Our speakers

Irfan Khan, Founder and CEO, eBikeGo

Ish Babbar, Co-Founder, and CTO, InsuranceDekho

Ishan Gupta, CEO, EduKart.com

Ishan Gupta is a passionate education entrepreneur, investor, speaker and a published author.

He is the CEO of EduKart.com, India’s largest destination for enrollment into distance and online education courses. Over the last three years, the company has helped thousands of students and working professionals to get access to high quality degree, diploma and certificate courses  in the most convenient manner.

Prior to launching Edukart.com, Ishan was managing the One97 Mobility Fund, a $100 million venture fund. One97 Mobility Fund happens to be the only mobile sector focused fund in India. He has also worked as a General Manager at One97 Communications and was responsible for new product creation at One97.
 
Before working at One97, Ishan was leading the growth and marketing efforts of Facebook in India as its sole representative in the country.

Ishan had earlier founded Appin Knowledge Solutions, an education services company in India. Appin Knowledge Solutions is currently one of the leading players in the field of information security training and consulting.

Ishan has also worked at Helion Venture Partners, an India focused venture fund.

Ishan is a published author - he published the book "Make the Move - Demystifying Entrepreneurship" in 2007. The book has a foreword by Sabeer Bhatia, founder of Hotmail and a message from then President of India, Dr. A.P.J Abdul Kalam. The book also contains views from some of the leading entrepreneurs from India. Consequently, he was featured on Young Turks, CNBC for his work in the field of education and promoting entrepreneurship. The book has sold more than 10,000 copies till date.  Further, Ishan has spoken at venues like the Stanford University, London Business School, Indian School of Business, IIT Delhi, IIT Mumbai, IIT Roorkee on topics like Leadership and Entrepreneurship. He has also represented education entrepreneurs in a committee formed by Government of India on Implementation of Technology in Higher Education.

Ishan has a MBA from Stanford University, California, USA and a Bachelor of Engineering from University of Delhi, India.

Ishan Gupta, Managing Director, India, Udacity

Ishan Gupta is the Managing Director, Udacity, India his role in Udacity as the Managing Director for India is to build a strong team, launch more India-focused courses and take the Indian business to new heights.

Ishan was until end of 2016, the Vice President(Business) at Paytm (India's largest mobile commerce company, valued at $6Bn). Before that, he was running EduKart in India, which he had founded in 2011. The company went on to become the largest education marketplace of India. The team at EduKart was acqui-hired by Paytm in early 2016.

Ishan has earlier worked at Facebook as a growth manager for India, founded an education company and established a corporate development division for a telco services company. He did his engineering from University of Delhi and MBA from Stanford University, California, USA. Besides that, Ishan has published a book on entrepreneurship titled “Make the Move- Demystifying Entrepreneurship” and has spoken on topics of entrepreneurship and ed-tech at various prestigious venues in India and outside.

Ishita Swarup, Founder and CEO, 99labels

Ishita Swarup as a CEO at 99labels, continues her love for challenges and young setups, and here she has taken her imagination further, and has been instrumental in carving out a space which epitomises all the fun of shopping for great brands in a secure, responsive and completely reliable way.

Ishita has a degree in Economics from Delhi University and an MBA from IMT.

She began her career with Cadburys. Consequently, it was a natural progression for her to create and manage Orion Dialog, a pioneer in the ITES sector in India. She exited by selling the company to Aegis BPO part of the Essar Group, where she continued as COO - India. Thereafter she helped set up a social venture -Sakha Consulting Wings Pvt. Ltd. Sakha is a unique social enterprise, launched to provide safe transport solutions for women, by women in urban India.

Ishita Vora, Head of Listings and Primary Markets, NSE

Ishita leads the listings and the primary markets business at the National Stock Exchange of India across equity, debt, and hybrid securities. She works closely with issuers, bankers, investors, state-owned entities and regulatory authorities to ensure a robust fund raising framework in India. Ishita has experience on both the buy as well as the sell side and has seen the investing community from both these angles over the last 18 years. Prior to NSE, Ishita led Investment Banking for a domestic brokerage and was also instrumental in setting up an infrastructure focused private equity fund in India. She started her career in management consulting and led the CFO Advisory Forum for leading Indian corporates during her consulting stint. Ishita has been an active member of several SEBI sub-committees on equity and debt capital markets including the SEBI sub-committee responsible for drafting the public market led fund raising framework for Indian start-ups.

