Our speakers

Siddhartha Gupta, Partner, McKinsey & Company (Moderator)

Siddhartha Jain, CEO, Spice Labs Pvt Ltd

Siddhartha co-founded Spice Labs in 2009 with the aim of exploring the exploding Mobile world. Leading the consumer applications he helped it outpace all other efforts. Presently he leads the team as the CEO and Chief Gamer.

 

Since taking over as CEO in 2012, Siddhartha has shaped Spice Labs as a Mobile Gaming company driving up users from about half a million a month to more than 5 million a month in less than 9 months.

 

Before Spice Labs, he was involved in 3 different projects.
In 2001, as a fresh graduate out of college he joined firstRain leading the Product for Market Intelligence solution based a highly scalable web crawling, indexing and categorization engine. The solution was employed by multiple Fortune 500 companies.

 

At GlobalLogic for an year he lead the VoIP group managing teams in US, India and Japan to deliver next generation telephony systems.
Siddhartha joined Mobisoc in late, 2006 and created powerful tools that did macro and micro level analytics on extremely large operator data to get highly valuable consumer insights. He lead the conceptualization and execution of 'Mitr', a cross platform mobile development platform that was the basis of the first wave of mobile strategy of top 25 Indian internet companies.

 

He is an active 'social-entrepreneur' and helps run 'Adharshila School'  in MP, India bringing education to remote tribal areas.

Siddhartha graduated from Indian Institute of Technology - Delhi, in 2001.

Siddhartha Pahwa, CEO, Meru Cabs | @MeruCabs

Mr. Siddhartha Pahwa joined Meru Cabs Pvt Ltd as Chief Executive Officer in 2011. He is a Chartered Accountant from ICAI and ranked 42 in the country in1996. He is also a Cost Accountant from CWAI and has done an MBA from IIM Ahemdabad.

Siddhartha started his career as a Management Trainee with Hindustan Lever Limited in 1996. He brings with him 18 years of experience in Business management, Supply Chain, Operations and Finance Management across geographical regions of Asia, Africa & Middle East. Siddhartha won the ‘Best SCM Logistics Professional Award’ for Asia Pacific region across industries held in Singapore in December 2008.

Before he joined Meru family as CEO in 2011, Siddhartha was the President -Supply Chain & Generics at Abbott Healthcare Pvt. Ltd. His expertise includes improving business performance, supply chain efficiencies and effectiveness through process implementation. Prior to this he worked as a Finance Director - Brand Development with Unilever (Bangkok) & Supply Chain Manager with Hindustan Unilever Limited.

Under his able leadership as Chief Executive Officer of Meru Cabs Pvt Ltd, a complete transformation has been done of the business by improving utilization, enhancing consumer experience and better relationship with the chauffeurs. In the near future, a vast expansion is planned in the Meru fleet size. With his innovative thinking Siddhartha has successfully launched new brands like Genie Cabs & Meru Plus for inter and intra city travel with advanced GPS/GPRS technology in different cities. He has commited to increase Meru cabs to 100,000 in next few years across India.

Siddhartha is passionate about running, football and driving.

Siddhartha Saraf, CIO, Manyavar Family Office

Siddhesh Bhobe, CEO, eMee

After 15 years as a technocrat in a wide variety of domains ranging from tire manufacturing, media & Entertainment, banking and healthcare, Siddhesh is now focused on delivering high value business solutions, addressing the key concerns of CEOs, CMOs and their customers.

As CEO for eMee, he’s focused on delivering business centric gamification and engagement solutions in a variety of domains, including Retail and marketing, HR, healthcare, learning and media. He’s a passionate speaker and writer on gamification.

He joined Persistent in Feb 1998 after his M.Tech,  from IIT Bombay and currently he is the Center Head for Persistent systems, Pune. His mobile-enabled solution for Bridgestone Europe won the NASSCOM Innovation Award  for Market Facing Business Model and Business Process Innovation.

Originally from Goa, he’s very passionate about 5 Cs: Cinema, Cuisine, Cars, Camera and Cats, not necessarily in that order. He’s an avid blogger (http://siddhesh-k3g.blogspot.com)

@siddheshb

Sidharth Balakrishna, Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer, Zee (Essel Group)

Sidharth Balakrishna holds an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Calcutta and an Economics degree from the Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC), Delhi University. He has over 14 years of experience in the media & entertainment, artificial intelligence, energy, infrastructure and education sectors.

He is currently an Executive (whole time) Board Director and Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer at the Essel (Zee) Group and is leading several strategic initiatives in digital transformation, Artificial Intelligence, etc. In the past, he has led strategy and headed many large projects including in the fields of oil & gas, renewable energy, education, water, etc. Mr. Sidharth Balakrishna has also been a Strategy Consultant with Accenture and KPMG. Some of the projects that he has led have been awarded nationally and internationally.
He is a mentor to startups with MIT, Boston, USA as well as MassChallenge Boston & Tel Aviv, Israel.

Sidharth Gupta, Co-founder, Treebo

Sidharth is the co-founder of Treebo, a new-age affordable accommodation brand that is solving the problem of poor quality assurance in this space. Before launching Treebo, he was Vice President - Strategy & Corporate Development at Myntra where he was leading several strategic initiatives for the group. Prior to joining Myntra, he worked at McKinsey & Company for ~6 years and was a Senior Engagement Manager when he left the firm. At McKinsey, he served clients across geographies on topics related to operations, sales & marketing, organization, customer experience, and launching new businesses. His passion and experiences as a traveler drew Sidharth towards the idea of launching Treebo, through which he is trying to solve the problems he has personally faced as a traveler.

@mailsidharth

Sidharth Shakdher, EVP & CMO, Hotstar

Sidharth has been a part of the founding CXO team of Disney+ Hotstar, and leads the Marketing and D2C Growth at Disney+ Hotstar. Over the past 6 years, he has built it into the largest subscription business, as well as the largest premium video streaming platform, in India today. Prior to joining Disney+ Hotstar, Sidharth led one of the largest retail categories for Amazon in the US. He has also led Dettol for North America and played a key role in building Reckitt’s digital business in the US. He holds an MBA degree from Cornell University in the US, and a BE from Pune University, India.

Sidhwartha Roy Choudhury, Enterprise IT - Digital and Technology, Air India Limited

Sijo Kuruvilla George, Founding CEO, Startup Village

As CEO of Startup Village, Sijo provide leadership and vision in setting up the country’s first PPP model Technology Business Incubator.
Startup Village aims to bring together a powerful and vibrant ecosystem to reach out, identify, develop and accelerate the growth process of student startups. They have an ambitious plan of incubating 1000 companies over the next 10 years.

Sijo brings along management consulting experience with the two of the Big4’s, PwC & Deloitte. As a consultant with the Strategy & Operations practice, he have advised various public and private sector institutions on strategy, business plan, PPP, project feasibility, governance and urban infrastructure.

Fresh out of college and after a very brief stint with technology major Infosys, Sijo along with a few friends founded MobME, a young and vibrant startup in the Mobile VAS space. MobME today is the proud winner of many prestigious Innovation & Entrepreneurship Awards, the latest being the EMERGE50 by NASSCOM.

Soji speaks at college events and conferences in his efforts to evangelize technology & entrepreneurship. He also mentor students, young professionals, entrepreneurs and startups on various aspects related to business and productivity.