Our speakers
Sridhar Pinnapureddy, Founder & CEO, CtrlS Datacenters Ltd
Mr. Sridhar Pinnapureddy is the Founder and CEO of CtrlS, Asia’s Largest Tier 4 Certified Datacenter. Under his leadership, CtrlS has become the symbol of highest level of standards and has setup new benchmarks in the Industry. He has spearheaded over 200 innovations in Energy Management, DC Infra, Cloud, Disaster Recovery and elevated CtrlS as a thought leader and fastest growing Company. He is also the Founder and Chairman of Pioneer Group of companies which has interests in Internet, IT services and Infrastructure.
He is bestowed with coveted recognitions as "Outstanding Entrepreneur of the Year - 2010" for Asia Pacific region by APEA, "Rajiv Gandhi Shiromani" by Global Economic Council and "KaramveerPuraskar2007" awarded by ICONGO for his incredible accomplishments and magnanimous contribution to the society. He is a distinguished and sought after industry speaker by NASSCOM, CII and various industry bodies.
Sridhar Rajagopalan, MD & Co-founder of Educational Initiatives, Mindspark Centres
Sridhar Rajagopalan, Managing Director of Educational Initiatives (EI), is an educational entrepreneur who has helped change the way student learning outcomes are seen in India. After a brief stint at IBM India, Sridhar co-founded and ran Eklavya School in Ahmedabad for 6 years. In 2001, Sridhar founded EI which researches and creates diagnostic assessments and offers ASSET, India’s largest diagnostic assessment for private schools. EI’s ASSET test is taken by over 350,000 students in India and neighbouring countries, the Middle East and Singapore. Mindspark, EI’s adaptive learning program is used by over 80,000 students in India, the Middle East and the USA. In 2006, India Today carried a cover story titled ‘What’s Wrong with our Teaching?’ based on EI’s study on student learning in India’s 5 largest metros. EI also works with government schools in about 20 of its 28 states. In 2009, EI’s Student Learning Study with support by Google, Inc. provided the most detailed picture yet of student learning levels in 19 Indian states. EI is or has been involved in largest scale student and teacher assessment projects aimed at measurable learning improvement in Bhutan, the city of Mumbai and the states of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana and Gujarat. EI’s partners in these projects include the World Bank, UNICEF and McKinsey & Co. Sridhar is a member of various central and state government committees related to assessment and learning including most recently the committee for devising model rules for the Right to Education Act in Gujarat. He is a member of NCERT’s National Expert Group on Assessment in Elementary Education (NEGAEE) and has been a member of the Joint Review Mission of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. He is a board member of Central Square Foundation, Delhi, a trustee of Pratham, Gujarat and a member of the Global Advisory Council of the GEMS group.
Sridhar Ramachandran, Partner, Grant Thornton Bharat LLP
- Assistance in planning and execution of very large investments in India in the Special Economic Zones/ Free Trade Zone Models.
- Assistance in structuring foreign direct investments in various sectors including Special Economic Zones, manufacturing, wholesale and retail trading, e-commerce, financial services, infrastructure, real estate etc. in a tax efficient and regulatory compliant manner.
- Assistance in setting up business entities in India for various businesses in Company, partnership and LLP forms, including in Special Economic Zones (sector specific, free trade zones or multi product/ service units) or domestic units.
- Assistance in setting up offices abroad, making overseas investments and structuring acquisitions
Sridhar has over 24 years post qualification experience in tax and regulatory matters. A significant part of his career was spent in Delhi where he gained expertise in dealing with complex and varied tax and regulatory matters of multinational corporations. He shifted to Chennai in 2006 and prior to joining the Firm, ran a boutique consulting firm which specialized in tax, regulatory and M&A functions.
Sridhar is a tax partner in Grant Thornton LLP where he is responsible for the tax practice of Chennai and Kochi offices. He also responsible for the Transaction Tax practice of the firm for South India. Some of his key experiences include:
Sridhar is a regular speaker at forums across India, including the ICAI, ICSI and various trade/professional bodies where he speaks on foreign direct investment policy, exchange control law, special economic zones and income-tax law. He has contributed to Policy making on the Special Economic Zone laws across state and central government agencies.
He is the author of a book on Exchange Control Law in India published by Bloomsbury.
Srikant Krishnan, Co-founder, dMACQ
Srikant is a Chartered Accountant with 20+ years of experience with big-4 accounting firms. Of which 16+ years were in the mergers & acquisition arena with a focus on Private Equity. Srikant has spent 9+ years in Continental Europe and rest in India. He has worked on several cross-border and capital markets transactions and on various types of M&A deals including PIPEs, MBO, MBIs, LBOs, etc. Srikant brings core domain experience to dMACQ.
Srikant Sastri, Co-Founder, Crayon Data
Srikant Sastri provides strategic leadership as the co-founder of Crayon Data, the ambitious Singapore & India-based start-up, that aims to build a global business around Big Data.
Srikant is a seasoned entrepreneur and bridge-builder. As a successful entrepreneur Srikant had founded Solution - Digitas in 1995 and grew the company to become India and Southeast Asia’s leading marketing services agency. In 2005 he founded Team4U, India’s largest sales force staffing company. Both businesses achieved scale (2000employees, and 15,000 employees respectively) and market leadership before being acquired.
