Our speakers

Manish Shah, MD & CEO, Godrej Capital

Manish is the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer at Godrej Capital. He has spent over 22 years in retail financial services, in diverse businesses such as secured and unsecured lending, credit cards, wealth management and life insurance with Citi India, CitiMortgage US, AEGON and Bank of Baroda.

He has held leadership roles in organisations ranging from MNCs, Public Sector enterprises to co-founding a robo-advisory start-up that was later acquired by Newscorp, making it one of India’s earliest fintech exits to a large global organisation. These stints involved setting up large distribution networks across the country, strategic business development, institutional fund-raising, building analytics and risk management frameworks, often from the ground up. He joined Godrej Capital from BoB Financial Services where he was the MD&CEO, heading the bank’s NBFC focused on the credit cards business. He is an alumni of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and Mumbai university.

Manish Shah, Co-founder and CEO, Bigdecisions.com | @bigdecisionscom

Cofounder and CEO of Bigdecisions.com, a personal finance advisory platform. Started in 2013, was acquired by News Corp in 2014 becoming one of the country's earliest exits to a global corporation. Currently responsible for putting together an organization that helps Bigdecisions become one of India's most robust and transparent platforms.

Prior to starting up, spent 15 years in the financial services industry across markets in India and the US in businesses ranging from unsecured lending, mortgages, wealth management and Life Insurance. Assignments range from managing P&Ls involving large distribution teams spanning widespread geographies to running institutional business development efforts with specialized units.

Manish is an alumnus of IIM Ahmedabad

@ManishAShah26

Manish Singhal, Founding Partner, Pi ventures

Manish is a keen technology, people and business leader. He brings in over 24+ years of experience in building hardware and software IP oriented product companies, early stage investing, valuations, deal structuring and strategy advisory across different sectors.

He is the Founding Partner of pi Ventures, a venture fund focused on Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and IoT based out of India. He has been active in the startup eco-system in India for several years. He co-founded LetsVenture.com and led it to become the leading marketplace for startups & early stage investors in India (enabled 15 startups raising their rounds) within a very short span of time.

Before LetsVenture, he was the India country manager for Sling Media Inc, a silicon valley based consumer electronic startup. He built the R&D and product team in India from scratch and took it to a successful acquisition to Echostar Inc in the USA for 380M USD.

He is also a founder-mentor for an initiative called Women Entrepreneur Quest, which is an annual event for recognizing and rewarding women entrepreneurs in India.

After doing his engineering from IIT Kanpur in 1992, he has been instrumental in building several products and teams in different startups and established organisations like Sling Media, Ittiam Systems and Motorola. He has contributed to the standardisation of MPEG-4 standard and holds couple of video technology patents to his name.

Manish Singhal, Founder & CEO, LetsVenture

Manish Singhal is founder & CEO of LetsVenture. He is a serial entrepreneur and active angel investor. After doing his engineering from IIT Kanpur in 1992, he has been instrumental in building several products and teams in different startups and established organisations like Sling Media, Ittiam Systems and Motorola. He has contributed to the MPEG standard and also holds two patents to his name in video technology. .

Manish Tandon, Managing Director, Indian Cookery Pvt Ltd

Manish Tandon is the MD of Indian Cookery, which was created to launch high quality restaurants globally, specialising in Indian and other popular cuisines.

Mr. Manish Tandon has 23 years experience in the hospitality sector, of which thirteen have been in a General Manager/ National Director role. His key strengths are a deep understanding of the real estate market in India - involved in opening of over 200 outlets for KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Hard Rock Cafe, Gloria Jeans Coffees, Funcity, and Shiros.

He has strong brand start-up experience being part of the team for (Yum Restaurants International owner of brands like KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell) KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bells launch in India as well as leading the Hard Rock Cafe and Shiro launch, as the CEO of the business.

Manish Taneja, Co-founder & CEO, Purplle

Manish Taneja is the Co-founder and CEO of Purplle.com. Manish Taneja is a sharp and astute entrepreneur with demonstrative experience in scaling up, raising capital, building 100+ people teams. With a strong background in finance and technology, Manish is skilled in Finance, Strategy, and E-Commerce.

Manish has been instrumental in transforming Purplle.com and making it one of India’s leading beauty e-tailer with over 800 brands and 50000 products and around 2 million monthly active users. Purplle was last valued at $145M in its Series C fundraise from Goldman Sachs and Verlinvest.

Manish has successfully scaled Purplle’s homegrown beauty brands such as Good Vibes, Purplle, NY bae, and others. Good Vibes from this cohort has already become a 150 Cr brand and is among the top 3 in Naturals Skincare space on the app. Known for his consumer-centric approach, Manish has steered the brand towards building a differentiated, highly personalized digital shopping experience for consumers through the Purplle app by creating detailed user personas, enabling customers to test make-up and recommending products based on personality, search keywords, and purchase behavior.

