Our speakers
Phanindra Sama, Co-Founder & CEO, Redbus
Phanindra Sama “Phani” is Co-Founder & CEO of redBus.in, India’s largest bus ticketing company.
Founded in Aug. 2006, redBus today has operations across 25 states and offers services for ~39,000+ routes and has built relationship with about 1500+ bus operators and 40,000+ travel agents.
redBus is amongst Forbes top 5 startups to watch in 2010. redBus is ranked no#1 amongst the fastest growing companies in India in a survey done by All World Network. And is also awarded India’s best internet startup, 2010 by IMAI.
Phani is ranked no# 3 amongst India’s Most Promising Entrepreneurs by Business World. He has been chosen as a Global Shaper 2011 of the World Economic Forum. He was awarded Entrepreneur of the year award under IT, ITES category by ET NOW, the BITSAA 30 under 30 award and Ranked 4 in ‘Impact digital power 100’ in India in 2013. He is also selected as Endeavor Entrepreneur and TiE Entrepreneur.
He was a State ranker in Intermediate examination, Andhra Pradesh Sr. Secondary Board, graduated with distinction from BITS-Pilani, and worked with Texas Instruments, Bangalore before he co-founded redBus.
Philippe Micone, Founder, Noovoleum
Philippe Micone founded noovoleum in 2022 with 2 co-founders, leveraging technology and AI to sustainably collect used cooking oil from communities. Philippe obtained his Ph.D. in chemical engineering (Ecole Polytechnique Montreal) specializing in AI models for gas sensors. After working for the green tech start-up Odotech developing the European and African markets, Philippe joined Shell where he was leading the conventional O&G and biorefinery technology licensing in South East Asia. After leaving Shell, Philippe became the project director of the Sherdar Autsralia Bio Refinery and recently was in the same position for the First Resources Bio Refinery.
Pinak Chakraborty, CIO, Airtel Payments Bank
Pinaki Bhattacharyya, Founder, MD and CEO, AMPIN Energy Transition
Pinaki Bhattacharyya is the Founder, MD and CEO of AMPIN Energy Transition, a leading renewable energy transition company headquartered in New Delhi, India with its offices in Kolkata, Mumbai, and Bangalore. He established the company 9 years ago and today, AMPIN Energy Transition is an industry leading IPP with a pan India presence providing a one stop shop for customers through its powerful and resilient combination of large utility scale and C&I renewable energy projects, helping its customers to transition to 100% RE. With a portfolio of 5 GWp across 23 states catering to 100+ marquee customers in India and backed by leading institutional investors from Europe, Japan, rest of Asia and North America such as Sumitomo Corporation, SMBC and Siemens and with highest standards of corporate governance and ESG, AMPIN plans to scale up to 25 GW by 2030. In addition to its core renewable energy generation business, AMPIN’s Energy Transition enablers enhance its competitive edge by driving strategic initiatives in energy trading, solar cell and module manufacturing, green hydrogen, and energy storage, positioning it to become one of India’s leading energy transition players.
Pinaki Bhattacharyya has 23+ years of experience in India, US and Europe across PE, business incubation, leadership, operating and financing roles in the renewable energy sector. Prior to starting AMPIN, Pinaki was the CFO of Sterlite Power, India's leading transmission player. Additionally, he was the founding team member and CFO of one of the largest renewable IPPs in India (Sembcorp Green Infra) and the founding team member of the first renewable energy project equity fund in the US, New Energy Capital. He has managed the largest and most diversified renewable energy private equity portfolio of USD 300M for IDFC Private Equity. He has worked across the value chain in both renewable and thermal power generation at GE Vernova (erstwhile ALSTOM and ABB) and Intergen (a Shell-Bechtel venture with 16 GW power portfolio).
Pinaki is actively involved in policy advocacy for the renewable energy sector in India and holds key positions in various associations. He is the President of Distributed Solar Power Association (DISPA), Co-Chair of FICCI’s Renewable Energy CEO’s Committee and is an active member of CII and ICC’s Energy Committee. He has an MBA from Cornell University and B.E. Mechanical Engineering from Delhi College of Engineering.
