Our speakers

Atul Batra, CTO, Manthan Software Services Pvt. Ltd.

Atul is CTO for Manthan Systems which serves as the Chief Analytics Officer for several of the fastest growing retailers around the world.

Previously Atul was Sr. Director Engineering at Yahoo!, where he built a team that delivered vertical intent search products used by Yahoo!’s global user audience. Prior to Yahoo!, Atul was in the Bay Area at Good Technology Inc, a leader in multi-platform enterprise mobility with products adopted by 40 of the Fortune 100. He also headed engineering during Good's divestiture from Motorola where he was Sr. Director for mobile messaging, management and security products.

Earlier, Atul spent nearly 11 years at Sun Microsystems where he helped build middleware products, led the open sourcing of the portal server product line, represented Sun at OASIS, led the Sun-Yahoo! alliance, and helped craft company strategy around SOA. He was also part of the iPlanet alliance with Netscape that created an e-commerce platform, having earlier spent a few years as part of Sun's internal architecture group building business applications using the initial wave of enterprise java.


Atul Bhatnagar, Chief Operating officer, National Skill Development Corporation

Atul is a quintessential banker with over two decades experience in the global banking business. As a Mechanical Engineer from the prestigious IIT-Kanpur, Atul’s first stint in the corporate world however was in Tata Motors (then known as Telco) in 1985.  After a two year stint in Telco as graduate trainee engineer, he went to IIM, Calcutta for a Post Graduate Diploma in Management majoring in Finance and Marketing.  Atul’s career in banking started in 1989 when he joined Citibank in Chennai, where he was part of the team which launched the bank’s credit card business in India. After 8 fruitful years, with his last two years in Mumbai in Custodial Services as Assistant Vice President in Citibank, Atul took up his first foreign assignment when he joined HSBC’s Regional Card Centre in Dubai in 1997. Before he left HSBC in 2006, he had implemented a complete suite of systems for early fraud detection, credit and behavioural scorecards and initiating new Card systems for the British bank covering 8 countries in the Middle East and Africa.  In 2006 he joined Dubai First - the first NBFC in the country, as one of its founding team member.

In 2008 Atul joined UK-based Barclays as Chief Operating Officer in Kenya where he spent the next four years.  During his stint in Kenya, Atul won the ‘Male Diversity Champion’ award picked from among 1500 nominees from the bank’s global pool. Amongst all his achievements, he considers this as the most important one and in his own words the ‘Oscar among corporate awards’. The award recognised by the bank’s female employees as the champion male colleague who strived to bring gender diversity at workplace for the bank globally. During his stint in Barclays he also bagged an award for the best COO in Africa and also helped his bank bag the Best IT Bank given by Business Journal Africa, which also featured him on the cover of the magazine’s July 2011 issue.

After spending nearly a decade and half outside India, Atul found his ‘home calling’ when the opportunity to work of NSDC came up in March of 2013.  “Having been exposed to international standards in education and training, it was only a natural progression for me to bring home my learning to such a crucial sector like skilling,” he says. His heart is in quality and standards of what NSDC does. Operational leadership he says to him is about managing people who are in operations and his focus will be on elevating processes to new heights.

Atul now lives in Gurgaon and married with two children. His wife, Jaya, is a qualified Media Planner who worked in JWT but preferred to be a homemaker once the kids came along. He unwinds by meditation and watching TV during the weekends.


Atul Chaturvedi, Joint Secretary, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, Ministry of Commerce & Industry | @DIPPGOI

Mr. Atul Chaturvedi, aged 52 years, holds Master’s Degree in Zoology from University of Delhi, India. He joined the Indian Administrative Service in 1986 - Assam Meghalaya cadre. Since then he has held several important positions in Government of India and Government of Assam. The major previous assignments in Government of Assam included tenures with State Electricity Board, Department of Tourism, Department of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary, Department of Agriculture and Department of Disaster Management. The major assignments in Government of India included tenures with Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Planning Commission, Ministry of Tourism and Ministry of Sports.

Presently Mr. Chaturvedi holds the position of Joint Secretary in the Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion, Ministry of Commerce & Industry at New Delhi. He is looking after formulation of Foreign Direct Investment Policy and Promotion, approval and facilitation of FDI, Investment Promotion and International Cooperation related to Europe, Development of Leather in India. He is also in-charge of ‘Make-in-India’ publicity initiatives in the Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion recently launched by Prime Minister of India on 25th September 2014.

@atul1chaturvedi


Atul Hegde, Co-founder, Rainmaker Ventures Pvt. Ltd.

