Our speakers

Pushkar Chitale, GM-Products, Mobango

Pushkar Chitale is the General Manager- Products at Mobango– a part of People Group.  People Group is recognized today as a new-age Media & Entertainment company.  In a few short years the group has earned the reputation for being one of the most innovative businesses in India, having developed brands such as Shaadi.com, Makaan.com, Mauj Mobile and Mobango.  Mauj Mobile is one of the world’s fastest growing Mobile Internet companies delivering apps, games and videos to users all over the world.  Mauj Mobile boasts over 10 million unique visitors per month and powers over 1 million mobile downloads a day.

Pushkar has been a part of Mauj Mobile since inception, in 2003, building up the design team then as well as handling several key mobile game projects. He joined People Group again in 2007 has been instrumental in the development of various games for Mauj Mobile clients. Since the acquisition of Mobango in 2010, as the General Manager, Pushkar has provided strategic inputs to the development and continued growth of Mobango apps store and oversees the product line, partnerships as well as manages the global developer community.

Pushkar is professionally qualified in Sculpting and Modeling having a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from J J School of Arts. He also has professional qualification in Multimedia and Animation with a deep knowledge of software’s such as Maya, Max, etc. He started his career with Crest India in Mumbai moving on to work with leading organizations like GDR Media in Bangalore, Indiagames in Mumbai and LG Mobile in Pune.

Pushkar Kulkarni, Managing Director, CPP Investments

Pushkar Kulkarni is an Electronics Engineer from VJTI with an MBA from JBIMS, Mumbai. Before joining CPPIB, Pushkar served as the Managing Director of Serco in India with a board position. Prior to Serco Pushkar worked for 12+ years as the CEO of an Infrastructure Technology company, Efkon the Indian subsidiary of Strabag, a European Construction & Infrastructure conglomerate. He has represented India at the International Standards Org (ISO) on several technical committees responsible for communication standards in road & transport infrastructure.

Pushkar has over 2 decades of experience in Infrastructure covering Technology to Operations and Investing. He has led several M&A transactions across his assignments as also worked on several marquee Infrastructure projects including:
1. Bandra – Worli Sea Link
2. Yamuna Expressway
3. Nationwide FastTag system

Pushkar founded the CPP Investments Infrastructure practice back in 2015 and since has led several investments including:
4. IDPL JV with Larsen & Toubro
5. IndInfravit IPO, India’s first Private Listed InvIT
6. PGCIL InvIT IPO
7. NHAI InvIT IPO

Pushkar Rege, Global CIO, UPL

Quentin Mees, Founder, BelgYum Waffles

Quentin Mees is a Belgian national and have been living in india for about 6-7 years, in Mumbai and Bangalore. I have spent about 10 years in marketing and advertising in both Belgium and India and I also followed a program in Belgium to become a chocolate maker.

One and a half year ago, With my wife (Arati rao, an Indian national and Hospitality graduate with about 15 years of experience in managing restaurants in Delhi, Calcutta, Mumbai and Bangalore) and 2 other Indian partners, we have started BelgYum: an Original Belgian Waffle Concept, in Phoenix Mall, Bangalore.

Based my grand-mother recipe, me and my wife got a training in Brussels, in the eldest and most famous waffles and biscuits company of Belgium (a 180 years old family owned business, with focus on artisanal process and very high quality). Therefore we have been able to serve and bring to India the highest quality and the most authentic recipe and process of Belgian waffles.

BelgYum have been successful very quickly and we have one of the highest rating in Bangalore on Zomato. We are now in the process to expand and scale the business.

R Chandrashekhar, President, NASSCOM | @nasscom

Mr. Chandrashekhar is President of NASSCOM, the premier trade body for the IT-BPO Industry in India. He has had an illustrious career with rich experience in Government. He has been Chairman of the Telecom Commission and Secretary in the Department of Telecommunications in the Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Government of India from September, 2010 till his retirement from Government service at the end of March, 2013.

