users can find fitness options (from gyms to yoga to zumba, crossfit, healthy tiffins, personal trainers and more) in their vicinity and get all details (like offerings, photos, reviews, rate card, timings etc.) without stepping outside their house. They can also book unlimited trials (free sessions which are facilitated by Fitternity) till they figure out the right option. From a service provider perspective - Fitternity helps businesses and trainers in generating value through brand awareness, online presence and last-mile conversion.

Prior to Fitternity she worked with Aon Hewitt in talent & organisation consulting space and has over 5 years of experience across HR and Risk consulting. Neha holds a Bachelors in Management Studies from Narsee Monjee College of Commerce & Economics and has an MBA from Welignkar Institute of Management & Research. 

Nitin Agarwal is AVP, Marketing at ShopClues.com. Passionate about consumer behaviour and brand promotions, he is an astute marketer who brings his combined expertise in technology, data analytics and marketing to his role at ShopClues.com. His key focus areas are branding, media planning, rolling out campaigns in offline and online channels etc. He helms activities directed at augmenting the e-commerce player’s customer engagement/retention and acquisition.

Prior to joining ShopClues.com, Nitin bootstrapped a health and nutrition start-up, Health Raga and was instrumental in setting up its e-commerce channel. He has over seven years of experience working in diverse industry sectors such as automotive, banking and e-commerce. He has been associated with some of the most renowned organisations in the world including Gulf Oil Corporation Limited, Ashok Leyland and Genpact.

Nitin has an MBA from the prestigious XLRI, Jamshedpur and a B.Tech degree in Computer Science from JIIT, Noida. He enjoys travelling to islands and is a certified advanced open water diver.

23 Years of rich experience across functions of diamond industry like rough diamonds, polished diamonds, jewellery manufacturing, product/brand development, channel and partner development Handling a portfolio of Retail /Franchise /Digital sales  Nakshatra, Gili, Asmi, Nirvana, Sangini & other Diamond jewellery brands, also looking after Retail of Watches brands like rotary, Morellato, chronostar etc  & Fashion jewellery with good eye on From Product development to Product Management/Strategy/P&L Management/ Marketing & after sales services.

Radhika Binani is the Chief Products officer at Paisabazaar.com.  She comes with a rich experience of over 13 years in the financial services and distribution space, having worked with organizations like Citibank and Unilever. Before taking up this role, Radhika was the Director of Digital Marketing for both Policybazaar.com and Paisabazaar.com. Prior to joining the company, she was Program manager at Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, her goal was to provide capital towards building strong organizations in the for-profit social space.  

Radhika is an engineering graduate from Anna University, Chennai and holds a Post Graduate Diploma from IIM Bangalore.

@radhikabinani16

Rahul leads the Tata group’s pioneering budget lodging business, Ginger Hotels, with 37 operating properties and 32 hotels in pipeline. He has over 23 years of start-up and operating experience across luxury, upscale, mid-scale and budget lodging businesses. Rahul was earlier a founding team member, President and ED of Lemon Tree Hotels where he led its growth, from a start-up, to three distinct brands.

A graduate of IHM Pusa, New Delhi and a former member of the Indian Karate team, he has studied Sales, Innovation and HR management at IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, ISB Hyderabad and Cornell-Nanyang, Singapore. Rahul has worked and trained across India, USA and Singapore with Choice Hotels, Taj Hotels, Spectramind (WIPRO BPO) and Intercontinental Hotels. He also serves as a Member - National Tourism Committee, Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

@rahulpandit1

Rajat Mehta is the Senior President & Country Head- Brand, Retail & Digital Marketing at YES BANK, one of India’s largest private sector banks. In his leadership role at YES BANK, Rajat is responsible for Marketing & Communications of the Retail and SME businesses, across 1,000 branches in India as well as International operations for the bank. He also manages Product Marketing across all Liabilities, Assets, NRI, Cards, Third Party and Direct Banking product portfolios.

Rajat is also responsible for the YES BANK mother brand, including all brand initiatives across Television, Print, Outdoor and Events. He also manages the Central Sponsorship of the Indian Premier League (IPL) and leads a very robust Online Marketing practice, spearheading YES BANK’s Digital and Social Marketing initiatives for brand and business generation, where YES BANK enjoys a leadership position in India.

