Our speakers

Rajesh Singhal, Partner, Tata Opportunities Fund

Rajesh has over 17 years of investing experience including 12 years in private equity, a track record of over 25 PE investments and numerous exits.

Rajesh previously led the management of Milestone Religare Private Equity, a JV between Milestone and Religare, as its founding Managing Partner.  This fund was focused on providing growth capital to companies in Healthcare and Education sectors. Some of the representative investments include Resonance, HCG, Care ratings, KIMS Hospitals.

Earlier, Rajesh spent over 8 years with Intel Capital in India where he was responsible for 20 investments and has had full life cycle experience of private equity across different sectors and stages. Some of the representative investments include India Infoline, NIIT, Persistent Systems, FINO, Subex and Nipuna.

Rajesh started his career with ICICI where he spent 5 years across project finance, corporate finance and distressed debt restructuring. Rajesh is an MBA from IIM, Lucknow and B.Tech. from IIT, Bombay.

Rajesh Srivastava, Chairman & Managing Director, Rabo Equity Advisors Pvt Ltd

Rajesh Srivastava is the Chairman & Managing Director of Rabo Equity Advisors, managing 2 Rabobank sponsored private equity funds of US$120mln and US$150mln, both focused on food and agribusiness. The new Fund has Rabobank, CDC Group, UK; Asian Development Bank; Generali Insurance, Italy; FMO, The Netherlands; Proparco, France; IFU, Denmark as its investors. He has so far closed 12 investments, all in different sub-sectors.

Before setting up the private equity business, he was Managing Director (Corporate & Commercial Banking) of Rabobank India. Concurrently, he was Regional Head, Asia for food and agribusiness for over 5 years based in Singapore. In Rabobank, he is credited with setting up several new products such as Strategic Advisory, Renewable Energy, Carbon Credits and Micro Finance. Before Rabobank, he was with Lazard Brothers’ Venture Capital arm where he set up the largest VC Fund of the time for SMEs. Starting his career with Bank of Baroda, he has over 36 years of experience in corporate and investment banking.

Rajesh is regarded as a pioneer in establishing a private equity market for food and agribusiness sector and for advocacy on policies on agriculture/food processing. Amongst others, he sits on the CII National Committees on Agriculture, Food Processing and Innovation, Chairs CII Northern Regional Committee on Agriculture and Food Processing, and the Board of Sasakawa India Leprosy Foundation.

He is an Economics and Law graduate and a post graduate in Western History.

Rajesh Subramaniam, Managing Director, Walden International

Rajesh recently joined Walden International to spearhead the investment in India. In addition to previous employment in the venture industry, Rajesh was most recently the CFO and EVP for First Source Solutions, a publicly listed BPO company in India. After joining the start up in 2002, Rajesh was instrumental in building the company to its IPO and oversaw several strategic acquisitions on their behalf.

Rajesh holds a Bachelor of Commerce from Madras University and an MBA from Richmond College in London.

Rajesh Uppal, Sr Executive Director (HR & IT), Maruti Suzuki India Ltd

Rajesh Yabaji, Co-founder & CEO, BlackBuck

Rajesh is the Co-Founder of BlackBuck. BlackBuck is an online marketplace for logistics transactions, bridging the demand and supply facets in the road-freight space. The freight market has long been lacking efficiency, reliability and transparency. Keeping technology at its core, BlackBuck has endeavored to revolutionize this space by making the overall transportation process simple and effective, thereby bringing in a seamless transactional experience for both its customers and truckers. Blackbuck has created impact in this ecosystem through its proprietary products and processes, that enable online indenting, real-time access demand visibility, shipment tracking, pricing and performance analytics, fleet management, fair and competitive pricing etc. available both on web-based and mobile-based platforms.

Rajesh graduated from IIT Kharagpur in the year 2010. He started his professional career as a Supply Chain Manager in the Leaf Tobacco Business of ITC Ltd, where he led the supply chain transformation to streamline operations. Post this, he moved into the capacity of Business Manager in the ITC’s Foods business, responsible for building a new FMCG Business Category.

Rajheev Agrawal, Director & CEO, Nilon's Enterprises Private Limited

Started career with Unilever Group in India as Management Trainee in 1987. Worked as part of Finance & Animal Feeds Division for 5 years in the covenanted management category. Was listed as an outstanding performer.

Joined Hong Kong based textiles & garments group in their Indonesian operations as G.M. (Operations) in 1992. Worked with them for 7 years in Indonesia & USA. Credited with huge cost saving initiatives and diversifying the customer base of the company.

Joined as Senior Vice President (New Initiatives and Finance) with Lalbhai group in Ahmedabad in 1999. Reduced leverage and reduced cost in RM by 300 basis points.

