Our speakers

Vishal Gandhi, Founder & Managing Partner, Gandhi & Associates

Vishal Gondal, Founder and CEO, GOQii Inc

Born on (14 July 1976) Vishal is an Indian entrepreneur and an angel investor who started his entrepreneurial journey at the age of 16. He is the founder and CEO of GOQii (pronounced Go-Key) and is famously known as the “Father of the Indian Gaming Industry”. In 1999 he founded the game development and publishing company Indiagames. Having taken the company to amazing heights, in 2012, IndiaGames was acquired by the Walt Disney Company for $100 million, post which he served as Managing Director Digital, Disney UTV.

By 2009 IndiaGames had approximately 300 employees and offices in Mumbai, Beijing, London and Los Angeles. Gondal sold a majority of stake holds (adding up to 76.29% of the company) to TOM online Games, a subsidiary of TOM Online Inc, in 2009 and retained his position as CEO

In 2008, Gondal launched Sweat and Blood Venture group to invest in startups at a seed level. The organization has invested in Instablogs and Docsuggest, among others. Amongst other achievements Vishal was listed among the top 50 executives in the mobile content space by the UK based 'Mobile Entertainment' Magazine alongside prodigies such as Steve Jobs. Additionally he has also presented at the INK Conferences in Mumbai.

For recreation he enjoys running Marathons, Ultras, Trekking & Sky Diving. His love for the outdoors and pushing oneself physically dates to his growing years when he was a national level volleyball player. Vishal is a long time TEDster, gadget & gizmo freak and a judge on two television shows 'The Pitch' on Bloomberg TV & 'Your Wish is my App' on NDTV. His passion for technology, fitness & gaming led him to his next venture GOQii which is focused on helping people make a change towards a healthier lifestyle and be the force of good.

Vishal Gondal, Founder & Ex-CEO, Indiagames.com

An entrepreneur and angel investor, Vishal Gondal is a partner at Sweat and Blood Venture Group and the Founder and CEO of Indiagames.com that develops mobile and computer games in India.

Indiagames.com is the #1 gaming brand in India.  It caters to customers across different platforms like, mobile phones, iPad, social gaming and networking sites. In 1999, Vishal founded Indiagames, then a five member team. Today he leads a global operation with over 300 employees in Mumbai. He is recognized as being instrumental in starting and growing the Gaming Industry in India.

Vishal Gondal was part of the Nokia Advisory Council for Games and actively advices Nokia on wireless and gaming technologies. Vishal features among the 15 coolest young entrepreneurs in 2011 by The India Today Aspire magazine. Recently Indiagames was acquired 100% by The Walt Disney Company & Vishal now heads the Gaming/Digital Initiatives for Disney in India.

Vishal Gupta, VP & Head of Product Management, PhonePe

Vishal Gupta heads Product Management at PhonePe. He brings over 2 decades of diverse experience in Product Management, Product Development, Strategy, Market Research, Customer Experience, Engineering and Delivery.

Vishal belongs to the rare group of professionals who understand technology, business and operations with equal ease. He has held leadership positions across all 3 functions in multiple domains.

Vishal is an entrepreneur with a customer-first mindset. His strength lies in thinking long term and generating new ideas. In both his current and previous stints, he has been instrumental in generating multiple ideas and has taken them from inception to delivery.

Prior to PhonePe, Vishal was Director-Product Management at Flipkart where he led Flipkart money and payments. Prior to that, he was the GM for Returns at Flipkart and was also instrumental in delivering the supply chain product. Prior to the Flipkart Group, Vishal has built and scaled products at leading organisations such as Pine Labs, AOL & Schlumberger.

Vishal has 20 years of industry exposure in domains including telecom, retail, e-commerce, social & payments. Vishal holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electronics Engineering from the University of Pune and is also an alumnus of IIM Bangalore’s Executive General Management Programme.

