Our speakers

Jacob Kurian, Partner, New Silk Route

Jacob joined New Silk Route Advisors in April 2007 and focuses on private equity opportunities in the Indian sub-continent out of the Bangalore office.

Prior to joining NSR, Jacob was one of the Partners of the India Consumer Growth Fund which aimed to take advantage of the opportunities created by the strong consumption growth in the Indian economy. Previously, in 2003, as President of the Indian operations of Laureate Inc.

Previously, Jacob worked for the Tata Group as an officer of the prestigious Tata Administrative Service.

In mid 2000, Jacob was named COO and SVP of Tanishq, a fine jewelry business. Previously, in 1996, Jacob became Chief Marketing Officer of the watch business at Titan. His team rejuvenated the flagging watch business with the launch of multiple new brands that are India’s largest volume and youth watch brands. Under his stewardship, a widely respected annual poll ranked the Titan brand as India’s top consumer brand in 2000.

In 1993, Jacob joined Titan Industries to lead a pioneering attempt to take an Indian consumer brand into international markets. The Titan watch brand sells in over 35 countries and is one of the world’s top ten watch brands by volume.

Jacob has a degree in engineering (B.E. EEE) from the National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirapalli and an MBA from XLRI, Jamshedpur. He was voted “Exceller of the Year” – the outstanding graduating student by his class at business school. He received the Distinguished Alumni Award from NITT in 2008.

Jacob Mathew, Co-Founder and MD, MAPE Advisory Group

Prior to founding MAPE, Jacob was Vice President (M&A) at Merrill Lynch India where he has driven landmark deals including acquisition of Coats Viyella's garment business by AV Birla Group, sale of Burnol & Coldarin brand assets, Dr Reddy's buyout of American Remedies and sale of Diamond Dyechem to Ciba AG. Prior to this, he was the supervising consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers, where he was the first employee and setup the Corporate Finance division.

Jacob has advised a host of clients including Amway, Philip Morris, Telstra, Alcatel, Pilkington etc in their India entry and domestic partner selection assignments. He is an MBA from IIM Calcutta and a Civil Engineer.
 

Jaganath Swamy, Vice President, Harbourvest Partners (Asia) Limited

Jaganath Swamy joined HarbourVest in 2013 to focus on primary investments in India and Southeast Asia.

Jaganath joined HarbourVest from Northgate Capital in Delhi, where he was a principal with overall responsibility for developing and growing Indian fund investments and was co-lead for Southeast Asia investments.  Previously, Jaganath was a Founding Director of Ananta Capital, co-founding a specialized acquisition vehicle in the specialty and advanced materials space in India and led fundraising, negotiating with potential acquisition targets, and developing post-investment strategy.  His prior experience also includes McKinsey and Company in Mumbai and Singapore, and Evalueserve Inc., in India.

He received a Bachelor of Technology in Civil Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi in 2001 and an MBA (with honors) from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 2009.  He speaks Hindi, Telugu, and Oriya.

Jagannath Samavedam, General Partner, Ventureast

Jagannath is a Partner at Ventureast and leads the Ventureast Life Fund’s investments in the healthcare, pharma, digital-health and cleantech businesses. He has extensive experience in the PE space, as well as in project finance and corporate banking.

Prior to joining Ventureast in 2010, Jagannath was with Advaita Energy Advisors, a PE fund focused on energy investments. At Advaita, he was responsible for identifying investment opportunities in Indonesia and Australia. He was specifically involved in investing in two coal mines – one a two billion ton coal mine in Indonesia and the other a potentially 30 billion ton coal mine in Northern Australia. Earlier, Jagannath was the CFO of Naturol Bioenergy Ltd, India’s first fully integrated biodiesel plant that successfully shipped biodiesel to Europe, complying with their stringent standards. He was instrumental in raising $35 million from Private Equity players (including Ventureast) and banks.

Jagannath brings with him extensive experience in project finance and corporate banking gained through his 11 year stint with ICICI Bank as the zonal head of corporate banking business for the southern region. This gave him an opportunity to work with leading companies in the region for structuring financial solutions to their requirements.

Jagannath holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree from the Osmania University in Hyderabad, India, and an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, in Lucknow, India.

Jagdish Moorjani, COO, Citius tech

Jagdish Moorjani has spent over two decades across various leadership roles in technology and business process outsourcing. As the Chief Operating Officer of CitiusTech, Mr. Moorjani is responsible for project quality and delivery for all CitiusTech clients worldwide. He plays a key role in Quality Assurance and competency development initiatives directed towards client engagement, satisfaction and confidentiality.

Before CitiusTech, Mr. Moorjani co-founded TransWorks, where he was responsible for global operations, finance, infrastructure, commercial and legal. He led many key initiatives at TransWorks, including its first COPC certification, making TransWorks the first company in the world to be certified with COPC 3.2.

Mr. Moorjani holds a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). He also has a degree in Law from the University of Bombay, specializing in commercial and tax law.

Jagdish Narayanan, Chief Information Officer, Reliance Jio Payments Bank

Jagdish Narayanan, Chief Information Officer, Reliance Jio Payments Bank

Jagdish Narayanan is the CIO of Reliance Jio Payments Bank and Financial Services. With an experience of over 28 years’ in BFSI, he has led technology at digital fintechs such as Jio Payments Bank and Financial Services and Aditya Birla Payments Bank, as well as been a senior technology leader with large multi-national financial institutions such as Citi, Barclays, Bank of America.

As CIO of innovation-focused digital fintech banks, Jagdish has the unique experience of launching startup banks from scratch in all aspects, including product conceptualization and design, and end-to-end implementation including infrastructure, applications, strategy, vendor management, team buildout, and customer rollouts.

He has deep knowledge of global businesses in the domains of digital wallets, digital payments, paperless and friction-free e-commerce, Cash Management, Payments, Liquidity Management, Trade Finance, by virtue of experience in heading large global technology portfolios across regions such as North America, EMEA, and Africa.

Jai Rupani, Head, Dinesh Hinduja Family Office

Jai is a man who wears many hats. As the Head of the Dinesh Hinduja Family Office (DHFO), he oversees investments across all asset classes for the group: real estate, equities, bonds, structured products, private equity, and venture capital. Mr. Rupani led the real estate development efforts at Gokaldas Lifestyle, a group company of DHFO, for several years before taking the helm at the family office.

Before joining the Gokaldas Group, Mr. Rupani was part of the investment team at True North (erstwhile India Value Fund), a USD 2.2 billion private equity fund in Mumbai. During his tenure at True North, Jai led the investments into Merucabs (one of India’s first taxi-aggregation companies) and ACT Broadband (a leading IPTV and broadband service provider). Prior to True North, Mr. Rupani was an investment banker with The Royal Bank of Canada Capital Markets Group in their San Francisco office for several years. At RBC Capital Markets, Jai was integral to the technology investment banking team managing IPOs, private placements, and M&A deals. He has completed his formal education at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (BBA) and the University of Texas at Austin (MBA) in the United States. In his free time, he enjoys mentoring start-ups, playing golf, and spending time with his family.

Jaideep Hotha, VP & Head New Products, Hungama Digital

As a part of the Senior Management at Hungama I am responsible for launching new products and services on Music, Games, Videos and other VAS offerings across Telcos, Devices and ISPs Globally.

Jaideep Mehta, Managing Partner, IAN Alpha Fund (Moderator)