In his most-recent role as VivaKi India Chairperson, Srikant drove an ambitious M&A strategy to help the Publicis Groupe establish digital leadership in India, through the acquisitions of Resultrix, Convonix and Neev Technologies.
Respected as a leading marketing practitioner, Srikant started his career at Unilever and McCann – Erickson and has also driven a big initiative focused towards development issues in Indian society through an initiative called “Growth-for-all’, a movement that brought together individuals, corporations, and non-government organizations in a collaborative setting.
As an active Charter Member of TiE Delhi the Indian Angels Network, Srikant works closely with, and nurtures several tech start-ups, especially those that can make a social impact. Srikant also advises VivaKi and Razorfish-DigitasLBi on how to stay connected with emerging opportunities in the start-up eco-system.
Srikant is an engineer from IIT, Kanpur and an MBA from IIM, Calcutta and his other interests include current affairs, contemporary history, and economic development.
Srikanth Chunduri, Co-founder & Chief Operating Officer, Emart Solutions India
Srikanth Co-founded Emart Solutions in 2009, with a vision to harness the power of technology to help enterprises build sustainable customer experience. Being the Chief Operating Officer of Emart Solutions, he leads the company's overall growth and strategy. Under his leadership, Emart has a record of delivering consistent results, backed by execution excellence and client satisfaction. His ability to understand the unique requirements of clients and deliver novel solutions has transformed Emart as one of the most sought after loyalty services providers managing some of the largest loyalty and engagement programs for Fortune 500 and Forbes 100 companies.
Prior to Co-founding Emart, Srikanth was a Management Consultant with Mitchell Madison Group in New York, wherein he advised Fortune 500 firms on corporate strategy. Srikanth also had a stint as a Marketing Manager Prepaid at Alltel Wireless, a wireless service provider in US. He acquired his Undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT Chennai and Postgraduate degree in Master of Engineering Management from Duke University. He is a member of Mensa America and has a passion for advising and mentoring early-stage startups in India.
Srikanth Gopalakrishnan, CIO for HR, Legal and Communications, Deutsche Bank Group
Since joining Deutsche Bank in 2020 as CIO for HR, Legal and Communications, Srikanth has been involved in evolving the Workday footprint in HR and has also been managing the Legal portfolio with the rollout of the new Document Management system for the bank.
With over 22 years of experience in the HR Technology domain, Srikanth has been involved in large projects in the US and India including building HR products for Peoplesoft, Oracle, SAP and Success Factors. He has spent the last five years building products for the manufacturing sector using IoT, Machine Learning and building Business networks at SAP for Industry 4.0.
Srikanth has an M.S in Electrical Engineering from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, USA and an Executive General Management Programme from Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.
Srikanth Iyer, Co-Founder | CEO, HomeLane
Srikanth Nadhamuni, CEO, Khosla Labs India
Srikanth Nadhamuni is a technologist and entrepreneur who spent a decade and a half in California’s Silicon Valley designing CPUs, developing software products and creating internet startups.
Srikanth was inspired by his grandfather’s entrepreneurial zeal, who with his 10th grade education travelled globally, imported new equipment and technology and setup several companies in wood and plastics in Mysore, India.
Srikanth has a BE from the University of Mysore and an MS in Electrical Engineering from Louisiana State University. He worked at Sun Microsystems on the UltraSparc, the most successful CPU project at Sun. At Intel he worked on the Pentium projects. This was followed by a stint at Silicon Graphics creating an interactive TV platform. In 1996 he joined the initial team of Healtheon | WebMD, a Jim Clark and Kleiner Perkins startup. This was followed by GlobeTrades, an unsuccessful and highly educational startup failure. He moved to India in 2002 to work on social development initiatives and partnered with Nandan Nilekani (then CEO of Infosys) to start the eGovernments Foundation. This NGO focuses on improving municipal governance in 275+ Indian cities through the use of IT-enabled eGovernance products. Following that, he was made the Head of Technology by the UID Authority of India. He setup the Aadhaar technology centre that would design and develop a biometric-based Identity Management system for India’s 1.2 billion population.
Srikanth is currently the CEO of Khosla Labs which he and Vinod Khosla setup in Oct 2012.
Srikanth Narasimhan, Director, Veda Corporate Advisors
Srikanth manages client delivery and also leads the initiatives on the technology, internet & ITES sectors. He has over twelve years of well rounded experience in investment banking, private equity and corporate planning. He has advised & assisted many companies in their funding plans and M&A. He has also invested in companies, been on their boards, taken part in their growth strategies and successfully raised funds/acquired businesses for growth.
Earlier, Srikanth was with Ernst & Young, leading the private equity and M&A activities in the technology & services sectors. Prior to that, he was with ICICI Venture, the private equity arm of ICICI Bank (listed on NYSE), investing and managing a portfolio of investments in the IT / ITES sectors. He was also with RelQ Software, the leading software testing services firm in India, managing their corporate planning activities including acquiring a couple of businesses in Europe and raising a round of funding (both equity and debt) for the same. He has corporate experience as well, having worked with companies like TATA Motors and TATA Technologies.
Srikanth is an MBA from IIM Bangalore and holds an Engineering degree from BITS Pilani.