Our speakers

Shailendra Nath Rai, Co-founder & Director, Lava International

A business professional with over 24 years of varied business experience, Shailendra Nath Rai, or 'SNR' as he is popularly known, is a Mechanical Engineer, Six Sigma Green Belt, and is considered one of the leading professionals in Supply Chain Management in India today.

SNR has been a part of a sponsored research project of "Perpetual Supply-Demand Balancing" with the Indian School of Business (ISB) which is a partner of the Kellogg Institute of Management.

SNR is recipient of various awards which include "Best Supply Chain Manager" by IIM Bangalore and Price Waterhouse Cooper UK, in 2003. And "Top 6 Supply Chain Process Company in India" by SP Jain institute of management and IIM.

SNR has also co-promoted Pacetel, a leading OEM supplier to Bharti, Reliance, Tata, Hutch, ZTE and other telecom majors.

Shailendra Singh, MD, Sequoia Capital India

Shailendra is a Managing Director with Sequoia Capital India. Prior to joining the firm in 2006, Shailendra was a strategy consultant at Bain & Company in New York. Earlier, Shailendra was an entrepreneur in the digital media industry.
Shailendra received an MBA with Distinction from Harvard Business School and a B.Tech in Chemical Engineering from IIT Mumbai.

Shailendra is also a Kauffman Fellow.

Shailesh Ghorpade, Managing Partner & CIO, Exfinity Venture Partners LLP

Exfinity is a Rs 125 crore, domestic VC fund started in 2013 by stalwarts in the Technology space and focused on funding disruptive ideas that are innovative and scalable. Exfinity is now raising its second edition, an offshore fund, targeting a corpus of 150 MUSD.

Prior to Exfinity, Shailesh was with Azure Capital, a boutique VC fund in real estate as its CEO. Earlier he was with Suzlon Energy Limited where he was the Chief Strategy & Planning Officer. Before Suzlon, Shailesh was Associate Vice President with Infosys Technologies working with the leadership team on key transformation initiatives and strategy planning. Shailesh has also consulted Fortune 500 clients in US and Europe during his tenure at Infosys.

Shailesh has over 20 years of experience in project and corporate finance, operations, consulting, strategy, real estate and M&A across companies in Energy, IT, Financial Services and Consulting sectors. He has held senior positions in reputed groups like the Tata and A V Birla Group.

Shailesh is an MBA from Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies and Bachelor of Science & Technology from UDCT Mumbai.

Shailesh Lakhani, Managing Director, Sequoia Capital India

Shailesh is a Managing Director with Sequoia Capital India. Prior to joining Sequoia Capital India, Shailesh worked at Redknee's India subsidiary as the Managing Director and previously was Head of the Global Professional Services Group and held Product Management leadership roles. Previously, he consulted for Microsoft India and Tata Sons. He received an MBA from the Harvard Business School, and a BASC in Computer Engineering from the University of Waterloo.

Shailesh Pathak, Senior Director, Investments at ICICI Venture

Prior to joining ICICI Venture in 2007, Shailesh has 21 years of experience in investment banking, infrastructure and governance. He started his career with four years at ICICI's Merchant Banking Division. After a brief stint with HSBC's Merchant Banking Division, Delhi in 1990, he joined public service, and spent 16 years at very senior levels with two State Governments. During his tenure as an IAS officer, Shailesh handled many critical responsibilities, especially in the area of Infrastructure. He was MD of both the State Infrastructure Development Corporation, as well as the State Industrial Development Corporation. He was also Secretary, PWD with a team of 900 engineers, building and maintaining Highways, Bridges and Public Buildings over an area of 135,000 sq km with an annual budget of $200 mn. In 2006, he moved to New Delhi to join IDFC as Head - PPP Initiative. He spearheaded the India Infrastructure Initiative launched in 2006. Shailesh was chosen by Eisenhower Fellowships as one of 15 emerging young Indian leaders, and in Fall 2000, he studied infrastructure and governance issues in USA. He is a member of CII's National Committee on Infrastructure. Shailesh is a graduate from SRCC, Delhi, and an MBA from the IIM Calcutta (1986).

Shailesh Paul, Head, Merchant Sales & Acquiring and CyberSource, India and South Asia, Visa

Current Position and Responsibilities
Shailesh Paul is Vice President and Head of Merchant Sales & Solutions India and South Asia. He is responsible for leading Visa’s merchant acceptance strategy, Visa’s merchant, acquirer and payment facilitator partnerships as well as the CyberSource business in the subcontinent.

Previous Positions
Shailesh joined Visa in 2006 and until recently led Merchant Partnership Development & Co-brands for Asia Pacific, based in Singapore. He was previously Head of Product Development, Asia Pacific at Visa and was the regional lead for core product development & specialized sales. Prior to that at Visa, Shailesh was Regional Director, Debit Products for Southeast Asia & Australia. Shailesh joined Visa from Standard Chartered Bank where he was Head of Credit Cards and Personal Loans, Qatar and held various management positions in India.

Other Information
Shailesh holds an undergraduate business degree and MBA, both from India. His international career spans leadership positions in Asia Pacific, India and the Middle East. He is a regular contributor and participant at industry platforms as a speaker and panelist in many industry and public forums which include Mapic India (India Retail Forum) 2019 and 2021, ET Cards & Payments Summit 2019, TechCircle Pay-IT Conclave 2018 and 2020, to name a few.

