Our speakers

Harish Bahl, Founder and Chairman, Smile Group

Harish is a serial entrepreneur who has successfully founded and built some of the leading e-commerce and digital media companies across Asia and other emerging markets. He is the founder of Smile Group, India-based Asian Internet Group, which has extensive holdings in the consumer internet and digital media space. As a business builder, he partners with the best entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and global companies to build digital companies from scratch, expand operations and increase their footprint by rolling out internationally.

Harish Bijoor, CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc

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

Harish Chander, Executive Vice-President, Edelweiss Financial Services

Harish has over three decades of experience in working with SBI, IDBI & Edelweiss (the largest players in the respective fields in India) in project & infra financing documentation, distress asset investing, asset resolution and recovery. Harish was Head of Project & Infrastructure Financing (Loan & Security) Group at IDBI. He was also the legal and resolution head of the Stressed Assets Stabilisation Fund where he handled revival, restructuring and resolution of Assets aggregating more than USD 2 billion. He has vast experience across various legal resolution mechanisms and has a deep understanding of structuring and documentation related to the resolution of troubled assets. Additionally, he has five years of experience as a lawyer in the courts from the district level to the Supreme Court of India. He holds a degree in Law with distinction from Punjabi University in India.

Harish Kumar.G.S., Country Manager - BFSI Vertical, Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Harish Mehta, Chairman & MD, Onward Technologies Ltd.

Harish Mehta is the Chairman and Managing Director of Onward Technologies Ltd. And Deputy Chairman & Managing Director of Onward Novell Software (I) Pvt. Ltd. Mr. Mehta is also co-Promoter of Infinity venture Fund. Infinity Venture Fund is an Institutionalised Angel Fund aimed at promoting IT entrepreneurs.

He is Managing Trustee of TPATI. (Trust to Promote Advanced Technologies in India.) TPATI hosted ICCC-2002, an International Conference on Computers and Communications in August, 2002 at Mumbai. He has successfully chaired major Indian and International conferences like Cybercity, NASSCOM, VLDB'96, ICVC'99, ICCC 2002 and others.

He was also the co-founder and Jt. Managing Director of Hinditron's Computer Group and One of the chief architects for realizing Hinditron- Digital Joint Venture in India.

Mr. Mehta has been the founder member of NASSCOM ( National Association of Software & Service Companies) and former Chairman. He was the First President of TiE - Mumbai Chapter. TiE (The IndUS Entrepreneurs) is a non-profit global network of entrepreneurs and professionals, established to foster entrepreneurship and nurture entrepreneurs. He is a Trustee on TiE Global Board. He is also an advisor to American India Foundation (AIF).

Harish Menon, APJ Product Head, Akamai

Harish Menon joined Akamai in 2009 and currently is the Head of the Web Experience Product line; responsible for technologies that help organizations have high-performing, secure, and personalized web experiences on any device, across Asia Pacific & Japan. Harish is responsible for identifying and executing key product initiatives to grow Akamai’s Web Experience products portfolio in APJ, which includes initiatives and innovations in both the consumer web space and the enterprise cloud area. In his current role, he has brought to market new services and partnerships applied towards strategic initiatives such as cloud computing, site & application acceleration, mobile optimization & big data.

Harish has over 9 years of work experience in varied roles such as Product Management, Pre-Sales, Account Management, Business Development and Channel Management. Harish holds an MBA from Symbiosis International University, specializing in Marketing & Finance.

Harish Narasappa, Partner, Samvad Partners

Harish Narasappa is a founding partner of Samv?d: Partners. Harish is a leader in advising early stage startups in India. He has extensive experience in advising on cross-border mergers and acquisitions, banking, corporate financing, private equity, venture capital, technology, regulatory and dispute resolution matters.

Harish has represented and advised several leading overseas corporations on their acquisitions and business operations in this country, as well as renowned Indian companies on their commercial transactions and investments worldwide.

Harish is also a co-founder of Daksh, a Bengaluru-based independent, not-for-profit organization which uses cutting edge technology to solve various problems facing India’s judicial system. Daksh has built India's first public database on the judiciary. Harish is also closely associated with the National Election Watch.

Harish is the author of the book titled "Rule of Law in India – A Quest for Reason" published by Oxford University Press.

Harish Shah, Founder & Managing Director, Signet Excipients Pvt. Ltd.

Harish Shah is the Founder & Managing Director of Signet Excipients Pvt. Ltd.

Harish, a Mechanical Engineer and MBA from Mumbai started Signet in 1986 and is India’s leading Pharmaceutical Raw Materials Distribution Company.  It has several partners in different parts of the world and has been a pioneer in the promotion of specialty products to the Pharmaceutical Industry. In 2020, Signet has become a part of IMCD N.V, a leading MNC from Netherlands.

The Shah family has been actively involved in philanthropy and currently focuses its time and resources on supporting organizations working in fields of education, medical support, governance and civic media, adolescent and women’s empowerment and similar sectors.  Their family foundation, the Harish and Bina Shah Foundation, is engaged with several NGOs and institutions that positively affect the social, political and economic situation in India.

Harishankaran K, Co-founder, Interview Street (HackerRank)

Harishankaran is the co-founder of interviewstreet - a product that helps connect great talent with great opportunities  They started in late 2009, failed thrice before building this product and now a fast growing company backed by YC & Vinod Khosla with hundreds of enterprise customers. Harishankaran takes care of the engineering & operations and is based in Bangalore. 

Harishankaran K, Co-Founder, Hackerrank

A Computer Science graduate from National Institute of Technology Trichy, Hari did his internship at Novell under 'Novell Open-Source Internship Program', and was also selected for 'Google Summer of Code' under Firefox organization.

After a short stint with IBM, Hari co-founded HackerRank (formerly known as InterviewStreet), which became the first company from India to be chosen for the prestigious incubator program at Y Combinator. At HackerRank, he is responsible for product delivery and scaling core platform where developers from all over the world come to solve interesting challenges in different domains of Computer Science (Artificial Intelligence, Algorithms, Machine Learning, Functional Programming, etc) for fun, glory, learning, and jobs.

HackerRank currently has 700k+ programmers on its platform already, and growing rapidly. Over the last 3 years, HackerRank has empowered over 1000 companies worldwide, including some of the biggest names in the technology industry, to efficiently hire quality programmers.