Our speakers

Riyaaz Amlani, CEO and Managing Director, Impresario

Riyaaz Amlani is an entrepreneur and a restaurateur based in Mumbai, India. He is the CEO and MD of Impresario Entertainment & Hospitality Pvt. Ltd. and the President of NRAI (National Restaurant Association of India). He is often referred to as eatopian, hospitality wiz and a coffee baron.

Starting out as an outsider to the hospitality industry, today Riyaaz is highly respected and well-known in the restaurant business in India. Having sold shoes as a teenager, Riyaaz completed his education in UCLA with a Masters in Entertainment Management. Paving his way through the business, he soon started working as the entertainment consultant for many location based entertainment centers. During this period, Amlani contributed to the building of India’s leading Family Entertainment Centers as well as set up a wellness centre. He soon took over the reins of a leading media company, but gave it all up to open a café partnership with Kiran Salaskar. His vision was a cafe that offered an experience beyond the ordinary. This gave birth to his maiden venture Mocha, considered a pioneering venture in the café industry.

Riyaaz Amlani has been recognized as the ‘Best Restaurateur’ by 'Time Out Food Awards 2011'. All his restaurants have not only won various awards in India including Best New Restaurant, Best Bar, Best European Restaurant and Best Coffee Shop, but have also been acknowledged internationally by being nominated for UK’s Restaurant & Bar Design Award as well as shortlisted for Miele’s Top 50 Restaurants in Asia and recognized in Time Out Mumbai’s Top 10 Best Restaurateurs in India.

Riyaz Amlani, MD, Impressario Entertainment

Riyaaz Amlani is the CEO & MD at Impresario Entertainment and Hospitality Pvt. Ltd. The company began with its maiden venture Mocha - Coffees & Conversations, which has been IEHPL's claim to fame. The company also created Finale - Happy Endings, a rare B2B catering unit, which supplies desserts to caterers.

Highly respected in the Indian hospitality business as one of the youngest and most successful entrepreneur’s, Riyaaz is famous for his uncanny ability to provide a unique experience through each venture.Having completed his education in UCLA with a Masters in Entertainment Management, Riyaaz blazed through the biz and was soon at the helm of affairs of a leading media company. But gave it all up on a hunch to follow his dream of opening a café.

With no previous experience, he co-founded IEHPL in 2001 with a 500 sq. ft. Mocha in Churchgate. Today he has gone on to build 28 restaurants over nine years including Salt Water Grill,Salt Water Cafe,Smoke House Grill,DelItalia and Mocha ArtHouse to name a few.

Rizwan Koita, CEO, CitiusTech

As co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Rizwan Koita drives CitiusTech’s worldwide business strategy, including healthcare technology innovation and healthcare domain expertise development. Under his leadership, CitiusTech has become the largest healthcare technology company in India, with over USD 150MN in revenue, serving more than 110 leading healthcare organizations worldwide. In 2014, General Atlantic invested $110 MN in CitiusTech, valuing it at over Rs. 2,000 Crore.

Before CitiusTech, Mr. Koita was the CEO and founder of TransWorks (now part of Concentrix, the world’s #1 BPO company) one of the first business process outsourcing (BPO) firms in India, with over 21,000 employees worldwide today. Earlier, he was a senior consultant with McKinsey & Co., where he consulted transnational clients on exploiting remote service opportunities.

Mr. Koita is a winner of the 2013 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award. He is also a recipient of the 2002 Indo-American Society's Young Achievers Award in Business. He has a Master’s Degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering from IIT Bombay.

RK Bansal, MD, and CEO- Distressed Assets Resolution Business, Edelweiss Asset Reconstruction Company

R.K Bansal is the Managing Director and CEO of Edelweiss ARC. He brings with himself vast experience of over three decades of covering both development and commercial banking.

His portfolio includes diversified experience in all functional areas of banking such as Corporate Banking, Project Appraisal, Corporate Debt Restructuring[CDR], Retail Banking, International Banking, Finance & Accounts [CFO], Resources, Recovery, Investments, Treasury, Operations, etc. Prior to joining Edelweiss ARC, Mr. Bansal was an Executive Director with IDBI Bank for eight years, wherein he was also deputed by IDBI as a CEO to Stockholding of India Ltd. (SHCIL), IDBI Mutual Fund (now renamed as Principal Mutual Fund) and IDBI Federal Life Insurance. Mr. Bansal has played a pivotal role in the Indian Banking industry in resolving stressed asset issues and, in his expansive career. He has held various roles including being the Chairman of CDR Empowered Group and Chairman of Asset Reconstruction Company (India) Ltd. [Arcil] His other board membership included IDBI Federal Life Insurance Co. Ltd., ISIL, J.K. Lakshmi Cement Ltd., Uttam Value Steels Ltd., SIDBI, IDBI Asset Management Ltd., NSDL and NSDL e-Governance Infrastructure Ltd.

