Our speakers

Avnita Bir, Director-Principal, R N Podar School

Mrs. Avnita Bir, Director-Principal, Podar Schools, is a well-known educator. A postgraduate in Economics from Delhi School of Economics, Mrs. Bir has worked in the field of Education for over three decades across various institutes. She is a member of the Governing Body of CBSE, the leading education board of the country. She has been a member of Education Reforms Committee. Ms. Bir is also a member of the India Jurisdiction at the Global Education Leaders Program (GELP). Passionate about children, education, economics and technology, she has been able to combine all her interests into her professional life. Her dedication to the cause of good education propelled her to author two books on Economics in her early years in the profession. Mrs. Avnita Bir is the recipient of the prestigious National Award for Teachers, conferred by the Hon'ble President of India. She has also been honored by the President of Singapore for her contribution to the education sector. She was awarded the Microsoft Mentor School Award for Innovation in Education. She also received the FICCI Outstanding Woman Achiever Award for her work in the field of education. More recently she was invited to Google, to speak at the Google Global Education Symposium at the Google Headquarters in Mountain View. She has been appointed as a member of the Advisory Board of Google's GlobalEDU.org initiative.  Mrs. Bir has been driving change at R N Podar School and it has just been selected as the Ashoka ChangeMaker School in the first cohort of Ashoka ChangeMaker Schools in India. Having been an active proponent of appropriate edtech in schools and the classroom along with innovative pedagogy, Mrs. Bir has been acknowledged for and rewarded several Leadership and Mentorship Awards. She writes a guest column on parenting for the Times of India group and has been covered widely in media like BBC, New York Times, Times of India, NDTV, Times Now etc for her thoughts on education.

@avnita

Ayan De, CTO, Exide Life Insurance

Ayan is a technology strategist with over two decades of experience in the Insurance industry. He has specialties in technology-based process transformation, business process management, risk analysis and business continuity management. He has managed turnkey technology projects aimed at business transformation at some of the major insurance players across the South Asia geography.

Ayas Al Gul, Group finance director, United Technology Holding (Yas Holding Division)

Ayaskant Sarangi, CHRO, Mphasis Limited

Ayaskant currently heads the human resources function for Mphasis globally.

He brings with him more than two and half decades of human resources experience spanning multiple industries in areas like work force planning, talent acquisition, talent management, C&B, M&A, L&D and Analytics.

Prior to his current role, Ayaskant has worked with Wipro for 11 years including being the CHRO for Wipro Enterprises and before that has played multiple roles in Wipro Limited including leading the human resources function for service lines as well as providing leadership to many COEs globally such as leadership hiring, talent management and learning & development. Prior to Wipro, Ayaskant has worked with organizations like General Electric, Infosys Technologies and Larsen & Toubro. In General Electric, Ayaskant had more than a decade long stint with more than 8 years with GE Healthcare and 3 years with GE Corporate.

Ayaskant is a regular speaker in many other Industry forums and also mentors a couple of start- ups in Human Resources.

Ayaskant has done his engineering from NIT Surat and his master’s in human resources from Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar.

Ayush Bansal, Head, RazorpayX

Ayush Varshney, CTO/Co-Founder, Bluegape.com

Azhar Iqubal, Co-founder , News In Shorts

Azhar Iqubal, Co-founder and CEO of News in Shorts (NIS), started the venture along with his friends Anunay and Deepit in 2013, while still in college. The initial response was very good which made them left their studies to devote full time to the venture. He was studying Mathematics and Computing at IIT Delhi, when the idea of News in 60 words came into his mind. He do not used to read news at all before starting the venture. The overwhelming and complex nature of the existing media was the reason behind the same. This was the reason behind starting NIS, a extremely simple easy to use app with only the crux of the happenings.

B Muralikrishnan, Country Manager, Ebay

Muralikrishnan B. is the 36 year old dynamic Country Manager of eBay India. Murali is responsible for leading the eBay business in India, the Philippines & Malaysia & is an active evangelist of eCommerce’s transformational potential for both Indian online shoppers & entrepreneurs. 

Murali joined eBay in 2005 and has held a variety of leadership roles in eBay India, most recently as Sr. Director – Marketing & Product Management. His many achievements included driving a scalable hybrid local development model which significantly enhanced and localized eBay India’s user experience. Murali is also responsible for building the eBay India brand & is focused on driving eCommerce trial amongst Indian internet users & fostering buyer engagement. Murali was also responsible for leading eBay India’s foray into Mobile Commerce. 

In the course of his career, Murali has worked with Asian Paints managing Sales & Administration in various rural markets. Transitioning into the New Economy in 2000, he played a significant role in starting up India’s largest cybercafé chain, Sify Iways, at Sify Corp and later led Product Management for Sify’s Consumer business.

Murali is a Mechanical Engineer from Osmania University, Hyderabad and an alumnus of IIM Calcutta. An enthusiastic sports fan especially passionate about Cricket & Squash, Murali is also a photography buff spending his spare time behind the camera capturing nature, landscapes and architecture. He is currently relishing the joys of parenthood and bringing up his son.

B N Manohar, CEO, Stempeutics Research Pvt Ltd

Manohar has been associated with the Manipal Group since Jan 2002 and has taken up the role of President at Stempeutics in August 2007. Prior to this Manohar has worked as a Chief Executive, Manipal Universal Learning, handling on Line Assessment business, Engineering Twinning Program, Global Nursing Program, Vocational Education and E-content development. He also had a stint at the Group level (MEMG) as Chief Information Officer and Chief Executive - Strategic Projects.

Prior to Joining Manipal Group, Manohar has had long and successful stints at Wipro GE Medical Systems, Lucas TVS and W.S.Industries. Manohar has a rich domain expertise in strategy planning for various industry segments, Business Development, Process Re-engineering, Business System integration and leveraging IT Technology for service operations.

Manohar has done his B.E. from Regional Engineering College, Trichy and M.E. from Guindy Engineering College, Chennai.

B Raghavendra Rao, Chief General Manager - Global Markets Dept, State Bank of India

Mr. B Raghavendra Rao is currently Chief General Manager (Global Markets) at State Bank of India, Corporate Centre, Mumbai. At present, he oversees Treasury operations of the Bank consisting of Investment portfolio, Money market, Equity, Private Equity & Forex operations of the Bank, with a Portfolio of nearly Rs.9.5 lac Cr.

Prior to the current assignment, Mr Rao worked as CEO of SBI London handling the Wholesale Banking Division of SBI UK operations consisting of Syndications, Bilateral Credit, Trade and Investment departments and with a business portfolio of USD 12 Billion.

Mr Rao joined in State bank of India as Probationary Officer in 1990 and has worked extensively in major banking verticals like Credit, Treasury, International Banking and Retail Banking, including Overseas assignments at SBI Frankfurt and SBI Maldives.

Mr Rao holds a Post Graduate degree in Engineering. He is also a Certified Associate of Indian Institute of Bankers.