Our speakers

Rajesh Ranawat, Executive Director, Fung Strategic Investments

Rajesh is an accomplished senior executive who has worked with multi-billion dollar corporations in leadership positions working in several countries across diverse businesses and nationalities with a successful track record. He has more than 30 years of experience in the retail, distribution and logistics of fast-moving consumer goods, fashion and beauty products covering Asia, Middle East, Europe and the US.

Rajesh is currently a Director of Fung Strategic Holdings, the private investment arm of the families of Dr. Victor Fung and Dr. William Fung, the controlling shareholders of the Fung Group. In addition, he is the CEO of FSX Pte Ltd which is the holding company for the Fung family’s investments in India and South-East Asia as well as CEO of Fung Management MENA DMCC based out of Dubai. Rajesh was also a Non-executive Director on the Board of LF Logistics Ltd, which is a multinational logistics company and subsidiary of Li & Fung Group, which was acquired by Maersk, the world’s largest shipping company, for a multi-billion dollar consideration.

Rajesh has been with the Fung Group for the last 25 years in various leadership positions covering operations, strategy, finance and M&A. He was recently the COO and Executive Director of LF Logistics and also Head of Global Freight Management from 2014 to 2019. Prior to this he was based in London as Managing Director – Strategy and M&A for LF Europe, where he completed several strategic deals in the UK, Germany, France, Italy and the US to build a multi-billion on-shore distribution platform for LF Europe and expand the LF Beauty business in the US.

Rajesh joined IDS Group, the logistics and distribution arm of Fung Group, in 1999 as Group Development Director and subsequently as Chief Financial Officer in 2003 where he led the IPO initiative for a successful public listing of IDS in Hong Kong in 2004 as well as completing several M&A deals to grow the global footprint of IDS in Asia, Europe and the US.

Prior to joining the Fung Group Rajesh worked with Inchcape plc a global multinational in various management roles based in the Middle East, UK, Japan and Singapore. Prior to this he worked with PwC, the Big4 global accounting firm in the Middle East and India.

Rajesh holds a bachelor’s degree in commerce from India and is a Fellow Chartered Accountant.

Rajesh Rao, Founder & CEO, Dhruva Interactive

Rajesh founded India's first games company, Dhruva Interactive, in 1997 and is acknowledged as a pioneer of the Games Industry in India. Dhruva, now in its 15th year of business, is India’s oldest and most experienced games company, developing games across multiple platforms and providing game production services to the global videogames industry, working with global majors like Microsoft, Capcom and Disney.

In 2009, Dhruva’s product group was spun out into a new casual games company called GameTantra, which is focused on creating gaming IP for international and Indian audiences.

Rajesh is active in promoting and growing the game industry in India, he is Chair, Games, NASSCOM Animation and Gaming Forum (NAGFO) and Member, FICCI Entertainment Committee.

Dhruva’s success has been chronicled in Tom Friedman’s bestselling book, ‘The World is Flat’.

Rajesh Razdan, Founder & CEO, mCarbon Tech Innovation Pvt. Ltd.

Rajesh Razdan founded mCarbon in early 2008, to create a compelling platform based offerings for Telco's to maximize revenues in the areas of usage and retention, customer life cycle and value management. An industry veteran of 16 years, his vision is to support global Telco's through technology based offerings to help them upsell and cross sell more enabling continuous usage and return based business models.
 
In his present capacity as CEO, he steers the company's strategic vision, corporate development and operations. In the past, Rajesh has served as a member of solution sales team at Nokia Siemens and handled APAC and India region. Formerly, he has held senior positions with leading Telecom Organizations including KPN International Consulting, Ericsson, and Roamware wherein he worked across business development, product management, channels, strategic alliances, marketing and strategy functions.

Rajesh S Shetty, Partner | Financial Advisory | M&A Transaction Services, Deloitte India

Rajesh is a qualified chartered accountant and has been with Deloitte for over 20 years and has been responsible for a number of financial due diligence and transaction support exercises. During his tenure with Deloitte, Rajesh has also spent 2 years in M&A transactions service practice in New York, Deloitte USA. Over the past 18 years Rajesh has worked extensively in the field of financial due diligence, valuation exercises, corporate investigations and other related business advisory and transaction support services.

Rajesh Sawhney, Co-founder, InnerChef India (P) Ltd | @Inner_Chef

Rajesh is the cofounder of India’s fastest growing food tech platform. Rajesh drives vision, strategy and growth at InnerChef.

Rajesh is also the founder of GSF, India’s leading multi-city Tech-Startup Accelerator for the brightest tech startups in India.

Rajesh is also known as one the most prominent angel investors in India and has made investments in over 50 startups which include Viki (acquired by Rakutan for USD 225M), Little Eye Labs (acquired by Facebook), Mobstac, Pokkt, Silverpush, HackerEarth, Browntape, Overcart, Flinto, Timesaverz, Instalively, Dailyrounds, etc.

