Our speakers

Arpit Agrawal, Partner, Blume Ventures

Arpit Badjatya, CEO and MD, Serosoft Solutions

Arpit is an education technology thinker and innovator. He consults many leading educational institutions across India, Middle-east, Africa and APAC on using technology as a strategic tool for efficiency and success.

An ambitious edupreneur, Arpit has founded two education focussed ventures -

Serosoft Solutions: An award-winning educational technology company focussed on ERP solutions for education (Academia ERP)

CampusMall: A multi-channel brand licensing company focussed on school and college merchandise (www.campusmall.in)

He believes that the education sector in India, Middle East and APAC needs to transform to ensure big strides in overall development in these countries, and technology will prove to be the biggest enabler of such a transformation in the coming years. An avid speaker on education technology, he has also authored the ERP policy brief for Association of African Universities, which serves as a guideline for institutions to adopt automation.

Arpit is an MBA from the prestigious Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta and holds and engineering degree from the renowned Purdue University, USA. Prior to focussing on the ed tech sector, he worked with JP Morgan London as an investment banker and at Accenture Consulting as a strategy consultant.

Arpit Maheshwari, Vice President, Stellaris Venture Partners

Arpit believes that startups will use technology to solve uniquely Indian problems and create large world-class companies as a result. As a VC, he is looking forward to working with, and learning from, great entrepreneurs from the early stage of their journey. Prior to VC, Arpit donned many hats - he was a management consultant with BCG, ran product management for automotive and education startups, and corporate innovation for a large manufacturing house.

Arshdeep Singh Makker, Senior Director, Technology, Kapiva

Arumugham Mahendran, Chairman and Managing Director, Global Consumer Products

A Mahendran is an Indian entrepreneur and the Chairman and Managing Director of Global Consumer Products Private Limited, a ‘‘'synthetic startup’’' in the consumer goods sector. He is the former Managing Director of Godrej Consumer Products Limited.

Mahendran began his career as a partner with Chartered Accountancy firm RNG Price & Associates in 1980. In 1987, he partnered with R Mohan in Transelektra Domestic Products Limited to launch a brand of household insecticide called GoodKnight and Hit in India. He drove the business from a start-up to a Rs. 500 million brand in sales in a short span of seven years after which he sold the business to the Godrej Group in 1994 for Rs. 1 Billion.

Mahendran then became the Managing Director of Godrej Hicare Limited. Within a year he sold a 51% stake in Godrej Hicare Limited to the Sara Lee Corporation, USA, valuing the company at Rs. 3.8 Billion. In 2010, he acquired Sara Lee’s 51% for the Godrej Group and integrated the business with Godrej Consumer Products Limited. As Managing Director, Mahendran steered the merger and acquisition cell at Godrej Consumer Products Limited. Over a period of 3 years from 2010 to 2013, he also spearheaded Godrej Group’s inorganic growth around the globe through merger & acquisition. Some of the acquisitions concluded were Tura brands (Nigeria), Megasari (Indonesia), Issue Group (Argentina) and Darling Group (South Africa).

In 1996, Mahendran promoted a beverage company, GoodLife Industries Limited, focusing on South India and producing beverages under the brand name CheriO. This brand was subsequently bought by Global Consumer Products Private Limited.

In 2014, Mahendran created a synthetic start up, ‘’Global Consumer Products Private Limited’’ in the FMCG space. This joint venture along with private equity players Goldman Sachs (US) and Mitsui & Co. (Japan) was started on 1 February 2014. Mahendran is the promoter, shareholder, Chairman and Managing Director. The company has set up two offices (Bangalore and Mumbai) and developed and launched the chocolate brand, LuvIt, in the southern states of India.

Arun Duggal, Chairman, Shriram Capital Ltd

    

Arun Duggal is Chairman of Board of Directors of Shriram Capital, Shriram Transport Finance Company, Shriram Properties, Shriram City Union Finance, and Shriram EPC. He is also Chairman of Bellwether Microfinance Fund, which provides equity capital to promising Micro Finance organizations and helps them in capacity building.

Mr. Duggal is also a Senior Advisor to TPG Capital, a major Private Equity firm headquartered in San Francisco and Credit Asia Capital, Singapore. He is an experienced international Banker and has advised companies and financial institutions on Financial Strategy, M&A and Capital Raising. He is the Vice Chairman of International Asset Reconstruction Company and Indian Venture Capital Association. He was erstwhile Chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce, India and was also on the Board of Governors of the National Institute of Bank Management.

