YOUNG TECH SCHOLARS - Key Persons

Aakash Chaudhry

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Co - Promoter & Managing Director, AESL

Aakash Chaudhry is the Co-Promoter & Managing Director of Aakash Educational Services Limited (AESL). He leads the senior management team and is responsible for the overall supervision and direction of the company. Prior to AESL, he worked with top IT companies such as Infosys Technologies and Cognizant Technology Solutions, where he gained extensive experience in business management. At AESL, he follows his passion of helping deserving students and has been dedicatedly working towards providing focused and quality education across the nation through effective delivery channels. Aakash has transformed AESL into an established brand known for providing cutting-edge and niche educational services. He has been instrumental in putting in place new age systems that make operations more efficient, support and encourage skilled talent, leverage technological advancements & overall automation and follow agile marketing practices. This has ensured that Aakash classrooms - hybrid and digital - continue to evolve such that they are the best offering in the industry. He is the driving force behind the expansion of the company's educational services portfolio to IIT-JEE test preparatory services, foundation coaching services as well as digital learning programs. The Aakash group has investment from Think & Learn Pvt Ltd (BYJU'S) as well as by the world's largest Private Equity firm Blackstone. In 2018, Aakash was featured in Business World's '40 Under 40', a list of a most disruptive leaders young leaders in India Inc. He has also been adjudged the Most Promising Business Leaders of Asia 2020-21 by Economic Times. An alumnus of Harvard Business School, Aakash is an engineer by profession. He holds a bachelor's degree in computer science, and an MBA from the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad.

Ajay Arora

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Managing Director, D'Decor Home Fabrics

Alok Goyal

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Partner, Stellaris Venture Partners

Alok Mittal

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Founder & CEO, Indifi Technologies

Aman Singla

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Co - Founder at Immersa

Ambarish Raghuvanshi

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Co - Promoter and Former CFO, Info Edge India Ltd

Ameet Kumar Gupta

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Whole Time Director Havells India Ltd

Anil Chawla

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Co - Founder & Promoter, Clix Capital

Anil Chawla served as an Assistant Vice President of GE Capital since April 1996 and within 3 years, was promoted to Chief Executive Officer - Commercial Finance, India in 1999. Mr. Chawla served as Chief Executive Officer - Commercial Finance, India & South East Asia since March 2003 and established a major presence in the commercial finance markets in India and South East Asia. He served as a Director of GE Capital Transportation Financial Services. He serves as Member of The ALCO Committee. Anil started his entrepreneurial journey when he acquired GE Capital, now known as Clix Capital along with Pramod Bhasin and Aion Capital. Prior to this, Anil was heading D.E Shaw India and was also the MD of GE India. He was voted as one of India's hottest young executive in 2002 by Business Today was recently featured as a Thought Leader for Robb Report Singapore. He is an active YPO member, avid marathon runner and cyclist.

Anil Rai Gupta

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Chairman & Managing Director Havells India Ltd

Anurag Goel

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General Partner at Cactus Venture Partners

Anurag is the General Partner at Cactus Venture Partners, an early growth stage venture firm investing in consumer and technology start-up. He is also the co-founder & Chairman of Cactus Communications, a global science technology enterprise with operations across 10 countries. Anurag has 23+ years of deep expertise across strategy, M&A, technology & AI, and corporate development. As part of corporate development, his key interest areas are strategy, people management, D2C branding building, organization design, and leadership development. Anurag started his career in Amsterdam with McKinsey & Co. Anurag graduated from the Management and Technology Program with degrees in Computer Science and Finance from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

Apurva Parekh

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Executive Director, Pidilite Industries Limited

Arjun Bhagat

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Chairman & CEO, Calibrated Group

Arjun Bhagat is the Chairman of Calibrated Group, an investment partnership that builds and invests in off-shoring businesses out of India. He also serves as a partner in Marymount Investors, LLC, a $300M real estate investment firm he co-founded. Arjun was the President and Chief Executive Officer of R.M. Software India (Pvt.) Ltd. (RMSI). Arjun was responsible for the overall management and strategic direction of RMSI, and was personally responsible for building strategic customer relationships and opening offices in the U.K., Belgium, Japan, Canada and Australia. As the CFO of Risk Management Inc., a venture funded (Bain Capital and Sutter Hill) company, he led the spin-off of RMSI, a software and BPO company focused on the Geographical Information Systems space. Starting with 5 employees, he grew the company to a 800 person operation with an additional network capacity of 500 seats. In 1999, he negotiated the sale of the company to DMGI, the technology investment arm of the Daily Mail Group based out of the UK. Arjun currently sits on the board of - and is a major investor in - five privately held companies.

