Our speakers

Shiv Shivakumar, Former Group Executive President- Corporate Strategy & Business Development, Aditya Birla Group

Shivakumar Ganesan, Co-Founder & CEO, Exotel

Shivakumar Ganesan is the Co-Founder/CEO at Exotel, a business phone system on the cloud targeting SMEs in India.

Prior to Exotel, Shivku (as he is more commonly known) started, built, learnt and abandoned Roopit - a medium agnostic C2C marketplace. As an entrepreneur bootstrapping his start-up, he had only two people taking calls (one of them himself) and in the process he would miss a lot of calls. Each call was an important lead that could make or break his idea and affect customer satisfaction. He wanted a solution that would ensure he never missed a call and could track all phone conversations. Not finding anything in the market that fit his requirements, Shivku decided to build one instead. This led to a pivot and the rest will hopefully be history.

An alumnus of BITS - Pilani, Shivku started his career at Yahoo! as an Intern. He went on to write code for products like Yahoo Hotjobs, Yahoo Maps, Yahoo Communities etc. winning accolades and building long lasting friendships along the way. Shivku was awarded the Yahoo Ratna (Best Employee Yahoo - India) in 2005 and 2007 and the Yahoo Superstar (Best Employee Yahoo - Worldwide) in 2008. He has two patents in web crawling technologies. He then joined Flipkart.com as VP - Products and Technology, and started building their ERP system while helping hire the core engineering team.

At Exotel, Shivku along with his co-founders, Ishwar Sridharan (whom he met at Yahoo), Siddharth Ramesh (who studied computer science with him at BITS Pilani) and Vijay Sharma (whom he met at National Entrepreneurship Network) are looking to solve telephone and SMS related pain points of small & medium enterprises in a scalable & cost efficient manner.

Shivam Bajaj, Founder and CEO, Avener Capital

Shivani Bhasin, MD & CEO, India Alternatives

Shivani Bhasin Sachdeva is the Founder, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer at India Alternatives. Shivani has over 15 years of private equity experience in the USA and in India at top private equity funds including IDFC Private Equity, Lightyear Capital and GE Equity where she has been responsible for deal sourcing, execution and monitoring companies across various sectors. Shivani has helped shape strategy at various companies through board level involvement and been instrumental in generating superior returns for her investors. Shivani is an MBA from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and a BA from Mount Holyoke College (Massachusetts).

Shivani Bhasin Sachdeva, Founder & CEO, India Alternatives

themes in India such as women becoming more empowered as consumers. Shivani has over 19 years of global private equity experience in the US and in India at top funds including GE Equity, Lightyear Capital and IDFC Private Equity. Shivani has helped shape strategy at market leading companies through board-level involvement and has been instrumental in generating stellar returns for her investors. Shivani has previously served on the boards of HealthCare Global and Gokaldas Intimatewear, and currently serves on the boards of Brinton Pharmaceuticals and Seclore Technology. She is also an Independent Director at Emaar India, one of the largest real estate developers in India with assets in the country of over $3 billion, 5,000 acres of land, and 30 active projects; and at HIKAL Limited, a highly innovative company working across the life science value chain with over 2300 employees and market cap of over $943 million. Shivani has received accolades and recognition for being one of the top women leaders in Finance in India. Shivani received an MBA from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and a B.A. in Economics from Mount Holyoke College (Phi-Beta-Kappa, Magna Cum Laude, Sarah Williston Scholar).

Shivani Bhasin Sachdeva is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of India Alternatives Investment Advisors (“India Alternatives”). India Alternatives is a top performing mid-market private equity firm that backs unlisted companies that are the beneficiaries of transformational themes such as: women becoming more empowered as consumers; millennials driving a paradigm shift in consumption; technology reinventing financial services; and an increased focus on health and wellness.  

The Fund has made marquee investments including: TransUnion CIBIL – India’s dominant credit information bureau; NSDL – India’s largest depository; Brinton Pharmaceuticals – India’s fastest growing dermatology focused pharmaceutical company; Gokaldas Intimatewear (‘Enamor’) - a market leader in the women’s premium lingerie space and Seclore Technology - a rapidly growing cyber security company.

Prior to founding India Alternatives, Shivani was a key member of senior management at IDFC Private Equity where she was responsible for deal sourcing, execution and monitoring companies across various sectors including domestic consumption, healthcare and hospitality. Some of her notable investments at IDFC Private Equity include HealthCare Global Enterprises, a company focused on providing best in class oncology care on a pan India basis and Vodafone Essar, a leading telecommunications company.

Shivani previously worked with Lightyear Capital, a private equity fund based in New York, where she made lifecycle investments across sectors including education and financial services. Prior to that, Shivani had successful stints in the US at the private equity arm of General Electric and the investment banking division of Credit Suisse First Boston.

Shivani has been an active member on the boards of all her portfolio companies where she has been instrumental in guiding management teams and shaping strategy. Shivani has served on the boards of HealthCare Global and Gokaldas Intimatewear, and currently serves on the boards of Brinton Pharmaceuticals and Seclore Technology.  