Rajesh’s journey has been a continuum of re-invention waves. He brought private radio (Times FM) to India in the early nineties, redefining Indian youth culture. He was at the cusp of early Internet culture in India in the early 2000, building Times Internet Ltd the most valuable Internet business in India in 2005 (funded by Sequoia). Subsequently, Rajesh as the founding President of Reliance Entertainment, was at the center of a massive transformation of the Indian film industry, where he oversaw the corporatization of mom and pop Bollywood businesses into a multi-billion dollar industry. He spearheaded the biggest investment deal worth USD 1B (Dreamworks) between Hollywood and Bollywood.

Rajesh also advises Trident Capital, a prominent venture firm based in Palo Alto, California and represents them on the boards of Microland and Nielsoft.

Rajesh is an alumnus of the Harvard Business School and has a fellowship from the London School of Economics.

@rajeshsawhney

Rajesh Sawhney, Founder, GSF India

Rajesh Sawhney is the founder of GSF Superangels of India network and the host of Global Superangels Forum (GSF). He is also the co-host and curator of Founders Forum India. Rajesh is building the vital pieces of a nascent ecosystem for the early stage investing in India. Rajesh has made over a dozen angel investments so far. He is launching India’s first multi-city accelerator programme (GSF Accelerator) in October, 2012. Earlier as the President of Reliance Entertainment, Rajesh led Reliance Group’s foray into media & entertainment spanning movie eco-system, broadcasting, and New Media. Previously with the Times Group in India, Rajesh launched a number of successful ventures across different domains: Publishing, Radio & TV, Retailing, online classifieds, MVAS, e-commerce and e-travel.

Rajesh Sawhney, President, Reliance Entertainment Group

Rajesh Sawhney is a key member of the Reliance ADAG Apex leadership team. He is responsible for the Group’s entry strategy and game-plan for entertainment, media and online verticals: spanning movie eco-system, Radio and TV broadcasting, Internet and New Media ventures, broadband and mobile content and services.

Sawhney comes to Reliance Entertainment from The Times of India Group where he was Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Times Internet Limited. During 14 years with The Times of India Group, he created successful businesses across several areas: Publishing, Radio & TV, Retailing, Internet, E-commerce, Travel and Mobile value added services.

Sawhney is an Engineer and MBA, with a fellowship in Globalisation and Leadership from the London School of Economics and Social Sciences.

Rajesh Sehgal, Managing Partner, Equanimity Investments

Rajesh is the Founder and Managing Partner of Equanimity Investments. He has been a prolific angel investor for over a decade and has developed a deep understanding of the Indian entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystem.

He is an active member of Mumbai Angels and is also the Founding and current Chair of the Corporate Reporting Users’ Forum. He is a TiE Mumbai Board Member and Co-Chairs TiE’s FinTech Special Interest Group. He is a member of  the  Steering Committeeof NASSCOM 10,000 Startups.Rajesh has been an active secondary market investor for the last 24 years, 17 years of which, he worked with the emerging markets group of Franklin Templeton. He was also managing Templeton’s emerging markets private equity investments over these 17 years.

A Wharton alumnus, Rajesh has earlier obtained a management degree from XLRI specialising in Finance and Marketing. He is a CFA charter holder and has also earned a post graduate diploma in securities law from Mumbai.

Rajesh Sharma, National Head - MarketDevelopment, Brand Capital

Specialist at starting & building new, innovative & high growth ventures across sectors!

As a Private Equity professional, Rajesh  has helped entrepreneurs build exponential growth, scalable businesses, using a unique combination of Business growth, Capital Markets & Brand Creation tools.

He started his career as an entrepreneur, setting up own ventures in Media & Advertising, Education, Textiles & Tea.  Over the last 17 years he has worked  across industries ranging from Media, Private Equity, Consulting, Research and Analytics, E-Commerce,  IT/ITES helping companies like Times Group, Crisil (S&P), Kotak Mahindra, NIIT etc to set up new, innovative and high growth businesses.

He was instrumental in building up India’s first Online Information Services & Internet business, www.indiainformer.com (Matrix Information Services Ltd) in 1998, much before the dotcom boom.

At Brand Capital, he currently heads Market Development, the team responsible for incubating and funding, entrepreneurs to create new, path breaking, innovative businesses of the future.

Rajesh Shrivastava, CMD, Rabo Equity Advisors

Rajesh is a designated General Partner in the Fund, along with Rabobank. He had 28 years of professional experience prior to moving to the Fund, including 10 years in Rabo India Finance where his last assignment was as the Managing Director in charge of corporate and commercial banking.

 

He had also worked in agri business consulting for 2 years and with the South Asian Regional Apex Fund (sponsored by Lazard India) for 3 years. He started his career with the Bank of Baroda, where he worked for 12 years in Credit, 9 years in Regional/Zonal Offices in Merchant Banking and Business Development and for 2 years as a Branch Manager.

 

Rajesh is an Economics graduate and has a professional Law degree.