Our speakers
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
Atul Sharma, Co-Founder & CEO, Ozonetel
Atul Sharma, Cofounder & CTO, Ozonetel
Atul Tewari, COO, Quikr
Atul is COO at Quikr. He has over 17 years of strong operating experience in scaling organizations through talent acquisition, process & financial control and infrastructure. At Quikr, his responsibilities include Content-Operations, HR and Infrastructure. Prior to Quikr, Atul was working as CEO-India for Helix Advisors, which was acquired by BlackRock (NASDAQ BLK). As MD/COO for BlackRock, India, he was instrumental in growth of the organization from 100 to 700 people within a span of two years. Before joining BlackRock, Atul set-up a global shared services center in India for CalibratedGroup, a private equity fund based out of Los Angeles. The operation, scaled to 500 employees within a span of 3+years, before being acquired by one of the anchor clients. Prior to that, Atul was based in USA and worked in Sales/Business Development role in Media and Software Firms.
Atul has an MBA from Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve Univerity, Cleveland Ohio. He did his BTech from IIT Delhi.