Joined Nilons Group as Director & CEO in March 2004. Have grown the company by a factor of 33x in 10 years, making it the fastest growing processed food company in India. Shareholders wealth grew by 35x in 10 years.

Rajinder Balaraman, Vice President, Matrix Partners | @matrixindiavc

Rajinder is an early stage investor with Matrix Partners India. Matrix has invested in several market leading companies in India such as Ola (local transportation), Mswipe (mobile POS), Quikr (online classifieds), Practo (digital health platform), Dailyhunt (mobile local language platform), Five Star Finance (SME lending), Limeroad (mobile social commerce marketplace), Razorpay (payments), Treebo (digital hotel chain) and OfBusiness (SME lending and B2B marketplace) among others.

Rajinder has had the privilege of working with some of these fantastic founders who have built fast growing marketplaces and is looking to partner with more founders across B2B and B2C sectors that target “Real India”. Rajinder has an MBA from Harvard Business School and did his undergrad at the University of Madras.

@rbalaraman

Rajit Mehta, Managing Director & CEO, Max Healthcare Institute Limited

Rajit Mehta is the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Max Healthcare, a leading private healthcare company in India and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Company.
He is also a Non-Executive Director at Max Life Insurance and is a trustee of the Max India Foundation – the CSR arm for the Max Group of Companies.

As the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Max Healthcare, Rajit provides strong leadership in helping Max Healthcare in achieving its vision of being the most admired healthcare company in India known for clinical and service excellence. Besides leading the operations of the company, he is also currently engaged in leading an important transformation journey at Max Healthcare, including critical growth projects, enabling Max Healthcare to become a preferred Nursing employer, optimization of processes and establishing a strong culture of clinical excellence and patient centricity.

Rajit was a founder member of Max Life Insurance, since October 2000 and has been instrumental in helping Max Life become an admired, profitable and well run Company. During his tenure in Max Life, he undertook additional responsibilities as the Chief Transformation Officer which provided oversight on execution of key initiatives; designing and implementing new work systems; aligning key stakeholders; rationalising the cost structure to improve profitability; and laying down a comprehensive change management agenda. During this period, Max Life not only doubled its market share but also seamlessly transited to a new brand identity. Rajit was also instrumental in building a strong cadre and ethos of Human Capital as the founder HR Director of Max Life by recruiting and retaining a strong management team, creating a positive work environment and culture and ushering “best-in-class” HR practices.

Under his leadership, Max Life also progressed it’s Quality & Service Excellence journey. This included putting a Service Blueprint in place, implementing a comprehensive outsourcing strategy to impact customer experience and cost and embedding the MPEF framework in the business. As per the latest customer experience survey, Max Life is now ranked no. 2 in terms of overall customer loyalty, amongst all insurance companies. Rajit has also mentored the setting up of the Learning & Development Centre of Excellence.

Rajit has played a strategic role in helping Max Life expand its distribution footprint across India including facilitating a project to “Revamp Sales processes”. The project culminated in Rajit co-authoring a book titled “Growth Leadership Practices at Max Life”.

Prior to Max Life Insurance, he was the Director - Personnel at Bank of America and has also worked with HCL. His total experience spans nearly 3 decades. Rajit is a graduate in Commerce, post graduate in Human Resources and has also attended an Advanced Management Program at INSEAD - France. He is the recipient of the Chairman’s Award for Excellence at Max Life Insurance.

Rajit Mehta, CEO & Managing Director, Antara Senior Living

Rajiv Agarwal, CEO and Managing Director, Essar Ports Ltd

Mr. Rajiv Agarwal is the CEO and Managing Director of Essar Ports Ltd, one of the largest private port companies in the country. Mr. Agarwal is a Chartered Accountant with over 30 years of experience and has held leadership position in industries like Ports, Shipping, Telecom, Retail and Business Processing Outsourcing (BPO).

He became MD and CEO of Essar Shipping, Ports & Logistics Limited in 2010.  He Joined Essar Group in 1997 as Chief Operating Officer in Essar Telecom and was the Executive Director of Essar Shipping Limited (ESL) from 1998-2002. He has been instrumental in setting up several startup companies as CEO like The MobileStore Limited, Telecom Towers and Infrastructure Limited and Aegis Communications.  He has been key member of several industry committees like Confederation of Indian Industries (CII), Federation of Indian Commerce Industries (FICCI), The Associated Chamber of Commerce & Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) and SUPERBRANDS for several years.

He is recipient of Maritime Personality of the Year’ 17 at Gujarat Star Awards and Port Personality of the Year’ 17 at Maritime & Logistics Awards.  He has also been conferred with Maritime Standard Excellence Award’ 16 in Dubai for his contributions to maritime Sector.  In the past he has also won the CEO of the Year Award in 2009 at Asia Retail Congress and was among the finalists for Asia Business Leadership Awards, 2015 by CNBC.