Our speakers

Padmanabhan Raja Jaishankar, Managing Director, IIFCL

With his rich experience of around 33 years in Development Banking and Financial Domains, Mr. Jaishankar expertizes in Structured Project Finance, New Financial Product Development, Risk Management and other functions. He structured the first ever Mortgage Securitisation transaction in India along with a number of other structured financial solutions such as Credit Enhancement, Takeout Finance and Reverse Mortgages.

He has been actively engaged in assisting the Government in its various Committees on Sectoral Policies, which includes leading the initiative for the First Dedicated Credit Enhancement Company for the infrastructure sector. He is also a leading member of the project finance group of the Inter-Ministerial Steering Committee (IMSC) for financing of infrastructure investment under the National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP) announced by the Government of India.

Before his current position as Managing Director, IIFCL, Mr. Jaishankar has graced various key positions such as Executive Director of National Housing Bank, Director&CEO of IIFCL Projects Ltd. (IPL), Chairman (Board of Trustees) of IIFCL Asset Management Company Limited (IAMCL) and was Chief General Manager, IIFCL.

Mr. Jaishankar holds a Master's degree in Technology from IIT, Delhi and is an MBA (Finance) from FMS, Delhi University.


Padmasingh Isaac, Founder & Chairman, Aachi Masala Foods (P) Ltd

Mr. A.D. Padmasingh Isaac, Chairman and Managing Director of AACHI Group of Companies was born in Dec 1955 in a middle class family at Nazareth, Tirunelveli District. He did his graduation in Business Administration from Aditanar College, Tiruchendur and joined for Godrej Soaps as Sales Officer. In view of his excellent and meritorious performance, within two years he was promoted as Area Sales Manager in charge of Tamil Nadu. His 10 years of experience in Godrej Soaps that kindled his entrepreneurial spirit in Mr. Isaac! In 1998, he started with a product of Liquid Blue and thereafter, introduced AACHI MASALA products in rural and semi urban areas of Tamil Nadu. He is well knowledged in the abundant market potential of all standards of work life before several MNCs stepped in aggressive rural marketing.


Pallabi Ghosal, Partner, Trilegal

Pallabi Ghosal is part of the Corporate practice group at Trilegal and a very well-regarded partner specialising in investment funds and asset management practice. She also regularly advises on financial regulatory matters. She also assists funds in their portfolio investments, joint ventures, and other corporate restructurings.

Pallabi has drafted many submissions (as a part of requests from various industry bodies) for changes in laws framed by Indian regulators including SEBI, RBI, IRDA and the Government of India.


Pallav Mohapatra, MD & CEO, Asset Reconstruction Company (India) Limited


Pallav Nadhani, Co-founder & CEO, FusionCharts

Pallav is the co-founder and CEO of FusionCharts. He started FusionCharts at the age of 17 without any external funding. Today, FusionCharts has over 21,000 customers and 450,000 developers. His entrepreneurial journey has been covered by various magazines like Forbes, Entrepreneur, Business Today, Economic Times and numerous blogs & websites.

 

Pallav holds an MS in Computer Science from the University of Edinburgh, UK. He has co-authored a book on combining the power of Flash and .NET called 'Flash.NET' in 2002 and has written several technical articles for international journals ever since.

 

Pallav also holds the position of Chief Gardener at Seeders, an angel fund which he co-founded for seed funding technology companies in India. In his free time, he loves traveling, cricket and poker.


Pallavi Joshi Bakhru, Partner and Leader - Private Client Services, Grant Thornton Bharat (Moderator)

Pallavi drives the tax and regulatory services group of the firm, which specializes in cross border transactions, investment and business structuring, compliance, transaction advisory services, transfer pricing and indirect taxes.
 
Pallavi has over 21 years of post-qualification experience in the field of taxation. Her area of expertise includes inbound and outbound structuring advisory (including regulatory compliance) for both Indian and overseas investors. She has also advised clients on re - structuring and advisory on mergers and slump sale.
 
Pallavi is a Fellow Member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and an active member of International Fiscal Association - India Branch.

Pallavi has over 30 years of experience spanning solutions and clients in different sectors. She was the Head of Tax at a large $ 15 Billion natural resources group for five years and worked closely with the Promoters and assisted with growth strategies.

Currently, Pallavi is the Head of the Private Client Service offering at Grant Thornton Bharat and also heads the UK Corridor, In 2015, Pallavi was recognized as one of the Top 10 Women in Tax in India by the International Tax Review.

Her specialties include corporate tax, litigation, including being a part of a team that ran an international arbitration under Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT), tax structuring and regulatory matters pertaining to FEMA.

