Profile:

Pari Natarajan, Co-Founder and CEO of Zinnov, has successfully spearheaded engagements for Fortune 500 companies and helped them effectively globalize their R&D initiatives and bolster their business footprint in India and across other emerging markets.

Pari continues to deliver thought leadership across various facets including R&D globalization, emerging market entry and technology adoption by SMBs and consumers.By dint of his experience,Pari has exceptional expertise across multiple industry verticals such as Internet and Software, Semiconductor, Telecom, Consumer Electronics, Healthcare and others.

Prior to taking Zinnov’s helm, Pari held management positions at Praja and Centric Software. He holds an M.S. in Industrial Engineering from Iowa State University.

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Dominique Cerutti has been Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Altran group since June 2015.

An engineer by training, Dominique Cerutti spent over 20 years at IBM in the United States, where he contributed to the company’s strategic transformation. In particular, he served as Chief Executive Officer of IBM Global Services for the Europe, Middle East, Africa division, and later for IBM Europe. He then went on to join the global exchange group NYSE Euronext, serving as Chief Operating Officer and member of the Board of Directors before becoming Chairman of the Management Board and CEO of Euronext, a multinational company which he successfully steered through market flotation and strategic repositioning.Dominique Cerutti is graduated from the ESTP Paris.

Profile:

Ayan Mukerji was the Chief Executive of Wipro’s Media and Telecom Strategic Business Unit & Product Engineering Service until January ‘16. He was responsible for a Global P&L of $1.7B, including Sales, Delivery and Operations,Solutions and Customer Satisfaction. He has worked and lived across India,Europe and North America.

Ayan also headed Wipro’s Product Engineering service line that creates intelligent products and connected devices for customers in an era of digital disruption.Customers are spread across Manufacturing and Hi Tech, Consumers Electronics,Medical Devices, Software Products, Automotive, Industrial Automation etc.

Ayan’s experience of working with CEOs, CIOs and CTOs of Fortune 100 corporations gives him a unique and in-depth understanding of their markets and businesses. Ayan has been sharing his views on technology’s impact on changing consumer experiences at forums like The Economist’s Intelligence Unit, Oracle Open World, Zinnov Confluence etc.. He is associated with leading forums like Telecom Council Silicon Valley, TM Forum and ETC (Entertainment Technology Center) and academic institutions globally. He also advises start-ups in the Silicon Valley.

Ayan holds a management degree from The Indian Institute of Management (IIM),Calcutta and an Electrical Engineering degree from the Indian Institute of Technology IIT) – Kharagpur. He lives in Los Gatos, California.

Profile:

Mr. Joachim Nell is in charge of Global R&D Footprint of Continental AG. He is currently based in Frankfurt, Germany.

He assumed this position in January, 2013 after he returned from India. In Bangalore he was in charge of Continental Technical Centre India since 2009. From India he was as well heading a worldwide team to develop the Affordable Cars Strategy for all automotive divisions of Continental. Mr. Joachim Nell has deep technical experience in safety technologies and is well connected to technology trends in BRIC countries

In 1996 Mr. Nell joined Continental AG and took over leading positions in brake by Wire, steering actuators and electronic brake systems including P&L responsibility in Frankfurt and Berlin, Germany.

After finalizing his Master degree at RWTH Aachen in Automotive Engineering Mr. Nell began his automotive career with Daimler AG in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1988. He held various management positions in brake component, brake systems and chassis systems engineering.

Profile:

DAVID SOLDANI received a M.Sc. degree, Laura Vecchio Ordinamento, in Electronic Engineering with magna cum laude from Università degli Studi di Firenze, Italy, in 1994; and a D.Sc. degree in Technology with distinction from Helsinki University of Technology (Aalto University), Finland, in 2006. In 2014 and 2016, he was appointed Visiting Professor and Industry Professor at University of Surrey, UK, and University of Technology Sydney, Australia, respectively. In EU, he is qualified and authorized to exercise his profession in Civil and Environmental, Industrial and Information sectors.