Vishal Gupta, Managing Director, Bessemer Venture Partners

Vishal Gupta, is the Managing Director at Bessemer Venture Partners in Bangalore. Vishal joined BVP India in 2006 and focuses on investments in consumer internet, fin tech and health tech. Vishal is currently on the board of Bigbasket, Swiggy, LivSpace, Pharmeasy, Urbanclap, Hungama, MediAssist, NephroPlus, Perfios, Innoviti, Home First Finance, Applied Solar Technologies and Anunta Technologies. In the past he has served on the boards of Indian Energy Exchange (now public), Matrimony.com(now public), TaxiForSure (acq. Ola), Orient Green Power (now public). He has also served as a board observer of Shriram City Union Finance, Motilal Oswal and SnapDeal.com. He is involved with IIM Calcutta Innovation Park which promotes entrepreneurship.

Prior to joining BVP India, Vishal was a senior manager in the treasurer’s office at Reliance Group, Vishal helped the firm establish a private-equity fund that invested in such companies as Celebrity Fashions, Adlabs, and other firms in the healthcare and financial-services sectors. Previously, served as an executive assistant to the CEO a joint venture of HCL Tech and Deutsche Bank in India.

Vishal holds an M.B.A from the Indian Institute of Management in Calcutta, is a chartered accountant and has a B.A. in commerce from GS College, where he was ranked one of the top 750 students in the country. He is also a member of Mensa and has been a nationally-ranked table tennis player.

Vishal Hanmattekar, Director - Loyalty, Taj Hotels Resorts & Palaces

Vishal is currently Director of Loyalty at Taj Hotels, Resorts & Palaces. He has over a decade and half of experience in creating and managing Loyalty programs and CRM initiatives with a special focus on data driven marketing and CRM in Social Media. He has designed and implemented loyalty programs across varied customer segments for major brands across Retail and Hospitality.

Vishal Kapoor, Chief Design Officer, Future Group

Vishal Kapoor is a design thinker who seeks oneness in the world while accentuating the interconnectedness & merging polarities of societies & communities at large. It is this understanding & vision that reflects in his body of work driven mostly through multi-disciplinary & integrative systems approach. Deep empathy & creative problem solving are the weapons he employs to solve most life problems. He is also exhibit servant leadership where in leads from front & hand holds the teams at every juncture while ensuring the best possible team output in varied situations.

In his current role, Vishal Kapoor is Chief Design Officer at Future Group where he is instrumental in reimagining retail ecosystems in sync with changing consumer & socio economic milieus. His work impacts 23-million sqft. of space in 409 cities across the food, fashion & home formats of the company governed by human centered design approach. In his two & a half decades of retail experience, he has been lauded for bring design to the forefront, which has added strategic value at the intersections of trade, governance, & building new markets. Vishal is postgraduate in design strategies from school of design, HKPU –Hong Kong.

He has spoken at multiple national & international forums on how can design build differentiations & environments that are most relevant in difficult to keep up with changing world. This includes TTF (Trends of Transformation Forum) 2019 in Guangzhou, China , Global Retail Show ,Brazil and HYSEA (a registered apex body for software industry) 2015 in Hyderabad, India. He has also written publications & white papers for industry communication forums like In-store Asia & Medium.

Vishal Kapur, Director – Investments, Avigo Capital

Vishal Kapur is a Vice President and part of the managing team at Avigo Capital, an independent private equity fund based out of New Delhi with a focus on private equity investments in the SME sector in India. He was earlier a consultant with Booz Allen Hamilton in the USA and Boston Consulting Group in India, specializing in operations and corporate strategy. His skills are in corporate strategy, corporate restructuring and business performance improvement. Mr. Kapur has a MBA from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business and a B.E in Chemical Engineering.

Vishal Krishnam, Partner, PWC India

Vishal Kumar, Managing Director , Xander

Vishal is Managing Director at Xander and serves on the investment committee of the firm. Xander is one of India’s largest real estate private equity firms with over $2bn under management.

Vishal has spent over a decade investing in Indian real estate and thus knows all the markets, players, issues and opportunities well. He has invested across asset classes in equity and debt deals and has a deep understanding of the real estate business in India. He is also a member of the FICCI committee for real estate.