Our speakers

Vik Mehrotra, CEO & CIO, Venus Capital

Vik is the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Investment Officer of Venus Capital Management, Inc, Boston, MA, USA. Vik has been actively investing in Asia since 1989 and Venus focusses on low risk, alpha generating strategies from India. Venus recently started an NBFC in India, funded by US and European pension and sovereign wealth plans. Venus has offices in Boston, London and Delhi.

Prior to founding Venus, Vik worked at UBS. Vik has a Master’s of Business Administration (MBA) degree from the Rochester Institute of Technology. He is a charter member of The Indus Entrepreneur (www.tie.org), Boston chapter, and a member of the Young Presidents Organization (www.ypo.org), New England chapter.

Vikaas Gutgutia, MD, Ferns N Petals

Vikaas Gutgutia, is the master mind behind Ferns N Petals, he established in 1994. With an objective to serve world class facility to Indian customers and the highest quality along with widest varieties of domestic & exotic flowers, FNP has diversified into various other flower related fields, the biggest being wedding décor; in less than a decade under his leadership.

FNP Group encompassing , FNP Events & Weddings, Ferns N Petals Retail (Franchising & E-commerce), FNP Marketing, FNP Rentals and the latest venture ‘FNP Tahiliani’. Today top celebs, entrepreneurs, key industrialists, designers and politicos of the entire country constitute FNP’s clientele, the list is ever growing.

Vikas Agarwal, General Manager, India, OnePlus | @OnePlus_IN

Vikas Agarwal is the General Manager - India at OnePlus. At OnePlus, he is responsible for driving strategic partnerships and the fully localized service operations in India.

Overall, Vikas has close to 12 years of cross-functional experience across private equity, real estate and e-commerce domains. Prior to joining OnePlus, Vikas served as a Director of Corporate Excellence at IBIBO (part of MIH-Naspers Group) where he led the business operations of their marketplace vertical.

Earlier, he was part of the founding team and part of the investment team at Ivanhoe Cambridge India (real estate vertical of La Caisse, one of the biggest pension fund in North America).

In 2004, Vikas graduated from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi with B.Tech and M.Tech degrees in Chemical Engineering. Later, he received his Masters in Business Administration from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad in 2007. Vikas currently lives in Bengaluru, along with his wife and son.

@Vikas_AGL

Vikas Chimakurthy, Director, Kotak Reality Fund

Vikas Chimakurthy is a part of the leadership team at Kotak Realty Fund that manages over US$ 1 billion of funds under management. He joined the Kotak Mahindra group in 1999 and has approximately 17 years of work experience.

Prior to joining the Fund in 2007, Vikas worked with Kotak Investment Banking where he headed the real estate and energy sectors. Vikas set up real estate coverage for Kotak Investment Banking. Vikas successfully led M&A transactions across sectors such as energy, telecom, technology, media and chemicals.

Vikas received an engineering degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (I.I.T.-Delhi) and completed his MBA from Faculty of Management Studies (Delhi University).

Vikas Choudhury, Managing Director, Aimia Inc

Vikas Choudhury is currently Managing Director of Aimia India, and part of the Global Leadership Team of the world’s largest loyalty marketing company (TSX: AIM).  For Aimia, he has also lead a JV with the Tata Group and a strategic PE investment in Fractal Analytics.  He has over 15 years of experience in executive management roles in consulting, venture capital, retail, technology and analytics.

He is a board member / advisor and an active angel investor with successful investments in over 20 consumer and technology businesses like Myntra, InMobi, Zipdial, Hotelogix and AppsDaily.  He is a co-founding investor in Mumbai Angels.  He has also run a luxury home store retailer, founded and sold a Red Herring Top Asia 100 enterprise performance management and data analytics business, and led a surveillance systems company managing security solutions.  He started his career with Arthur Andersen and CSC in USA.

He is an alumnus of Harvard Business School and an MBA from University of Pittsburgh, USA.  He has been named Asia's Top 50 Retail Professionals, and is a national award winning photographer.

Vikas Choudhury, CEO, AIMIA

Vikas Choudhury is currently COO & CFO of Aimia India. Vikas has over 15 years of experience in executive management roles in retail, analytics, technology, venture capital and consulting. 

Prior to Aimia India, he has founded and sold a Red Herring Top Asia 100 enterprise performance management and data analytics business, run a luxury home store retailer and led a surveillance systems company managing security solutions. Vikas has been a co-founding angel investor in Mumbai Angels. Vikas started his career with Arthur Andersen and CSC in USA. 

