Our speakers

Rahul Pandit, MD & CEO, Ginger Hotels | @GingerHotel

Rahul leads the Tata group’s pioneering budget lodging business, Ginger Hotels, with 37 operating properties and 32 hotels in pipeline. He has over 23 years of start-up and operating experience across luxury, upscale, mid-scale and budget lodging businesses. Rahul was earlier a founding team member, President and ED of Lemon Tree Hotels where he led its growth, from a start-up, to three distinct brands.

A graduate of IHM Pusa, New Delhi and a former member of the Indian Karate team, he has studied Sales, Innovation and HR management at IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, ISB Hyderabad and Cornell-Nanyang, Singapore. Rahul has worked and trained across India, USA and Singapore with Choice Hotels, Taj Hotels, Spectramind (WIPRO BPO) and Intercontinental Hotels. He also serves as a Member - National Tourism Committee, Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

@rahulpandit1

Rahul Patwardhan, CEO, NIIT | @NIITLtd

Rahul Keshav Patwardhan is the Chief Executive Officer of NIIT Limited, a global leader in skills and talent development, offering multi-disciplinary learning management and training delivery solutions to corporations, institutions, and individuals in over 40 countries.

Rahul is a Production Engineer and an MBA from IIM Calcutta. After having spent the first 20 years of his career with NIIT in diverse roles, Rahul returns to the company with 10 years of extensive Global experience in scaling managed services operations with Logica. With a proven track record and excellence in strategy, technology services management, training services & channel management, Rahul will spearhead the transformation of NIIT's global offerings and brand positioning in the realm of skills and talent development.

Prior to re-joining NIIT, Rahul was based at the Europe headquarters of Logica as MD, Global Managed App Services. By 2011, he oversaw a revenue line of USD 1.5B and a 12000 person globally diverse App Management workforce across all onshore European locations and offshore locations in India, Morocco, Philippines and Central/Eastern Europe. He then became the Global Productivity Leader, responsible for design & execution of a strategic program to improve delivery productivity and gross margins across the firm, globally. Earlier on at Logica in 2005, Rahul served as the Company's CEO of the India Offshore unit in Bangalore, as well as the Global Director of Applications Management delivery across Logica worldwide. He functioned as a key member of the global leadership team.

During his initial career, Rahul started at NIIT as a key member of the team in 1987 that conceived and implemented NIIT's Training Services Franchise model. He then led product management of the Individual IT Training business and drove strong annual growth. He also initiated training services Quality Management on industrial engineering principles, to ensure NIIT delivered Quality training consistently, while scaling up. Later, as NIIT's Corporate Planning manager, he developed and implemented a model for long-term strategic planning and budgeting for the company. In the early 90's he set up NIIT's operations across Asia Pacific, kicking off the globalization of Corporate & Individual learning businesses, and was instrumental in NIIT's start in China; apart from launching the Software & SI business in the region. He led the acquisition of significant multimedia learning deals in Singapore and Malaysia. During the last part of his 20-year career with the NIIT group, he was the President of Europe & APAC Software business in NIIT Technologies Ltd.

@rpatward

Rahul Rai, Head - Real Estate Business, Icici Prudential Amc

Rahul joined ICICI Prudential AMC in Nov 2010.

At ICICI Prudential AMC, Rahul is responsible for anchoring the Real Estate Business and driving team synergies.

Rahul has an overall work experience of around 20 years. His expertise and core competency has been in the in depth understanding of the real estate segment and evaluating and investing in real estate projects. He has also managed one of the largest and first FDI transactions that happened in the Indian real estate space in 2004.

Rahul, is a Chartered Accountant, and has also completed the Cost Accountancy and Intermediate level Company Secretary Course. Prior to ICICI Prudential AMC, he has been associated with companies like Arthur Anderson Corporate Finance, Ernst and Young Transaction Advisory Services, RSM Advisors Private Limited and till recently was associated with Sun Apollo Real Estate Advisors.

Rahul believes that his strong technical and analytical skills help him as a decision maker. In his leisure he likes reading fiction and watching movies & sports.

Rahul Raisurana, MD, Standard Chartered Private Equity

Mr. Rahul Raisurana is Managing Director, Standard Chartered Private Equity Advisory (India) Limited wherein he founded and currently heads Standard Chartered’s Midcap focused private equity business in India. His over 20 years of professional experiences includes senior managerial and leadership roles in private equity, corporate and investment banking, corporate finance and risk management with leading global financial institutions in India and USA.

Prior to joining Standard Chartered, he was Managing Director, Investments at IDFC Project Equity Company Limited and co-founded India’s first project-level infrastructure investment fund jointly sponsored by Citigroup and IDFC. Previously he was also a senior member of Deutsche Bank India’s Executive and Management Committee in his capacity as Head of Institutional and Corporate Credits, India. His other professional assignments included roles with Moody’s Investors Services in New York and with Citigroup’s Corporate & Investment Banking group in India.

Mr. Raisurana currently serves as a Director on the Boards of PI Industries Limited, Man Infraconstruction Limited, Bush Foods Overseas Pvt Ltd, Innovative Industries Ltd and Privi Organics Limited. He holds a Masters degree in International Management from Thunderbird, USA, Masters degree in Business Administration from Clark University, USA and a Bachelor of Commerce (Honours) degree from the University of Calcutta, India.

