Our speakers

Bert van der Vaart, Co-Founder, SEAF

Bert van der Vaart was one of two co-founders of SEAF in 1989, when it was known as the CARE Small Business Assistance Corporation (CARESBAC). SEAF invests in small and midcap enterprises in more than 23 emerging markets globally, managing almost $500 million as of December 31, 2008. After serving as SEAF's EVP, he served as Director-General of CARESBAC-Polska, SEAF's first fund, which during his direction completed 27 investments and realized its first 6 exits. In 1997, Mr. van der Vaart became SEAF’s CEO and President, where he has been involved with the establishment and supervision of each SEAF fund, including frequent visits to each SEAF fund office. SEAF has made more than 275 investments, and has realized more than 155 exits. SEAF has offices in 19 countries and employs more than 100 professionals globally. It characteristically focuses on improving the management capacity and transparency of each investment it makes and proactively guiding the company to exit.

From 1984 through 1994, Mr. van der Vaart was a Partner and Associate with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Washington, D.C, Frankfurt, and Brussels where he specialized in corporate law, primarily with respect to corporate financings and mergers and acquisitions for such entites as Vortech, Waverly Publishing, General Dynamics, Investcorp, Fleetwood, Hilton International, Kellogg’s, Honda Motors, and Westinghouse. From 1983 through 1984, he was a management consultant with Bain & Company in London and Munich. Mr. van der Vaart holds a J.D. from Yale Law School, where he also studied finance at Yale School of Management; a B.A. in Politics and Economics and a M. Phil. in Economics from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar; and a B.A. from the University of North Carolina, where he was a Morehead Scholar. A Dutch national and dual citizen of the Netherlands and the United States, he speaks Dutch, English, German, French, and some Polish.

Bertram Dsouza, VP & Head, Digital Payments | FinTech Strategy & Partnerships, Kotak Mahindra Bank

BG Krishnan, CEO & Founder, eShakti.com Pvt. Ltd

B G Krishnan (BG) is the Founder & CEO of eShakti.com P Ltd, an online women’s fashion brand that is ranked #1 in the USA for custom-clothing serving the mainstream American market. What drives him is the opportunity to build a global fashion brand from India.

His career has included heading sales and marketing in consumer product companies in the first half of his career until he turned entrepreneur via a media sales business. The arrival of the internet made it clear that brand marketing and distribution will change in unprecedented ways but most of all it would be possible for small companies offering great value to compete with bigger ones, and that too across geographies. As a brand marketing person, the internet was an exciting development for BG!  This led to the launch of eShakti in 2001, with Angel Investors from the USA, as an online retailer that sold lifestyle products from India to the Indian diaspora. From there, eShakti, sensed a much larger opportunity in the mainstream American market, and made a decisive change in 2008 to fashion clothing for American women.

eShakti raised  Series A venture-capital funding from IDG in 2011 and Series B from IvyCap and IDG in 2014, helping the company to register a steep 10x rise in top-line over the last 3 years.

BG earned a BSc in Physics from Loyola College, Chennai and an MBA from Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management, Mumbai.

BG Mahesh, Founder and MD, OneIndia.in

B. G. Mahesh is the founder & MD at Greynium Information Technologies Pvt. Ltd., an Internet applications development services company. Greynium also owns Oneindia.in and Click.in. Greynium was acquired by Mumbai based Netcore Solutions Pvt Ltd in April 2010.

Mahesh was a pioneer in the Indian Internet, being active since 1992. Being at the forefront of Internet and Information Technology, he has to his credit initiating Portal Communications, with Mahesh.com being one of the popular Indian portals during the mid-1990s. Mahesh also co-founded Indiainfo.com. Under his leadership, Indiainfo.com survived the Dot-com bust and saw multifold growth over the years, to gain a preeminent position.

Mahesh received his graduate degree in computer science from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and his undergraduate degree from the SJCE, University of Mysore.

Bhaktha Keshavachar, Co - founder & CTO, Ezetap

Desperate to put "Made in India" on a product designed and manufactured in India, Bhaktha has led the architecture and development of the flagship mobile payment product and platform which enables any merchant, retail or enterprise, to accept payments in all digital forms in a smart way. Ezetap's product crafting involves hardware design, mechanical design (both ID and MD}, firmware development, mobile (and other platforms) app development and server application development. Bhaktha worked for a large microprocessor company for more than a decade before taking the entrepreneurial plunge and co-founding Ezetap. Bhaktha was born and brought up in Bangalore. He studied in a Govt. School till his middle school, was a Josephite during high school and pre-university; and got his degree in engineering from UVCE. He also has a Masters from Arizona State. His main hobby is bare-foot long distance running and occasionally also loves riding his bike on Sunday mornings to de-stress.

Bhanu Chopra, Founder & CEO, RateGain

Bhanu Chopra, widely recognized as one of the thought leaders in the Travel and Hospitality software-as-a-service industry, founded RateGain in 2004. As RateGain's CEO, Bhanu is responsible for spearheading overall business strategy and leads the innovation efforts for the hospitality space.

Bhanu started RateGain in response to the increasing popularity of Online travel agencies (OTAs) and the resultant change in dynamics in the hospitality space, when he recognized the business need of OTAs and hotels to compare rates across their competitor websites.

Today, RateGain is a leader in hospitality and travel technology solutions for revenue management decision support using scientific pricing methodologies, rate intelligence, seamless electronic distribution and brand engagement. RateGain has over 12,000 clients from all around who maximize their revenue everyday using over200 million rate notifications and half a billion inventory updates each year that RateGain facilitates. RateGain’s clients include independent hotels, chains and brands, e-retail clients like online travel agents, wholesalers, tour operators, car-rental agencies, airlines and cruise lines. RateGain has 550+ employees based across various offices in the UK, US, India, Spain, Brazil, UAE and Thailand.