Over the years, she has 

  • simplified the global structure of some large groups
  • institutionalized a royalty payment system 
  • resolved some high-pitched tax litigation and 
  • done Advocacy

Pallavi works closely with Promoters on critical aspects of business, including decisions related to 

  • business restructuring / evaluate reducing ETR for promoters
  • succession planning
  • she has helped clients re-organize their business and take their geographic footprint overseas.
  • help draft a Family Constitution 
  • acquire second residences overseas
  • set up and manage Family Offices


Her clients range from large listed to privately held companies and high-net worth-individuals.

Sector Experience
Natural resources, consumer and retail, aviation, manufacturing, and education

Professional qualifications and memberships
Fellow Member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India

Member, Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs

Pallavi sits on the Boards of two listed and 3 unlisted Companies as an Independent / Non-executive Director

 


Pankaj Bajaj, Managing Director and Chairman, Eldeco Group

Pankaj Bajaj graduated from the Shri Ram College of Commerce, Delhi University with a Bachelors degree in commerce. He later did his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad. Pankaj joined his family promoted company Eldeco Housing & Industries Ltd in Lucknow in 1996. The company had and continues its leadership position in various segments of real estate development in UP.

In 2000, Pankaj Bajaj moved to Delhi and formed Eldeco Infrastructure & Properties Ltd. (EIPL). Today the Eldeco Group has a major presence in many North India cities. Apart from group housing, shopping malls and office buildings, the Eldeco Group is active in residential and industrial townships.  The Company’s business strategy rests on positioning of each of the properties as premium in the segment for which it is proposed, high quality construction technology and timely delivery. The Eldeco Group has successfully delivered more than 175 real estate projects and is currently executing 25 projects including 10 large townships. Under the leadership of Pankaj Bajaj, Eldeco is currently executing large-scale projects in the states of UP, Haryana, Punjab, Uttarakhand and Rajasthan.

Apart from serving on various policy advisory committees, he is serving as the President of CREDAI, NCR-the association of developers in the NCR of Delhi.


Pankaj Dinodia, CEO, Dinodia Capital Advisors

Mr. Pankaj Dinodia is the Chief Executive Officer of Dinodia Capital Advisors and leads a diversified team of young Investment Bankers at the firm. He started his career at Goldman, Sachs & Co. in New York in the Investment Banking division. He was later handpicked to move to India to set up Goldman's Private Equity business (Principal Investment Area) in Mumbai. He was involved in the execution of numerous investments including Mahindra & Mahindra (US$ 175 Mn), Sudhir Gensets (US$ 50 Mn) and TVS Logistics (US$ 25 Mn). 

Mr. Dinodia’s prior work experience also includes Cue Ball Capital (a venture capital firm based in Boston), Lehman Brothers (Investment Banking in New York), Deutsche Bank (Private Wealth Management in New Delhi) and Ernst & Young (Management Assurance in New Delhi). Most Recently, Mr. Dinodia has been felicitated as the ‘Entrepreneur of the Year 2013- Financial Services’ by Franchise India, Asia’s largest retail and franchise solutions provider.

He is the founder of the Global Wharton India Mentoring Network and the Co-Founder and former President of the Wharton Alumni Association's Delhi Chapter. He also sits on the Executive Board and Management Committee for the Harvard Business School Club of India and is a Charter Member for TiE Delhi.

He graduated magna cum laude from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania for his B.S Economics Degree (concentration in Finance) where he was on the Dean's List and received an MBA from the Harvard Business School (HBS), where he graduated with second year hono.


Pankaj Goel, CTO, BharatPe


Pankaj Jain, Partner, 500 Startups

Pankaj Jain is a Partner at 500 Startups, a California based seed fund and accelerator program. Pankaj focuses on investing in early stage startups across New York City, India, South Asia and has led investments in over fifty companies at 500 Startups across 6 countries. After getting his B.S. from NYU’s Stern School of Business, Pankaj spent over 12 years in the Financial industry at firms such as JP Morgan, Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) and GlobeOp Financial Services.

At Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM), Pankaj served in various roles including enterprise mortgage risk management, application development architecture, and market data infrastructure. From there, Pankaj went on to become one of the founding employees of GlobeOp Financial Services in late 1999, where he headed the firm’s trade management, pricing and data infrastructure as well as customer service areas.

In 2007, Pankaj’s adventures in India began, where he started a company building an on-demand, employment marketplace for the under-served. In 2008, Pankaj became a co-founder of the HeadStart Network Foundation and the led the efforts in Delhi. In late 2010, he began the process of founding Startup Weekend in India and led the organization until 2013.

In early 2012, Pankaj began working with TLabs, an Indian accelerator, where he helped source, select and invest in startups for the first two cohorts. In late 2012, Pankaj joined 500 Startups to lead the firm’s investments in Indian startups. Pankaj moved back to New York City in late 2013 and continues to focus on Indian startups targeting the domestic Indian market as well as a global market. Pankaj loves to eat, play video games, write really bad Perl code and sit on tropical beaches
doing nothing. He sometimes blogs at http://blog.pjain.me and can be found on Twitter at @pjain