Our speakers

Shalini Prakash, Principal, 500 startups

Shalini believes in the magic that happens at the intersection of entrepreneurship and technology. Her interests lie in understanding how these intersections can be empowered to create transformational solutions for different ecosystems. Her vast knowledge and experience gives her the unique perspective ability to operate in cross- disciplinary roles and industries, create inter-relations and develop creative solutions.
Currently, the Principal at 500Startups, a global venture capital firm and accelerator based in Silicon Valley with US$250M under management, Shalini takes pride in being at the helm of affairs at the world's most active early-stage investors with a portfolio of over 1,500 companies across 50 countries. She is responsible for 500’s India investments, portfolio and operations. Her focus is to scale 500’s investments, expertise and operations across India and help invest in the region’s most talented, passionate founders and promising startups.

Prior to joining 500, she was working with INKtalks (previously in association with TED) where her roles involved promoting INK’s platform through collaborative programs and partner networks. Apart from these engagements, she was an “Entrepreneur in Residence” at GSF Global Accelerator Program, Mentor in Residence for IDEX Accelerator Program and a Program Manager at Kyron Accelerator Program.
She holds Master of Science (MS) from London School of Economics (LSE), MBA from Liverpool Business School and an Engineering Graduate from RVCE Bangalore.

 

Shamender Sharma, Head Business Strategy, Khedut Agro Engineering Pvt Ltd

He is the head- Strategy and business development at Khedut Agro Engineering which is India’s largest manufacturer of automatic seed drills and innovative planting machinery. Here he is responsible to set corporate strategic directions (vision and Strategy) & support in decisions on key strategic issues i.e. market entry, acquisitions. He reviews the company’s overall strategy to ensure the organization anticipates and responds to changing business conditions. He serves as principal external representative of the company and develops successful alliances and joint ventures etc.

He has over 15 years’ experience in handling business development for banking, Financial institutions and Agriculture Retail. He is also a part of leading consulting firm  “GoldRoof Advisors”, has worked on both private equity transactions and structured finance deals, with specific focus on agro based companies.

Shamsher Puri, MD, Dusters Total Solutions

After successfully completing Mechanical engineering degree from Punjab Engineering college, Mr. Bansal joined Engineers India Limited. In 1983, he left the cushioned corporate job to fulfill his long envisaged dreams.

His first venture started with providing Design consultancy followed by EPC for Sugar plants. Innovation and R&D are the two critical attributes Mr. Bansal has inculcated in the employees and has made them DNA of the group. Later the company ventured into Pre-Fabrication business for Piping, started its own fitting manufacturing capacity and is now one of the leading international engineering enterprises offering a single source solution for piping systems.

Under the supreme guidance and management of Mr. Bansal for last 27 years, the company grew by leaps & bounds and have achieved new heights. But if you take his words it’s just the starting and there is lot to be achieved and to be given back to the society.

The company ventured into Biomass space way back in 2003, when it was just a beginning of green power/ cleantech era. With the years of industry experience and passion to do something new, Mr. Bansal along with the team erected and commissioned 2 biomass plants in the record time of 9 months from the date of starting the civil works.

The vision of setting up these plants was beyond corporate profits & accounts. It was to give back something to the society, something to the farmers, to rural people and something to the State of Punjab where his roots are from.

Shankar Kambam, CEO, Meridian Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

Shankar Narayanan, Co-Head, Carlyle Asia Growth Partners

Shankar Narayanan is a Managing Director with the Asia Growth Capital team of global PE fund responsible for advising growth capital investments in India. He is based in Mumbai.
 
Mr. Narayanan has been in private equity since 1993 with the unique distinction of having run some of the investee companies as a CEO. He has on-the-ground work experience across the country which allows him to have a very practical perspective of growth prospects and challenges across industries.
 
Since joining the global PE fund in 2004, Mr. Narayanan has led and advised Carlyle on key investments such as Claris Lifesciences, Elitecore Technologies, Repco Home Finance, Tirumala Milk Products, Visen Industries, Value and Budget Housing Corporation, Edelweiss Financial Services, South Indian Bank, Infotech Enterprises; etc. He has also successfully delivered exits from Tirumala Milk Products, Cyberoam Technologies and Repco Home Finance (IPO). He was also actively involved in managing the fund’s investments and exits in Newgen Knowledge Works, Financial Software & Systems, Learning Mate Solutions, QuEST and Sharekhan.
 
