Our speakers

Gopal Devanahalli, Sr.Vice President, Manipal Global Education Services

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

Gopal Jain, Managing Partner and Co-founder, Gaja Capital

Gopal Jain is Managing Partner and Co-founder of Gaja Capital, an India-focused growth & buyout firm based in Mumbai. Founded in 2005, Gaja is a leading player in India’s private equity market with an exceptional track record of 20+ investments and an AUM of over $500m. Gaja has invested consistently in India’s mid-market across themes in education, financial services & consumer, most recently expanding into healthcare and domestic software, with a key focus on driving scale and transformation in its portfolio companies via operational value add.

Gopal is an active columnist and is currently member of SEBI’s Alternative Investment Policy Advisory Committee and Indian Private Equity and Venture Capital Association’s Executive Committee. He has a deep interest in the social sector and leads Gaja Gives which supports a wide and growing number of philanthropic efforts in India.

Gopal Pillai, Director & GM, Amazon Seller Services

Gopal has rich experience in diverse firms ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies, with a focus on general management and innovation in products and services.

Gopal has been with Amazon for over 8 years, in various roles in US and India. He moved to Bengaluru, India in 2015 to lead Seller Services for Amazon India. He currently manages all aspects of the seller services ecosystem in India including seller acquisition, seller education & enablement services, fulfillment channel products, seller experience, seller engagement and seller offline and online marketing initiatives. Amazon India currently has over 300,000 sellers and over 170 million products, growing rapidly.

Prior to Amazon India, Gopal managed the Amazon.com Home Entertainment category and the Heavy Bulky Delivery Experience program for all US Retail categories. Prior to this, Gopal was the Category Leader for Mobile Electronics categories and the Product Owner for AmazonWireless.com, a specialty website for cell phone products and services.

Prior to Amazon.com, Gopal was Director of Digital Products for BusinessWeek. Before that, Gopal’s roles included co-founding an early stage technology startup and leadership roles in Non-profit, Healthcare, Insurance and Energy sectors.

Gopal graduated from the Executive MBA program at the Kellogg School of Management and has a Bachelor’s in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Madras, India.

Gopal Srinivasan, Managing Director & Chairman, TVS Capital

Gopal Srinivasan is the Chairman and Managing Director of TVS Capital Funds P Ltd.

A scion of the TVS family from the third generation, his entrepreneurial career spans well over three decades in which he has founded, steered and scaled up over 10 new ventures across diverse business verticals.

Passionate about fostering startups and mentoring young entrepreneurs and is an avid angel investor. He is a founding member of The Chennai Angels, one of the premier angels investing networks in India.

Gopal takes a keen interest in public policy matters of the VC/PE Industry, being actively involved with the regulators for the financial markets by dint of his engagements with SEBI (Member of AIPAC), the Indian Venture Capital Association (IVCA) & Confederation of Indian Industry (CII); He was also the Member of the Venture Capital Investment Committee for SIDBI’s Fund of Funds for Start-ups (FFS) programme in ’18-’19. Gopal is a Governing Council member of Reserve Bank Innovation Hub (RBIH), which has been formed in Dec’20; RBIH is a centre for idea generation and development to provide the facilitating environment, encourage collaboration, and in the process promote innovation in the financial sector. Gopal is also a non-official member on the National Start-up Advisory Council (NSAC) being formed by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPITT) in Jan’21 to advise the Government of India on measures needed to build a strong eco-system for nurturing innovation and startups in the country to drive sustainable economic growth and generate large scale employment opportunities.

He is also actively involved in knowledge initiatives through his involvement in academic institution. He is a member of University of Michigan’s India Advisory Board.

Gopal is also the Chairman of Chennai International Centre, a think-tank that brings together a cornucopia of thought leaders from the spheres of business, the economy, policymaking, science, art, culture and entrepreneurship.

Gopal has been recently appointed as the Honorary Consul General for the Kingdom of Netherlands in Tamil Nadu.

Gopi Natarajan, Co-founder, and CEO, Omega Health Care India Private Limited

Gopi Natarajan is the visionary entrepreneur who forecast the enormous opportunity in the healthcare BPO/KPO industry when it was in the nascent stage. From a technical professional, Gopi transformed himself gradually into an entrepreneur and established Omega Healthcare in 2004, which today has grown into a large enterprise having an employee strength of over 8,500 and growing at the rate of 30-35% year-on-year. The organisation is a leader in the space and constantly engages in training and upgrading the skills for its employees.

