Our speakers

Ronnie Screwvala, Founder, Unilazer Ventures

Ronnie Screwvala is a first generation entrepreneur who pioneered Cable TV in India, built one of the largest toothbrush manufacturing operations and went on to create a Media & Entertainment conglomerate - UTV - spanning Television, Broadcasting, Digital, Mobile and Motion Pictures, which he divested to The Walt Disney Company in 2012

Demonstrating an innate ability to merge creativity with commerce, Newsweek termed him the Jack Warner of India, Esquire rated him one of the 75 most influential people of the 21st Century and Fortune as Asia’s 25 most powerful.

Onto his second innings, Ronnie is driven by his interest in championing Entrepreneurship in India and is also focused through Unilazer to build his next set of ground up businesses in high growth and impact sectors. His more recent commitment is also to build Sports with lending first mover and support to Kabaddi and Football.

Ronnie is also passionate about Social Welfare and is active along with his wife Zarina as Founder Trustees of The Swades Foundation, which operates with the single minded focus of empowering one million lives in Rural India every 5-6 years through a unique 360 degree model with verticals in Water, Sanitation, Health, Nutrition, Community Mobilization, Education, and most importantly Agriculture & Livelihood, to lift them out of poverty permanently.

Roop Kumar, Country Category Manager, Data Services and Storage, HPE India

Roopa Ambekar, Founder, Managing Director, Uber Medspa & Style Lounge

United States Board Certified Cosmetologist & Medical Aesthetician Roopa Ambekar is a two-time national award winner, and a published artist. With over twenty-three years of experience in key leadership positions within the top American beauty brands, she has been a beauty educationalist, industry columnist, and is the Ex-Dean of the Paul Mitchell Institute in the USA.

A casual salon visit when she travelled to India six years ago was what gave her an insight into the disorganised beauty industry, as well as the outdated beauty education system. With the vision to groom our beauty industry with her expertise and knowledge, she established the award-winning Uber Salon, Spa, and Skin Clinic in Bangalore as she settled in India with her family.

Now, with the knowledge and expertise from her international experience combined with her entrepreneurial skills to run a successful beauty business in India, Mrs Roopa Ambekar is launching her education brand - the Roopa Ambekar International Institute of Cosmetology (RAIIC).

@roopambekar

Roopa Kudva , Partner & Managing Director, Omidyar Network India Advisors | @OmidyarNetwork

Roopa is partner at Omidyar Network and managing director of Omidyar Network India Advisors, where she leads overall investment strategy and operations. In her role, Roopa helps Omidyar Network manage and develop the India-based portfolio across core initiatives.

Prior to joining Omidyar Network, Roopa spent 23 years with CRISIL, and was its managing director and chief executive officer from 2007. She led CRISIL's transformation from being India’s premier ratings agency into a diversified global analytical company. Under her leadership the company's market capitalization grew four-fold and revenues tripled. She led the company's expansion plans and CRISIL now has a presence in 150 cities across India and research centers in Argentina, Poland and China. Its client base includes some of the largest global investment banks and as well as tens of thousands of small firms and enterprises in India.

Roopa also worked for Standard & Poor's, Paris, as director, financial institutions ratings. She is regularly featured in the media as a prominent woman leader in corporate India. She has served as a member of several policy-level committees relating to the Indian financial system, and is an independent director on the board of Infosys, one of India's most respected software companies.

Roopa holds a postgraduate diploma in management from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A).

Roopa Purushothaman, Managing Director and Head of Research, Everstone Capital Advisors

Roopa Purushothaman is a Managing Director and Head of Research for Everstone Capital Advisors.

 

Prior to joining Everstone in 2006, Roopa had over six years of experience having worked as a Vice President and Global Economist at Goldman Sachs, where she published papers on topics including long term growth, global trade and migration in the BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China). Roopa holds a Bachelor’s degree in Ethics, Politics and Economics and in International Studies from Yale University and a Master’s degree in Development Studies from the London School of Economics.

