Our speakers

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.

Bharat Shashikumar 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.

Bharat Venkat, Sr Technical Director APAC, Customer Success, Denodo

Bharat is a business and technical leader with over 20 years of experience in technology, creating solutions, establishing businesses, sales and services, building and managing high-performance teams from the ground up, across technical and business operations, with a strong understanding of technical delivery, operational excellence, and business administration.

He is responsible for technical delivery in data integration, data management, and delivery services to our customers and partners at Denodo Technologies.

Bharati Jacob, Founder & Partner, Seedfund

Ms. Bharati Jacob is a Founder-Partner of Seedfund, an early stage fund that invests in innovative Indian start-ups. She has extensive experience in venture investing, marketing and financial services. Ms. Jacob co-founded Seedfund in 2006 and invested in 35 companies thus far. The diverse investments include Redbus (on-line bus ticketing), Edusports (sports in schools), Jeeves (post sales service for appliances), Axisrooms (organizing hotel inventory) among others. Seedfund’s exit from Redbus – a company which she identified as an early investment and served on the board - to a strategic investor, was among the top three venture capital deals of the last decade for return on capital invested. Prior to Seedfund, Ms. Jacob was a partner at Infinity Ventures, a pioneer in Indian early stage investing whose exits include Indiagames and India Bulls (listing in India). She has also worked at Lazard India and Northwest Airlines in Minneapolis. Her early experience prior to business school was in consumer market research in India. Ms. Bharati Jacob has Masters degrees from The Wharton School of University Pennsylvania and XLRI Jamshedpur and is an alumni of the Shriram College of Commerce, University of Delhi.

Bharti Gupta Ramola, Markets and Industries Leader, PwC India | @PwC_IN

Bharti Gupta Ramola is the India Market Leader for PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and a member of the India Leadership Team. She has over 30 years of work experience, a large part of which has been with PwC. Prior to her current role, she was the India Deals Leader. She has also led the Infrastructure, Government & Utilities & Energy Sector Advisory for PwC India. Bharti has been a member of PwC Global Diversity and Inclusion Council.

In her personal capacity, Bharti serves on the boards of BASIX and Srijan, two of India’s foremost organisations promoting livelihood development. She has been Chair of the Board of PRADAN.

Bharti has a Post Graduate Diploma in Management, Indian Institute of Management -Ahmedabad, and a Bachelors Degree in Science (Hons) - Physics, from St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi.

Bhaskar Chalasani, CEO and MD, Naturol BioEnergy

Bhaskar Chalasani has passion for green and game changing new technologies and has incubated and pioneered the setting up of first integrated industrial scale biodiesel facility in India in 2007. He has bachelor’s degree in engineering and graduate degree in business administration from Wayne State University. He worked with advanced engineering group at Ford Motor Company in USA and subsequently joined family paper manufacturing business in India. His passion for green technologies has led him to pursue green and clean technologies. He is AMC member of TIFAC (Body of DBT) GOI to implement a pilot project at NIIST to develop cellulosic ethanol technology pilot plant and is a regular speaker in Green and Clean technology circuit. Bhaskar implemented 100,000 Tons biodiesel manufacturing facility in Kakinada from concepts to commercial production. This plant is one of the most advanced in the world and the feed stock is waste oils (PFAD and RBD Stearin).

Bhaskar is currentlyWorking on:

•?2 X 110 MW Dual Fuel Fired (Natural Gas and Biodiesel) Power Generation project in Kakinada, AP. EIA Terms of reference are expected this month and Detailed Project Report is finalized now.

•?100 MW renewable, clean and green bio-oil (waste wood-chip based) based power generation facility Colorado, USA.

Bhaskar Chaudhry, Director - Investment & Corporate Advisory, Entrust Family Office

Bhaskar is part of the direct equity team at Entrust and works on both public and private investments. He has been with the firm for over eight years. Prior to Entrust his experience spans investing and operating roles. He was the CFO of a few startups and helped in scaling up. He was also part of the real estate private equity team at Credit Suisse and the PMS team at Kotak Securities. He is a graduate of IIM Bangalore and BITS Pilani.

Bhaskar Rao, MD & CEO, KIMS Hospital

A legend in cardiology, Dr. Bollineni Bhaskar Rao {MBBS,MS, DNB (CT Surgery)} is one of the very few Cardio-Thoracic Surgeons in the country, who performed over 30000 surgeries in his career spanning over last 25 years. After completing studies from India and abroad, Dr. Bhaskar Rao started his career in 1990 before turning into a healthcare entrepreneur in 2000. Dr. Bhaskar Rao's thirst, thrust and quest is to make medical facilities available to as many people as possible.

Well known in the medical fraternity for his passion towards his profession, Dr. Rao started his entrepreneurial journey at "Mahavir Cardio Vascular Centre" in Hyderabad with 50 beds and performed heart surgeries at an unimaginable low cost of just Rs. 45,000 only. Dr. Rao never turned away any patient from the hospital for want of money.

The brand "Krishna Institute of Medical Sciences", under Dr. Bhaskar Rao’s aegis began its journey in 2004 with a 300 bed hospital on par with the then established hospitals of Hyderabad in professional excellence, the state of art technology and infrastructure facilities. With 1000-bed KIMS Secunderabad, an ISO 9001-2000 recognized institution, is today's South-India's largest healthcare facility under one-roof. This institution has been accredited by NABL, NABH.

Dr. Bhaskar Rao was instrumental in formulating Rajiv Gandhi Aarogyasri scheme, first time launched in Andhra Pradesh in 2007 for providing health care to the poorest of the poor. This prestigious scheme has won him accolades from all quarters of the country and the world. He was the chief architect of Aarogyashri scheme for both creating it and implementing it successfully. This well formulated scheme has become so popular that the other States in India have emulated it time and again; and operate similar schemes across the country even today.

Mahaveer Cardio Vascular Centre was conceived, designed and established by him in 1996 with a major thrust on providing high quality care at nominal cost. The Cardio Vascular centre deals with Tertiary care referrals within the reach of a common man who cannot afford expensive treatment.

Krishna Institute of Medical Sciences (KIMS) was established in the year 2004 and within a span of less than a decade is now a 1000 bed hospital, located on a sprawling campus at Minister Road a between the twin cities of Secunderabad and Hyderabad. The Hospital has been set up in keeping with international standards using cutting edge technology and is managed by a group of highly qualified Doctors and Health Care Professionals.

Afghanistan’s FIRST of its kind state of the art Diagnostic Centre in the capital city, Kabul was established by him – KIMS Wardhak Diagnostic Centre. The Centre was equipped with latest generation MRI, CT scanner and basic Laboratory facilities. The Diagnostic Unit was  Tele linked to Krishna Institute of Medical Science in Hyderabad for expert opinion. All the Tests were subsidized, which provides an opportunity for the population in Afghanistan to have access to the best diagnostic facilities.

With the singular aim of reaching out to the poor by providing FREE education & Medical care in my native town Nellore, he along with his brothers established a charitable Foundation - Bollineni Krishnaiah Charitable Trust. Through the auspices of this Trust, the very FIRST Nursing School in region was established in 2002, furthermore, in 2005, he set up a Nursing and Physiotherapy College in Hyderabad, which is attached to Krishna Institute of Medical Sciences.

He was recently awarded at the Times Healthcare Achievers Award 2017 with The Lifetime Achiever of the Year in Cardiology & Cardiothoracic Surgery.