Dr. Soldani has been active in the ICT industry for more than 20 years, successfully working on 200+ research, innovation and customer services projects for 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G ICT systems and services, and contributing to 500+ quality deliverables – from strategic research and innovation strategies, business and work plans formulation to modeling, simulations, emulations and proof of concepts of innovative solutions, products and services with partners and customers.

From 1997 to 2006 he was at Nokia in various technical and research management positions. From 2007 to 2009 he served at Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) as Head of Customer Networks & Solutions and Solutions & Services Innovation functions, Research Technology & Platforms (RTP), Munich, Germany. In this role, he was responsible for “driving the alignment between the RTP research portfolio, the NSN Network Architecture Vision and Technology Strategy, and future customer needs”, and leading innovative research projects for improving fixed-mobile broadband solutions and services. Prior to joining Nokia, he was a research engineer at Rohde & Schwarz (R&S) and Sirti S.p.A., in Milan, Italy, and officer (lieutenant) at the Italian Military Navy, Livorno, Italy.

From Feb 2009 to Aug 2016, he was at Huawei European Research Centre, Munich, Germany, as Head of IP Transformation Research Centre (IPTRC), Head of Network Solution R&D and, subsequently, Head of Central Research Institute (CRI) and VP Strategic Research and Innovation, in Europe; and represented Huawei in the Board of Directors of The 5G Infrastructure Association (5G-IA) and NetWorld2020 European Technology Platform (ETP), in Europe.

He is currently back at Nokia serving as the Head of 5G Technology, End to End, Global. Areas of his responsibilities and expertise include, but not limited to: future wireless, network, big data value, computing, IoT and multimedia technologies.

He has been selected many times to receive special awards in recognition of his role, commitment, professionalism, and outstanding contribution at Nokia, NSN and Huawei. He has published or presented numerous international papers, contributed to the publication of many books, and holds several international patents.

Since 2009, Dr. Soldani has been serving as Associate Editor in Chief (AEiC) of IEEE Network Magazine, and Guest Editor of IEEE Communications Magazine and IEEE MMTC E-Letters. He has taken part in a number of IEEE Technical Program Committees (TPC) for international conferences, journals, magazines and workshops, especially in areas of future wireless, network, computing and media technologies.

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Sidhant is a Partner & Practice Head at Zinnov and has been engaging with Fortune 500 companies in the technology space to execute their multi-location engineering globalization strategy.

He has spearheaded multi-year engineering center strategy definition and continuous transformation programs for existing MNCs and service providers in India. He has extensive experience in formulating and implementing market expansion / GTM strategy.

Prior to joining Zinnov, Sidhant has had multiple years of R&D experience with Toyota Motors and Tata Motors. Sidhant holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering and a management degree from the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad.

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Peter is an outsourcing professional and currently oversees the procurement strategies and vision for outsourced product development. As part of his role he drives the contingent workforce strategy and is actively pathfinding the way for Intel into a total talent management. His responsibility for external engineering and third party development spans globally. Outsourced Product Development (OPD) is a critical and integral part of Intel's R&D activities and right at the heart of the cutting edge of compute.

In the last couple of years Peter led the contingent workforce strategy that delivered multimillion savings and developed Intel’s scattered contingent workforce practice in a future proof, global program.

Coming with a degree in business administration Peter held a variety of management roles in the past for direct and indirect materials and joint Intel Corp back in 2011. Prior to Intel he worked as a senior manager for Infineon’s purchasing organization and as Head of Procurement at Nero AG. His professional career is complemented with assignments in Corporate Strategy Departments for Deutsche Telekom, Mercedes Benz and Deutsche Boerse AG.

