Our speakers
Bama Balakrishnan, COO, Northern Arc Capital
Bama Balakrishnan is the CFO of Northern Arc Capital, a leading Non-Banking Finance Company. Northern Arc is a pioneer in the field of financial inclusion by serving as a crucial link between mainstream capital market investors and small & mid-sized high-quality last-mile lending institutions and businesses.
Bama has previously served as the Chief Risk Officer leading the risk function since 2012. She has been instrumental in strengthening the risk management approach to sharpen risk assessment of clients, and their portfolios as well as building the ability to assess dynamically, the impact of risk events. Prior to Northern Arc Capital, Bama worked with ICICI Bank for 10 years starting off in the structured finance team and moving on to lead teams in corporate and investment banking in India, USA and Singapore. She has experience originating, structuring and executing complex bilateral and syndicated financing transactions for medium and large corporates across products such as cross border acquisition financing, asset financing and resource financing. She graduated with an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad and has a bachelor’s degree in commerce from the University of Madras. She is also a CFA charter holder.
Bama Balakrishnan is the CFO of Northern Arc Capital, a leading Non-Banking Finance Company. Northern Arc is a pioneer in the field of financial inclusion by serving as a crucial link between mainstream capital market investors and small & mid-sized high-quality last-mile lending institutions and businesses.
Bama has previously served as the Chief Risk Officer leading the risk function since 2012. She has been instrumental in strengthening the risk management approach to sharpen risk assessment of clients, and their portfolios as well as building the ability to assess dynamically, the impact of risk events. Prior to Northern Arc Capital, Bama worked with ICICI Bank for 10 years starting off in the structured finance team and moving on to lead teams in corporate and investment banking in India, USA and Singapore. She has experience originating, structuring and executing complex bilateral and syndicated financing transactions for medium and large corporates across products such as cross border acquisition financing, asset financing and resource financing. She graduated with an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad and has a bachelor’s degree in commerce from the University of Madras. She is also a CFA charter holder.
Bama Balakrishnan is the CFO of Northern Arc Capital, a leading Non-Banking Finance Company. Northern Arc is a pioneer in the field of financial inclusion by serving as a crucial link between mainstream capital market investors and small & mid-sized high-quality last-mile lending institutions and businesses.
Bama has previously served as the Chief Risk Officer leading the risk function since 2012. She has been instrumental in strengthening the risk management approach to sharpen risk assessment of clients, and their portfolios as well as building the ability to assess dynamically, the impact of risk events. Prior to Northern Arc Capital, Bama worked with ICICI Bank for 10 years starting off in the structured finance team and moving on to lead teams in corporate and investment banking in India, USA and Singapore. She has experience originating, structuring and executing complex bilateral and syndicated financing transactions for medium and large corporates across products such as cross border acquisition financing, asset financing and resource financing. She graduated with an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad and has a bachelor’s degree in commerce from the University of Madras. She is also a CFA charter holder.
Bama Balakrishnan is the CFO of Northern Arc Capital, a leading Non-Banking Finance Company. Northern Arc is a pioneer in the field of financial inclusion by serving as a crucial link between mainstream capital market investors and small & mid-sized high-quality last-mile lending institutions and businesses.
Bama has previously served as the Chief Risk Officer leading the risk function since 2012. She has been instrumental in strengthening the risk management approach to sharpen risk assessment of clients, and their portfolios as well as building the ability to assess dynamically, the impact of risk events. Prior to Northern Arc Capital, Bama worked with ICICI Bank for 10 years starting off in the structured finance team and moving on to lead teams in corporate and investment banking in India, USA and Singapore. She has experience originating, structuring and executing complex bilateral and syndicated financing transactions for medium and large corporates across products such as cross border acquisition financing, asset financing and resource financing. She graduated with an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad and has a bachelor’s degree in commerce from the University of Madras. She is also a CFA charter holder.
Bama Balakrishnan is the chief operating officer of the Company and oversees the day-to-day operations of the Company. She has also served previously as the chief financial officer and chief risk officer. In her role as chief financial officer, she played a key role in deepening access to liabilities and completing a significant capital raise for the Company. She joined on August 13, 2012, as a senior risk officer. In this role, she led the strengthening of the risk management approach as the Company scaled up across multiple new sectors. Prior to joining Northern Arc, she worked with ICICI Bank for 10 years. She is a director on the board of Dvara Research Foundation, an organization engaged in research and policy advocacy. She holds a bachelor’s degree in commerce from the University of Madras, a post-graduate diploma in management from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and a professional diploma in software technology and systems management from the National Institute of Information Technology. She is also a member of the Institute of Cost and Works Accountants of India and a chartered financial analyst.
Baqar Iftikhar Naqvi, CEO, Cotton County Retail Ltd
Baqar is currently the CEO of Cotton County Retail, and handles a network of more than 600 EBOs, selling apparel to the mid market consumers. Baqar has more than twelve years of experience including ten years of Management Consulting, with extensive work in industries such as Retail & Consumer Products, Food & Grocery, Textile & Clothing and Real Estate. He has worked on over 45 projects in geographies including India, S. Asia & Africa and with European & American retailers & brands.
