Our speakers

George Alexander Muthoot, MD, Muthoot Finance Ltd

George Alexander Muthoot is a chartered accountant who qualified with a first rank in Kerala and ranked 20th overall in India, in 1978. He has a bachelor degree in Commerce from Kerala University where he was a rank holder and gold medallist. He was also awarded the Times of India group Business Excellence Award in customised Financial Services in March 2009.

He served as the Chairman of the Kerala Non banking Finance Companies Welfare Association from 2004 to 2007 and is currently its Vice Chairman. He is also the Member Secretary of Finance Companies Association, Chennai.

He is the founder member for The Indus Entrepreneurs International, Kochi Chapter and is now a member of the Core Committee of The Indus Entrepreneurs International Kochi Chapter.

His insight for understanding of gold loan business and professional zeal has been the catalyst behind the Company's meteoric rise to the present level of being India's largest gold loan company.

George Thomas, Partner, India Value Fund Advisors

George joined IVF Advisors in 2002 to strengthen the "Business Building" function. As a Business Manager, George has leveraged his turnaround and marketing experience to assist portfolio companies with merger integration, strategy, systems & process, recruitment, marketing, and branding. George has also assisted the Fund fine-tune its under-writing capability;          supporting Fund Managers appraise pre-investment cases. He has a wide network of connections and an in-depth understanding of business segments and management teams.

In Trinethra, George strengthened operational controls and developed an annual operating plan with suitable management information systems. He used his vast expertise to reinforce the management team. On acquisition of Music Broadcast, George took direct oversight on operations of Radio City during an initial period of uncertainty caused by delay of the new licensing policy. He identified a leadership team for the business and inducted them into their new roles. George helped TTK Healthcare Services migrate to a centralized IT enabled delivery platform,which he identified along with the management as a seminal initiative to scale the growing healthcare insurance claim processing and attract good quality international business.

George is a Post-Graduate in History from St Stephen's College, Delhi University with almost 20 years of work experience, prior to joining IVF Advisors. He was Whole-time Director and Chief Operating Officer at BPL Soft Energy Systems Limited. Before this, he spent 2 years as Director - Confectionery on a restructuring assignment with Warner Lambert India. Prior, he held positions in the Foods business of Unilever in India and the UK.

Gerard Rego, Chairman & CEO, VayuGrid Marketplace Services Pvt. Ltd.

Gerard J Rego - Wharton Fellow 05, Reuters DV Fellow 06, Stanford University is currently the Chairman & CEO at VayuGrid Marketplace Services Pvt. Ltd. He  has over sixteen years experience in creating, leading & managing innovation and services with domain and technology cross-functional teams for new product development/engineering/ management with industry exposure in Manufacturing, Aerospace & Defense, Automotive, ICT, Hitech, Publishing CAD/CAM/CAE and ILMS. He is a Charter Member of TiE Pune Chapter. He was also featured among the top 20 bigwigs in India's silicon valley in 1998 by Express Computers Bangalore.

Giriraj Bagri, President and Group CEO, FMCG Raymond

Girish Batra, CMD, NetAmbit

Mr. GirishBatra (CMD of NetAmbit), is a first generation entrepreneur who established Netambit in September 2000 by drawing on his experience from successful stints at Escorts and Godrej. Over time, under his leadership, NetAmbit has become India’s first of its kind retail financial products supermarket.

NetAmbit has grown rapidly over the last 11 years to become one of the dominant players in the financial products distribution in India and has an enviable name especially in the Life Insurance Distribution space.

Girish belongs to the Class of 1997 of Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering from College of Technology, Pantnagar, Uttaranchal. At NetAmbit, Girish spends most of his time giving strategic direction to the company. He likes to travel and supports philanthropic causes, which he feels are the best way to give back to the society.