Ashish Kacholia

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Director, Lucky Investment Managers Pvt Ltd

Ashish Kumar

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Managing Partner and CIO at Infinity Alternatives

Ashish Kumar is the Managing Partner and CIO at Infinity Alternatives. Prior to founding Infinity Alternatives, Ashish was the India head for PineBridge Investments. He has also worked in Bank of America. Ashish has a B.Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

Atin Kukreja

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CEO, Rippledot Capital

Brijesh Agarwal

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Founder & Director, IndiaMART InterMESH Limited

Carl Marks

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Professor at Cornell University
Professor of International Studies

CP Gurnani

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and CEO, Tech Mahindra

Dalip Pathak

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Special Limited Partner at Warburg Pincus
Special Limited Partner, Warburg Pincus LLC

Dalip Pathak is a Special Limited Partner at Warburg Pincus. He joined Warburg Pincus in 1994 and has previously been both head of India and head of Europe for the firm. He remains engaged in India, and currently focuses on broader firm wide initiatives including sourcing cross-border opportunities. Prior to joining Warburg Pincus, He was with the International Finance Corporation (The World Bank Group). He is a member of the development board of The Francis Crick Institute, which will be the largest biomedical research centre in Europe, and is a member of both the Advisory Council of the South Asian Institute at Harvard University, and the EMPEA. Dalip also serves on the Board of Trustees of Asia House. He received a B.A. and an M.A. in economics from Delhi University and an M.B.A. from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Deepak Raj

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Founder and Managing Director of the New Jersey
Founder, Raj Associates

Raj is founder and managing director of the New Jersey-based private investment firm Raj Associates that has investments in real estate and public and private securities. He is currently the chairman of Pratham USA. He is also a CFA and, with his wife Neera, the founder of the Raj Center on Indian Economic Policies at the Columbia University. Raj has extensive experience as an equity analyst and an investment banker, including 24 years with Merrill Lynch. As director of Global Equity Research, he managed a staff of approximately 700 investment professionals located throughout the world.

Devashish Chopra

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Global Industry Analyst at Wellington Management International Ltd

Dilipkumar Khandelwal

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Managing Director and CEO, Deutsche India

Dinesh Agarwal - Managing Director

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Managing Director
Founder & CEO, IndiaMART InterMESH Limited

Dinesh Agarwal is the Managing Director of our company. He studied at Maharaja Agrasen Vidyalaya Inter College, Lucknow and acquired his B.Tech engineering degree with a specialization in computer science from the Harcourt Butler Technological Institute, Kanpur. He has previously worked with Hindustan Management and Technical Services Private Limited, HCL America, Inc., HCL Limited, HCL Hewlett-Packard Limited, Centre for Development of Telematics (C-Dot) and CMC Limited. Dinesh has led various revolutionary ideas to promote and help Indian SMEs worldwide and has raised voice on multiple concerns like GST, taxation, infrastructure, power, technology, etc. Dinesh is a prolific investor and has invested in a large number of start-ups. He is a Member of the Governing Council of Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) from 2015 till present. From 2017, he has also been actively associated with the Indus Entrepreneur (TiE) and serves on the Advisory Committee of Amity International Business School.

Diwakar Nigam

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CMD, Newgen Software Technologies / KNOW MORE

Dr. Abhijit Banerjee

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Member of the Plaksha Team
International Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Professor of Economics, MIT Co - Founder, J - PAL

Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee is the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2003 he co-founded the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) with Esther Duflo and Sendhil Mullainathan, and he remains one of the Lab's Directors. Banerjee is a past president of the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development, a Research Associate of the NBER, a CEPR research fellow, International Research Fellow of the Kiel Institute, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Econometric Society. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow and a winner of the Infosys Prize.

Dr. Anant Agarwal - CEO

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CEO
Member of the Plaksha Team
Founder and CEO, EdX

Anant Agarwal is the CEO of edX, an online learning destination founded by Harvard and MIT. Anant taught the first edX course on circuits and electronics from MIT, which drew 155,000 students from 162 countries. He has served as the director of CSAIL, MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and is a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT. He is a successful serial entrepreneur, having co-founded several companies including Tilera Corporation, which created the Tile multicore processor, and Virtual Machine Works. Anant won the Maurice Wilkes prize for computer architecture, and MIT's Smullin and Jamieson prizes for teaching. He holds a Guinness World Record for the largest microphone array, and is an author of the textbook "Foundations of Analog and Digital Electronic Circuits." His work on Organic Computing was selected by Scientific American as one of 10 World-Changing Ideas in 2011, and he was named in Forbes' list of top 15 education innovators in 2012. Anant is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a fellow of the ACM. He hacks on WebSim, which is an online circuits laboratory in his spare time. Anant holds a Ph.D. from Stanford and a bachelor's from IIT Madras.