Piruz Khambatta, CMD, Rasna Pvt. Ltd
Piush Kothari, Head Strategy, Digital business and Customer Analytics, Aditya Birla Payments Bank
Piush Kothari, from Aditya Birla Group, currently Heads Strategy, Digital business and Customer Analytics for Aditya Birla Idea Payments Bank. A member of the launch team, he has been contributing in creating the overall Bank proposition. As the Digital Business Head for ABPB, he is responsible to create the propositions across UPI, Mobile Banking and Internet Banking while customer experience at the heart of these digital products. Before this, he was a part of the Chairman’s office at the Group. The office works closely with the Group Chairman and advises him on strategic and operational issues across businesses. As a part of the office, his portfolio included working with the 11 Financial Services businesses within the Group (across Insurance, Asset Management, Lending, Securities Broking and Wealth Management) and the Chemicals businesses of the Group across India, Thailand and Germany.
Before joining Aditya Birla Group, Piush has held roles in the Lubricants business of Shell and in Accenture Strategy Consulting. In his eight plus years at Accenture, he has advised clients in Oil and Gas, Metals and Mining, Infrastructure and Private Equity on a variety of areas important for their businesses.
A commerce Graduate from St. Xavier’s, Calcutta, Piush completed his post-graduation from IIM Calcutta in 2002. He is a keen observer and strong believer in the Financial Services and Fintech future of India.
Piyush Agrawal, CEO & Founder, Superprofs.com
Piyush is a graduate from IIT Kanpur and Stanford University. After completing a master’s program at Stanford University, Piyush returned to India to set-up Aurus Network with the vision of enabling a million teachers connect with a billion students using technology. Piyush and the team developed a cutting edge technology which enabled various education & training institutes to deliver HD quality live classroom sessions at extremely low internet speeds (as low as 100 Kbps). This led to setting up of 100s of remote classrooms across the country where students could come and attend the live classes being delivered from top cities. Later, the team launched SuperProfs (stands for “Super Professors”) to make the classes of the best professors/teachers for various competitive exams available to students online itself, so that the students could attend the classes from their home. Today, more than 15 lakh students use SuperProfs every month and study from India’s Best Professors!
Piyush has been awarded the prestigious MIT Review Innovators Under 35 award (India) and is a co-author of 8 international publications, including 2 journal papers and 1 best student paper award winner at ACM Multimedia (Germany), along with being a co-author of 1 US patent.
Piyush Chowhan, Vice President & Chief Information Officer, Arvind Lifestyle Brands
He is an experienced professional working in areas of retail strategy, business analytics, customer loyalty and CRM, retail business consulting and supply chain management.
As CIO for Arvind Brands, he is responsible for IT strategy and execution of technology for all its brands business. With experience 20+ years in setting up new strategic groups, BU’s in areas of business, finance operations and analytics to achieve strong business benefits.
He possesses a strong domain knowledge in retail, e-commerce and supply chain management while working for global retailers like Walmart, Target, Circuit City, Tesco, Best Buy etc. He has set up and managed competency centers/ teams for retail and supply chain as shared service or captive units. He also has an exposure in building practice/ COE in business analytics and retail consulting.
With various publications under his name, Piyush is also proficient in Program Management, P&L Management, Business Consulting, PMO setup, ERP Implementation.
He has been featuring in many IT related events, Guest lecturing and published his views in many magazines like ETCIO, AIM.
Piyush Goenka, Partner, Tano India Advisors Pvt Ltd.
Piyush has over 6 years of experience in the financial services industry. Prior to his work with Tano, Piyush was working with IL&FS Ltd. in investment banking for over 3 years and was part of the team headed by Hetal Gandhi. Before that Piyush worked with Export Import Bank of India in Corporate Banking and with First Global Securities as an equity analyst.
Piyush is a Postgraduate in Business Administration from Management Development Institute, India and a Graduate in Commerce from St. Xaviers College, India. He is also a CFA Charterholder.
Piyush Gupta, Head of Credit Markets, Investec