Our speakers

Mahesh Murthy, Partner, Seedfund

Mahesh Murthy is a founding partner at Seedfund, and has over 26 years of marketing and communications experience, of which 15 years are in online marketing. Mahesh has worked with Grey in India and Ogilvy in Hong Kong, where he won notoriety and awards as a creative director on HP, The Economist, Pepsi and MTV.

He moved to a Silicon Valley firm, CKS Partners (later, USWeb/CKS) as Creative Director, GM and Partner – where he helped launch the first commercial version of Yahoo in 1995 and the Earth’s Biggest Bookstore campaign for Amazon.com in 1997. Mahesh then returned to India to run Channel V, till its sale to Newscorp in 2000 and then founded Passionfund to invest in startups. He also set up Pinstorm in Bombay which is today among the world's leading digital marketing firms.

Mahesh has a passion for early-stage investing and teamed up with Pravin Gandhi and Bharati Jacob (ex-Infinity) in 2006 to set up Seedfund, today a leading early-stage venture capital fund in India.

Mahesh Narayanan, Global Chief Operating Officer, Saavn

Mahesh Narayanan is the Global Chief Operating Officer at Saavn. Based out of India’s Mumbai office, he oversees numerous functions of the company to encourage growth and support Saavn’s expansion. Narayanan is one of India’s top digital business leaders with over 15 years of experience across businesses in the mobile, ad-tech and consumer Internet spaces. He has been featured as one of the Top 99 Tech Indians twice (2012 and 2014), by Exhibit - a leading tech publication. Mahesh has held various senior leadership positions across global technology media companies such as Google, AdMob and Sociomantic. He has been a part of three companies that exited successfully through an acquisition. He spent 7 years at Google India across various functions and was awarded the Google Hero for his outstanding contribution to the organization. He joined AdMob as the Country Manager for India in 2009, and moved back to Google after the acquisition of AdMob.

Mahesh was named the Mobile Marketing Person of the Year at the Indira Marketing Excellence awards in 2011. He has also been featured in the Digital Power 100 list as one of the icons of India’s Digital ecosystem in 2012 by Impact, a leading advertising, media and marketing publication.

Mahesh Pratapneni, Co-Founder & Board Member, MedGenome

Mahesh Pratapneni co-founder and Board Member of MedGenome. He has led strategy, partnerships and corporate development including fundraising for the company. Mahesh is the founder and MD of Emerge Ventures that specializes in incubating product companies in the education, healthcare, and data/analytics sectors. He is known for building outstanding global teams and comes with broad experience in product visualization, development, management and building global delivery models. He holds a B. Tech. degree in Electronics and Communications from IIT Madras and an MBA from IIM Calcutta.

Mahesh Ramamoorthy, CIO, Yes Bank

Mahesh is the Chief Information Officer of YES BANK. In his role, he is leading Technology and Digital transformation for the Bank. Mahesh is also leading new age technologies such as API, AI/ML, BI and business solutions which is going to be driving factor for all new products at the Bank. Mahesh has over three decades of experience in the BFSI technology space in payments & banking technology, product design, business solution and project management across Indian and MNC Banks and technology firms. In his previous role, he was leading the Payments vertical for Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa at FIS Inc. He has also been associated with Barclays Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Aviva Plc, DCB Bank, IDBI Bank and Standard Chartered Bank. Mahesh holds a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering with a specialization in Electronics from the University of Mumbai and is a certified Information systems Manager and a Marshall Goldsmith certified, Stakeholder centered Coach.

Major Ashish Ahuja, Chief Operating Officer, Fino Payments Bank

Major Ashish is responsible for developing and executing innovative solutions for Fino Payments Bank. In addition to overseeing in house offerings, Ashish manages corporate partnerships and alliances to strengthen the product and service portfolio of the bank.

He is also entrusted with the task of ensuring accessibility of the bank’s products across multiple platforms – digital as well as physical. For smooth and seamless service delivery to customers, clients and merchants, Ashish is also responsible for the cohesive functioning of Products, Technology and Central operations.

Earlier, he successfully managed Fino’s corporate business and retail initiative of Money Marts. An Indian Army veteran with over 27 years of experience that includes military service, banking, corporate business, channel management, retail and more, Ashish’s strength lies in successfully executing complex projects.

