Speakers | Upcoming Events and Training

Darius Pandole, Partner, New Silk Route

Darius joined New Silk Route Advisors at its inception in February 2007 and focuses on private equity opportunities in the Indian sub-continent out of the Mumbai office.

He previously worked at IDFC PE Ltd. which he joined in February 2003. Darius was the Executive Director, and later Chief Operating Officer of this asset management company that managed the India Development Fund, an infrastructure focused private equity fund. The India Development Fund was the largest domestic private equity fund in India at that time and Darius was part of the start-up team responsible for raising and managing this fund. While at IDFC PE, Darius participated as a Director on the Boards of portfolio companies and also represented the firm in interactions with regulatory authorities and at industry forums, such as the SEBI, IVCA, etc.

In February 1999, he co-founded and served as Managing Director of IndAsia Fund Advisors Pvt. Ltd., the Indian advisor to the AMP-IndAsia India Fund – a private equity fund established in partnership with AMP of Australia. Whilst establishing this fund, he completed numerous successful private equity investments in the Information Technology, Telecom and Media sectors on a “club basis”. Prior to this, in 1997, Darius joined the investment team at the IndOcean Fund, amongst the first private equity funds to be established in India. The IndOcean Fund was established in partnership with Chase Capital Partners and Soros Fund Management. As a principal at this Fund, he was involved in evaluating potential investment proposals and in working with portfolio companies.

Upon his return from the US in1993, he managed the operations of his family owned soft drinks business, Duke and Sons Limited, which was a market leader in Western India. Darius was responsible for the marketing strategy and sales execution, as well as for the finance and treasury management functions. He led the negotiations that culminated in a successful sale of the business to PepsiCo.

He was the Indian junior national squash champion and represented India at various international tournaments. He was also a US national squash champion and first team All American.

He has a BA (Economics) from Harvard and an MBA from the University of Chicago. He is a frequent speaker at venture capital industry forums in India.

Darshan Gandhi, Global Design Head, Godrej Consumer Products Limited

Darshan Gandhi is Global Head - Design, Godrej Consumer Products Limited (GCPL).

Darshan believes in inclusive design principles; that all good design should be accessible. She joined Godrej & Boyce's Interio division in 2006, where she was a catalyst in introducing design thinking, by creating and showcasing a diverse range of products under one platform, with a unique design philosophy. This led her to work for Godrej Industries in 2008, where she was assigned to design SPACE, a prototype office to create a young work culture that inspired the exchange of ideas, innovation and change at Godrej. This was the start of design driven thinking at GCPL.

She formed the GCPLDesignLab in 2009, and was instrumental in applying design led thinking to transform brands with delightful product offerings (in a Godrej way) for a rapidly evolving Indian market. This created a great impact and value for consumers across categories, with reinvigorated brands like Expert, aer, Cinthol, Goodknight and BBLUNT. By leveraging the design tools of need based user-centric segmentation, prototyping and product mapping, Darshan led the development of a unique collaborative approach in line with GCPL’s overall objectives. Today, she and her team of highly skilled designers have extended the same approach to GCPL's brands and categories across Africa and Indonesia. The recent designification of Africa’s leading hair extensions brand, Darling, marks a milestone in GCPLDesignLab’s journey of inclusive design thinking practices as a leading in-house design studio. GCPLDesignLab was awarded ‘India's Best Design Studio Award 2017’ and ‘India’s Best Product Design Award 2019’ .

Darshan is a post graduate from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, and an alumna of the Harvard Business School’s executive education General Management Programme.

Darshan Mehta, CEO, Reliance Brands

Darshan Shah, Co-Founder & CEO, NewsReach India

Darshana Shah, Sr.Vice President - Marketing and Visual Merchandising, Hypercity Retail

Darshana Shah holds a Master degree in Marketing from NMIMS .She has over 14 years of work experience with 6 years in the IT and 8 years in the retail sector. Thus her work experience spans from stepping into the IT Industry to establishing herself in the retail sector. With expertise in varied areas like operations, marketing, brand building, private brands marketing, retail communications. She has worked with retail giants like Shopper’s Stop, Future Group (Pantaloons and Big bazaar) & Reliance Retail.

Darshana is very passionate about travelling and meeting different people across the globe and learning about their culture & heritage. She loves dancing and is a certified Indian classical dancer (Bharatnatyam). An avid reader, she enjoys reading fiction and also loves experimenting with continental cuisines in her spare time.

