Our speakers

Rahul Maheshwari, Investor, Verlinvest

Rahul Mehta, Director, Argonaut Private Equity

Rahul is a Director at Argonaut Private Equity and heads India investments. Mr. Mehta is on the board of eYantra Inc and an observer on the board of Koutons Retail and VKL Spices. Rahul was previously a Principal at Blue River Capital, a $140 million India focused private equity fund.

A co-founder of the fund, Rahul sourced and executed transactions across a variety of sectors including financial services, manufacturing and logistics. He has also held positions at ChrysCapital, one of India?s largest independent private equity firms, Greenhill & Co in New York in its merchant banking and investment banking division and Merrill Lynch in New York in its investment banking division.

Mr. Mehta graduated Magna Cum Laude with a B.A. in Mathematics and Economics from Cornell University and holds an M.B.A. from MIT?s Sloan School of Management, U.S.A.

Rahul Mehta, Director, George Kaiser Family Office

Rahul Narvekar, CEO, NDTV Ethnic Retail Ltd (IndianRoots.com)

Rahul Narvekar, a true Mumbaikar and a serial entrepreneur launched 'Indianroots' in July, 2013; this being his fifth venture as a promoter and second in the e-commerce world. From working as a door to door salesman to pay for his education to leading sales campaigns of brands like Dettol at small paan wallahs in Mumbai’s red light district; to peddling Gillete razors in Akbarallys, Rahul's entrepreneurial abilities were getting honed up from his early days itself.

A multi-tasker, by heart, Rahul joined TS - tele-shopping network at UTV, while pursuing a full time business entrepreneurship course. He became a part of Asia's first Interactive music channel named Oxygen in 1999. The company scaled to revenues of 2 crore a year with the best of clients including Coca Cola, Colgate, HLL and so on.

After dabbling for brief stints with Sun City and DLF, Rahul met a European gentleman called Oliver Jung and became an entrepreneur again and launched the e-commerce site that changed the whole dynamics of e-commerce called, www.fashionandyou.com in 2009.

@rahulnarvekar

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.