Over the years, Ashish has represented Fino in multiple businesses and government forums on financial inclusion, DBT and AEPS amongst others. Ashish is a fitness buff and enjoys squash and golf in his spare time.

Major Ashish Ahuja, Chief Operating Officer, Fino Payments Bank

Major Ashish Ahuja has been associated with the Bank since inception and took charge as the Chief Operating Officer in June 2020.

Major Ashish is responsible for developing and executing innovative solutions for Fino Payments Bank. In addition to overseeing in house offerings, he manages corporate partnerships and alliances to strengthen the product and service portfolio of the bank. 

For smooth and seamless service delivery to customers, clients and merchants, Major Ashish ensures cohesive functioning of Products, Central operations and other affiliated functions.

An Indian Army veteran with over 28 years of experience across military service, banking, channel management, retail and more, Major Ashish’s strength lies in successfully executing complex projects.

Over the years, Ashish has represented Fino in multiple businesses and government forums on financial inclusion, digital payments, direct benefit transfer (DBT) and Aadhaar enabled payment systems (AEPS) amongst others.

Malay Bhowmik, Head Enterprise Business, Persistent Systems

Malay has decades of experience in identifying, developing, and exponentially growing new markets, building diverse and inclusive teams, and adopting the right technologies to enable successful digital transformation in enterprise. He is proficient in looking at the big picture, interacting with customers, and comprehending requirements.

Malay Bhowmik, Google Business Unit Enterprise Head, Persistent Systems

Malika Sadani, Founder & CEO, The Moms Co.

An engineer and MBA graduate by qualification, Malika Sadani is the Founder and CEO of The Moms Co. - India's leading company for toxin-free products catering to expectant and new mothers seeking natural, chemical-free products for their daily personal care regimen.

The idea for The Moms Co. came to her, in 2012; when she had just moved back to India from London. At the time, she couldn’t find safe products for her daughters locally; in fact, one of her daughters also suffered from a skin condition, which made high-quality solutions a necessity. She spoke to a number of parents, only to realize that there was a gap in the market for products that mothers could trust and the concern wasn’t hers alone. This birthed a brand, which serves over 2 million moms across 20,000 pin codes.

A category builder and pioneer in the space, in a short span, she has received several awards, including the Times She UnLTD. Entrepreneur Awards, Business World 40 Under 40, Pharma Leaders Power Brand Awards and others; while the product range has also been recognised at the Cosmopolitan Beauty Awards, Mother & Baby Awards - Mum’s Award, LUXlife Parent & Baby Awards (The Moms Co. is India’s first brand to have won this award) and yet others.  

An expert in her own right, Malika feels she has always been an obsessive mother and there are many moms like her who want the best for themselves and their babies, who hate having to compromise on the safety of the products they use for themselves and their family. She believes that with The Moms Co., she has embarked on a mission to help moms in India and across the world make safe, natural and effective choices for themselves and their loved ones.

In India's largest DTC transaction to ever take place in the beauty and personal care segment, in October 2021, The Moms Co., led by Malika’s expertise, was acquired by The Good Glamm Group. The Moms Co., India's first Nature In. Toxins Out.™ brand continues to work as an independent entity. An expert in her own right, Malika continues to grow the brand and aims at growing it to a Rs. 500 crore revenue run rate in the next two years.

Mallik Sundaram, Co-Founder, President & CEO, Mitra Biotech

Mallik Sundaram co-founded Mitra Biotech in 2008. He serves as the President & CEO of Mitra Biotech since May 2008. Prior to Mitra, Mallik was a scientific co-founder of Momenta Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: MNTA) which was founded on the sequencing technology for Complex polysaccharides and glycoproteins, co-developed by Mallik at the Sasisekharan laboratory at MIT. Mallik was instrumental in developing M-Enoxaparin, Momenta’s first Billion dollar drug and three other lead drug candidates through various stages of regulatory approval in the U.S.

Mallik obtained his Ph.D. in Biotechnology from the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT and MBA from the Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania. He has been an adjunct faculty in the Department of Bioengineering (2000-2007) and the Department of Chemical Engineering (2007-present) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA.