Our speakers
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.
Benaifer Malandkar, CIO, RAAY Investments
A seasoned financial markets professional, Benaifer Malandkar is the Chief Investment Officer at RAAY Global Investments- the family office of the Amit Patni Group of Patni Computers. The promoter family divested their stake in May 2011 to I-Gate Corporation at USD 1.5 bn. She is responsible for investment management of the group including identification, evaluation, deal execution, and monitoring every investment across a gamut of diverse asset classes including public markets.
Additionally, she has served as a Director on the Board of Bombay Shirt Company and an advisor to the Board of Waterfield Advisors, a fast growing Multi Family Office firm. She has also served as a Director on the Board of Nirvana Venture Advisors, a Digital & Internet Venture Fund and currently is a Board Director at AD Ventures, a music content and live events company as well as a Board Director at Web Talkies Pvt Ltd, a regional content creating company.
Benaifer’s forte lies in end-to-end setting up of new businesses and following that up with a robust performance. She has a demonstrated track record in identifying early stage and unlisted company investments, succession planning, and estate management. She has raised funds for early stage and mid stage companies, and been instrumental in the leading the business strategy for a few ventures to achieve sustainable profitability. A well networked professional, she is recognized for business and market intelligence, a critical skill in the investments field.
Across the multiple organisations that she has worked in, including Citibank, ICICI Prudential AMC, Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and SMIFS securities, she has consciously chosen new roles, thereby wide-basing her exposure and proficiency. With experience of over 22 years in various corporates she has gathered considerable understanding and comprehension of portfolio management, equity and debt markets, asset management, and retail & private banking industries.
She is often invited to speak at national and international industry events of repute and often writes opinion pieces in various publications. Benaifer received her post graduation degree in Masters in Business Administration from JDBIMS, Mumbai.