Shailesh Sawlani, General Manager, Uber

Shailesh has been with Uber for nearly two years since the launch of Uber’s operations in Mumbai. Prior to Uber, Shailesh was leading Aido.com - a multi-category e-commerce startup in Dubai, catering to the Gulf region, as the Chief Operating Officer. He has an MBA from ESADE Business School, Barcelona and over 9 years of experience across multiple sectors - consumer products, media & entertainment and e-commerce with Virgin Records/ EMI Music, Unilever and has done multiple start-up and consulting projects. Shailesh is based in Mumbai with his wife Kiara. She is a NIFT, Mumbai and FIT, New York grad., has worked with Landmark Group as a buyer for the brand Splash and is now running an independent clothing brand. Outside of work, they are both movie buffs and love traveling.

Shailesh Vickram Singh, Managing Partner, Massive Fund

Shailesh Vickram Singh is the Managing Partner - Massive Fund and founder - GoMassive - The Impact Investment Network.

Both the organizations have been set up to build ecosystem and promote investment in areas of Agriculture, Clean Mobility, Clean energy, Clean Water & Waste Management.

Shailesh has over 20 years of experience in Entrepreneurship / Venture investing with SeedFund (a $54 million VC fund based in India), GVFL, UTI and has been an angel investor as well. He writes extensively on Agriculture, Farmer income, Economics, Venture capital, and Entrepreneurship. His blog fringenotes.in has been regularly published in leading newspapers of India.

Shailesh is a regular speaker at various Industry forums both internationally & in India. He recently spoke in international event such as EIIES China, FT Climate Asia-Hong Kong, Transforming Asia Pacific Summit Bankok, Cleantech Forum Singapore, UN regional Climate summit- Bangkok, and in Indian events such as Sankalp Global Forum, UNEP World Environment Week- New Delhi.

Shailesh has done his MBA from IIM Lucknow and B.Tech from GB Pant University.

Shaili Chopra, Founder, SheThePeople.TV

Shaili Chopra is one of India’s top television editor-­?presenters. She has a prolific journalism, which has now furthered her into entrepreneurship, allowing her to
use her news skills to create meaningful content for the web. In her last role, she was the Senior Editor and Lead Anchor at ET NOW, the Economic Times Business News
Channel and earlier with India’s largest tv network NDTV where she was part of the core team that set up their business channel NDTV Profit.

In March 2016 Shaili was announced one of India’s Top 50 Most Influential Women in Media, Marketing and Advertising by IMPACT Magazine. She is the founder of two success startups called GolfingIndian.com and SheThePeople.TV

Shaili’s startups have been official partners of the government’s efforts such as StartUp India Initiative, Make In India initiative, TiE’s StartUp Expo and  many more. In 2012, SheThePeople.TV is the biggest story telling platform for women achievers in India. Shaili received India’s highest honour in journalism The Ramnath
Goenka Award for best in Business Journalism. She also won the Media Foundation Best Business Anchor Award for 2010 and in the same year the Federation of Indian
Industry (FICCI) gave her the Young Women’s Achiever Award for contribution to media. She also won the News Television Award for the Best Reporter in India in 2007 and
laterin 2008, her business-­?golfshow Business on Course, won the Best Show Award.

Shaili Chopra has been at the forefront of key global events including the G-­?20 of 2008 in Washington on dealing with the big economic crisis, Prime Minister’s visit
for bilateral talks in Germany, World Economic Forum in Davos (2011 and 2012), India Economic Summit and the World Retail Congress. She also spoke at the Doha Middle
Eastern Economic Summit (May 2015) on the power of Social Media.

She is the author of the critically acclaimed Big Connect-­? Politics in the Age of Social Media; a book on golf and business called Birdies and Business and When I Was 25 a book in which India’s top changeagents and leaders share their stories of risk and reward. Shaili was ranked among the 30 witty, intelligent and incredibly fun Indian women to follow on Twitter by CNN-­?IBN (India arm of CNN). Shaili's big interviews include Warren Buffett, George Soros, IMF Chief Christine Lagarde, Tiger
Woods, Gary  Player, Arnold Palmer, Vikram Pandit of Citi, Nobel Laureate Dr Amartya  Sen, Doomsday economist Nouriel Roubini, GE’s Jeff Immelt, JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, Singer Peter Gabriel, Author Paulo Coehlo, Blackrock's Chairman Larry Fink, Sir Evelyn Rothschild, Deutsche Bank's  Anshu Jain, Barclays’ John Varley, Corporate Guru Dr Ram Charan, Rothchild's Lady Lynn, LVMH’s Yves Carcelle, Ikea's Anders Dahlvig, Hermes’ Christian Blanckert, WEF'sKlaus Schwab, Pepsi's Indra Nooyi and many others.

Shaily George, CEO, Aadyant Education

Shaily is an investment professional turned entrepreneur. She has almost a decade of work experience across various functions and industries. She is an engineer from McGill University, Canada and has done her MBA from the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad. She has recently joined the Aadyant Education to help take the platform from a single pre-school player to end-2-end educational service provider with a chain of pre-schools, training institute as well as formal K-12 schools. Prior to joining Aadyant, for a year, Shaily consulted a few entrepreneurs to help with business planning and strategy. Prior to that, she spent 2 years at IDFC Private Equity, where she was mainly responsible for looking at investment opportunities in the education, healthcare and hospitality sect. Prior to her MBA, Shaily worked for three years as a project manager on aircraft simulators at CAE Inc., Canada.