Our speakers

Vasudha Madhavan, Founder & CEO, Ostara Advisors

Vasudha Madhavan is among India’s first investment bankers to specialise in Electric Mobility and Climate-tech, advising in the space since 2017. With over 22 years of experience in corporate and investment banking, she was recognised in 2023 by the India Energy Storage Alliance as one of the Top 40 women leaders driving India’s energy sector. A frequent media voice on climate-tech, Vasudha previously led Citibank India’s Private Equity & Hedge Fund coverage, executing FDI/FII deals worth ~$3B and managing key relationships across global funds and large corporates. She also worked in risk management and mid-market lending at Citi, and earlier in structured finance at ICICI Bank. She has advised on PE/VC fundraises and M&A deals at IndigoEdge and Allegro Capital. An XLRI alumna, Vasudha is a mentor at AspireForHer and is also a certified scuba diver and photographer based in Bangalore.

Vasuta Agarwal, VP & GM - India, InMobi | @InMobi

Vasuta Agarwal is the GM - India at InMobi. In this role, Vasuta is responsible for the strategic roadmap and revenue for InMobi's India business including developer, brand and commerce partnerships. In her previous role as VP for Business Development, she managed the global partner management team responsible for account management and revenue growth of all key publisher/supply side relationships across North America, LATAM, Europe and Asia Pacific.

Vasuta is a graduate from BITS and has an MBA from IIM Bangalore. Prior to joining InMobi, she worked with McKinsey for 2 years.

@VasutaAgarwal

Vatsal Kanakiya, CEO, 100X.VC & Partner, Mehta Ventures

Ved Prakash Arya, Managing Director & CEO, Milestone Capital Advisors Pvt Ltd

Ved Prakash Arya is the MD & CEO of Milestone Capital Advisors Private Limited. He has successfully led the creation of 6 private equity funds investing in India, each having very high standards of investing excellence. Milestone is a premier independent fund house to manage private equity investments for Indian and global investors, and has invested in projects worth more than $1.0 billion across healthcare & education, real estate development, infrastructure and real estate yield driven projects in India. Milestone combines extensive national vision with local insight with a team of 60 professionals operating out of Mumbai based headquarters.

Earlier, Ved was COO and Director, Pantaloon Retail (India) Ltd. and prior to that CEO, Globus Stores, which he founded while he was with the Rajan Raheja group for over 10 years. With over 16 years of experience he was also the founder and director of the Retailers Association of India. He is an engineering graduate & MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.  He has also spent one year in ESSEC (France) doing research, and completed his Advanced Management Programme from Harvard Business School.

Veena Sivaramakrishnan, Partner, Shardul Amarchand Managaldas

Ms. Veena Sivaramakrishnan is a key Partner in the Firm's Banking and Finance and Insolvency and Bankruptcy Practice with over 14 years of experience. She has significant experience in Banking and Finance, Financial Services Regulatory, Derivatives, Insolvency, Bankruptcy and Restructuring. She has been consistently recognised by prestigious Indian and international publications (including Chambers and Partner and Asia Law Profiles) individually and within her areas of practice.

Prior to working at Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co., Veena has worked at Juris Corp for over a decadeacross varied areas of practice impacting banks and financial institutions and at ICICI Bank mainly for its offshore operations. While at ICICI, she was also based in Canada and worked with Davis Polk and Wardwell in New York on secondment primarily to set up the New York branch of ICICI. Across the years, she has been advising banks and financial institutions in their financing strategy to Indian clients and on host of issues they encounter while operating in India and / or dealing with Indian entities and their subsidiaries / offshore operations. She has evaluated complex structures with interplay of multiple jurisdictions and legal systems while advising clients on financing structures, restructuring and enforcement.

Vellayan Subbiah, , Murugappa Group

Vellayan currently runs Laserwords, a Murugappa Group company. Laserwords provides prepress services to leading global publishers. Prior to running Laserwords, Vellayan worked with McKinsey and Company for six years in their U.S. Offices. He has an undergraduate degree from IIT, Madras and an MBA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Velumani Arokiaswamy, Promoter, CMD & CEO, Thyrocare

A visionary and an able business administrator, Dr. A. Velumani proves amply clearly to industry that, 11 Focus gives Success". Born to a landless farmer in a small village near Coimbatore, South India, today he owns and operates Thyrocare, an industry leader and a brand worth over Rs. 3000 crores. Began as a mathematician, he acquired his Ph.D in Thyroid Biochemistry from BARC / Mumbai University. He worked for 14 years in BARC as a Research Scientist and Teacher and then became an administrator in business.

He is Chairman and Managing Director of Thyrocare Technologies Limited, a pathology vertical and CEO of Nueclear Healthcare Limited which is a Radiology vertical. His focus areas are Thyroid Biochemistry, Bioanalytical Chemistry, Nuclear Chemistry and Nuclear Medicine.

An infectious motivator, he has succeeded in converting educated as employed, graduates as professionals, individuals as entrepreneurs, vendors as partners, family members as wealth creators and by his unique way, transformed intimidating problems into opportunities.

He is hilarious when it comes to educating and motivating youth in Entrepreneurship.

@velumania

Venkat Inumella, Partner, McKinsey & Company

Venkat Raju, Ex-MD, ACI Worldwide Inc & an Active Angel Investor

Mr. Venkat Raju, based in Bangalore, is an active angel investor and also serves as a mentor & advisor to his investee companies. His current investments cover a wide spectrum spanning Cloud Computing & SaaS, Big Data & Analytics, Mobility & Payments, and next-gen E-Commerce.

Mr. Raju is an accomplished entrepreneur & seasoned executive with strong business, technology and general management credentials.  Most recently, he served as the India Country Head & Managing Director for ACI Worldwide Inc. He has held several roles including as –an Entrepreneur (CEO & Founder of startups backed by Kleiner Perkins, Benchmark Capital etc. in Silicon Valley), an IT Executive (Managing Director & VP positions at Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank) in Wall St, Product Executive (GM & SVP Products at VerticalNet in San Francisco), Chief Technologist (Chief Architect for British Telecom in London) and as a Management/Strategy Consultant (owner of a boutique firm focused on Cloud Computing & Saas in New York).

He is an alum of Boston University (Management & Business) and Indian Institute of Science (Electrical & Electronics Engineering). 

Venkat Thiagarajan, Chairman, SYFX Treasury foundation

Popularly Known as Thyaguji in forex markets. He is an FX Market professional with over 30 years of experience in Financial markets.

Worked as a Senior Foreign exchange Dealer at Syndicate Bank both in their Mumbai and London offices before moving to Reliance Industries Ltd .  He was heading their Foreign exchange  treasury where he served with distinction for close to two decades before superannuating recently.

He is a postgraduate in Economics and has been doing extensive research in Behavioral Finance.  He has an incredible record in macro forecasting. He has been an exceptional trainer in the field of treasury education and  he has conducted training programmes across the world for so many institutions.

He is currently the Chairman of SYFX Treasury foundation - an educational initiative and a not-for-profit company. He contributes to the columns in most of the leading Financial newspapers.