A digital marketing veteran, Atul Hegde is a visionary who co-founded Rainmaker Ventures, a unique establishment that aims to fund and wholly mentor start-ups. In a world where most funds only chase valuations, Atul believes that young start-ups and entrepreneurs must be nurtured and guided with an emphasis on thorough mentoring, and not just by seeding money, which is the current trend of the day.

At an industry level, Atul is a member of the Digital Media Committee of Industry bodies like the Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI). He was also the Jury Member and Advisor for the Indian Digital Media Awards. He has won prestigious awards at Cannes, Abbys, Effies, and IDMA and has launched India’s 1st Digital Media Handbook in 2010. Atul was recently awarded the top digital media professional in Asia.

Atul possesses an outspoken personality and likes to describe himself as a ‘professional entrepreneur’.

In his 20 year long career, Atul has worked across Advertising, Brand Identity Design and Digital Media Marketing. He has had highly successful stints at Euro RSCG and Vyas Giannetti Creative—both leading advertising agencies in the country. He has handled brands across Asia, Middle East and Europe. He also held the post of Chief  Executive  Officer  (CEO)  at  Ignitee  Digital  Services  Pvt and where he was responsible  for the overall  operations  of  Ignitee’s  business  in  India and  abroad.

At Ignitee, he played the key role to drive huge waves in the online space for brands such as Maruti  Suzuki  which  has  been  ranked Number 1, by  the  Mckinsey  Nielsen  report  for  being  the most successful brand in creating social media brand equity in India.  
Other renowned brands under his kitty include Viacom18, Standard Chartered, Whirlpool, Samsonite, Askme, MAKE IN INDIA, among many others.
Through his vision, Atul aims to identify and nurture potentially dynamic young businesses and push them to the forefront creating globally renowned brands through the process.


Atul Jain, COO, LeEco


Atul Kapur, Managing Director, Indivision Capital

Currently serving as the Chief Investment Officer (CIO) of Indivision Capital Management, Kapur had been with Goldman Sachs for 12 years and was appointed Managing Director in October, 2000. He was responsible for all Private Equity Investments within the Principal Strategies Group (GS proprietary capital) for Europe and Middle East in addition to the joint responsibility for all private investments in India.

Prior to this, Atul worked for 9 years in the Principal Investment Area of Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong, Singapore and London deploying the GS Capital Partners family of funds.

Prior to that, Kapur worked in corporate development with Pacific Century Group and with STAR TV in Hong Kong before he joined Goldman Sachs in 1994. Kapur is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and holds a bachelors degree in commerce from University of Delhi.


Atul Mehra, MD & Co-CEO, JM Financial


Atul Nanda, VP-India Operations & APAC Partner Management, Salesforce.com

Atul is a well-respected leader in the SaaS world, having just moved back to India after 20 years in the US.  He has been with salesforce.com for over 4 years and has been part of the amazing growth story of the Cloud, as salesforce.com has grown from 40,000 customers to over 100,000 and revenues have tripled to ~$2.5 billion since the time that he joined the company.  

Under Atul's leadership, salesforce.com defined what it means to support customers in the cloud and is seen as a pioneer in this space.  

In his new role, Atul is now leading the effort to bring Salesforce and the social enterprise to the India region as well as actively engaged in building Alliances with partners across multiple markets in APAC.  

Prior to salesforce.com, Atul has had extensive leadership experience with companies such as SAP Business Objects, ACS, and Paccar and thus has a strong grasp of the contrast between on-premise and SaaS and keen insights into what it takes to be successful on the Cloud.


Atul Phadnis, Founder & CEO, What's-On-India

Atul Phadnis is a Technology Entrepreneur and a domain expert in Digital Television. He is currently CEO of What’s-ON (a company he had founded) and GM (Asia Pacific), Gracenote.

As a start-up, Atul led What’s-ON to raise its Series-A and Series-B funding rounds from Silicon Valley funds – Sequoia Capital, Nexus Venture Partners and Intel Capital and successfully create a model specializing in TV Search, Recommendations and Analytics across Asia spanning 16 countries including India, Jordan, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, etc with some of the largest Cable, Telecom and Satellite TV operators as its customers. In 2010, Forbes adjudged What's-ON to be one of the 5 hottest “New Ventures to look out for” while CNBC-TV18 named Atul as one of the Top 10 Young Turks of 2010. In 2012, he led What’s-ON to make 2 critical acquisitions including one in Jordan, Middle East.

In 2014, What’s-ON was acquired by Gracenote/ Tribune Media - who are the Global leaders in TV, Movies and Music metadata technology. Atul’s role in the merged entity is to spearhead initiatives in the Asia-Pacific region.


Atul Sharma, Co-Founder & CTO, Ozonetel