Dr. Arvind Raman

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Member of the Plaksha Team
Robert V. Adams Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Executive Associate
Senior Associate Dean of the Faculty, Purdue University

Arvind Raman is the Robert V. Adams Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Executive Associate Dean for Faculty and Staff in the College of Engineering at Purdue University. He has pioneered the use of cyber-infrastructure in the Atomic Force Microscopy community for research and education through advanced simulation tools and online classes which are used by thousands around the world. Arvind is passionate about the role of engineering in international development and leads the USAID funded LASER center (Long term Services for Research) that delivers practical, evidence-based solutions to address bottleneck global development challenges through a variety of funding and capacity building mechanisms that bring researchers and development practitioners together in a growing 2000+ member global network. A. X. Cartagena-Rivera, W-H. Wang, R. L. Geahlen, and A. Raman, "Fast, multi-frequency, and quantitative nanomechanical mapping of live cells using the atomic force microscope", Scientific Reports (Nature Publishing Group), 5, 11692, 2015.

Dr. Ashish Gupta

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Founder of Benori Ventures
Founder of Helion Venture Partners
Founder, Benori Knowledge Solutions
Senior Managing Director, Helion Ventures

Dr. Ashish Gupta is a Founder of Helion Venture Partners and serves on several boards including Hindustan Unilever, Infoedge (Naukri), Pubmatic, Simplilearn, and Workspot. Prior to Helion, he co-founded two successful companies - Junglee (AMZN) and Tavant Technologies. He also worked at Woodside Fund, Oracle and IBM. His other investments include Daksh (IBM), MMYT, MuSigma, UPWK, Flipkart (Walmart) and Perfios. Ashish enjoys working with startups with a particular interest in product and leadership. Ashish is a Kauffman Fellow, holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University, and a BTech from IIT Kanpur where he was awarded the Presidents Gold Medal and later nominated to the list of 50 notable alums. Ashish Gupta is the Founder of Benori Ventures. Benori aspires to fundamentally reduce the cost of knowledge on our planet. He has coined the term KPO (Knowledge Process Outsourcing) and founded the global KPO industry. He started his career with McKinsey where he served as an Engagement Manager and spent about five years with them. He received his MBA from The Carnegie Mellon University and B. Tech. in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. He recently graduated from the senior executive leadership program at Harvard Business School. He is one of the founders and trustees of Ashoka University and also serves on the board of TiE Delhi.

Dr. Ashish Nanda

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Member of the Plaksha Team
Director, IIMA

Dr. BN Jain

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Member of the Plaksha Team

Dr. James Holloway

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Member of the Plaksha Team
Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs University of New Mexico

Dr. Jennifer Cochran

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Member of the Plaksha Team
Shriram Chair of the Department of Bioengineering, Stanford University

Dr. Kaushik Basu

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Member of the Plaksha Team
Fellow of the Econometric Society
Professor of Economics
Professor of Economics and Carl Marks Professor of International Studies, Cornell University

Kaushik Basu is Professor of Economics and C. Marks Professor at Cornell University. He was earlier the Chief Economist and Senior Vice President of the World Bank. Prior to joining the World Bank, he served as Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India. Kaushik is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and received the title Padma Bhushan which is one of the highest civilian awards given by the President of India. His contributions span development economics, welfare economics, industrial organization and game theory.

Dr. Krishna Palepu

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Member of the Plaksha Team
Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

Dr. Pankaj Jalote

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Member of the Plaksha Team
Founding Director, IIIT Delhi

Dr. Shankar Sastry

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Member of the Plaksha Team

Dr. Sharad Malik

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Member of the Plaksha Team
Chairman, Department of Electrical Engineering, Princeton University
Director of the Gigascale Systems Research Center

Sharad is the Director of the Gigascale Systems Research Center (GSRC), one of six centers that comprise the Focus Center Research Program (FCRP), a joint industry-government initiative. GSRC is addressing the chip-scale system design challenges with an eight- to 12-year horizon. His consulting activities include AT&T Bell Labs, NEC, Synopsys and Monterey Design Systems. Sharad also serves as a Member of Technical Advisory Board of QUALCOMM Flarion Technologies. and NVXL Technology, Inc.