Profile:

Keith Williams, 48, has over 20 years’ experience in the engineering & technology industry. Keith is responsible for Technology and World Class Centres leadership for the Altran Group, including: Product & Systems R&D, Manufacturing & Operations, Digitization and Industrial Enterprise. This also includes technology topics such as Internet of Things, Big Data, Robotics and Autonomous Systems. Keith began his career working on the Channel Tunnel Project, and has held a range of technical, business and leadership roles, including Managing Director of Altran Praxis, a world-renowned specialist in safety-critical systems. He has a First Class Honours degree in Computer Science, is a Chartered Engineer, a Freeman of the City of London, a Liveryman in the Worshipful Company of Engineers, a Fellow of the British Computer Society, a Fellow of the Institute of Engineering and Technology, a Member of the Safety and Reliability Society and a Chartered IT Professional. He also sits on the Leadership board of ESCO, the UK Electronic Systems Council.

Profile:

Simon Best is Head of New Business at Airbus Defence & Space, CIS (Communications, Intelligence and Security), with the mission to take capabilities of the Division to new markets and applications not traditionally served and create new business.

Starting as a Graduate Engineer from the University Collage of Swansea, Simon has a career spanning 28 years to date. He has worked for British Telecommunications building international fixed and mobile network operators. He has spent 10 years on Joint Ventures, Mergers and Acquisitions in Telecoms and IT business in US, South-East Asia, India and Europe. At Arthur D. Little and previously Theron Management Consulting he has advised many Telecoms operators in Europe and the Middle-East on growth strategies in network convergence, digital service platforms, cloud and Internet domains.

Simon joined EADS / Astrium Services Space Division in 2013 and with subsequent Airbus Group restructuring became Head of Strategic Business Development and Cyber Security for CIS. Through this role of driving growth in both operational and emerging businesses it lead to his current position.

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Steffen Schaefer is a Senior Principal at Siemens AG. He is responsible for innovative, digital Mobility Management solutions. Steffen has kick-started and lead development of Siemens’ mobility platform which integrates 30+ mobility operators in various regions.

With his degree in business informatics Steffen has always been at the intersection of business and technology. Previously at IBM, Steffen is working on innovative Mobile Internet and Sensor Network solutions - what today is called the Internet of Things - since 15 years. He has always been leading first-of- a-kind projects in Transportation, Energy, Telecommunications, and Automotive industries, as well as with Cities. Steffen has been involved with IBM’s Smarter Cities initiative from the onset. He has written one book, numerous articles, and is a frequent speaker at conferences.

Profile:

Has more than 16 years of experience in information technology, telecom, banking and financial services. Has a strong analytical mind and experienced in modelling, analytics and big data technologies. He was a core member of an analytics start up where he developed patentable algorithms for customers in e-commerce, digital marketing, and credit and risk assessment in financial services.

Profile:

Wilhelm Wiese currently heads the ABB India Development Center in Bangalore. Wilhelm joined the company in 1984 and held throughout his career various management positions in power and process automation. During more than 20 years in R&D he headed software development teams in Germany, Sweden and India. Before coming back to India he lived in Singapore for five years where he was responsible for the control technology services and consulting business in Asia Pacific. Wilhelm holds a Masters in Electrical Engineering, specialized in automation technology and a MBA from the Open University Business School. He came first time to India for three years in 2004 to support the startup phase of ABB’s development center and lives now again in Bangalore since 2013.

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Santhosh Kumar is the President & Managing Director for Texas Instruments’ (TI) operations in India. He brings a blend of experience in business, engineering and customer relationships to this role. Prior to this assignment, Santhosh Kumar was responsible for leading TI’s C6000 video and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) business. He was based in Dallas, Texas. In that role, he worked with various global customers and engineering teams to grow TI’s ADAS business.

Santhosh Kumar joined TI in 1995 and started the performance audio team in India. He then assumed the leadership of the ASP applications team and later led India’s software and DSP design teams. Santhosh Kumar has also served as the Manager of the Software Centre of Excellence in India and previously led the worldwide software team for the SitaraTM family of processors, before moving to the United States.

Santhosh Kumar holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electronics & Communications Engineering from the University of Calicut and a Master’s degree in Software & Systems from BITS, Pilani. He is also a TI Senior Member Technical Staff (SMTS).