Girish Huria, Executive Vice President and Head of Growth APAC, AvianWe

Girish Joshi, Senior General Manager Listing Business, BSE

Mr. Girish Joshi, Senior General Manager by designation Heads Listing Business at Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). At BSE he also headed Fixed Income and Interest Rate Derivative Segments and was instrumental in the launch of Interest Rate Derivatives and New Debt Segments. Before joining BSE, he has worked at ICICI Bank Group for 10 years. At ICICI Group he has worked in various areas like ICICIDirect.com, Treasury Mid Office and at CFO office.

Girish was also one of the earliest core team members which were involved in the set-up of National Stock Exchange (NSE). At NSE during 7 years he worked in Wholesale Debt Market and post trade functions. He is a member of CoBoSAC committee of Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and also member of CII committee on Integrated Reporting. He represents BSE in Sustainability Working Group (SWG) of World Federation of Stock Exchange (WFE) and also Sustainable Stock Exchange initiative of the United Nations.

He has represented BSE in various sub groups formed by SEBI for market developments like E-IPO, Regulatory framework for Index Providers, Development of CBLO type products for Corporate Bonds, REITs and InVit etc. He is also member of the Secretarial Standard Board (SSB) formed by the Institute of Company Secretary of India (ICSI). Mr. Girish Joshi is Chartered Accountant as well as Cost Accountant by qualification.

Girish Mathrubootham, Founder & CEO, Freshdesk Inc

Girish founded Freshdesk in 2010. Prior to Freshdesk, Girish was Vice-President of Product Management at ZOHO Corporation. He has over 13 years of experience in making and marketing best-in-class enterprise IT management products. Very passionate about customer service, usability and making products that give the biggest bang for the buck, Girish has easily been the Product Manager with the happiest set of customers.

Girish Nadkarni, Partner, IDFC Alternatives

Girish Nadkarni - Girish Nadkarni has over twenty two years of experience across private equity, M&A, managing large companies, corporate finance, treasury and risk management, business strategy and setting up of businesses.

Mr. Nadkarni primarily focuses on originating and evaluating investment opportunities, over-seeing the portfolio and creating exit opportunities. He has strong consumer, agri-business, rural infrastructure and telecom sector expertise. He has led investments in Parag Milk Foods, Staragri Warehousing and Collateral Management and NCDEX. He also actively manages investments in Green Infra and DARCL.

Prior to joining IDFC Alternatives, he worked for Rallis India Limited (a Tata Group Agri company). Previous to this, he was with Tata Chemicals and played a key role in the acquisitions of General Chemicals, USA and controlling stake in Rallis (2007-09). He has played key role in more than a dozen M&A and buyout transactions such as VSNL, Hughes Telecom, Escotel Mobile, Nagarjuna Oil and divestments such as Idea, Tata Honeywell, Tata Telecom (Avaya) and Information Tech Park.

Girish Nair, CEO, Netcore

Girish Nair joined netCORE as the Chief Operating Officer in 2005 and was appointed as the Chief Executive Officer in late 2011. During his tenure at netCORE, revenues have increased over 10 times in 8 years and employee strength has grown 5 times. At netCORE, he helped in setting up the Mobility division and also helped the company in becoming a leader in email and mobile marketing. Under his leadership, netCORE has won several domestic and international mobile marketing awards and recognitions. Girish has contributed to netCORE in a great way by making it an innovative and competitive workplace and bringing in a professional, open and fun loving culture into the organization.

Girish completed his Engineering degree at IIT Bombay, India and then did his Masters in Engineering, specializing in Robotics from Virginia Tech, USA. He also pursued engineering management studies at Stanford, USA. He worked in the Silicon Valley, USA for 15 years with different sizes of companies, ranging from startups to mid-sized companies to large public enterprises.

Girish started his career as a developer of automation products at Consilium (later acquired by Applied Materials) and soon after, helped build the mission critical automated material handling system at Intel’s factory in Ireland. He then became one of the youngest Program Managers at Intel, responsible for large factory automation projects.

Later, he joined what was then a relatively small start-up Webvan, where he was primarily responsible for the deployment, scalability and technology integration of the critical distribution centre at the heart of the business. Webvan grew to be one of the largest eCommerce companies in the US in 1999. Girish later joined Siebel where he was Senior Director and managed several diverse engineering groups.