Our speakers

Ajaay Gupta, MD, Capital Foods Ltd

Ajaay Gupta is a professional entrepreneur in the packaged food industry. A marketing professional by background, he has been instrumental in the architecture and launch of some highly successful food brands like Ching’s Secret and Smith & Jones. Ching's Secret is the #1 Chinese ingredients brands with products across sauces, soups, Hakka Noodles, Sauce mixes and instant noodles.

Smith and Jones is the leading Masala Noodles, ketchup and cooking pastes brand in india.

Ajaay Gupta brings with him experience in the field of manufacturing and marketing of processed foods since 1996. Capital Foods also retails in some of the biggest retailers of the world, like Tesco, Dunnes, Target and Loblaws. Previously he was the CMD of Forefront Advertising and Mkting and was well regarded as one of the brightest advertising talents in the 90s having won multiple AD Club and CAG Awards.

Mr Gupta has been the marketing brain behind various brands for clients like Mother’s Recipe, Sheetal, Kala Niketan, Baccarose. He also currently serves of the board of directors at Fashion Retailer Kimaya.

Ajay Adiseshann, Founder & MD, Paymate

Ajay is a serial entrepreneur and an angel investor with a passion for technology. Prior to founding PayMate, he founded Webresource (Web development) and Coruscant Tec(Mobile apps), sold to Mukta Arts.

 

When not running PayMate, Ajay spends hours listening to Indie music and discovering new bands on his favourite app-NPR music.

Ajay Bakshi, CEO, Manipal Hospitals

Dr. Ajay Bakshi is the Managing Director & CEO of Manipal Health Enterprises (Manipal Hospitals) since July 2014. Manipal Hospitals is the corporate healthcare and hospitals entity of the Manipal Education & Medical Group and its healthcare network comprises of 16 hospitals covering 7,000 beds in India and Malaysia. Building on the existing strength and reputation of Manipal Hospitals for clinical excellence, Dr Bakshi is leading a digital transformation of its core business model, as well as leading an organizational transformation to make the entire hospital network more empathic and friendly towards patients and their families.

Prior to Manipal, in 2011 – Dr. Bakshi worked at Max Healthcare as their MD & CEO where he led a succesful launch of 4 new hospitals as well as a comprehensive turn-around of the overall network. Dr. Bakshi trained as a neurosurgeon: he has an MBBS and M.Ch. (Neurosurgery) degrees from All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi. After finishing his Chief Residency, he has worked as a Consultant Neurosurgeon at Vidya Sagar Institute of Mental Health & Neurosciences (VIMHANS), New Delhi. During this period he started a successful endoscopic neurosurgery practice, in addition to performing more than 600 major brain and spinal surgeries for complex neurosurgical conditions.

In 2002, he transitioned to a research role at Dept. of Neurobiology, Drexel University College of Medicine, Philadelphia, where he built a research program around minimally invasive stem cell transplantation for spinal cord injuries. Based on an R21 research grant that he received from National Institute of Health, Dr. Bakshi developed and demonstrated the safety and efficacy of Autologous Stem Cell transplantation via lumbar puncture technique in animal models - a procedure that is becoming main stream for Human Stem Cell transplantation now. At the same time, he also completed the 2 year Wharton Management Program from The Wharton School.

In 2005, Dr. Bakshi joined McKinsey and Company, New Jersey and served large US corporations in Medical devices, Hospitals, Pharmaceuticals and Health Insurance sectors around questions related to their Strategy, Organizations and Operations. In 2008, he moved to their Dubai Office and got an opportunity to serve Prime Ministers and Health Ministers of the Middle East and African countries on questions related to the design and effectiveness of their countries' Health Systems. He left McKInsey in 2011 as an Associate Principal to join Max Healthcare as their CEO.

Ajay Bhalla, President, Cyber and Intelligence Solutions, MasterCard

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.