With Manish at the helm, Purplle.com’s employee strength has reached close to 1000 and the business is growing by 100 percent year on year. Purplle is well-positioned to be a leader in the burgeoning Indian e-beauty space.

Manish holds a B.Tech in Electrical Engineering and a Masters in Information & Communication Technology, from IIT Delhi. Besides scaling the ladder of start-up excellence and keeping a keen eye out for potential investors, he is a Green tea connoisseur and an avid reader. He wishes to be an author/interviewer one day. Prior to Purplle.com, Manish has worked with Fidelity Growth Partners India (now called Eight Roads), Avendus Capital, and Lehman Brothers. He started the beauty ecommerce platform in 2012 with co-founders Rahul Dash and Suyash Katyayani.

Manish Tewari, Co-founder, Pokkt.com

A veteran of a half dozen startups, Manish is an accomplished entrepreneur and leader with a strong history of designing and delivering new products to emerging markets. He currently serves as Co-Founder and CTO at Pokkt where he leads the teams responsible for the development and operation of software and systems powering the mobile industry's leading revenue optimization solution for freemium app developers.

Before Pokkt, Manish was the Founder/CEO of Koovs.com, India's leading Fashion Ecommerce portal. During his tenure, Koovs became the only Indian Ecommerce company to be listed on London Stock Exchange AIM Market with a market cap more than 100 million dollar. At Koovs he was focused on innovation in Operations, Technologies and Marketing Services.

Prior to Koovs, Manish has worked in different technical roles in various top startups like Tavant Technologies, Ketera Technologies and Minglebox Communications. Manish holds a Bachelor of Technology in engineering from IIT BHU. His current area of interest are Scalable Architectures, Distributed Design Patterns, NoSQL and Functional Programming.

Manish Vij, Founder and CEO, SVG Media Pvt. Ltd.

Manish Vij, is the Founder & CEO of SVG (Smile Vun Group). He is a veteran of the digital media industry and has over 12 years of experience in the internet domain.
 
Manish has founded leading internet companies in areas of digital marketing and e-commerce with international joint ventures and leading venture capital firms. Manish’s entrepreneurial ventures include:

• Quasar - A joint venture with WPP is an award winning and leading digital marketing agency in India

• SVG Media - SVG Media, a Smile Vun Group company is the Largest Indian Digital Media Network with over 150 Million Unique Visitors. SVG Media started its India operations in 2006 and is the launch pad for successful digital advertising technology media businesses. SVG Media houses leading Performance, Mobile, Social, Data Targeting and Rich Media businesses such as Tyroo, DGM, Seventynine and Komli. Through its four entities, SVG Media represents more than 70% of India’s Internet base. SVG Media is a joint venture between Vun Network and Smile Group and is funded by Xplorer Capital

• SeventyNine - A leading mobile advertising company in India, revolutionizing the space through its path breaking technology to serve videos in mobile applications. Seventynine was successfully sold to Gruner+Jahr, Europe’s leading magazine publisher in 2012 and later in December 2014 was acquired by SVG Media.

• Letsbuy.com -  India's leading online electronics and IT retailer that was funded by reputed venture capitalists (now sold to Flipkart)

Prior to establishing SVG and Vun Network, Manish was associated with Rediff.com for over 4 years and he also started India’s first digital classifieds business - kabadibazaar.com in 1999.

Manish, an MBA in marketing is not only a pioneer in the internet marketing space but also one of the youngest dotcom entrepreneurs. Manish has represented the Indian digital industry in various domestic and international industry forums, events and seminars.

Manisha Girotra, CEO, Moelis India

Manisha Sood, Country General Manager, Fitbit India | @FitbitIN

Manisha Sood is the Country General Manager-India for Fitbit. Manisha has joined the company in August 2015, and was previously the Director, SMB for Microsoft India. At Microsoft, Manisha was responsible for leading the sales and marketing function of the Small & Medium Enterprise Business within India. Prior to Microsoft, she was at SanDisk where she was Country Manager & Director for the India & SAARC region for over six years. She has to her credit launching the SanDisk business in India and taking the brand to the leadership position. Manisha also evangelized Marketing for SanDisk in driving the brand's first ever TV campaign in the world which was later introduced in US and Latin America region. In her career spanning over 25 years, Manisha has been in country head roles for over a decade-and-a-half. Prior to SanDisk, Manisha worked with Kodak India Ltd. as General Manager, Digital Capture and Home Printing for 10 years and with Modi Olivetti as Business Manager. Manisha has over two dozen leadership awards and citations to her credit including the Top 10 Most Influential People in Photography award five times in a row for her incessant contribution to the Indian imaging sector. She was also listed among the 10 Women on Top in Indian IT by The Economic Times and Telecom's Women Team by the My Mobile magazine. Manisha holds a bachelor's degree in Chemistry from Bombay University and a Diploma in Computer Science from IITC Mumbai.