Our speakers

Pradeep Cholayil, Managing Director, Cholayil Pvt Ltd

Pradeep Dadha, CEO and Founder, Netmeds.com | @NetMeds

Pradeep Dhada’s Netmeds.com, known as India Ki Pharmacy, brought home the highly coveted NDTV Unicorn Award for Health-Tech Start-up of the Year. Prior to launching Netmeds, he paved a tracked record of innovation and achievement by founding and leading companies that operated worldwide and within a range of industries that include hospitality, digital publishing, e-commerce, and corporate wellness.

Growing up in Chennai, he graduated from Loyola College and worked at his family’s pharmaceutical business, Dadha Pharma, Pvt. Ltd, creating a retail distribution chain of more than 1,500 outlets. Then, to further hone his business acumen, Pradeep left the comfort zone of the family business and took positions with the contact centre divisions of Reliance Infocom and Sun Communique. In 2003 he developed the back-office model for an international pharmaceutical company, one of the first global operations of its kind. His latest venture, Netmeds.com, is India’s first e-marketplace offering pharmaceutical and OTC healthcare products across the pan-Indian spectrum. In its first year of business the company has served customers in every state and more than 600 cities.

Pradeep Gidwani, Coach & Founder, The Pint Room

51 years young, Pradeep Gidwani is chasing his dreams to set up the “ Starbucks of beer”. Pradeep is setting up a chain of beer cafes across the country. Pradeep conceptualized and set up The Beer Café in Dec 2010 before selling the business to his former partner. In Apr 2012, Pradeep launched a new chain of beer cafes under the brand name – The Pint Room. Today The Pint Room has 4 outlets across India and is a casual neighbourhood meet up space over great beer.

His last Corporate job was as Managing Director of Carlsberg’s India operations. He was responsible for developing the India entry strategy, setting up and building Carlsberg’s brewing business in India. In a short span of 2 ½ years Carlsberg has established a strong foundation in India under Pradeep Gidwani’s leadership with 5 top quality breweries spanning the North, East, South and West of India, presence of its brands across the Indian sub continent. 3 brands Carlsberg, Tuborg and Palone have delighted quality conscious consumers and have established a place in the mind and hearts of Indian consumers. Carlsberg has been one of the most successful consumer goods companies to setup business from scratch in India and achieve revenues of USD 50 million in its 2nd full year of operations in 2009. Carlsberg is the 3rd largest brewer in India currently.

Pradeep Gidwani started working in 1986 and in 25 years has held various senior positions across some of the finest corporations in the world. Prior to Carlsberg, Pradeep lived in Dubai and worked with Red Bull as Managing Director of its Asia Business and was responsible for the development of the Red Bull brand across Asia. Before this he was part of the team that built Foster’s into one of the most successful beer/ consumer goods brand that was ever launched in India. His prior experience covers almost every category in the beverage business starting from tea/ coffee with Unilever’s Brooke Bond where Pradeep started as a Management Trainee, experience in spirits with UB Group, launch and development of the Scotch whisky segment in India with brands like Johnnie Walker, Black Dog, Black and White, Vat 69, introducing India to the fine world of grapes with champagne – Dom Perignon, Moet Hennessy, cognacs – Hennessy and a portfolio of wines.

Pradeep Gidwani is recognized across the Food and Beverage world for concept selling, creating brands, start ups each of them highly successful. In Sep 2002
Business Today ranked Pradeep as one of India’s Hottest Young Executives in its First ever listing of 25 of India Inc’s rising stars. Almost every Business Media has featured Pradeep as one of the best known entrepreneurs in the beverage segment.

Pradeep, 51, is one of the few whose passion at work spills into his hobby. He is an avid collector of the finest beverage products from across the world, has studied each of these categories in an in depth manner, has visited some of the finest maltings, distilleries, wineries, breweries, bottle/can manufacturing units - anything to do with beverages. His knowledge and passion about adult beverages is unrivalled. Pradeep has also been invited to share his experience in building successful start ups, experiential marketing at various Brand Marketing and Business Forums across the country. Pradeep is also an avid traveler taking unique holidays including personally captaining and steering a boat in France for a week, driving holidays in Scotland, France, Germany, Wales, Australia and New Zealand.

Pradeep is a graduate of the Symbiosis Institute of Business Management and has been recognized as one of its best known Alma matar. He loves numbers and completed his BSc in Mathematics from Wadia College, Pune. His schooling was across the country - as Pradeep says “ ten schools in ten years, tons of friends in every part”.
Maybe it is this early trait that has given Pradeep an amicable, social and down to earth approach where meeting people in a bar is something he truly enjoys.

@pradeepgidwani

Pradeep Goel, MD, Prudent Arc Ltd.