    

Rahul Shah, SVP and Business Head - JAPAC, Searce

Rahul Sharma, Co-founder, Micromax Informatics Limited

Rahul Sharma is the driving force behind Micromax, the 10th largest mobile phone company in the world. Under Rahul's leadership, Micromax's innovative product and marketing strategy has revolutionized the smartphone market in India. He has led the revolution of the democratization of technology for the masses by removing barriers for large scale adoption.

Rahul has an understanding of the market which enables him to offer customized and affordable innovations to the Indian consumers. His greatest strength lays in being able to pre-empt the ever evolving needs of the consumers, and being the first one to offer the most innovative and affordable solutions to address those needs. This desire of staying ahead of the curve by constantly raising the innovation bar has helped Micromax become the most popular consumer technology company in India. Rahul to his credit has pioneered many firsts in Indian mobile phone market in India with innovations like the 30-day battery backup, dual SIM phones, QWERTY keypads, universal remote control mobile phones, first quad-core budget smartphone etc.

Rahul along with his team closely looked at the consumer landscape in the country and decided to introduce the ‘Canvas’ range of smartphones which offered a unique amalgamation of superior technology with style. Rahul recently launched his new company YU Televentures Pvt. Ltd. which is a new age technology brand that strives to work with the community to create an ecosystem of connected devices. YU aims to provide an extraordinary product experience while offering differentiated services that delight the consumer.

Rahul and Micromax have been consistently rewarded at some of the most prestigious awards like the ‘Most Promising Company for the Next Decade’ by CNBC Awaaz and the ‘Emerging Company of the Year 2011’. In recognition of his achievements, Rahul was awarded The Forbes Person of the Year in 2010. He has also been awarded the prestigious 'GQ Man of the Year (Excellence in Business)' in 2013, He was among the only Four Indians in Fortune Magazine's Global Power List of 2014- Fortune’s ’40 under 40’ list of 2014. These are just a few of the numerous awards and recognition conferred upon him.

Rahul Sharma, Chief Information Officer, Tata Projects

Mr. Rahul Sharma joined Tata Projects as a 'Chief Information Officer' in April 2022 and is responsible for the IT & Digital Transformation. In this role, he is focused on transforming the IT & function by enabling the digitalization of key business processes and hyper scaling digital platforms. At Tata Projects he has a vision to implement robotics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to create a technology driven project delivery ecosystem.

Rahul has a rich experience of more than 25 years at leadership positions in the Engineering & Construction Industry. He has managed Global Operations Excellence & Digital Enablement groups across continents and worked in Leadership positions in key functions like Information & Digital Delivery, Business Development, Strategic Sales, M&A, Project Management, Project Controls and Engineering Coordination with a team size varying from 50 to 900 personnel in organizations as large as 100K employees and Fortune 200 Companies.

Rahul has obtained his Masters in Construction Management from NICMAR and his Bachelors in Civil Engineering. He is a Certified Lead Auditor for ISO 9001, and has an Honours Diploma in Software Technology and Systems Management.

Rahul Sharma, Sr. Director & Country Manager, Slack

Rahul Sharma, Business Head - North & East, Snowflake India

Rahul Sharma the business head for North India, East India and Public Sector for Snowflake. He has 20+ years of experience in building businesses and before joining Snowflake he helped build the Servicenow, BMC Software business in the North.

He is a data enthusiast and is excited about the future where businesses can unlock from data using pivots like data collaboration and data monetisation.

Rahul Singh, Founder & CEO, The Beer Cafe

Rahul Singh is the founder & CEO of THE BEER CAFÉ, India’s favorite Beer Chain. With 20 locations operational by the end of 2013, it’s poised to become the largest, fastest and most profitable alcobeverage service brand in India. It’s an enterprise with attractive growth opportunity in India’s food service space for its multiple growth drivers ( demographics, lifestyle and urbanization), attractive payback and entry into unexplored format. With 4 awards in its first year of launch ; Images Coca Cola Golden spoon award, India Restaurant Congress award, Times Nightlife award and ET Now business & service excellence award, the consumer and industry has recognized this startup as a blockbuster.

Professional turned Entrepreneur, Rahul has been involved with numerous sports & lifestyle brands for the past 20 years. As CEO, Greg Norman Collection India from 2007-09, he spearheaded the brand’s operation involving sales, marketing and manufacturing. Prior to 2007, he was the Executive Director at Reebok India for 8 years and was part of the leadership team which made Reebok the undisputed market leader. He was responsible for the apparel business at Reebok India and also setup a sound sourcing base for exports from South Asia. His stint as a founder member of Triburg consultants for 5 years, from 1994 to 1999 was spent in pursuing business from numerous international brands like Liz Claiborne, PVH group, Ralph Lauren, Ann Taylor, Nautica, Motherswork, Carligry among others. A Textile Engineer, Rahul brings in an analytical approach to each line of enterprise that he gets into.

Married to a fashion designer with a 13 year old son, Rahul is a gizmo freak, single malt collection, marathon runner and a certified scuba diver. Fortunately, beer is omnipresent in his line of business.