Our speakers

Raghav Chandra, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Urban Company

Raghav Chandra, is the Co- Founder and Chief Technology Officer of UrbanClap, India’s largest homes services marketplace.

He is an alumnus of the University of California, Berkeley, and has worked at Raomware, Infosys and Yelp as software engineer before joining Abhiraj Bhal and Varun Khaitan to form UrbanClap.

He was also a part of 40 under 40 entrepreneurs in 2018, GQ's Most Influential Young Indians and Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia in 2017.

Raghav Gupta, Managing Director India & APAC, Coursera

Raghav Gupta, Country Manager - India, BlaBlaCar

Raghav is India Country Manager at BlaBlaCar. He is leading BlaBlaCar’s journey in this large and exciting market. He believes in applying a glo-cal approach to bringing the best global practices with a strong local proposition to Indian audiences.

He started his career in the fashion business and then spent a number of years working in management consulting as a consumer & retail expert with Booz & Company and Technopak Advisors.

Raghav is an MBA from INSEAD in France, a post graduate in fashion business management from the National Institute of Fashion Technology in New Delhi, and a Mechanical Engineer from the Pune University. He has spoken at various conferences and published in the media around consumer trends and building capabilities in emerging markets.

Raghav Himatsingka, Co-founder, Truckola

Raghav Himatsingka comes from a family that has been in the transport business for nearly a 100 years - from the days of horse carriages. He has been a lifelong student of supply chain logistics, having studied the subject at Georgia Tech and Stanford University and applying his knowledge in his work for the last 8 years.

In 2015, Raghav founded Truckola - a tech focused inter state cargo transport company - which is rapidly disrupting the fundamentals of the transport industry in India. His company recently raised a small round of angel investment from a group of marquee investors. Raghav is deeply passionate about entrepreneurship, technology in business, leadership, mentoring young graduates, and solving the major issues plaguing the Indian transport industry like driver welfare, corruption, vehicle idling, etc.

Raghav Malhotra, Director - M&A Tax, Deloitte

Raghav has over 12 years of consulting experience, working with clients operating in sectors such as manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, auto components and ancillary, IT-ITES, and oil and gas. Currently, leading the tax and regulatory practice for Deloitte in the Chandigarh Tri-city / Punjab region.

Extensive experience in advising large promoter and family based companies in the areas of family settlement / succession planning, domestic / offshore structuring of business, investment strategy, corporate and international tax matters, incentive advisory and transfer pricing.

Raghav Ramdev, Director,, ChrysCapital Advisors LLP

Raghav has been with ChrysCapital since September 2003 and focuses on the healthcare sector, one of the four focus sectors for the Firm. He has been involved in all their 9 investments in the sector made since CY06 of which five have been fully exited at an ROI of over 5.2x. Previously, he was with the global research division at McKinsey & Company. Raghav received an MBA from Management Development Institute, Gurgaon and a Bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from Baroda University.

Raghav Verma, Co-founder, Chaayos

Raghav is co-founder of Chaayos, a chain of chai cafes in Delhi NCR and Mumbai, that is changing the way the country consumes chai. Lack of options to get a great cup of chai outside of home, led co-founder Nitin Saluja and Raghav, to start Chaayos in 2012. With recent backing of $5MM by American investor Tiger Global, Chaayos stands at 10 cafes and is rapidly expanding with a target of 50 cafes by May 2016.

With the tagline “experiments with chai” Chaayos offers over 12,000 varieties of chai- including trademark options like the Hari Mirch Chai and Aam Papad Chai. The cafes offer a contemporary yet rustic ambience, elevating the often taken-for-granted beverage, from a local tapri setting to an experiential offering. And it doesn't stop at cafes for the team; they want to be a part of every chai occasion for their customers. The latest innovation is an app based ordering solution through innovative disposable kettles, that they are using to deliver chai all over Delhi and Gurgaon.

An IIT Delhi graduate of Chemical Engineering (2010), Raghav had previously co-founded online education startup PrepSquare, where the team had created a video-based product for the Indian entrance examination ecosystem. Prior to that, he was working with US based big-data analytics firm Opera Solutions, consulting global credit card and private equity firms on both revenue enhancement and cost optimization.

Raghav is also a professional bass player and pianist and has released an album with his band Antariksh, a progressive rock outfit. His love for food, and baking in particular, is what drew him to the F&B space. His speciality is cheesecakes, and he loves to innovate on many of the food menu offerings at Chaayos.

@rag_ver

Raghu Dharmaraju, COO, Embrace Innovations

Over the past decade, Raghu Dharmaraju helped bring innovations in healthcare, solar energy, and automotive technologies to market.