Pradeep Goel, CMD, Prudent ARC Limited; Chairman, ASSOCHAM National Council for ARCs & Vice -Chairman, ARC Association

Work experience of 27 years as an industrialist, entrepreneur in the field of Iron and Steel. During all these years, he has been actively involved in establishment of businesses such as Power Projects – Thermal, Hydro & Solar and Pharmaceutical, Engineering, Ship-breaking, Real Estate and so on. He has vast experience while having combined knowledge of the domestic conditions as well as global. During his visits world-over for different sectors of industries that he was involved in, his hand on experience has given him a global outlook on most of the industrial sectors. Thus creating a Vision, Knowledge-base and Understanding of all aspects, which are required for running a successful industry / organization in specific sectors and otherwise too.
He is Chairman of ASSOCHAM National Council for ARC ‘s & Vice -Chairman of ARC Association.

Pradeep Gupta, Chairman & MD, Cyber Media (India) Ltd.

Pradeep Gupta is the Chairman of the CyberMedia Group, South Asia's first and largest specialty media house, with 15 publications, 12 websites, 100+ events and weekly TV programs in the infotech, telecom, consumer electronics & biotech areas. CyberMedia’s brands include Dataquest, PCQuest, Voice&Data, BioSpectrum, DARE, MIT’s Technology Review, CIOL.com and Global Services. The group's media services include market research (CMR) and content outsourcing (Content Matrix Inc). CyberMedia is a public company.

Pradeep is also an Angel investor and a mentor to a number of entrepreneurs. He is the co-founder of Indian Angel Network. He is the Chairman of the Board of Advisors of IIT Alumni Trust. He is the President of the Association of Indian Magazines. He is also on the Board of UTI, IIT Mandi, TiE Global, PanIIT India and Kaleidoscope Entertainment.

He is the recipient of the Distinguished Alumni award of IIT Delhi and the Helen Keller award for working in the disability sector.

Pradeep is an Engineer from IIT Delhi (1975) and an MBA from IIM Calcutta (1977).

Pradeep Hirani, Chairman, Kimaya Fashions Pvt Ltd

Armed with an experience of over 20 years in Luxury Fashion Retail, Mr. Pradeep Hirani anchors India’s largest Multi Designer Fashion House - KIMAYA Fashions Pvt. Ltd. With 24 stores spread across India, UAE and Pakistan, KIMAYA was the first Indian fashion house to scale up the country’s designer wear industry, both in terms of footprint and experience.

Mr. Hirani constantly endeavors to revolutionize the buying pattern of the quintessential Indian woman and open up new vistas in the domain of luxury fashion. As a testimony, he laid the foundations of “KARMIK” - an innovative brand that retails prêt collections by Leading Designers at an average price of $100!

Under the aegis of Mr. Hirani, KIMAYA has won a number of awards along its journey since its inception in 2002. The company is an ISO 9001 certified Fashion House that has won the “Star Luxury Retailer of the Year Award” for 4 years in a row.

Having pursued his Masters in Business Administration from NMIMS, Mumbai, Mr. Hirani is responsible for developing the expansion strategy for the group. He is also an anchor and a regular speaker at various retail forums like IRF, RAI, IFF, and VC-Circle.

He is an advisory board member and goodwill ambassador to Fashion Institutes like The New School of Design (Parsons), National Institute of Fashion Technology, WLC College India, G.D. Goenka, and Pearl Academy of Fashion amongst others.

Pradeep Kumar, CEO - Government Business, Vakrangee Limited

Pradeep Kumar is an ex-IRS officer with a MBA and B.Tech in telecommunications. He has more than 18 years of experience in Global Business Development and execution of large public sector IT projects.

Prior to joining Vakrangee, he has consulted several large corporations on World Bank and Asian Development Bank projects.

Pradeep Lokhande, CEO, Rural Relations

Pradeep Lokhande’s goal to reach out and contribute to the development of rural India inspired him to embark on a mission 20 years ago, which is today known as Rural Relations. Banking on one of his prime area of interests, Information Technology, Pradeep installed used computers in rural secondary schools, where the interest and curiosity of students is very high. Till 2009 Rural Relations was able to install 20,000 used computers directly or indirectly across 10 states in India.

Post the success of this initiative, Pradeep embarked on yet another movement named Non-Resident Villagers (NRV) movement. With the help of NRV, till date 3,280 Gyan-key libraries in rural secondary schools have been established. In addition to this Pradeep is also credited with the game changer initiative villagewiKY, which is an open information platform of key and feeder villages of India.

@pradeeplokhan de

Pradeep Sampath, COO, MMP Mobiwallet Limited (mRupee)

Pradeep Sampath is the Chief Operating officer of MMPL, the Mobile Payments arm of TataTele Services Limited. He has over 18 years of experience in the areas of Sales & Operations across Payments, Network and IT. His last assignment was with ElectraCard Services (P) Limited where he was responsible for Sales & Business Development for Switching & Card Management Solutions. He was managing the Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa Operations based out of Dubai. His experience spans across companies like Network Solutions Limited, Wipro Limited, Infotech Group, IBM India Private Limited and Euronet Services India (P) Limited.
 
He has completed his Bachelor of Engineering (Electronics & Instrumentation) from Bharathidasan University. He has also pursued his Post Graduate Diploma in Business Administration from the Loyola Institute of Business Administration.