Shivani is also an Independent Director at Emaar India, one of the largest real estate developers in India with assets in the country of over $3 billion, 5,000 acres of land, and 30 active projects; and at HIKAL Limited, a highly innovative company working across the life science value chain with over 2300 employees and market cap of over $943 million.

Shivani is a frequent speaker at domestic and international conferences on private equity including the SuperReturn, Europe and Singapore; Indian Venture Capital Association and AVCJ, Hong Kong and India.

Shivani has won an award for the top 25 women leaders in Finance by AIWMI (Association of International Wealth Management of India) as part of India’s Top 100 Women in Finance campaign. This campaign was designed to identify the most successful and respected women professionals in finance who are talented, resilient, ethical, strong and have grit.

Shivani received an MBA from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and a BA in Economics from Mount Holyoke College (Phi-Beta-Kappa, Magna Cum Laude, Sarah Williston Scholar).

Shivani Poddar, Co-founder and CEO, FabAlley and Indya

Shivani completed her graduation from Hindu College and did an MBA from Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi.  After graduating from FMS, she was a part of the leadership program at Hindustan Unilever and specialized in the Commercial and Supply Chain function.  Post HUL, she worked with Avendus Capital as a part of the Investment Banking team. At HSE, Shivani has been responsible for setting up sales and distribution, sourcing and manufacturing processes, financial systems, and fully integrated supply chain techniques.

In 2011, co-founders Tanvi Malik and Shivani Poddar were both working in corporate fields with promising careers spread out before them. A stray conversation where they bemoaned the lack of affordable, globally trendy fashion in the country for women gave them the idea of starting FabAlley, and later Indya. They saw that women were becoming more discerning; more exposed to “fashion as expression”, but Indian brands and brands that were present in India at the time were not providing the kind of options that were being sought out. This very personal insight started out their fashion entrepreneurial journey – they studied the market size, the brands in the landscape, consumer preferences and realized that there was a serious supply side vacuum. They quit their jobs, moved back to Delhi and started FabAlley within 6 months of that first conversation.

Shivani Poddar, Co-founder, FabAlley

Shivjeet Kullar, CEO, NFX Digital

Shivjeet Kullar has spent over 25 years in advertising. He began his career with agencies like Lintas and Contract. At the age of 29 he became a Creative Director and went on to win over 100 national and international awards, including One Show, New York Festival, Creativity International and JWT - All World Gold.

When he was 37, after winning Delhi Copywriter of The Year he became a partner-consultant to the Advantage Asia group and worked out of their Delhi, Sri Lanka and Jakarta offices.

Among his well known campaigns are the BJP Campaign that won them the previous elections, Shah Rukh Mayur Khan, AC Black Whisky and Bole Mere Lips I Love Uncle Chips.  
Till recently he was a mentor to the ad agency that he founded - K-Factor- which itself has won awards at Delhi Ad Club, Bombay Ad Club and Creativity New York.
He was also a consultant in the event world where  he worked with all the latest event technologies including 270 projection, holograph, ventuz and water projection. Many of the events he has helped to create have won international awards.

For ten years he wrote a column - Dilli To Pagal Hai, which has made him a household name in Delhi, it was later released as a book. He’s collaborated with Shiamak Dawar to write ‘Yes’ - The Musical. (where he worked with Bryan Tellis and Fountainhead). He has also just published a fiction thriller titled ‘Taking The Taj.’ Talks are on to produce it as a film.

His first play ‘Shiva Calling’ will debut on stage later this year.

In 2011 the world renowned Campaign magazine did a survey and ranked him as one of the 10 most high profile creative people in India, the only creative person in Delhi to be named on the list.

He has now moved to the internet domain and launched a ‘first time in the world’ website called adytude.com. The site is achieving remarkable success, was funded by IAN - the largest Angel Netwrok in the world, and has an ultimate valuation of $100 million by Deloitte. It will be launched in 15 countries worldwide in the coming years.

Shoan Shinde, Marketing Director, TurboHire

Shobhit Agarwal, MD, Capital Market, Jones Lang Lasalle

Shobhit Agarwal heads the Capital Markets division of Jones Lang LaSalle, and is based out of the Mumbai office of the firm. The Capital Markets division advises & structures real estate investment transactions on behalf of realty funds, developers and investors. Shobhit has been with Jones Lang LaSalle since March 2000, with pan-India responsibility for the Capital Markets division. He has over 12 years of experience in the property finance and investment sector. He is responsible for overseeing major cross-border real estate transactions.

Over the past 12 years, he has worked with several large real estate developers, investors and funds advising them on strategic planning & investment strategies. He covers advisory, structuring joint ventures, equity raising and advising on disposals and acquisitions in core markets. His clients include Ascendas, India REIT, Kotak, Unitech, Hiranandani, Bata India, Turner Morrison, PVR, various government bodies and Indian & international institutional investors.

He has also been credited with solving problems creatively with new ideas, new methods and procedures within real estate as the structured investments business in India is comparatively new and developing.

Shobhit has a Bachelor of Engineering (Construction) degree from Centre For Environmental Planning And Technology, Ahmedabad, a Masters in Planning degree from School Of Planning And Architecture New Delhi, and a diploma in financial management from NMIMS (Narsee Monjee Institute Of Management Studies), Mumbai.