Gopi is the Co-founder and CEO at Omega Healthcare and has more than 25 years of experience in the Healthcare Industry both in the US and India. Prior to Omega, he led a $40 million medical billing company in the US with 1,000 employees, of which 250 were located in India.  He has also gained valuable experience in IT and BPO/KPO outsourcing during senior management stints with Aetna (NYSE: AET), EDS (NYSE: EDS) and Healtheon/WebMD (NASDAQ: WBMD). Having a brilliant track record in leadership, mergers, acquisitions and integration of companies, Gopi has been instrumental in leading small sized companies  and growing them into mid/large companies.   He now spends a significant amount of his time in India, overseeing the operations and growth of Omega Healthcare.

Gopinath Jayaraj, Chief Information Officer, Tata Motors

Mr. Gopinath Jayaraj is the Chief Information Officer of Tata Motors, India’s leading commercial vehicle and car manufacturer. Gopinath holds the responsibility of leading the IT and digital agenda of the organization across all business units and operating locations on Tata Motors. This includes digitizing and modernizing enterprise business processes across both customer and manufacturing systems, as well as enabling the entire fleet of products with connected vehicle technology.

Prior to Tata Motors, Gopinath was heading Whirlpool Corporation's India Technology Center. His early career was with the Tata group, with a long stint at Tata Technologies, heading global delivery of software and engineering services.

Gordon Fairclough, South Asia Bureau Chief, The Wall Street Journal | @WSJIndia

Gordon Fairclough is the South Asia bureau chief of The Wall Street Journal, overseeing coverage of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Maldives, with a team of more than 20 reporters. Prior to coming to New Delhi, Mr. Fairclough was the Journal's Central Europe bureau chief. He has also served as a correspondent in China, Korea and Southeast Asia. He has reported for the paper from more than two dozen countries. He was part of the team that won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting, which honored the Journal's coverage of China. He is a graduate of Yale and the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

@gefairclough

Gourav Chindlur, Co-founder and COO, Vizury Interactive Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

Gourav co-founded Vizury in 2008 after realizing that the performance of display advertising can be improved dramatically by studying user micro behaviours. He currently heads all mobile business and product initiatives for Vizury. He was earlier the head of product management and prior to that, he was the head of operations and analytics and has been been instrumental in Vizury's global expansion and growth.

Gourav has significant experience performance display advertising, programmatic media buying and using data in driving advertising goals for global brands. He is well versed with internet related technologies, ad tech platforms and big data analytics and has held speaking assignments around these in several countries.

Prior to Vizury, Gourav was a part of the Business Value Group at Trilogy, Inc where he was involved in developing customer acquisition strategies for Auto manufacturers and Telecom operators across US & India markets. He has also worked with the mobile apps development team at Motorola.

Gourav is a Computer Science Engineer from RVCE, Bangalore, and has an MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode. He also holds a patent in the field of radio communications.

Gourav Rakshit, COO, Viacom18 Digital Ventures.

Gourav Rakshit is currently the Chief Operating Officer of Viacom18 Digital Ventures. As part of the role he is responsible for driving the growth agenda of the network’s digital businesses. Since joining Viacom18 Digital Ventures Gourav has built a strong and robust digital ecosystem with VOOT, India’s first and only multi-platform kids’ app, VOOT Kids and the recently announced VOOT Select. Under his aegis VOOT has witnessed exponential growth with achieving a new viewership benchmark of 100 Million MAU’s, emerging as the most engaged premium AVOD platform with 100 billion minutes of watch time in the year.

Prior to joining Viacom18 he was President and CEO of People Group that owns and operates Shaadi.com. A University of Rochester and IIM Ahmedabad alumnus, Gourav has an in-depth understanding of digital disruption and a proven track-record of envisioning subscription growth. Over the course of 11 years at Shaadi.com, he has been instrumental in building one of India’s most iconic brands and a robust consumer subscription play, while delivering one of the few profitable P&Ls in the Indian internet ecosystem.

With over 2 decades of experience in Consumer Technology, IT and FMCG sectors, Gourav started his career with Nestle and took two more stops – Planetasia and Infosys Consulting before joining People Group. At Planetasia, he had his first brush with the media & tech industry, and at Infosys he successfully led consulting engagements for diverse consumer clients including Apple, Safeway and Wells Fargo.

Gourav has been a leader both on and off-field and is a true sports enthusiast at heart. He has represented school & college teams in football, rugby, cricket, squash, pool and table tennis, captaining them in many instances. As a working professional he continues to explore newer avenues to further his sporting passion

Goutam Datta, Chief Information & Digital Officer, Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance Co. Ltd.