Our speakers

Pranay Gupta, Joint CEO, CIIE

Pranay Gupta as the Joint CEO at the Center for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship, Pranay has been leading the IIM Ahmedabad's incubator to become the foremost organisation in early stage incubation in India. He has been instrumental in setting up and scaling various programs at CIIE, including iAccelerator. During his tenure, CIIE has incubated more than 20 startups and has raised funds to the tune of $2mn.

He is a board observer to more than 10 startups, where he helps them with setting up internal processes, deciding their business startegy, networking, and reaching out to the right kind of people. Apart from helping startups, Pranay enjoys creating opportunities for students to get involved in entrepreneurship - be it through the various courses and projects that CIIE provides to IIM students, or through internships for others.

Previously, he has worked with Lehman Brothers and Nomura, leading Investment Banks and helped them set up their India equity practice. He has also worked on shorter stints with promoters in a variety of fields including data analysis, luxury adventure tourism and educational magazine.

He is passionate about building organisations from ground up, and is currently getting his highs through his work with startups and by building CIIE & CIIE Initiatives.

Pranay Surana, Co-founder & COO, Flyrobe

Pranay is currently the co-founded & COO of Flyrobe - India's largest fashion rental service started in June 2015. Flyrobe has been nominated on the 2017 list of top 50 Global startups by Bloomberg and featured under Forbes 30 under 30 Asia.

He is graduated from IIT Bombay in 2013 (Mechanical engg). He has worked with Deutsche Bank for 2 yrs (June' 13 - May' 15) within their Investment Banking division covering EMEA Industrial clients.

Praneet Garg, Managing Director, Asia Alternatives (Hong Kong)

Praneet Garg is a Managing Director in Asia Alternatives’ Hong Kong office. Mr. Garg is on the Firm’s Investment Committee. Mr. Garg co-leads Asia Alternatives’ investments in India and Southeast Asia, and is primarily responsible for deal sourcing, due diligence, deal execution and portfolio management of private equity fund investments and direct co-investments in these geographies. Mr. Garg also co-leads the Firm’s Special Situations and Secondaries efforts across Asia and leads Asia Alternatives' market research function.

Prior to joining Asia Alternatives, Mr. Garg had over five years of consulting and research experience with the Private Equity Practice at McKinsey & Company in the Delhi and London offices. He worked with McKinsey Private Equity client teams on issues of Private Equity strategy, organization, performance and due diligence. He also led the Private Equity research team and authored several market research pieces on Asia Private Equity and other related topics.

Mr. Garg holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree and an M.B.A. from Mumbai University. Mr. Garg is fluent in Hindi, Punjabi and English.

Mr. Garg currently serves on the Advisory Boards of several of Asia Alternatives' Indian and Indonesian funds.

Praneet Garg, Principal, Asia Alternatives LLC

Praneet Garg is a Principal in the Hong Kong office. Mr. Garg co-leads Asia Alternatives’ investments in India and South East Asia, and is primarily responsible for deal sourcing, due diligence, deal execution and portfolio management of private equity fund investments and direct co-investments in these geographies. Mr. Garg also leads Asia Alternatives' market research function.

Prior to joining Asia Alternatives, Mr. Garg had over five years of consulting and research experience with the Private Equity Practice at McKinsey & Company in the Delhi and London offices. He joined McKinsey & Company in 2001 and led several Private Equity knowledge development projects. He worked with McKinsey Private Equity client teams on issues of Private Equity strategy, organization, performance and due diligence. He also led the Private Equity research team and authored several market research pieces on Asia Private Equity and other related topics.

Mr. Garg holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree and an MBA from Mumbai University. He is fluent in Hindi, Punjabi, and English.

Mr. Garg currently serves on the Advisory Boards for Nexus India I and II.

Praneet Singh, Partner, True North

Praneet joined True North in Oct 2017 and is based in the Mumbai office, where he works closely to build and manage True North portfolio companies in the healthcare space. With over 26 years of experience in the emerging markets, Praneet brings expertise in general management, leadership development, marketing, investing and consulting, with a specific focus on the healthcare and consumer industries. He has worked in diverse markets globally - in India, Southeast Asia, Latin America and the US.