Dr. Sriram Rajamani

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Member of the Plaksha Team
Managing Director of the Microsoft Research India Lab in Bangalore
Managing Director, Microsoft Research India

Sriram Rajamani is the Managing Director of the Microsoft Research India Lab in Bangalore. Prior to moving to Microsoft Research's India lab, he was managing the Software Productivity Tools group at the Microsoft Research lab in Redmond. He has also worked as a programmer writing telecommunication software and electronic design automation software. His first-hand experience in the realities of commercial software development guides his choice of problems and approaches to research in software productivity. Sriram holds the position of an Adjunct Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad and serves on the editorial board of the Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery (CACM). He is the cofounder of the Innovations in Software Engineering Conference (ISEC) in India, and serves on the executive committee of the Special Interest Group on Software Engineering (SIGSE) in India. His interest in the Computer Science research community activities in India, made him co-found the Mysore-Park workshop series in India. Sriram has also been elected ACM fellow for work that pushed the state-of-art in formal verification and improved Windows reliability. Research Interests: He is a distinguished researcher, whose career has spanned various areas in computer science, ranging from hardware and software verification, and programming language design, to distributed systems, security and privacy, cloud security and probabilistic programming.

Dr. Vijay Kumar

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Member of the Plaksha Team
Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, University of Pennsylvania

Dr. Yannis C. Yortsos

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Member of the Plaksha Team
Dean, Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California

Frances S. Ligler

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Member of the Plaksha Team
Professor at NC State and UNC Chapel Hill

Frances S. Ligler is a biochemist and bioengineer who is a 2017 inductee of the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Ligler's research dramatically improved the effectiveness of biosensors while at the same time reducing their size and increasing automation. Her work on biosensors made it easier to detect toxins and pathogens in food, water, or when airborne. In 1986, she joined the US Naval Research Laboratory, where she developed sensors to detect anthrax and botulinum toxin that were deployed during Operation Desert Storm. In 2012, she was named a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. In 2013, she left the US Naval Research Laboratory to become the Lampe Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering in the Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering at North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She received an honorary doctorate from Furman University in 2018.

Gagan Hasteer

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VP, Content Engineering, Netflix

Ganesh Ramani

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Partner, Goldman Sachs

Gaurav Suri

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CEO of Arcesium
CEO, Arcesium LLC

Gaurav Suri is the CEO of Arcesium. Gaurav was formerly a Managing Director and Head of Information Technology and Software Development for the D.E. Shaw group. From 1996 till Arcesium's launch in 2015, he focused on developing proprietary software associated with the D.E. Shaw group's investment management activities and building out the firm's software development operations in Hyderabad, India. He also oversaw the D.E. Shaw group's office in Hyderabad. Gaurav started his career in research at AT&T Bell Laboratories where his research interests included large scale reliable distributed systems.

Gopal Jain

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Managing Partner, Gaja Capital

Harish Bahl

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Founder & CEO, Smile Group

Hitesh Oberoi

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Co - Promoter, MD and CEO, Info Edge India Ltd

Hitesh is a Co-Promoter, MD and CEO of Info Edge India Limited. Apart from the country's leading job site, Naukri.com, Info Edge also owns 99acres.com, Jeevansathi.com, and Shiksha.com and has investments in various internet startups like Zomato & PolicyBazaar as well. With over 20 years of experience in the internet industry, he is part of various industry forums. He is a charter member of the TiE, New Delhi and also the past Chairman of IAMAI. The Internet and Mobile Association of India.

IZA Bonn

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Fellow

Jai Rajpal

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Founder and CEO of Crescent Asset Asia Pte
Founder and CEO, Crescent Asset Management Asia

Jai is the founder and CEO of Crescent Asset Asia Pte. Ltd. He had previously been Global Head of FX at Nomura International (Hong Kong) Limited since August 2012. He served as Head of Fixed Income, Asia ex-Japan at Nomura International (Hong Kong) Limited until August 2012. He served as Head of Fixed Income for Asia ex-Japan at Nomura Holdings Inc. from March 2010 to August 2012. He served as Joint Head of Fixed Income, Asia-Pacific at Nomura Holdings Inc. from November 2008 to March 2010. He served as Global Head of Asian Currency Trading at Deutsche Bank AG since February 2007 and was responsible for the FX Business in Japan.