Vikas is an alumnus of Harvard Business School and University of Pittsburgh.

Vikas Dawra, Managing Director - Investment Banking, YES Bank Ltd

Vikas Dawra is Managing Director - Investment Banking at YES BANK. He has extensive experience in the Investment Banking industry across a range of industries and geographies. At YES BANK, Vikas has led cross-border M&A, private equity placements, IPO and FCCB issues. His team focuses on E-Commerce, Information Technology, life sciences, natural resources, metals, FMCG and food & agri among other industries. Besides India, he has led successful transactions in US, Netherlands, France, Israel, Greece and Africa.

Prior to joining YES BANK, he was Associate Director, M&A at Rabo India Finance, Mumbai. Vikas also spent 5 years with Arthur Andersen both in Delhi and Mumbai, where he worked in the M&A division and focused on the life sciences and telecommunications sector.

Vikas holds a B.E. in Electrical Engineering from PEC, Chandigarh and an MBA from Faculty of Management Studies, University of Delhi.

Vikas Gupta, Chief Information Officer, H-Energy Group of Companies

Vikas is a strategic IT Leader with organisational authority for enterprise-wide technology planning and designing infra-light solutions to intensify cost savings with continual refinement & improvement of IT performance.

An MBA Techie and cross functional strategist, adept in meeting ever-expanding, global business demands against concurrent resource consolidation.

Vikas has been a digital transformational leader for several global organizations and has brought about revolution in their business.

He has delivered projects across diverse industry verticals including Financial Services, Manufacturing, Projects, Engineering and Constructions, Services, Banking & Insurance, Travel and Hospitality and in Telecommunications.

Vikas is a professional with over two decades of quality experience in IT consulting who has worked with Global IT Partners like SAP, Oracle, BaaN, SunSystems, IBM, Microsoft  in carrying out Process Design and systems implementation.

He is actively engaged in designing solutions with new age digital tools and infusing mobility to applications, enabling cloud approach and creating roadmap for Big Data & Analytics.

He has delivered umpteen projects in digital space thus implanting efficiencies in the applications' DNA and bringing about process automation by infusing technology into business.

He is adept at software development in support of industry specific digital strategies, Infrastructure and application support, quality assurance, configuration management and third-party partner management.

He has been instrumental in designing completely integrated & automated environment complimented with digital initiatives to ensure faster, simpler and easier work environment for all stake-holders and has consolidated existing Application and Infrastructure landscape into a leaner and agile global platform.

Vikas is more of an engine of the team, both @ work as well as leisure. He loves travelling to serene and uninhabited places. He loves cooking as much as he loves eating. He staunchly believes that “anything worth doing is worth doing well……..”

Vikas Jain, Co-Founder & Business Director, Micromax

Vikas Jain serves as Business Director and Promoter of Micromax Informatics Limited. He has over 14 years experience in international business and planning and the information technology sector. He has previously served with Daewoo Motors engineer (QC approval) and GE Motors as a co-op student. He holds a Bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering from Jamia Millia Islamia University.

Vikas Kakwani, CEO, Keya Foods International Pvt Ltd

Joined Marico as a Management Trainee in 1995 and contributed to fuelling the company’s growth over 8 years before moving to Coca-Cola and then with the objective of exploring the global market relocated to Dubai in 2004 and got into a totally diverse field of Real Estate. After witnessing the boom & the bust, returned to India in 2010 and joined Aircel Telecom as Circle CEO. The day IVFA/VKL bought KEYA FOODS, I was roped in to set-up the company’s operations and put in on the growth path.

I call myself a "Foundation Expert". Highly solution oriented, efficient planner and Out-of-The-Box thinker having the analytical & organizational capabilities in “creating from scratch” - including building the organisation, establishing sales & distribution infrastructure, automating and integrating business processes, spearheading high worth BPR initiatives, setting up supply chain network, designing & executing marketing strategy through effective people management and optimum utilization of resources towards achievement of set targets and overall P&L management.

Within one year, KEYA is now available in top 100 cities across the country through 1500 Modern Trade stores and 15000 General Trade stores as well as other channels like Airlines, Hotels & all major E-tailers like Amazon, Big Basket, Local Banya etc.

I am fond of reading & writing. I write blogs and have published a fiction e-book. I play squash, am a gadget freak and love traveling (25 countries by last count).