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Subramanian (Mani) Ganeshan is the General Manager of Amadeus Labs, Bangalore and the R&D Head for the APAC Region. Amadeus Labs Bangalore is the second largest R&D site for Amadeus after Sophia Antipolis, France. More than 1400 engineers are innovating on the core products of Amadeus that provide the backbone for the travel industry players to manage their Distribution and IT Operations efficiently.

As the R&D Head of the APAC region, Mani’s main responsibility is to implement the Amadeus Global R&D footprint strategy in the region; to better synergize between the business units, R&D and regional commercial teams. Before joining Amadeus, Mani worked for several multinational organizations like Ness Technologies and Accenture in Bangalore, Wells Fargo Bank and MCI Telecommunications in USA and ATOS Origin in Mumbai.

Mani holds an MBA in Executive Management from Colorado Technical University, USA; and an MCA (Master of Computer Applications) from the University of Pune, India. He has worked in international multi-cultural environments having spent 11 years in USA and a couple of years in Europe before that.

Profile:

Frank Kern joined Aricent in 2012 as the Chief Executive Officer and a member of the Board of Directors. As CEO of Aricent, Frank is focused on driving growth in the business and developing solutions and services that change the way people live, learn and work. He and his leadership have continue the strong tradition of engineering excellence at Aricent, while increasing the business value through innovation and diversified growth. Prior to Aricent, Frank was with IBM for over thirty years in various leadership roles including Senior Vice President, Global Business Services, Senior Vice President Sales and Distribution and President, Asia Pacific Region. Frank has been a driving force in creating today’s IT culture, software enablement, and global business services.

For decades, Frank has been a leader in developing integrated services for technology issues around the world, and has been a champion of empowering creative thinking to solve business challenges. Frank has published many essays and editorials about the best ways for businesses to succeed, and is passionate about mentoring the next generation of leaders. His work has appeared in publications such as Bloomberg Business.

Frank graduated Bucknell University with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and received a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Syracuse University. He is married and has a grown daughter.

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Doreen Lorenzo is a successful leader of global creative firms who has advised Fortune 100 companies on design and innovation issues for decades. The former president of the global design firms, frog and Quirky, she is now the Director for the Center of Integrated Design at the University of Texas, a co-founder of the mobile video insights firm Vidlet, a board member and advisor of several startups, and a columnist for Fast Company Co.Design and Medium. A recognized thought leader on business and design issues, she speaks publicly about her signature leadership style and the power of empathy to drive business results. A Manhattan native, she maintains that everything in life connects back to a Ramones song.

Doreen is an ardent believer in the advantages of “soft skills” like empathy and humor in business. She speaks at industry conferences, at private events, and to the media about her experience using these often overlooked skills to understand and motivate creative people. A driven and successful woman in a male-dominated industry, Doreen also speaks about women in leadership and coaches aspiring women leaders to help them find their own paths to success.

In 2016 Doreen joined forces with other business and design leaders, including former frog co-founders Hartmut Esslinger and Patricia Roller, to launch Vidlet, a mobile video platform that transforms how brands communicate and capture insights from customers, employees, and anyone else important to their business.

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Tarun Sharma is the CEO of BMC Software India Pvt. Ltd. (BMCI), a wholly owned subsidiary of BMC Software Inc. Tarun also serves as the Chief Customer Officer for Asia Pacific and Japan, responsible for ensuring customers successfully realize value from the BMC products and solutions they use. Tarun has been with BMC Software since 2009 and is credited with leading BMC India to its current maturity level. His primary focus has been on making BMC India known for innovation and customer value realization. He ran BMC’s incubator that strengthened the company’s product portfolio in the rapidly changing IT industry landscape. His leadership was recognized by Zinnov when BMC India received the award for Center Transformation in 2014 and Customer Centricity in 2015. He has the privilege of being the first General Manager based out of India managing a global portfolio of customers and products. Tarun joined BMC from Virtusa (“VRTU”), a global software services company, where he was SVP of the technology business and part of the team that took the company through its startup years to a successful IPO. Prior to joining Virtusa, Tarun co-founded a company called EC Cubed. EC Cubed was recognized in its early days as the top 100 companies to watch for in the B2B e-commerce space. The company was funded by large venture capitalists like Battery Ventures, Boston Millenia and other companies like Infosys and Cambridge Technology Partners.

Tarun has co-authored two books - Programming Web Components (McGraw Hills Publications, 1997) and Enterprise E-Commerce (Meghan-Kiffer Press, 1999). Enterprise E-Commerce went on to become a best seller, ranking within the top 25 on business technology management. Tarun is a software engineer by training. He graduated from PICT in 1992. He lives in Pune now with his wife, Reshma, and two children, Simran and Avi, after having lived in the US for fourteen years.

Profile:

Dattatreya is passionate about technologies and business. His business unit designs and develops products in diverse domains – Industrial automation and smart manufacturing; automotive electronics, steering and diagnostics; power tools, security systems, HVAC systems and home appliances. They run three COE for product reliability, NVH (Noise Vibration and Harshness) and Plastics and a User Experience studio for design. He is an electronics engineering graduate from MNIT Jaipur and has done an executive management program at IIMB. He is an expert in introducing Lean Management in all indirect areas. He has helped many Bosch group companies worldwide in improving their software engineering and development processes based on CMMI framework.

During the last 22 years with Bosch, he has worked and lived in India, Germany and USA. Prior to joining Bosch he had worked for 6 years with BEL (Bharat Electronics) in development of Radar and Sonar systems for ISRO and DRDO.

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Niranjan Thirumale is Vice President of VMWare and Head of India R&D. The R&D team in India plays a critical role in product development in all of VMWare’s strategic imperatives – SDDC, Hybrid Cloud and End-User Computing. In this role, Niranjan leads the charter to build great products out of the India centers in Bangalore and Pune, and drive new innovations.

Profile:

Mr. R.K. Shenoy, Senior Vice President of Global center for Powertrain Electronics and Product Engineering - one of the largest Business Units at Robert Bosch Engineering and Business solutions Private Limited (RBEI). This center in India (and Vietnam) is not only responsible for Electronic Control Units for Emerging Markets (BRIC), but also products and solutions for Global customers in the new Business verticals of Aerospace, Off-Highway and Railways out of India and Vietnam. Mr. R.K. Shenoy is been associated with BOSCH Group since 1986 and carries an overall working experience of 30 years in various functions. Initially he was responsible for Industrial automation, PLC development and Precision instrumentation in RBIN (erstwhile MICO). Later he moved on to Embedded Software development for Engine management systems. Prior to the current role he was responsible for Car Multimedia and Automotive Safety Systems and instrumental in setting-up hardware development and Product development in RBEI.

Mr. Shenoy also carries about 6 years of international experience in Germany as coordination of software development, customer liaison and leading ECU development for European customers.

Born in 1964, Mr. Shenoy holds a Bachelors degree in Electronics and Communication from National Institute of Technology, Suratkal (1986). Mr. Shenoy is married and blessed with two kids. He is interested in listening to music, driving and hobby electronics.

Profile:

Octavian Tanase is the senior vice president of NetApp’s Data ONTAP operating system group. ONTAP is the world’s #1 storage operating system. Previously Octavian was the GM of the Cloud Appliance – AltaVault, Group which built the fabric to enable enterprises to operate in hybrid cloud environment to send their backups and archives to the cloud. Octavian started at NetApp as the vice president of the Data Protection engineering team who shipped world-class data protection products such as SnapMirror, MetroCulster, SnapVault.

Before joining NetApp in 2010, Octavian led the Java Platform engineering group at Sun Microsystems/Oracle. He has also held various engineering roles in several start-ups in Silicon Valley.

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Virendra Gupta is Senior Vice President and Business Line Head – 2012 Labs Business line and Single OSS Business Line in Huawei Technologies India Pvt. Ltd., Huawei's largest overseas R&D center focused on developing and delivering telecom, enterprise and consumer domain core platforms, products, end-to-end solutions and services for global market.

Profile:

Anupam Pahuja is the General Manager of Technology for PayPal in Asia Pacific and is also the Managing Director & General Manager for PayPal Payments India. He is responsible for the business operations and management of the Asia Pacific technology centers in Singapore, Shanghai, Chennai, and Bangalore.

Anupam is also responsible for the business operations and management of the Asia Pacific technology centers in Singapore, Shanghai, Chennai, and Bangalore. PayPal’s technology centers in the region have over 1,500 engineers who support the PayPal business globally. These talented technologists are part of a global team that is constantly innovating and driving software development initiatives that enhance and expand PayPal’s global payments platform. The technology centers house a best-in-class team of software developers, architects, user experience engineers, web developers, data analytics & project managers.

Anupam joined PayPal as the General Manager of India Development Centers in 2010. Bringing with him years of international experience in technology, consulting and entrepreneurship, Anupam has been instrumental in making the India centers one of the best places to work in the country. The PayPal centers in India have been ranked among the top 15 IT companies in the “India’s Best Places to Work” for 6 years in a row, by the Great Places to Work Institute and The Economic Times.

Anupam has a wealth of experience managing large-scale multinational enterprises, and has also incubated and sold several businesses. Prior to PayPal, Anupam was the Managing Director for India for NASDAQ-listed SumTotal Systems, the world’s largest eLearning company. In this role, Anupam managed the company’s global product development and led sales, marketing, and professional services for the APAC region. In 2000, Anupam founded MobiApps Inc, a mobile focused company where he played the role of the CTO and COO and sold the company in 2006. He then founded SeaKey another high tech startup, which failed in 2008. He also serves as a Board Member for several companies and nonprofit organizations. Anupam holds an undergraduate degree in Computer Science from Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania and an MBA in International Business from Georgetown University.

Profile:

Guru Bhat joined PayPal in 2015 as the General Manager of the Chennai Technology Center in India. Guru comes with more than 19 years of experience in the technology sector and is responsible for driving PayPal’s technology strategy in Chennai as the company builds out next-generation payment solutions and services. Guru heads business operations and management of the Chennai Center whose technologists are part of a global team that is constantly innovating and driving software development initiatives that enhance and expand PayPal’s global payments platform.

Guru previously headed R&D Operations for Ericsson R&D India where he was responsible for organizational efficiency and effectiveness for Ericsson’s IP, Cloud, Analytics and Network Functions business units. In addition, he also led the Cloud and Virtualized Telephony products group in Bangalore. Guru graduated with a Masters Degree in Computer Science from the State University of New York at Buffalo and worked as a Lead Architect for Sun Microsystems and subsequently Oracle for a total of 12 years in Boston, Massachusetts. Upon his return to India in 2007, Guru was the lead architect of SAP’s Cloud Platform Group in Bangalore and subsequently served as Managing Director of Serus Corp, a Supply Chain startup company before joining Ericsson.

Guru maintains an avid interest in sports, books, movies, music and pretty much anything that makes life joyful and interesting. He is passionate about playing tennis, reading (about tennis) and writing (about tennis) and is a recent addition to the ranks of those addicted to long-distance running.

Profile:

Nitin Tappe is Co-Founder of Pratiti Technologies, company which is he founded in 2015 to help enterprises with their Digital Transformation journey. After successful 5 years stint in corporate role, Nitin is back to what he enjoys most – conceptualizing new software solutions to solve business problems. Nitin is postgraduate from IIT, Mumbai,India and in his 20 years of career, has played key roles in building desktop as well as enterprise solutions right from ideation to launch which are adopted by many Fortune 500 companies. As a Founder member of Pratiti Technologies, he is committed to apply his management learning as well as passion for building new solutions to realize technology innovation with certainty.

