Our speakers

Ajay Chhangani, Co-Founder & Group CEO, RISE India

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

Ajay Chitkara, Director & CEO, Airtel Business

Ajay Desai, Senior President & Chief Financial Inclusion Officer, YES BANK Ltd

Ajay Desai is Senior President and Chief Financial Inclusion Officer at YES BANK and is a key leader of Food & Agribusiness Research Management (FARM) vertical of the bank. He oversees Inclusive & Social Banking (ISB) & Microfinance Institutions Group (MFIG) teams. At ISB, he spearheads the financial inclusion initiatives including implementation of Financial Inclusion Plan as mandated by RBI. He is one of the key architects of “Frugal Innovations for Financial Inclusion (FI4FI)” approach of the bank, which has received several awards and accolades at national and global level. He has been a key contributor to several frugal innovation like YES Sahaj (Micro-ATM device), YES Money (Domestic Remittance Service) & YES LEAP (SHG Bank Linkage program).

Earlier as Country Head, Agribusiness Rural & Social Banking at YES BANK, he had spearheaded the Rural and Agribusiness lending of the Bank. He was instrumental in developing several structured financing deals to ensure Bank’s outreach to farmers, despite constrain of limited rural branch network.

Prior to joining YES BANK, he was a Chief Manager with Rural Micro-Banking & Agribusiness Group of ICICI Bank. He was instrumental in developing special lending program for rural cooperatives and developing new micro finance partnerships with small NGOs.

Prior to joining the Banking sector, he was working as a consultant to various developmental organizations like CARE India, BASIX, IDE –India & Indian Grameen Services.   

Ajay holds PGDRM from Institute of Rural Management, Anand and Masters Degree in Agriculture from Konkan Krishi Vidyapeeth, Dapoli, Maharashtra. He has over 16 years of experience in various capacities across Rural Development and Banking Sector in India.

Ajay G Prasad, Partner, JSA

Ajay Hattangdi, Founder, Alteria Capital Advisors

Ajay Kaushal, Co-founder & Director, BillDesk

Ajay Kaushal is a Director and co-founder of BillDesk, one of India’s largest electronic payment platforms.  Ajay along with his partners co-founded BillDesk in 2000.  Today BillDesk powers electronic payments across all large organizations in India and operates across 80 locations in India with over 450 employees.

He is on the Board of Trustees of the Charities Aid Foundation India (CAF India).  Ajay is a speaker at events organized by industry associations.

Prior to setting up BillDesk, Ajay has worked with SBI Capital Markets and Arthur Andersen.  

Ajay graduated in Electrical Engineering from IIT Madras and completed his PGDM from IIM Lucknow. 

Ajay Kelkar, Co-founder & COO, Hansa Cequity

Ajay has over 24 years experience across Procter & Gamble, PepsiCo, Shopper’s Stop, and HDFC Bank. Over the last 7 years, he has in partnership with the Hansa group set up a unique Customer marketing company called Hansa Cequity. The team has built up a strong profitable business based on Analytics & CRM.

He is the Co Promoter & Chief Operating Officer of Hansa Cequity. Cequity is a Marketing Services Provider and helps its clients design engaging customer experiences by leveraging customer information using analytics, technology & marketing communication solutions.

Earlier as Head of Marketing for Shoppers’ Stop (one of India’s leading Department store chains), he was responsible for creating a unique & vibrant loyalty program called First Citizen which is a unique Indian case study on loyalty marketing.

Ajay was earlier Chief Marketing Officer at HDFC Bank, where he led the bank's marketing team on the pioneering path of data-led marketing analytics. The bank executed a unique data based strategy and this led to huge ROI in cross sell and up sell.

Ajay Kumar Vij, Co-founder & CEO, AsianHealthcare Fund

Mr. Ajay Kumar Vij was formerly the CEO of Dabur Pharma, a fully integrated global pharmaceutical company which he successfully built up over 13 years into one of the world's largest specialty oncology groups that operated in 40 countries around the world including USA, Europe, Latin America, and the Asia Pacific region. He was instrumental in selling the company to European healthcare major Fresenius for over USD $360 million in 2008. He has broad exposure to the Asian healthcare sector and has wide experience in identifying promising business opportunities, developing a growth strategy and implementing profitable exits.

Mr. Vij serves as Non-Executive Director in Diwan Chand Medical Services P. Ltd., Dabur Research Foundation, Althea Lifesciences Limited and Famy Care Limited.

Mr. Vij is a member of the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO).

He holds a MBA and Bachelor degree in Science from Punjab University, Chandigarh, India.

Ajay Mahipal, Director, HealthQuad Capital Advisors Private Limited

Ajay Mariwala, MD, Vallabhdas Kanji Ltd.

Ajay Jaysinh Mariwala is the MD of Vallabhdas Kanji Limited Asia's largest processor of spice and spice ingredients, located Kerala, India. VKL is the flagship company of the USD 100 Million Kanji Moorarji Group, which includes Kancor Flavours and Extracts Ltd, and Autohangar (India) Pvt. Ltd.

Since 1993 Ajay has led the business and operations of VKL to a record Sixteen -fold growth from INR 140 Million to INR 2.50 Billion and expanded areas of business to include ground spices, sterilized spices, seasonings, private label and Flavours & Fragrance. He has also completed three rounds of Private Equity Investments in VKL & established three subsidiaries in USA, Germany and Vietnam which has earned VKL the largest spice exporter status.

Ajay holds a Master of Science Degree in Management Science from Sloan School of Management, MIT, Cambridge and a Bachelor of Science Degree in Chemical Engineering from Purdue University, West Lafayette.