Baqar has led several Retail Startups and Rollout (Strategy & Implementation) projects for some of the largest business houses in India and South Asia, and across various retail segments, formats and categories. He has strong operational experience of end to end project implementation/ execution. He has also worked with leading international brands/ retailers on their India entry strategy.
Baqar has also consulted clients in the Education and Healthcare sectors.
Baskar Subramanian, Co-founder, Amagi Media Pvt Ltd
Baskar is a dreamer, avid technologist and thinker. He likes to build companies – he has spent the last 16 years in building technology and building companies. An M.Tech drop-out from IIT-Bombay, Baskar earlier graduated from GCT, Coimbatore specializing in Computer Science and ever since has been on the prowl looking to build technologies fitting business needs or looking to build businesses leveraging high tech.
Baskar started his career in Texas Instruments in Bangalore building design systems – but was soon out building a new company – Impulsesoft. Baskar, as CTO at Impulsesoft architected products and systems at both Impulsesoft and subsequently at SiRF (NASDAQ listed US semiconductor firm which acquired Impulsesoft).
Baskar loves straddling between technology and business strategy bridging the two. At Amagi, which he co-founded, Baskar drives business strategy, investments and technology architecture. Baskar has a host of patents to his name and regularly mentors various start-ups and businesses.
Beas Dev Ralhan, CEO, Next Education India Pvt. Ltd
Prior to Next Education, Beas Dev Ralhan has been an entrepreneur (co-curricular activities focused firm - FreshPixel Labs), Investment Manager (Onicle), Technology Leader (Head of Research - Technology , PartyGaming) , Consultant (Technical Architect , Infosys - Retail, Distribution and CPG practice) and Programmer (PartyGaming, Cysphere.com, Retort, Tata Infotech Limited). Beas Dev Ralhan has completed his Integrated MSc programme from IIT Bombay and his MBA from London Business School.
Bedraj Tripathy, AVP & CMO, Integrated Marketing, Godrej Interio
Bedraj Tripathy started as a grass root sales professional, moved to the field of brand communications and then stepped into the corporate world.
During his over 20 years of experience, he has been instrumental in managing and building a few coveted brands around the world. He has a wide range of experience, retail, BFSI and technology, both in B2C and B2B segments. He has been working with a premier institute in India and one in US to demystify ‘experiential marketing’.
He has a vast exposure in India as a market as well as UK, US and SEA. Currently he is working as AVP, Integrated Marketing, Godrej Interio (the furniture division of Godrej & Boyce Manufacturing Company Ltd.)
Beena Parmar, Assistant Editor, VCCircle (Moderator)
Beerud Sheth, Co-Founder & CEO, GupShup
Gupshup enables better customer engagement through conversational messaging. Gupshup is the leading conversational messaging platform, powering over 6 billion messages per month. Across verticals, thousands of large and small businesses use Gupshup to build conversational experiences across marketing, sales and support.
Mr. Beerud Sheth previously founded and led Elance (now Upwork, a publicly listed company), the pioneer of online freelancing and the gig economy. Before that, he worked in the financial services industry – modeling, structuring, and trading fixed income securities and derivatives at Merrill Lynch and Citicorp Securities. His graduate research, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab, involved developing autonomous learning software agents for personalized news filtering.
He earned an M.S. in computer science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology & a B.Tech in Computer Science from IIT Bombay, where he was awarded the Institute Silver Medal.
Bejul Somaia, MD, Lightspeed Venture Partners
Bejul Somaia is Managing Director of Lightspeed India Partners Advisors LLP, which advises Lightspeed Venture Partners, a leading global venture capital firm with more than $3B in capital under management. Mr. Somaia established Lightspeed’s India activity in 2008 and has over eighteen years of operating, entrepreneurial and investment experience in the US and India. He was previously Co-CEO of Twiga Fiberglass, a leading manufacturer of building materials in India, and founder and Chairman of Openlist (acquired by Marchex, Inc).
Earlier in his career, Mr. Somaia was an investment professional at General Catalyst Partners, a strategy consultant at Bain & Company and an investment banker with Salomon Brothers. Mr. Somaia has advised on investments in a number of Indian companies including Oyo Rooms, Indian Energy Exchange, Limeroad, Craftsvilla, OneAssist, Fresh Menu and Shuttl. He holds a BSc in Economics from the London School of Economics and MBA from Harvard Business School.
@bsomaia
Belson Coutinho, Co-Founder and Chief Marketing & Experience Officer (CMO & CXO), Akasa Air
Ben Mathias, ED, NEA
Ben joined NEA in 2006 to focus on investments in the rapidly growing Indian markets. In January 2007, he launched New Enterprise Associates (India) Pvt. Ltd. and opened its Bangalore office. He is currently on the board of ValueFirst, Nova Medical Centers, NephroLife, InTarvo and Novatium and works closely with Intellisys, Deeya Energy and NEA's other India related investments.
Prior to joining NEA, Ben held senior positions at E2open (NASDAQ: EOPN) and i2 Technologies (acquired by JDA Software). Previously, Ben spent a few years at PwC Consulting (acquired by IBM) as a part of the retail consulting practice.
In his early career, he was at Open Environment Corporation and built application development tools for Distributed Computing. Ben received his Master of Science in Engineering Sciences from Dartmouth College and his Bachelor of Technology from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.