Prior to joining the global PE fund, Mr. Narayanan spent six years at Hathway Investments in Mumbai and during that time served as Managing Director and CEO. He was also with Deutsche Bank Capital Partners, based in Hong Kong, as a Director covering South Asia and India. He was involved in a number of prominent private equity investments in India, including Johnson Tiles, Exide Industries, Hathway Cable, Asianet Satellite Communications, Pushpa Polymers, Tata Infomedia and AFL Limited and served on the Board of Directors of all these Companies.
 
Prior to Hathway Investments, Mr. Shankar Narayanan worked at Citibank in Mumbai. He received a Post Graduate Diploma in Management from XLRI Jamshedpur where he was a Gold Medalist standing first in the graduating class in the area of Finance & Accounting and a Bachelor of Technology degree in Civil Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi.

Mr. Narayanan is currently on the Boards of Elitecore Technologies, Infotech Enterprises and Newgen Knowledge Works. Previously he served on the Boards of key portfolios such as Repco Home Finance, Claris Lifesciences, Value and Budget Housing Corporation, Visen Industries, Financial Software & Systems, Tirumala Milk Products, Cyberoam Technologies, Learning Mate Solutions, Allsec Technologies, QuEST, Newgen Knowledge Works & Sharekhan.

Shankar Vaddadi, CEO & Founder, www.i-lend.in | @i_lend

Shankar Vaddadi is a seasoned professional having held leadership positions across various industries and public companies in India. He has wide experience in Technology , Financial Inclusion Architecture and Social Entrepreneurship and has pioneered industry sectors. Presently he is the Founder & CEO of www.i-lend.in which is India’s first P2P / Social Lending marketplace and is at the forefront of evangelising alternate finance as well as propagating this sector with all stake holders including regulators and eco systems participants. www.i-lend.in is the most experienced and comprehensive P2P lending marketplace in India with a lot of firsts to its credit.

Prior to this role , Shankar has held leadership positions with companies like TVS Electronics , VTX Industries etc and has wide experience in several industries.

@vaddadi

Shankha Banerjee, CEO-Group Companies, Dr Lal Pathlabs

Shantanu Jha, Founder & CEO, DocSuggest

Shantanu Jha, Co-founder & CEO, Ziffi

Shantanu's favorite sport is juggling. He juggles between the roles of marketing, web designing, sales, testing, HR and sometimes "that-guy-on-the-phone in the office". His focus is making sure more and more people know about me and use my services. He hails from a family of doctors and brings in insights that helps evolve my future path and strategic direction. He is passionate about travelling & music and makes sure he gets to sing in as many parties as possible. He boasts of getting a degree from IITB without any backlogs but never reveals his CPI.

Shantanu Mathur, Founder, Smartwards

Shantanu is a graduate of IIT Delhi (2001) and did his MBA from Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth (2009).

Before Smartwards, Shantanu has over 13 years of global experience across ecommerce, Strategy Consulting and Financial Services with FashionAndYou.com, Bain & Co., A.T.Kearney
and Capital One Financial Services.

He moved back to India in 2011 as the MD, Incubator at the Smile Group which has launched multiple e-commerce businesses in India, Germany and Brazil including FashionAndYou.com,
DealsAndYou.com, Freecultr.com, among many others including bringing AirBnB.com to India and S.E.Asia. He was also the CEO of Fashionandyou.com in early 2012 and drove the highest
sales day in the history of the company.

Shantanu is a subject matter expert in Analytics and Loyalty Programs as applied across multiple industries. At Capital One, he managed all parts of the Go Rewards Miles & Rewards credit card, including new product design and marketing. At Fasihionandyou.com, the loyalty program was launched under his leadership.

His vision for Smartwards is to innovate in 360? customer engagement and build the largest customer engagement network in the country. This vision also includes the heart and soul of Indian retail, the Small & Medium Business owner via low cost, yet state-of-the-art customer engagement tools.