At Embrace Innovations, a social enterprise working to help millions of vulnerable babies, Raghu led the market launch and scaling of its revolutionary infant warmers.

An alumnus of IIT Madras, UMass Amherst, and Cornell, Raghu grew up in a small town in Telangana, India. He loves working with innovators to create impact.

Raghubir Menon, Corporate, M&A and PE Partner, Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co

Raghubir advises numerous corporates, sovereign wealth funds and private equity funds, MNCs, and strategic corporate clients on a variety of domestic and cross-border transactions. He has also represented clients in a large number of complex public M&A acquisitions for listed Indian companies.

Raghubir actively represents large corporate clients such as the National Stock Exchange, One97 Communications Limited, Walmart, Flipkart, Vodafone, Sembcorp, and blue-chip PE and SWF clients such as Blackstone, KKR, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, General Atlantic, GIC, Temasek, ADIA, Vista Equity Partners, Silver Lake Capital, and the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund.

Prior to joining Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co., Raghubir has worked with White & Case LLP, in London and Singapore, for five years.

Raghubir Menon, Regional Practice Head - Mumbai, M&A and Private Equity, General Corporate, Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas

Raghubir Menon is a Corporate, M&A and PE Partner at the Firm. He is an expert on matters pertaining to Mergers and Acquisitions and Private Equity.

Raghubir advises numerous corporates, sovereign wealth funds and private equity finds across the full range of their operations and activities. He has extensive experience in mergers and acquisitions,restructurings, onshore & offshore structuring and has represented MNCs, corporates, investment and commercial banks, private equity funds, sovereign wealth funds, multilateral agencies and strategic corporate clients on a variety of domestic and cross-border transactions.. He has also represented clients in a large number of complex public M&A acquisitions in listed Indian companies.

Raghubir actively represents large corporate clients such as the National Stock Exchange, One97 Communications Limited, Vodafone, Urbaser, Sembcorp and blue chip PE and SWF clients such as Blackstone (for whom he has undertaken every transaction that they have undertaken in South Asia in the past four years), KKR, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, General Atlantic, GIC and Temasek (for whom he has closed five transactions in the last 24 month period). For a client such as One97, he has undertaken all of their work for the past 5 years, including their joint venture with Alibaba and Ali Pay for an approximate investment of US$680 million, as well as the creation of their Payment Bank and the hive off of the payments business into One97 Payment Bank. He also advised them on creation of their new marketplace e-commerce vehicle, a multi staged and structured transaction including the hive-off of their e-commerce business, the investments into the new vehicle by Alibaba and the business cooperation and transitional services arrangements entered into with One97. Some of his notable transactions include advising Blackstone in relation to the 100% buy-out of the two sea-plane operating companies in the Republic of Maldives, which was nominated as “Private Equity Deal of the Year” by IFLR Asia Awards 2014. He has also advised Blackstone in relation to the acquisition of a controlling stake in Mphasis Limited, a listed Indian company from Hewlett Packard Enterprises under a controlled auction scenario and the subsequent open offer under the Indian takeover regulations. This year he acted for Blackstone on the acquisition of 100% of the Comstar Automotive Limited as well as on the acquisition of the Thompson Reuters business (a US$ 18 billion acquisition). Other significant representations include advising Temasek in relation to its investments in Devyani International Limited, a company engaged in the QSR business; MXC Solutions, an e- commerce platform trading in the style of CarTrade; Zomato, the food app provider and the urban integration platform set up between Temasek and Ascendas, UST Holdings, an IT and ITES company and Ola, a cab aggregator. In another major deal, he represented Walmart in relation to its acquisition of Flipkart, which transaction closed in August 2018 (a US$ 17 billion multi staged acquisition).

Raghubir was awarded ‘Partner of the Year’ by IDEX Legal Awards 2017. He won the M&A Lawyer of the Year: Private Equity for Asia Pacific at the Asian Lawyer Emerging Markets Awards 2015 for the work undertaken over 2015. As “one of the few lawyers that has the combination of both commercial and legal skills,“ Raghubir Menon enjoys a formidable reputation in the private equity market. “He would always be available and meet the deadlines without compromising on quality. We were morem than impressed,“ explains one client, as quoted by Chambers and Partners. He was also ranked as Asia’s busiest lawyer by MergerMarket for the calendar year 2017, in terms of closed transactions.

Prior to joining Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas, Raghubir has worked with White & Case LLP, in London and Singapore for five years. Raghubir is an LLB from the prestigious National Law School of mIndia University, Bangalore. He enrolled at the Bar Council of Delhi in 2004 and is a qualified Solicitor (England & Wales).