Roopal Kulsrestha, Partner - M & A, Private Equity & General Corporate, Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas &Co

Roopal Kulsrestha, is a Corporate, M&A and PE Partner based out of the Mumbai office of the Firm. She has extensive experience in cross border M&A / private equity deals across a range of sectors including insurance, real estate, hospitality and infrastructure. Roopal has also advised clients in public M&A acquisitions in listed Indian companies.

Roopal actively represents various private equity funds and large corporate clients on transactional and advisory matters. Her key clients include, Brookfield Asset Management, Blackstone (real estate), L Catterton, Liberty Mutual Group, Tyson Inc., IKEA and Sumitomo Chemicals Co Limited.

Roopal has featured in RSG India Report, 2017 and been recommended for “Corporate” and described as “having ‘a keen eye for detail’ with ‘a fantastic grip over all the moving pieces of a transaction”. She has also been called a ‘reliable lawyer’ with good legal expertise. Recent articles include, “Issues in reclassification of listed companies’ promoters”, “Conundrum of funding for insurance companies”  both published in the Asia Business Law Journal.

Roopam Asthana, CEO, Liberty General Insurance

Rrahul Sethi, Co-Founder, Head of Talent, Delivery & Partnerships, Expoodle

In the last 22-years as a professional & entrepreneur, Rrahul has made friends, built companies, sold companies, invested in people, and learned his way up. He has spent a reasonable time building business in South Africa, the United States, and India.

Rrahul has over 2 decades of experience in the Enterprise of Tech domain. An Entrepreneur for the past 17-years, he has built 2-Tech companies & has successfully executed 100% slump sale of Procure-To-Pay product company in 2018.
In 2020, he co-founded Expoodle & started his immersive experience journey of frontrunners in ever-evolving immersive tech & Metaverse opportunities.

He was awarded the ‘Proto Award’ for India’s most innovative Startups (Times Media Group). In the year 2018, he was also felicitated at BRICS Alliance Summit in New Delhi for emerging product development in the sustainable technology space.

Rubi Arya, Executive Vice Chairman, Milestone Capital Advisors

Rubi has over 18 years of professional experience in Business Strategy, Real Estate and General Management. At Milestone, she is responsible for designing Milestone’s overall corporate strategy, vision and future initiatives for business expansion, as well as the company’s representative at Global as well as Indian investor forums.

Under her leadership, Milestone has showcased its full cycle capability of fund raise, deployment, nurturing and profitable divestments and has invested as well as returned over Rs. 2800 crores  to the investors by way of timely exits and investment income across all funds.

Rubi leads and mentors the top management and continues to drive the company’s active management philosophy and devotes her time to putting together the team’s combined knowledge and experience towards securing profitable deals, right from investment to divesting. Prior to joining Milestone, Rubi was Global Head – HR at Kingfisher Airlines and has also held various senior positions at companies like Asian Paints & Price Waterhouse Coopers.

Engg. graduate from BITS (MESRA), MBA from XLRI, Jamshedpur and Executive Programme at Harvard Business School. Holds Certificate of Excellence from “The Directors’ Club”,  a unique accredited certification program by Hunt Partners and Board Evaluations Ltd. (UK) aimed at elevating effective governance on the board of directors at Indian as well as global organisations.

@RubiArya30

Rucha Nanavati, Chief Information Officer, Mahindra Group

Rucha Nanavati, Chief Information Office at Mahindra Group, is a global leader with experience in enabling business strategies through technology solutions. Rucha has led successful digital transformations in multiple industries including high-tech, retail and manufacturing. She is passionate about fostering innovations and cultivating an engineering culture and is known for developing and directing large global, cross-functional tech teams that deliver high-value, transformational initiatives. Rucha’s previous experiences range from consulting role at PricewaterHousecoopers to technology leadership roles at Albertsons Companies and Motorola.

Rucha is passionate about mentoring and helping women move forward in technology and at workplaces in general. She also mentors start-ups and a strong promoter of women led start-ups as well.