Our speakers

Praveena Rai, Chief Operating Officer, NPCI

Ms. Praveena Rai is Chief Operating Officer of NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India). She is responsible for running the business, the products, the operational and technical delivery. Passionate about payments and technology as drivers to economic value, she helps NPCI attain it’s strategic objectives of offering simple, secure and seamless digital payments experience to consumers and users across the ecosystem - that can lead to rapid digitalisation of India.

During her professional journey of two and half decades, she has built expertise across banking verticals in Cards, Retail, Commercial Banking and various facets of the payments space.

She has worked with Kotak Mahindra Bank leading the cash management portfolio, with HSBC for a 10 year stint including heading payments for the bank’s Asia Pacific region, and with Citigroup across roles for South Asia.

Ms. Rai holds a PGDM from IIM Ahmedabad, and is an Engineering Graduate from College of Engineering, Guindy.

Praveena Rai, COO, National Payments Corporation Of India (NPCI)

Praveer Roy, COO, Loylty Rewardz

Praveer is the Chief Operating Officer of Loylty Rewardz Mngt Pvt Ltd. Praveer holds the responsibility of driving forward a substantial part of Loylty Rewardz, mainly focused on delivering value to our customer and partner organizations. It is also Praveer’s focus area to constantly prepare the organization to achieve our tomorrow’s goals. Towards this, Praveer manages our critical functions such as technology, business architecture, operations, mobile, analytics, marketing and partner relationship management. Praveer has played a critical role in the growth of Loylty Rewardz from its inception days when Praveer was a member of our Business Advisory Board before taking on the full time role as the COO.

Praveer is a member of the Founding Class of the Indian School of Business and a CPA from the United States. Praveer is also a Chartered Accountant and has previously worked with the leading global organization such as Capgemini, Sumitomo, Deloitte, etc. in different geographies including in India, Middle East, Europe and in the US. While at Capgemini, Praveer was instrumental in building their SEPA (Single Europe Payments Area) Payments Practice based out of The Netherlands. Praveer was also a key contributor to some of Capgemini’s large global deals in financial services and consumer goods verticals such as the Royal Bank of Scotland, IKEA in Sweden and Coca Cola in the US.

A published author of the literary fiction Alternate Journeys, Praveer is also a voracious reader, an amateur philosopher, an ardent traveller and an adventure enthusiast.

Pravin Gandhi, Managing Partner, SEED FUND

Pravin Gandhi is a Managing Partner in SEED FUND, an early stage fund launched in 2006. He is also a Managing Partner of Infinity Venture Fund, an early stage fund launched in year 1999-2000. With operational & management experience spanning 30 odd years, he was one of the early IT entrepreneur having promoted Hinditron in 1972 and a successful IPO in 1988.

He has been an angel investor in various IT Companies since with several Board Directorship in listed and unlisted companies including significant Shareholder & Director of Schiller Healthcare.

Mr. Gandhi is a graduate in Industrial Engineering from Cornell.

Prayaag Kasundra, Founder & CEO, BookAdSpace.com

Driven by passion and vision, Prayaag is responsible for constantly re-aligning strategies to make  bookadspace better platform for clients. He spends time designing product features, finding solutions to  technical problems and planning product roadmap. He is responsible for defining sales strategies and even occasionally does sales pitches too. By the way he also writes help articles and even designs graphics for say website, brochure.
 
Software Engineer by education, he started with small web solutions company upon finishing graduation after working as freelance developer and contractor. He has architected many web solutions and has broad knowledge of computing & web technologies. He finds hidden pleasure in building something amazing.

Prayank Swaroop, Principal, Accel Partners

Prayank is a Principal with Accel in India. He has more than a decade of experience across investing, product management, product marketing and engineering. Prayank focuses on investments in commerce (B2C/B2B) and mobile sectors at Accel. Has led investments in MechMocha, Bizongo, Quiklo and Mubble. And, is closely involved with Accel India's investments in TaxiForSure (now merged with Ola Cabs), BookMyShow, MySmartPrice, Power2SME and a number of mobile businesses. He is also currently looking at growth investments from Accel India.

