Our speakers

Virendra Gupta, Founder & CEO, Newshunt

Virginia Sharma, Director, Marketing Solutions, India, LinkedIn

Virginia Sharma is the Director of Marketing Solutions at LinkedIn India. As part of the senior leadership team at LinkedIn India, Virginia’s focus is to help leading enterprises and marketers meaningfully engage with professionals on the LinkedIn platform, with relevant and valuable content. She leads a sales team who consult marketers and agencies create and execute high-impact content marketing campaigns.

Virginia has been a marketer all her life. Before this role, she was the Director, Marketing for LinkedIn APAC, where she designed and drove effective marketing campaigns to grow the LinkedIn Talent Solutions Business. Virginia started her career at IBM and held several marketing leadership positions across North America, APAC and India, including Vice President of Marketing and Communications for IBM India/South Asia. Before joining LinkedIn, she had to her credit 15 years of experience in the marketing industry and has won several awards including Asia’s Most Influential CMOs in 2015 by CMO Asia.

An alumnus of New York University, Virginia is a global marketer who brings extensive business and leadership experience to her role at LinkedIn.  

Visalakshi Chandramouli, Founding member, Tata Capital Healthcare Fund

Visalakshi is the Founding member of Tata Capital Healthcare Fund, an India dedicated
Healthcare & Life Sciences Private Equity Fund. She has spent over twenty-eight years across
Healthcare Private Equity, Equity Research and Pharmaceutical R&D operations.
As the head of the Tata Capital Healthcare Fund, Visalakshi drives the fund raising and
investment management activities of the fund. She has successfully led the fund raise in both
vintages of the Tata Capital Healthcare Funds (I and II), with commitments in excess of USD
200MN from international and domestic institutional investors and corporates. She is actively
involved in portfolio management through presence on Board and other committees of Investee
companies. Under her leadership, the Tata Capital Healthcare Fund has delivered outstanding
returns and boasts a robust performance track record - for which the Fund was awarded
‘Healthcare Investor of the Year’ for three consecutive years, 2018, 2019 and 2020 by Venture
Intelligence.
Visalakshi has a vast experience within the pharmaceutical industry as well as commercial &
investment experience in the industry.
She started her career as a research scientist at Cipla, a global pharmaceutical company and
thereafter, spent over 12 years as Lead Healthcare investment analyst at leading financial
services firms like Kotak Securities and Merrill Lynch where she was Senior Director of India
Healthcare Equity Research and rated No. 2 in Asia for Healthcare for 2008 on the prestigious
Institutional Investor (II) poll rankings.
Visalakshi is a Chemical Technologist from ICT Mumbai (specialization in pharmaceuticals & fine
chemicals) and MBA (finance) from Mumbai University. She is also a graduate in Advanced
Management Program (AMP) from the Harvard Business School. Visalakshi has also been
recognized as ‘India’s Top 100 Women in Finance’ by AIWMI (Oct.’2020). Visalakshi is also
actively involved with industry associations like NatHealth as co-chair Western Region and as
co-chair of Impact Future Project (IFP).
Outside of work, Visalakshi is training in the art of Hindustani and Carnatic Violin instrument
styles. 

Vish Narain, Country Head, TPG Growth

Mr. Narain is Country-Head for TPG Growth, a global private equity firm and is based in Mumbai. Prior to joining TPG Growth in 2007, Narain was an investor with Bessemer Venture Partners in New York. Previous to that he was an Engagement Manager in McKinsey's Private Equity Practice in Palo Alto and London. He joined McKinsey from Deloitte Consulting, where he was a Senior Consultant. He has a Master of Technology from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and an M.B.A., Stanford University School of Business. Narain’s non-profit activities include board roles at Spic Macay, an organization working to preserve and promote classical Indian music. He is deeply involved with his family’s foundation work in rural India. Selected as a Young Global Leader (2014), he is an active member of the World Economic Forum and is a part of the South Asia Bridge initiative to bring together business communities across borders under the WEF banner. He is also a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network and a 2014 Aspen Fellow. A semi-professional sitar player and adventure travel enthusiast. He has worked in 20 countries and traveled to over 75 nations. He is currently serves on the boards of AGS, Sutures India Limited, India Transact, Global Gene Corp and Landmark Auto. He is a columnist on economic opportunity and hopes to contribute to India's growth story.

Vishaal R Vira, Director, Sarjena Foods Pvt Ltd

Mr. Vishaal R. Vira, Director at Sarjena Foods, is recognized for his in-depth knowledge of almost everything on earth and his ever inquisitiveness to learn. Even though he hails from a family of businessmen, Vishaal chose not to inherit the family business, rather earn it by hard work and sweat, the two elements that paid off rich dividends as the future unfolded.