Mr. Sanjay Vakharia is the Director  & COO of Spykar Lifestyle Private Ltd. & has been part of the original team who founded Spykar in 1992. Prior to joining Spykar, he worked with Magna Publications as the Export Manager (Garments) wherein he was responsible for setting up the marketing network in the US & UK markets. Additionally, he served as Marketing Manager for Toys & Games division of the Magna group. in 1990, he set up the Jeanswear Brand RAGZ, in partnership with a few friends.

His sharp business acumen saw him rise from overseeing product development and Marketing to being the COO. He has played a key role in the overall Marketing & Brand Communication strategies at Spykar.

Under the astute direction of Mr. Vakharia, Spykar has set up a robust distribution platform across the length and breadth of the country spanning EBO’s, LFR’s, MBO’s, and online sales. Besides online, Spykar has over 2000 points of Sales across 300 towns and cities of the country.

It is his passion & purpose to be unique that makes Spykar deliver a product that is easily distinguishable from the rest of the brands in the denim market. His keen eye on every aspect of business coupled with extensive travel across the world has led to inputs which have propelled Spykar to compete with the leading international brands. Spykar has the distinction of serving one of the most fickle consumers of the country, the youth, since over two decades and this has translated in Sanjay Vakharia of being one of the few professionals in the industry having a wealth of knowledge on this consumer segment.

@snj9

Shalabh is a founder member & currently heads Marketing, Operations, Information Technology, Customer Retention & Corporate Communication. An MBA in Marketing, he has previously worked with Standard Chartered Bank and ING Life Insurance.

He brings with him a strong retail financial experience of 22+ years in Consumer Banking & Life Insurance Industry. Through his career he has run large profit centre & SBU’s across various business lines in Life Insurance & Retail Banking. Core competence & exposure revolves around Distribution set up & handling sales in large business environment, Marketing, Strategic Planning, Customer Retention, Alliances & Acquisitions, Channel Relationship Management, Market Expansion & Distribution Strategy, Customer Service & Operations.

Shalabh in his current role handles four diverse functions of the company - Marketing (Brand, Digital Marketing, Public Relations), Operations, Information Technology & Customer Retention (Customer Engagement, Customer Experience & Satisfaction). The focus hence is on creating an enabling environment for the brand and work in parallel on various initiatives focused on the Customer.

Shalabh is a self driven professional & brings a high level of energy, dedication and integrity to the work place with a clear focus towards achievement of organizational goals.

Mr. Siddhartha Pahwa joined Meru Cabs Pvt Ltd as Chief Executive Officer in 2011. He is a Chartered Accountant from ICAI and ranked 42 in the country in1996. He is also a Cost Accountant from CWAI and has done an MBA from IIM Ahemdabad.

Siddhartha started his career as a Management Trainee with Hindustan Lever Limited in 1996. He brings with him 18 years of experience in Business management, Supply Chain, Operations and Finance Management across geographical regions of Asia, Africa & Middle East. Siddhartha won the ‘Best SCM Logistics Professional Award’ for Asia Pacific region across industries held in Singapore in December 2008.

Before he joined Meru family as CEO in 2011, Siddhartha was the President -Supply Chain & Generics at Abbott Healthcare Pvt. Ltd. His expertise includes improving business performance, supply chain efficiencies and effectiveness through process implementation. Prior to this he worked as a Finance Director - Brand Development with Unilever (Bangkok) & Supply Chain Manager with Hindustan Unilever Limited.

Under his able leadership as Chief Executive Officer of Meru Cabs Pvt Ltd, a complete transformation has been done of the business by improving utilization, enhancing consumer experience and better relationship with the chauffeurs. In the near future, a vast expansion is planned in the Meru fleet size. With his innovative thinking Siddhartha has successfully launched new brands like Genie Cabs & Meru Plus for inter and intra city travel with advanced GPS/GPRS technology in different cities. He has commited to increase Meru cabs to 100,000 in next few years across India.

Siddhartha is passionate about running, football and driving.

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

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

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

Passionate direct marketer and CRM professional. Specialist for building CRM / loyalty framework, analytics framework and customer driven marketing. Experience in launching and managing program for fuel, coalition loyalty programs, grocery, lifestyle retail and Banking. Direct to customer marketing frameworks for banking products and services. Building campaign strategy and implementing IT solutions for marketing – campaign management tool.

Specialties: Brand Management, Data analytics, Loyalty program strategy development, loyalty program implementation, Promotions, Direct marketing, Campaign Management, Multi channel Marketing , CRM strategy and implementation Customer experience.