Prior to joining Accel, Prayank worked at Adobe Systems and Standard Chartered Bank. He has an integrated master's degree in Mathematics and Computing from IIT Delhi, and an MBA from Indian School of Business, Hyderabad.

Twitter: @prayanks

Prayank Swaroop, VP, Accel Partners

Prayank is a Vice President at Accel India. At Accel, Prayank focuses on ad-tech, consumer internet and mobile investments. Some of the investments he has been involved with are Mysmartprice, TaxiForSure, BookMyShow, Eventifier, Collectabillia and Bluestone.

Before joining Accel, Prayank was a Product Manager at Standard Chartered Bank where he worked on mobile banking and trading products. Previously, Prayank had spent several years in key engineering, evangelism, and sales positions at Adobe Systems. Prayank holds an MBA from the Indian School of Business, and an Integrated Masters in Mathematics and Computing from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.

Preet Matani, Executive Director - Healthcare, PwC

Preeta Sukhtankar, Founder & CEO, The Label Corp

Preeta Sukhtankar is the CEO and founder of the lifestyle brand The Label Corp - styled by Sussanne Roshan, Malaika Arora Khan and Bipasha Basu.  She grew up in Mumbai and graduated from the St Xavier's with a degree in Economics. Preeta then pursued a career in fashion media and worked for some of the most influential international brands including Elle, MTV, L'officiel, Seventeen donning various avataars from being a fashion writer, stylist, a director to a publisher.

After years of working in fashion, Preeta noticed a void in the market for a collection with a designer aesthetic at a more attainable price point across categories. In 2012 she launched thehomelabel.com, a lifestyle brand rooted in classic decor only to move to apparel with theclosetlabel.com with wearable fashion and then statement jewelry and accessories with thetrunklabel.com. The collection is available only online and TLC recently partnered with Amazon.in with exclusive storefront launches on their platform

Preeta has received recognition from the various digital and fashion industry stalwarts and was recently included in "Top 50 Indian women entrepreneurs" and "Top 10 women in the Indian Digital Space".  An avid philanthropist, Preeta works with several charitable organizations and up until recently lead the Elle Breast Cancer Campaign which has raised over 10 crores towards the cause.

Preeti Bajaj, MD & CEO, Luminous Power Technologies (P) Ltd

Preeti Bajaj is the newly appointed CEO & MD at Luminous Power Technologies and is responsible for all company operations. Founded in 1988, Luminous has over the last 33 years, grown into one of India’s most trusted brands in the power back-up, and residential solar space.

With experience of nearly two decades in the Australian and global business environments, she holds expertise in developing and executing strategies to set the pace for sustainable growth across a range of enterprises (multinationals, ASX listed corporates and startups). Over the years, Preeti has built a career at the intersection of technology and transformation.

In her last stint, Preeti headed the Adecco Group as the Australia & New Zealand CEO and MD for Modis Australia. She was the startup CEO of Clipsal Solar (a venture by Schneider Electric), with the sole mission of using renewable technologies to enable customers to achieve purposeful living. With nearly two decades of experience, Preeti has worked for various firms, including Brookfield Multiplex, Metcash (Top 100 ASX), Intuit Real Estate Solutions, Vision Software, and Schneider Electric, in business development, general management, operations, strategy, and transformation. Driven to stay relevant in a fast-changing world, Preeti has forged a path in commercial leadership through tenacity, raw drive, and a highly strategic mindset that is comfortable and confident in defining future business vision.

In 2011, Preeti won the AFR's Young Executive of the Year award. Never afraid to push a boundary, Preeti has also championed many firsts during her career as a young and successful professional. She was also awarded the Scholarship for the Authentic Leadership Program at Harvard by Chief Executive Women in 2017.

Preeti completed her MBA from Swinburne University and her Master’s in Applied Finance from Macquarie University, Australia. She is passionate about diversity and actively supports emerging leaders through her contribution as an advisory member of Chief Executive Women.