Darshika Kothari, Partner, AZB Partners

Darshika Kothari is a partner of AZB & Partners specializing in private equity investments, mergers and acquisitions and joint ventures. She has over 14 years of experience in the legal field, spearheading several large transactions, advising marquee private equity clients as well other leading international and Indian corporations and financial institutions with regard to various legal and regulatory aspects.

Darshika’s extensive experience ranges from structuring instruments, formulating entry and exit strategies, and governance issues to advising on acquisitions and investments in India and abroad, takeovers, foreign investment regulations, securities related laws, complex regulatory issues and securities litigation. She has advised the firm’s leading clients with regard to their Indian ventures and investments in a broad range of sectors.

Darshika also often participates in several legal reforms committees and policy initiatives.

Dattaraj Rao, Chief Data Scientist, Persistent Systems

Dattaraj Jagdish Rao is the author of the book “Keras to Kubernetes: The journey of a Machine Learning model to Production”. Dattaraj is the Chief Data Scientist at Persistent with 25+ years’ experience driving digital transformation, powered by AI. He has championed key solution accelerators like Persistent’s GenAI Hub, Responsible AI based Evaluation framework, Knowledge Graphs for Precision Medicine & Drug Discovery, Agentic Workflows and MS teams based Employee Policy Bot. He leads a team of world-class data scientists that explores the state-of-the-art in Large Language Models (LLM), Multi-modal models (LMM), Responsible AI and constantly delivers innovation in Healthcare, BFSI and Cybersecurity domains.

Earlier, he worked at General Electric (GE) for 20 years building Industrial IoT solutions for Predictive Maintenance, Digital Twins and Machine Vision. He held several Technology Leadership roles at Global Research, GE Power and Transportation (now Wabtec). He led the Innovation team out of Bangalore that incubated video track-inspection from an idea into a commercial Product called “LocoVISION”. Dattaraj has a Bachelors’ degree in Mechanical Engineering and 11 patents in Machine Learning. He is based in Goa, India.

Dave Richards, Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Unitus Seed Fund

Dave Richards is an experienced entrepreneur, executive, and global early-stage investor. In 2012, he co-founded Unitus Seed Fund, now the leading venture seed fund supporting startups innovating for the masses in India. Unitus Seed Fund is part of the Unitus Group, a premier financial services group operating in India and other emerging markets since 2000. He has been an early investor in microfinance and other businesses serving low-income populations. Since 2005, he has been involved with the Unitus Group, helping to lead efforts to select and invest in entrepreneurs in many developing countries. He led the Unitus Labs incubator for 2 years including the successful research and spinout of two venture firms: Unitus Impact and Unitus Seed Fund. He also led Unitus Investment Management, the General Partner of Unitus Equity Fund, a pioneering microfinance venture fund, was a board member of Unitus Capital, a leading Bangalore-based investment bank, and was on the investment committee for Unitus Impact.

Dave Richards, Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Capria Ventures

A tech entrepreneur for 20 years and a scaler for 15 years in the ‘Global South, Dave Richards, Managing Partner at Capria Ventures, is an early-growth investor which includes strategic investments in local early-stage VC funds in Global South and is passionate to mentor startup CEOs and emerging GPs.

He co-founded Capria in 2012, Unitus Ventures in 2005 and quickly grew into one of South/Southeast Asia’s most experienced global investors. As a Managing Partner, his responsibilities currently include investment sourcing and diligence, portfolio management, fundraising and investor relations, and oversight of finance, business operations, compliance and administration.

Dave brings to Capria deep experience as an entrepreneur, executive, and global early-stage and early-growth venture capital investor. At Capria, he has been on the leadership team launching and operating 2 early-stage India venture funds (under Unitus Ventures brand), and the Capria GP Accelerator and Capria Fund, investing in 40+ early-stage and early-growth funds and tech companies across the global south in sectors including fintech, edtech, logistics, healthtech, agtech, jobtech and consumer.

Dave has constructed a robust position in the Global South startup and VC ecosystem through his continuous work to boost impact. His entrepreneurial experience and success have led him to discover and support many early-stage ventures in the Southeast Asia markets which are front-runners in creating impact-led solutions in the region. Early in his career, Dave had developed and led multiple high-growth technology businesses at RealNetworks, Sybase and Symantec from startup to multiple hundred million dollar global enterprises. He is a Partner with Social Venture Partners Seattle and co-founder of the SVP Fast Pitch startup impact angel fund.

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