Bhanu has a master degree from Indiana University Bloomington, USA in Finance and Computer Science. He started his career at Deloitte Consulting serving several Fortune 500 companies help them with their ERP, SAP, systems integration and overall IT strategy in Chicago. Prior to setting up RateGain, he also co-founded Riv Consulting, a company that helped fortune organizations with Systems Integration on CRM software like Broad VISION.

Bhanu is a highly sought after speaker in the travel and hospitality technology space. He has spoken at various HSMAI events, Hotel technology Conference, China Low Cost Airline Summit, Independent Hotel Show etc. He has also been profiled on the Young Turks program of CNBC-
TV18. He is also a contributor to publications like ‘Entrepreneur’ and ‘The Economic Times’.

Bharat Bakhshi, Partner, Jacob Ballas Capital

Bharat joined Jacob Ballas in 2006.  Jacob Ballas serves as the Advisor to three India focused private equity funds - New York Life International India Fund ("Fund I"), New York Life Investment Management India Fund ("Fund II") and NYLIM Jacob Ballas India Fund III ("Fund III").  Bharat leads investment teams in investing, monitoring and exits, and is also involved in Fundraising.  He serves on the Boards of several portfolio companies. He has an experience of 24 years, of which 19 years has been in financial services. Prior to Jacob Ballas, he spent 10 years with Citigroup and UBS in Corporate and Investment Banking based in New York and Mumbai. He started his career with Atlantic Richfield Corporation in Los Angeles. He has a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from California State University, Fullerton and an MBA from the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California.

Bharat Banka, Senior President, Aditya Birla Group

Mr. Banka is currently Senior President at the Aditya Birla Group. With diverse experience exceeding 22 years in business, strategy, principal investing, M&A, post-merger integration, capital markets & CXO-level roles, he brings unique value-creation abilities, commercial acumen and strong team management skills.
 
As founding CEO, he had set up Aditya Birla Private Equity (ABPE) in 2009 by building team and raising ~$200m in domestic funds. In his personal capacity, Mr. Banka is a mentor/ investor in start-ups and mentors entrepreneurs through Indian Angel Network (IAN) and Mumbai Angels (MA) and as Charter Angel at Venture Nursery (VN) and The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE).
 
Prior to ABPE, he played a pivotal role in expanding Aditya Birla Group through complex M&A and organic means as Head - Group Finance. Before joining Aditya Birla Group in 1994, he was responsible for capital markets, corporate M&A advisory and managed PSU clients at the Indian JV of J. P. Morgan with ICICI.

Mr. Banka is Fellow Chartered Accountant, Associate Cost & Management Accountant from Institute of, a member of Institute of Company Secretaries of India (ICSI) and Bachelor of Commerce. He has graduated in Independent Directors Certification Program, conducted by Board Evaluation Limited, UK. He is a member of National Committees of CII i.e. Capital Markets and Private Equity and a member of Capital Markets Committee and Private Equity Committee of FICCI. He is an elected member of Executive Committee of Indian Private Equity & Venture Capital Association (IVCA). He is recipient of the prestigious “Professional Achiever - Finance Sector” Award from the ICAI and authored monthly column ‘Bankanomics’ for “The Entrepreneur”, a Network 18 business magazine aimed at early-stage entrepreneurs.

Bharat Dighe, Partner, Aureos India Advisers

Bharat is a Partner working in the Aureos India team, having joined the Mumbai office in May 2010. His role covers sourcing potential transactions suitable for the investment size and requirements of the Aureos South Asia Fund (for investments in India). The role involves carrying out detailed due diligence processes on companies and their managements, completing the investments, monitoring the companies and then the responsibility for creating and executing the exit strategy.

Prior to Aureos, he spent 10 years in the private equity sector investing growth capital in medium sized enterprises across sectors in India. He began his private equity career in 2000 with Indian Direct Equity Advisors and in 2002 moved on to BTS Private Equity, where he spent 8 years and became Partner. Before this, Bharat worked with a large consulting firm in India for five years.

He has a graduate qualification in Science and is a postgraduate qualified Chartered Accountant from The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India.

He believes in the growth story of Indian medium sized businesses and in Aureos philosophy of creating value through investments into medium sized enterprises in high growth sectors. He also feels that Aureos global platform and working environment offers the right combination to successfully continue the investment strategy into medium sized growth-oriented companies in a growing economy like India.

He is passionate about fitness and travelling, and spends his free time visiting new places across India and overseas.

Bharat Sethi, Founder & CEO, PosterGully.com

Bharat Sethi is a start-up and tech enthusiast with special interests in understanding customer behaviour, e-commerce, and retail design. He founded PosterGully in early 2012 as India's first fan merchandise store powered by designers. Since then he's been integral in getting over a million users to the unique marketplace with unusually high conversion rate & gross margins. The team bootstrapped to $175,000 in nine months before being incubated & raising funds from GSF India. The company grew twenty times in top line under his leadership to become the default merchandise store within its target audience in a short span of time. He's a hardcore negotiator & salesman with seven years of experience in selling online; including highly profitable Ebay stores.

Bharat holds a Bachelor's degree in Economics from University of Delhi (2011). He enjoys running, watching documentaries, quizzing & discovering new artists on Soundcloud. Deeply interested in digital marketing & world politics, he's a keen follower of usability design trends that shape how people interact with spaces around them. Bharat has a passion for motivating young people to start-up and start soon.