Prior to joining True North, he was with Siguler Guff and Company, building and managing their portfolio of private equity investments in India and Southeast Asia. Before that, he spent five years as the CEO of Piramal Healthcare's India pharmaceutical business, growing it more than three-fold during that period. He has also done long stints as a consultant with McKinsey and Company, focusing on operations and marketing strategy, and as a brand manager with Procter & Gamble. He holds an MBA degree from IIM Calcutta and a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Delhi.

Praneet Singh, Partner, True North

Praneet joined True North in Oct 2017 and is based in the Mumbai office, where he works closely to build and manage True North portfolio companies in the healthcare space. With over 26 years of experience in the emerging markets, Praneet brings expertise in general management, leadership development, marketing, investing and consulting, with a specific focus on the healthcare and consumer industries. He has worked in diverse markets globally - in India, Southeast Asia, Latin America and the US.

Prior to joining True North, he was with Siguler Guff and Company, building and managing their portfolio of private equity investments in India and Southeast Asia. Before that, he spent five years as the CEO of Piramal Healthcare's India pharmaceutical business, growing it more than three-fold during that period. He has also done long stints as a consultant with McKinsey and Company, focusing on operations and marketing strategy, and as a brand manager with Procter & Gamble. He holds an MBA degree from IIM Calcutta and a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Delhi.

Pranjal Kumar , Principal, Bertelsmann Investments & Corporate center India

Pranjal Kumar is currently the Principal at Bertelsmann India Investments and Corporate Centre. He leads portfolio management for our investee companies, as well as steers investments in the education sector. In his Corporate Center role, he supports Bertelsmann’s divisions in evaluating the investing landscape and helping them execute growth / expansion plans.

Pranjal has a professional career of around 14 years, where he has spearheaded several strategic and operations related assignments across telecom, media, retail, consumer goods and real estate. His domain expertise lies in shaping growth strategy and its operationalization (market assessment & entry, supply market analysis, go-to-market and functional strategy, strategic due diligence / post-merger integration) and in driving large-scale operational excellence programs (efficiency improvement programs, organization structure & re-design).

He started his career with an Indian Oil major, and after his management diploma worked with multiple top-tier management consulting firms i.e. A.T Kearney, Accenture, KPMG and Tata Strategic Management Group.

Pranjal holds a Post-Graduate Diploma in Management from Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIM Bangalore) and a Bachelor’s degree in Technology from Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IIT Delhi).

Praphul Chandra, Founder, koinearth

Praphul Misra, Managing Director & CEO, Netcarrots Loyalty Services

Praphul Misra is Director & CEO at Netcarrots Loyalty Services. He has 16 years of experience in Sales, Market Research, Consulting, and Direct Marketing in India and USA. Prior to his current position, Praphul was designed and managed CRM programs for Hero Honda, General Motors, Hindustan Times, Microsoft, Usha Lexus, JCPenny, Discovery Channel, amongst others. He did B.Engg. from University of Roorkee (now IIT) and MBA from State University of New York, Buffalo.

Prasad Ankit, Founder & CEO, Touchtalent.com

Ankit Prasad studied Mathematic and Computing at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.  He dropped out in the final year to pursue his interest at Touchtalent. He swiped almost all major student awards during his stay at IIT Delhi including Best Fresher Award, Best Hostel Representative Award, Best Chief Editor Award, Cumulative contribution to Board for Student Publication award etc. Apart from these awards, he has many more awards to his credit; He was finalist at TiE International Business Plan Competition representing Touchtalent, Kairos Fellow for the year 2012-2013 and Global Student Entrepreneurship Award, South Asia 2013. He is also an official TEDx youth speaker. 

Ankit was always interested in Technology; He wrote his first program at the age of 6 and got appreciation from the district collector. Incorporated and made his first technology company profitable at the age of 16. During his stay at IIT Delhi, he was associated with number of technology start-ups. Before founding Touchtalent, he was the CTO of another IIT Delhi Start-up.

At Touchtalent, Ankit is responsible for product and engineering. He along with his team is working on the most modern technology to create unique user experience. Some of the technology initiatives taken by Ankit at Touchtalent are one of its kind in India, never tried and experimented before. Due to his dedication Touchtalent was recognized as top 100 startups led by university students in the world. 

Through technology Ankit wants to address the most complex problem of content creators i.e secure storage.  Premium content creators are hesitant to share their content online as they do not find any platform that can provide them secure storage.

In his free time Ankit spends his time in writing scripts and making videos. He has to his credits many viral videos that have been appreciated by global media