He is on the Board of Directors of Jubilant Energy. Netherlands (Chairman Audit Committee), Patni Computers (Chairman, Audit Committee), Fidelity Fund Management, Manipal Acunova, Zuari Industries, Info Edge (Chairman Audit Committee), Dish TV, Mundra Port & SEZ, Hertz (India), Mortice Limited (Singapore) (Chairman of Audit Committee) and Bank of Bhutan. He is a member of the Investment Committee of Axis Private Equity.

Prior to joining Shriram Group, Mr. Duggal had a 26 years career with Bank of America, mostly in the U.S., Hong Kong and Japan. He spent ten years with the New York Corporate Office of Bank of America handling multinational relationships. He has also worked with BA Asia Limited, Hong Kong and HCL Technologies, India. Mr. Duggal is involved in several initiatives in social and education sectors. He is a Trustee of Centre for Civil Society, New Delhi, which focuses on improving the quality and access of education to students especially for the poor. He teaches a course on Venture Capital & Private Equity at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad as a visiting Professor.

Mr. Duggal holds an Mechanical Engineering degree from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi and holds a post graduate degree in management from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad.

Arun Gupta, Co-founder, MagicTel Solutions

Mr. Arun Gupta is a technology veteran turned serial entrepreneur with 23+ years of experience and multiple patents to his credit. His visionary leadership offers a business edge to the companies founded, co founded by him or wherein he is Director on board.

Mr. Arun Gupta is the Co Founder of MagicTel Solutions, a subsidiary of MoMagic Technologies. Founded in the year, 2012 MagicTel today, is #1 player in the Retail distribution space in India. Some of the top global mobile apps are part of MagicTel network and distributed through its retail channel -App Junction. MagicTel currently has acquired more than 5 million users for these global Apps through its channel.

Mr. Gupta is also the CEO and Founder of MoMagic Technologies. And Co Founder, mChamp Entertainments, a celebrity driven contest app. Also invested in education startup: EduAce. Prior to venturing on his own, Mr. Gupta has held many significant positions in the IT sector and has expansive experience and profound knowledge base in Product Development and Mobile Technology.

Mr. Gupta was also the Director at MediaTek for almost a decade and the architect of the 1st version of MediaTek handset MMI. Arun holds a Master’s Degree in M-Tech from COEP Pune and Executive Management from IIM Calcutta.

Arun Kapur, Director, Vasant Valley School

Arun Kapur is presently Director of Vasant Valley School, Delhi, which is run by the India Today Group. He has over 28 years of experience in the field of education - The Doon School, Dehradun, British School, New Delhi and Vasant Valley School, New Delhi. He was responsible for setting up of Vasant Valley School. He is also the Head of Ritinjali, an NGO set up by him in 1995 for education and community development. He is the author of Transforming Schools: Empowering Children, a book that offers insights to ‘what makes a great school’.

In Dec 2001 he established Pallavan, an early childhood development programme for children between the ages of 2 and 5 years. In 2006, he established Pallavanjali, a school and resource centre offering education, therapy and life training to children and young adults with special needs between 0-24 years, in an inclusive holistic environment.

Arun Korati, Senior Managing Partner, IIML Asset Advisors Limited

Mr. Arun Prakash S. Korati is a Senior Managing Partner at IIML Asset Advisors Limited. At IIML, he advices Yatra Capital, a Euronext listed real estate fund. Prior to joining IIML, he worked as MD & CEO at Axis Private Equity, a private equity arm of Axis Bank. There he managed an Infrastructure fund.  He also worked at New Vernon as head of their Private Equity, where he invested around $ 126 mn across many asset classes using various financial instruments. He started his PE carrier in 1992 and worked at Pathfinders and Actis prior to joining New Vernon. In his private equity career spanning nearly 22 years, Arun was directly involved with 28 investments. Arun is a graduate in Mechanical Engineering (RV College of Engineering), AMIE (Civil Engineering) with Masters in Marketing (NMIMS). He is also a qualified cost accountant (ICWA)

Arun Menon, Founder and CEO, AppsDaily Solutions Pvt Ltd

Arun is an IIT Bombay alumnus with more than 15 years of entrepreneurial experience. He started his first company, Ambrosia InfoTech, right after college which he organically grew to a highly profitable business employing more than 200 engineers and delivering many hi-tech technology solutions along the way. He then started AppsDaily, a first-of-its-kind, India-wide retail distribution network to sell Mobile Apps and Services to smart phone customers. AppsDaily over the years has become one of the largest mobile applications platform in the country with a retail network spanning over 700 cities, in partnership with  more than 10,000 retail outlets and over 3 million satisfied paid-app customers.