Our speakers

P S Jayakumar, MD, Value & Budget Housing

Mr. Jayakumar (Jaya) holds a Master's Degree in Management from XLRI, Jamshedpur, a Master's Degree in Commerce from the University of Madras and is an Associate Member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India. He is also a Gurukul Chevening Scholar from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Jayakumar started his career with Citibank in 1986 and has held many senior management positions at Citi including, Country Head for Consumer Business in India and Head-Consumer Lending in Asia Pacific and the Far East. During his banking career spanning 24 years, he has contributed significantly to the development of the retail banking industry in India.

P. Rudran, MD & CEO, Asset Reconstruction Company India Ltd

Mr. Rudran holds over 40 years of management and leadership experience in reputed banking and financial corporations like RBI, IDBI and SIDBI. He joined Arcil in April 2012 as the Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer and presently guides the strategic and operational aspects of the Company.

Prior to joining Arcil, he led the core professional team in setting up, operationalize and manage India SME Asset Reconstruction Company Ltd. (ISARC), a specialized ARC promoted by SIDBI. He was associated with SIDBI as the Chief General Manager and headed various head office departments.

P. Srikar Reddy, MD & CEO, Sonata Software Limited

Srikar is the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Member of the Board of Directors of Sonata Software Limited. A graduate from the Regional Engineering College (NIT, Trichy), and a Post Graduate in Management from IIM Calcutta.

Srikar has been with Sonata since 1986 and is pivotal in building Sonata as a trusted and reliable IT Solutions company. Srikar’s philosophy of driving business growth through a single-minded focus on customer and investment in people and technology, has made Sonata one of the fastest growing IT solutions company with a unique and differentiated strategy and value proposition.

In the last 6 years, between 2012 to 2018, since Srikar became the CEO of the company Sonata has seen its revenues, profits multiply many times and a market capitalization growing over 20 times, enabling the Financial and Industry analyst groups recognizing his focus to conceptualize and execute a unique growth strategy based on IP. This has helped Sonata to be a member of the group of unique Global growth companies at the World Economic Forum (WEF).

Srikar has set Sonata on a new growth path with a unique proprietary approach to creating digital businesses called “Platformation “

Srikar is actively involved with NASSCOM and CII, and was the Chairman of the Regional NASSCOM Council. He has been the Speaker at WEF and NASSCOM events. Srikar was conferred with the distinguished Alumni award by NITT, for his contribution to Industry/Corporate.

Sonata's growth over past 6 years is now widely recognized and Srikar has been featured recently in the list of India’s 10 most valuable CEO’s in the large enterprise category (2500 crore to 7500 crore) by ‘Business World,’ (Issue dated 18th June 2018). He has also been featured by Business Today (September 2017) as leading one of India’s fastest growing emerging (revenue between 500 to 2500 Cr) companies.

P. Vijayraghavan, Founder & CEO, Lawrencedale Agroprocessing India Pvt Ltd

Palat Vijayaraghavan founded Lawrencedale Agro Processing during March 2009 after being witness to the numerous troubles which the farmers go through in managing the life-cycle of their harvest.

The farmers, especially those with land-holding of less than 5 acres, are at the mercy of numerous intermediaries, when they (farmer) want to sell the produce. Vijayaraghavan, along with three partners, innovated to walk with the farmer in the entire life-cycle of the harvest and get them beneficial forward market linkages, besides offering a host of farmer services to improve the quality of the yield while reducing dependency on chemical pesticides.

With this foundation, Vijayaraghavan refined the fresh produce post-harvest management processes to drastically reduce the supply chain losses along the farm-to-fork link which enabled the retailers to increase their focus on the front-end. Innovating further, He has put in place a series of technology processes to drastically reduce the contaminants from the fresh produce and make them Safe To Consume.

An Automobile Engineer by education, Vijayaraghavan is a long-time resident of Ooty, and has been active in preserving the natural environs of the ecological biosphere of Ooty through eco-friendly landscaping and improving the town's infrastructure.

Vijay, a passionate and hands-on manager at Lawrencedale Agro, is also active in various facets of society development in Ooty and is actively involved in Road Safety Awareness.

P.K Sinha, Professor - Retailing and Marketing, Chairperson - Centre for Retailing, IIM - Ahmedabad

Piyush is a faculty in the area of marketing and retailing. He has more than three decades of academic and industry experience. He has taught at leading management schools of India. Prior to joining IIMA, he was the Dean at MICA. He teaches Retailing and Marketing Management to the post graduate students. He has been the Chairperson of the Centre for Retailing at IIMA.

Dr. Sinha has consulted companies in the areas of retail efforts, service management, marketing strategies, and marketing communication. His clients include companies from engineering, software, media, petroleum and retailing. He is working with some of the leading retailing companies in India. The projects include loyalty programmes, enhancing the performance of the outlets and redefining the role of the outlets in the new environments.