RN Iyer, Founder & CEO, Vayana Network

Ram Iyer, Founder & CEO of Vayana Network, is a serial entrepreneur with over 25 years in the Cash and Trade space providing solutions to some of the largest Banks across the globe. At Vayana Network, Ram has led the company’s vision over the last decade to democratise access to affordable finance for MSMEs. Previously, he was the Co-founder and CEO of CashTech Solutions, a leading Cash Management vendor in Asia which was acquired by Nasdaq listed Fundtech (now a part of the Finastra Group). He has previously worked with Accenture in their management consulting business. He is a management graduate from IIM Ahmedabad and an Engineer from Mumbai University. A guest speaker at various Fintech & Trade forums, Ram brings in exceptional understanding of B2B trade, payment ecosystems and technology.

Rob Arnold, Chairman, SLICeR Pte. Ltd

Based in Singapore, Rob Arnold is presently Executive Chairman of Slicer, a SaaS analytics platform start-up focused on the fashion and apparel industry, and a partner at Strategy & Leadership Consulting. Previously Rob spent thirty years in strategy consulting, including six years as CEO of Strategic Decisions Group of Palo Alto and six years as VP of IMS, leading their global strategy consulting team. He received a BA and MA from Cambridge University and an MBA from Dartmouth College’s Tuck School. He has written and spoken widely on topics relating to strategy, decision-making and governance.

Rob Sloan, Research Director, The Wall Street Journal

Priyanka Dutt is the India Country Director for BBC Media Action, the BBC’s international NGO that uses the power of media and communication to inform, empower and connect people around the world. With two decades of experience in media and communications across both private and development sectors, Priyanka specializes in communication for social impact. She has worked on a range of media platforms and formats, including television, radio, mobile, and outreach. Her work has won several Indian and international awards including a GSMA Global Mobile Award, a Commonwealth Broadcasting Association Award, a Global Health award and a Vodafone Mobile for Good award, among others. She holds a Master’s degree in Film and Television Studies from the University of Warwick, UK.

Rob Sloan is the Research Director at the Wall Street Journal Pro. He has made a career of specializing in IT security, focused on directing, investigating and protecting against cyber-intrusions, especially state-sponsored attacks. Mr. Sloan writes analysis for the WSJ Pro Cybersecurity newsletter tailored for executives in big and small companies and regularly contributes his research and executive analysis to studies and reports.

Previously Mr. Sloan was Response Director at an IR consultancy in London and started his career with the UK government looking at some of the earliest targeted attacks against critical networks. He is especially interested in the requirements, motivations and capabilities of threat actors.

 

Robin Alter, CEO, Kreeda Games India

Robin Alter is the CEO and CoFounder of Kreeda Games India, a social mobile game developer and publisher in Mumbai, India. Previously, as CTO, Robin led game operations for Kreeda’s MMO Game Publishing business. With 25 years of experience in technology, he has worked as a business strategist, technologist and solution designer for Media, Entertainment, Telco and Finance clients.

In 1997, worked at Muze in NYC to lead the business re-engineering team to transition from a retail kiosk to content streaming service to over 100 internet businesses including Amazon, MTV, and Universal Music. While at Muze, he was instrumental in the definition of the W3C standards for metadata, ecommerce, IP rights management.

In 1989, while at IBM, Mr. Alter headed a services division that implemented the first educational systems in over 1000 schools in the USA. He later joined the Finance Industry division and held roles with IBM Headquarters Marketing.

Mr. Alter holds a Bachelors of Science Degree from Carnegie-Mellon University. He grew up in New York City and has lived in India since 2004.

Robin Moses, Founder & CEO, Reach Accountant

Reach Tax’s founder and CEO, Robin Moses, has a nationally recognized name in the tax and accounting world. He is also the founder of www.reachaccountant.com , a website which provides tools to create a virtual office for a Tax Professional. In his current tenure, he has started several stunning initiatives in the tax preparation industry. Reach Tax is his initiative to make taxes easy for the small business owners.

Robin started his first food and distribution business a few months after leaving college at the age of 21. A Chartered Accountant by education he was never happy as an accountant and was bitten by the entrepreneurship bug again in 2005 when he founded Reach Tax a Retail Tax Preparation Company. It eventually did not do too well, but taught Robin about SaaS, Franchising and Online Marketing. Later in 2010, he founded Reach Accountant, A SaaS based next generation accounting software company.

Roch Dsouza, Marketing Head, BrandFactory ( Future group)

Armed with an MMS degree in Marketing and experience in Retail, FMCG and Real estate, Roch has worked his way up the corporate ladder and is now heading Marketing for Future's Group's Discount format Brand Factory, which is an 1000 crore format. Prior to this, he has driven the launch and management of "Payback" Loyalty program in Future Group to help the group acquire common loyalty objectives.

Roch has also been exposed to the US Market where he was responsible for marketing and brand building activities for Hirco Developments . Apart from these, he has also led Pantaloons  and Central concepts by Future Group in National Level Role. A thought leader that is, Roch has led multiple teams through multi crore formats, and efficiently so.