As Telecom Secretary, he was responsible for driving several key policies and strategies covering licensing, spectrum management, National Broadband Plan, Convergence, Manufacturing, Investment, security, R&D and the National Telecom Policy 2012. As the Secretary of the Department of Information Technology, he steered the formulation of national policies for the IT sector and for promoting Electronic System Design and Manufacturing and R&D in the Electronics and IT sector. Earlier, he established the first Department of Information Technology in the country in the state of Andhra Pradesh and was Secretary of the Department from June, 1997 to December, 1999.

He was conferred the Prime Minister’s Award for Excellence in Public Administration for the year 2007-08.  He has been conferred several awards including Data Quest Path Breaker of the Year Award in 2005 and Distinguished Alumnus award of IIT-Mumbai in 2010.

@RentalaShekhar

R Gopalakrishnan, Non-Executive Director, Tata Sons

R. Gopalakrishnan (Gopal to his friends) has been a professional manager for 45 years from 1967 onwards: 31 years in Unilever and 14 years in TATA.

He had served in Jeddah as Chairman of Unilever Arabia, in Bangalore as Managing Director of Brooke Bond Lipton India, and finally as Vice Chairman of Hindustan Lever. Currently, he is Director, Tata Sons Ltd.  He is the chairman of Tata Auto-Component Systems and Rallis India, the vice chairman of Tata Chemicals, and is a director of Tata Power and Tata Technologies.  He is an independent director on the boards of Akzo Nobel India and Castrol India.

Gopal studied physics at St Xavier's Calcutta, engineering at IIT Kharagpur and attended the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School. He is a Past President of All India Management Association.

In 2007, his first book, "THE CASE OF THE BONSAI MANAGER: lessons for managers on intuition", was published by Penguin India.

In 2010, his second book entitled "WHEN THE PENNY DROPS: learning what is not taught" was published, by Penguin India, followed by Hindi and Tamil editions.

In 2012, his third book "WHAT THE CEO REALLY WANTS FROM YOU: the 4 A s for managerial success" was published by Harper Collins India.

He has delivered guest lectures and written articles.  He has designed and taught an unusual course entitled LWNT-Learning What's Not Taught at Tata Management Training Centre, Pune, and at Indian B-schools.

R Gurumurthy, Head - Corporate & Institutional Banking, The Ratnakar Bank Ltd

R. Gurumurthy, holds a Bachelor's degree from Delhi University and is a Certified Associate of the Indian Institute of Bankers. He has over 25 years of exposure in the banking sector both in India and in Hong Kong.

As Head - Corporate & Institutional Banking at RBL Bank, he is responsible for driving relationships with large corporates, Public sector undertakings, Financial Institutions, government departments & local administration set-ups by growing the deposits, loans and transactional business portfolio of the bank.

Prior to joining the Bank, he has been a part of both the corporate & FI sector and has also worked in the capital markets space in top leadership positions. Most recently he was heading the FI Strategic Coverage Group for Standard Chartered Bank, Mumbai.

R Jagannathan, Senior Journalist & Editorial Director, Swarajya Magazine

R N Iyer, Founder & CEO, Vayana Network

R N Iyer, Founder & CEO of Vayana Network, is a serial entrepreneur with over 25 years in the Cash and Trade space providing solutions to some of the largest Banks across the globe. At Vayana Network, over the past decade, Ram has lead the company’s vision to democratise access to affordable finance to MSMEs. Previously, he was the co-founder and CEO of CashTech Solutions a leading Cash Management vendor in Asia which was acquired by Nasdaq listed Fundtech (now a part of Finastra Group). R N Iyer has previously worked with Accenture in their management consulting division. He is a management graduate from IIM Ahmedabad and an Engineer from Mumbai University. R N Iyer provides leadership in Business & Technology strategy and global Product development processes.

R Ramakrishnan, Executive Director, Bajaj Electricals Limited