Jitendra Gupta

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Founder, Citrus Pay

Julia M. Ross

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Member of the Plaksha Team
Dean of Engineering, Virginia Tech
Paul and Dorothea Torgersen Dean of Engineering and a Chemical Engineer, Has Appointments in the Departments of Chemical Engineering and Engineering Education

Julia M. Ross, the Paul and Dorothea Torgersen Dean of Engineering and a chemical engineer, has appointments in the departments of chemical engineering and engineering education. Ross is an active partner in the conversation on how the college can scale up experiential learning and make an impact on the tech-talent pipeline - both for academia and industry. Ross is a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering. In 2013, she received the American Council on Education fellowship, the nation's premier higher-education leadership development program preparing senior leaders to serve American colleges and universities. Previously, Ross served as dean of engineering and information technology at University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Research Interests: Ross' research interests involve fluid mechanics, especially how it relates to infection formation in the cardiovascular system. She's studied the adhesion of bacteria to protein surfaces, biomaterials, and human blood cells, which is a process that is typically one of the first steps of an infection. Most recently, she's been interested in biofilm formation, which is what often leads to chronic infection. Using an experimental technique known as protein micropatterning, Ross studies potential development of infection-resistant implants or tissue-engineered constructs.

Kamal Khetan

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Chairman & Managing Director, Sunteck Realty

Kapil Agarwal

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Chief Architect & Founder, Upaya Solutions

Karan Gilhotra

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Co - Chairman, PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry

Krish Mantripragada - EVP

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Chief Product Officer
EVP

Lalit Agarwal

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Chairman and Managing Director, V - Mart Retail

Madhav Bhatkuly

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CEO & Chief Investment Officer, New Horizon Investments Inc

Madhusudan Kela

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Founder, MK Ventures

Manas Fuloria

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Co - Founder, Nagarro

Manish Gupta

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Co - Founder and CEO, Indegene

Manmohan Gupta

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Founder, Nagarro

Mohit Thukral

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Founder & CEO, Vivtera Global Solutions

Monik Sameer Koticha

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Managing Director, Fortress Group

Mukesh Sharma

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Chairman and Director, Prometheus School

Mukul Agrawal

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Chairman, Param Capital

Murugavel Janakiraman

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Founder & CEO, Matrimony.Com

Natasha Malpani Oswal

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Creative Producer, Boundless Media

Navin Chaddha

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Managing Director, Mayfield Fund

Neeraj Aggarwal

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Chairman, Asia Pacific Boston Consulting Group ( BCG )

Niten Malhan

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Founder & Managing Partner, New Mark Advisors LLP

Nitin Rakesh

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CEO, Mphasis

Pallav Nadhani

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Founder & CEO, Charts.Com

Pankaj Agarwal

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Founder, Hello Travel

Pankaj Chaddah

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Founder, Zomato

Pramod Bhasin

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Chairman, Clix Capital

Priya Baveja

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Entrepreneur

Priya Jadhav

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Assistant Professor, IIT Bombay

Rajeev Leekha

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Partner, Complus Asset Management

Rajesh Sachdeva

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Founding Partner, Flowering Tree Investment Management

Rajiv Goel

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Executive Director, Havells India Ltd

Rajiv Kuchhal

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General Partner, Exfinity Venture Fund

Rakesh Bharti Mittal

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Vice - Chairman, Bharti Enterprises

Rakesh Jaggi

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VP Sales & Commercial, Schlumberger

Ravi Jasuja

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Director, Translational Research & Discovery BWH, Harvard Medical School

Rishi Yadav

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Founder & CEO, Zettabytes Inc

Ritesh Malik

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Founder, Innov8 Coworking

Robert V. Adams

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Named Chair

Rohit Arora

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Founder and Chairman, Silverskills

Rohit Kaila

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Vice President - Engineering, Walmart Global Tech

Ross Graham Walker

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Business Administration, Harvard Business School

Dr. Krishna Palepu is the Ross Graham Walker Professor of Business Administration, and Senior Advisor to the President of Harvard University. Professor Palepu was a Senior Associate Dean at the Harvard Business School for several years, overseeing the school's research, and its global initiative. His current research and teaching activities focus on strategy and governance. Professor Palepu has published numerous academic and practitioner-oriented articles and case studies on these issues. He has served on a number of public company and non-profit Boards. He has also been on the Editorial Boards of leading academic journals, and has served as a consultant to a wide variety of businesses. Krishna Palepu is a researcher at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and a fellow of the International Academy of Management. Professor Palepu has a masters degree in physics from Andhra University, a post-graduate diploma in management from the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, a doctorate in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and an honorary doctorate from the Helsinki School of Economics and Business Administration.