Ishpreet Gandhi, Founder and Managing Partner, Stride Ventures

Ishpreet is the founder and managing partner at Stride Ventures. At Stride, Ishpreet’s all-encompassing role at the fund involves sourcing proprietary investment opportunities, fundraising, managing the portfolio by working with and supporting portfolio companies, including attending board meetings and monitoring performance to ensure returns and strategic objectives of the fund are achieved. As the fund manager, Ishpreet has built a well-diversified portfolio sanctioning over INR 1300Cr across 55+ companies across Consumer, FinTech, Logistics, AgriTech, B2B Commerce, HealthTech, B2B SaaS etc. Additionally, he has successfully pioneered tailor-made short term solutions for growth stage businesses and has created banking alliances for Stride’s portfolio company’s by leveraging his banking experience and network. Stride has been the most active venture debt fund in India in terms of deals executed, completing 50 deals in the calendar year 2021. Ishpreet currently operates across two funds, with the second fund gaining significant momentum, targeting above INR 1000 Crore with a greenshoe option of INR 75 Cr.

Prior to founding Stride Ventures, Ishpreet Gandhi started his career with Standard Chartered Bank in the SME banking division. This was followed by a term in Citibank commercial banking and thereafter, he managed MNC business for the northern region for Kotak group. He was the team leader at Yes Bank managing MNC and VC relationships in 2014, where he started sourcing growth-stage startups. Ishpreet managed relationships with Venture Capital funds like Omnivore, Matrix Partners, Sequoia Capital, Mayfield Advisors & Bertelsmann during his term at YES Bank and IDFC. He closed his first VC-backed transaction as a first lender to BIRA (Alcoholic beverages) in late 2015, when the company attracted Series A investment from Sequoia Capital. The second company Ishpreet identified was Lendingkart, (Series A in 2016). The company was amongst the earliest fintech companies in India. Similar companies which Ishpreet successfully onboarded amongst startups were Leap India backed by Mayfield Advisors, Sixth Sense Ventures & TVS Capital (2016), Rivigo backed by SAIF Partners & Warburg Pincus (2018), Securens backed by Mayfield Advisors (2017), Ofbusiness backed by Matrix Partners and Norwest Venture Partners (2017). All these companies have witnessed significant increase in valuations with no delays in principal repayments or servicing of coupons.

Ishwar Sridharan, Co­-founder and COO, Exotel Techcom Pvt Ltd | @Exotel

Ishwar Sridharan is the co-founder and COO of Exotel Techcom Pvt Ltd, one of India's leading cloud telephony companies. Exotel helps businesses of all sizes manage their customer communication over calls and SMS without having to invest in infrastructure.

Ishwar finished his Engineering in IT from SASTRA University. He then went on to do his Masters in Engineering from IIIT, Bangalore. He joined Yahoo! as a Principal Engineer right after. He worked on a bunch of things at Yahoo! including creating and implementing the video search algorithm for which he holds a couple of patents. It was at Yahoo! that he met Shivku, the CEO of Exotel. And when Shivku started Exotel, he asked Ishwar to join him.

Since then, Ishwar has donned different roles across Exotel. Mostly, it involves being cool! Ishwar loves startups, building stuff, hacking, science, music, sketching, and problem solving. The order is up for debate, though.

Iype Isac, Chief Delivery Officer, BankBazaar.com

Iype is the Chief Delivery Officer at BankBazaar. A BankBazaar veteran right from its inception, he has donned many hats from being the first foot-soldier to the CTO to the CDO. He has been a part of the core team that envisioned the idea of BankBazaar way back in in 2008, and today, Iype is face of BankBazaar Technology for the partners.

He leads the Technology Integration team, which works closely with the technology team at the partner end and facilitates a smooth interface between the partner financial institution’s backend and the BankBazaar platform. He has been an evangelist for BankBazaar’s technology from the very beginning, and his leadership has contributed significantly to BankBazaar’s success.

J.C. Sharma, Vice Chairman & MD, Sobha Developers Ltd

Mr. J.C. Sharma has a bachelor’s degree in Commerce (Hons.) from Xavier College, Calcutta. He is a qualified chartered accountant and company secretary with over 25 years of experience in diversified industries such as automobiles, textiles, steel and Real Estate in the areas of finance and management. He has previously served as General Manager, Auto Distributors Limited; General Manager - Finance, Bhoruka Steels Limited; and General Manager- Commerce and Finance, Grasim Industries Limited. He has been associated with Sobha since June 2001 and is entrusted with the responsibility of managing the overall affairs of the Company, especially finances, land acquisition and legal functions. Mr. Sharma is instrumental in spearheading the growth mantle of Sobha.