He has to his credit of leading his impeccable expertise to many leading FMCG companies like SM Foods, Frito, Amul, Pravin Chitale, Poorna Foods, etc.

'Baker Street' - was formed under the aegis of Sarjena Foods Pvt. Ltd. and was acquired from Max Foods, manufacturers of Bakery products including Khari, Cookies, Toast, Nankhatai, Cake Rusk, in 2011.  Then its products were available only in 100 modern and 10 to 15 general trade stores in Mumbai.  As a result of the system oriented efforts to manufacture best quality products, Baker street has won the trust of customers and uttermost belief in the brand which is now exported in more than 20 countries. It is now present in domestic channel of modern retail outlets like Big Bazar, Food Bazar, Reliance Fresh, Hypercity, Spencer, MORE, TESCO, Apna Bazaar, Sahakari Bhandar, Haiko, Max Hyper, Magnet, Food Right, etc.

Vishakha Mulye, MD & CEO, ICICI Venture

Vishakha took over as the MD & CEO of ICICI Venture earlier this year. She has over 16 years of experience in the areas of equity investing, corporate strategy, treasury, structured finance and corporate & project finance. Prior to this, she was the Executive Director of ICICI Lombard.

From 2005-2007, she was the CFO of ICICI Bank and was responsible for large scale treasury operations involving assets to the tune of USD 50 billion, multi billion dollar cross border fund raisings in US and Japan besides India, and managing the Bank's large prop book. Under her leadership, the Bank raised close to $7 billion in equity and several billion dollars of debt financing.

Vishakha Singh, Founder and CEO, Red Polka

Vishakha Singh, a marketing professional has 16 years of experience in business strategy, brand building and shopper marketing behaviour. Alumni of The Times School of Marketing, she has played a critical role in launching and building some of the top media brands in her past job experiences. Her guiding principle is to be knowledge-driven and accountable, thus creating value for oneself and all stakeholders in the eco-chain.

Vishal Agarwal, Cofounder, LocoBuzz

Vishal Aggarwal, Group Head Corporate Development & Planning, Sterlite Technologies Limited

Vishal is a seasoned Corporate Development leader, with over 16 years of experience in M&A, Strategy, Finance, Venture Capital, Fund Raise, Investor Relations, Legal, Risk Management and Capital Markets. He comes with a strong track record of understanding the context and the environment in which global businesses operate, helping them navigate challenging waters and shaping their strategies. Vishal has been successfully building and leading cross-functional teams to create and execute impactful growth strategies across Telecom, Services Tech, Software, Automotive Industries etc.

Vishal has been with STL for more than 12 years and spearheads the growth initiatives for the Company and before that worked at Minda Corporation for 4 years.
At STL Vishal has been playing a pivotal role in driving the strategic roadmap and has orchestrated the Company’s foray into new business segments and new markets. Over the years, Vishal has successfully closed acquisitions/investments/JVs for the Group in UK, Italy, Israel, Japan, India, Brazil and China collectively valued more than 1 Billion Dollars. He has championed the post-merger integration for these cross border acquisitions by putting in place a post-merger operating model and framework as well as bridging cultural gaps through effective strategic communication.  He is also heading the FP&A and Corporate Planning function for STL Group to support short-term and long-term strategic plans of the Company, driving financial and capital allocation strategies for the Group.

Vishal also plays a crucial role in driving sustainable shareholder value creation through an active investor relations and capital markets program ensuring high standards of corporate governance. He has been representing the Company to the Global and Indian Investor fraternity, helping attain significant value for shareholders.

His ingeniousness of value unlocking led to immense shareholder maximisation through the first capital market transaction of its kind in India that involved the demerger of power and telecom businesses in 2015. The deal yielded 10x value creation in 2 years. He recently led a multi-million-dollar share buyback program for STL which resulted in more than doubling of the market capitalisation.

Vishal is a Computer Science Engineer and holds a Master of Business Administration degree from The Department of Management Sciences, Pune University.

Vishal Anand, Chief Product Officer, Dailyhunt

Vishal Anand is the Chief Product Officer at Dailyhunt, India’s largest news & e-books application with over 100 million installed users.  His career spans between the US, Japan and India where he has led product and engineering teams for large scale consumer software products. Along with a passion for building products, Anand is a voracious reader and derives happiness in bringing never before available Indian literature in the hands of Indian mobile users through Dailyhunt.

Vishal has a B-Tech in Computer Science and Engineering from the NSIT-University of Delhi and MBA from University of Washington.

@VishalAnand