During his corporate tenure, Dr. Sinha has headed the marketing function of some of the leading companies Dr. Sinha serves on the board of many companies. He is one of the few resources working in the area of qualitative research in marketing in India. He is associated as a mentor with several start-ups, especially those promoting social entrepreneurship.

P.P Gupta, MD, Techno Electric & Engineering Company

Aged 60 years holds a Bachelors degree in Engineering and a Post Graduate degree in Business Management from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. He was associated with the Planning Commission, Government. of India, as a Financial Analyst; Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited as a Management Consultant and as an Advisor in the merchant banking division of the erstwhile ANZ Grindlays Bank, Kolkata. He was the Vice President of Indian Electricals and Electronics Manufacturers Association (IEEMA), and has over 33 years of experience, including 28 years in the present activity.

P.R. Srinivasan, Partner, Xponentia Capital Partners LLP

Prior to founding Xponentia, Mr. Srinivasan served as India Region Head and Managing Director of Citigroup Venture Capital International (“CVCI”). He was also a member of the CVCI team which raised two global emerging market funds – USD 1.5 billion in 2005 and USD 4.3 billion in 2007. Before CVCI, he was one of the founders of HSBC Private Equity in India, which raised a USD 60 million fund in 1995. Over his investment career, he has led and been involved in numerous deals with an aggregate invested capital in excess of USD 700 million. Mr. Srinivasan holds a bachelor’s degree from College of Engineering, Guindy, Chennai and obtained a post-graduate diploma in Business Management from Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.

Paavan Nanda, Co-founder, Zo Rooms

Paavan Nanda is the Co-Founder of Zostel Hospitality Private Limited (ZHPL), the fastest growing firm in Indian budget accommodation. A graduate from Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, Paavan is currently handing Business Development and Investor Relations for the company. Been with ZHPL since its inception, Paavan has handled multiple functions for the company. An avid traveller by himself, he believes in creating an empowered network of travel facilitators who can truly revolutionize the way India travels. Prior to this, Paavan has worked as a Consultant with Bain & Company.

Paavan Nanda, Co-Founder, Winzo

Paavan Nanda is a Co-Founder of WinZO, India’s largest interactive entertainment platform, WinZO. That has over 75 million users and has raised 100MM dollars from marque global investors. Paavan is a second-time entrepreneur. His first venture was Zostel & ZO Rooms, a Tiger Global-backed aggregator model. Paavan's corporate stints were with Bain & Company, Abbott Labs, and Bank of America - Global Trading Desk. MBA from IIM- Calcutta, Paavan did his Engineering from NSIT in 2009.

Pablo Erat, Partner, Pioneering Ventures AG

Dr. Pablo Erat, Partner at Pioneering Ventures, is an entrepreneur, investor and a passionate triathlete. He has over 15 years of strategy consulting experience and strong entrepreneurial track record within various industries. He has over 8 years of leadership experience in the incubation and development of industrial-size agricultural and food supply chain investments in India.

Throughout his career, Pablo has incubated and successfully led companies in the area of consulting, digital commerce, technology, and food processing. Within consulting, he co-founded the strategy consulting firm Executive Insight and became a recognized thought leader within the development transformative strategies and competence based organizational models improving strategic decision making and fostering cultural change, organizational learning and innovation. Pablo simultaneously lectured on corporate strategy at the Department of Management, Technology and Economics at ETH and his innovative ideas and concepts have been published in numerous industry and academic journals and presented at international forums and conferences.

Pablo joined Pioneering Ventures a project CEO in 2009 with the initial assignment to lead the incubation of Citrus International, India’s first and only industry scale orange juice concentrate manufacturer. Under his leadership, the project team developed the business turn-key solution, acquired Proterra as lead-investor and HDFC and PepsiCo as co-investors.

In his current role as a Partner at Pioneering Ventures, Pablo is focusing on investor relations, corporate communication and strategic guidance of venture development. Examples of new ventures are MilkLane, a company which aims to become India’s largest aggregator and supplier of high quality milk and FarmLink, a company modernizing the entire supply chain for F&B with the aim to become the largest and most preferred supplier of value-added fresh produce for industrial scale off-takers.

Pablo at the age of 34 decided to radically change his habits and start living a more healthy and active life. On this journey, Pablo discovered endurance training and became a passionate triathlete. Despite a demanding job, including long working hours, extensive responsibility and heavy travel, Pablo managed to transform himself from an unhealthy business professional to a multiple amateur Ironman champion with a personal best of 8 hours and 50 minutes. Over the past 10 years, Pablo has completed 20 full distance Ironman races, became European Champion in long-distance triathlon and Swiss Champion in ultramarathon cycling in the “couples’ category” together with his wife Lucia.

Pablo earned his Master's degree in Strategy and Organization as well as his Doctorate at the Institute of Management (IFB) at the University of St. Gallen (St. Gallen, Switzerland).