Profile:

Anita Ganti is the Senior Vice President & Global Head of Wipro’s Product Engineering Services (PES). Her diverse experience in leading technology firms has given Anita a deep appreciation of the limitless possibilities that technology can create for global businesses. Drawing on her expertise in identifying the “unseen” trends, building strong teams and running large engineering operations, Anita has successfully executed some of the most complex projects in her career spanning two decades.

Prior to joining Wipro, Anita was Vice-President of Global Technology at Flextronics. Previously as the Business Head of the Precision Signal Path Division at Texas Instruments, Anita managed diverse teams ranging from product design and applications to testing and quality assurance across multiple engineering centers in USA, Europe, India and China.

The Product Engineering Service Line enables product engineering platforms for the future, through innovation, while leading today’s constrained products into a world of ubiquitous connectivity. Anita passionately believes that new age digital technologies will alter the very definition of a product and empower companies to solve their business challenges and transcend new boundaries.

Anita holds a Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from VJTI Mumbai, and a MSEE from Virginia Tech.

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Anand Prahlad is President & CEO and ParaBlu – a cloud security startup with offices in Bangalore and the bay area. With close to 25 years of experience building enterprise software solutions, Anand brings a unique mix of security and storage DNA. After relocating to India in 2010, he was Managing Director and Head of McAfee’s R&D Center in India, where he also served as VP of Engineering and led product development for McAfee’s Data Center products. Prior to that, in the US, he spent 16 years at CommVault Systems, where he was Senior Vice President of Product Development and a key member of the executive team that led CommVault through a successful IPO in 2006. Anand is a prolific inventor and has claims to several granted patents in the area of computer storage management. Apart from his computing interests, Anand is also an angel investor. He is a voracious reader and an ardent history buff.

Profile:

Dale Vaz, Director Software Development, Amazon India Consumer & New Business Initiatives In his current role, Dale Vaz is responsible for product engineering and innovation for customer experience on Amazon.IN website and mobile app. This covers every customer interaction from traffic, customer engagement, search, checkout, delivery experience and Ads. In addition, Dale leads engineering for new business initiatives such as AmazonNow, Junglee.com, Udaan and the Applied Machine Learning team for Amazon India.

Prior to this, Dale was the technology lead for international expansion for Amazon.com Retail business. He led the launch of Amazon’s ecommerce business in Italy, Spain and set the groundwork for future expansion into Brazil, Mexico and Russia. Along the way, Dale transformed Amazon’s website platform to simplify future international launches and reduce time to market and engineering cost by 60%.

Dale has ~9 years of Amazon experience and 16+ years of software industry experience. He has an engineering degree in computer science with an MBA from UMass. An avid reader with a curious mind, Dale spends his free time reading across a wide range of topics ranging from ancient Greek mythology to biopiracy.

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Krishnan Raman is Co-founder and CEO at Flutura, a specialist Industrial IOT Intelligence organization serving the Engineering & Energy industries. Flutura has been identified as one of the top 20 most promising Manufacturing start-ups globally by CIO Review and was chosen by Forbes and Bloomberg for ‘Rethinking Industries’ through Machine Intelligence. Krishnan in a thought leader in Analytics, has been honored as one of the “Bulls of Technology” in Houston and regularly speaks in International forums. Some of his recent speaking assignments were the prestigious The Economic Times IOT Summit – Mumbai, SAPPHIRE - Orlando, IOT Conference - Shanghai, SRII Conference - Tokyo, HANA Insider-Orlando, Demo Enterprise event-San Francisco, SmartData Summit-Dubai and Nasscom Product Conclave-Bangalore. Prior to founding Flutura, he played many leadership roles as Global Head of Business Analytics at Mindtree Ltd, Founder at Atma Consulting, Strategy Consultant with PricewaterhouseCoopers, Product Manager with Norton Abrasives etc. He holds an MBA in Marketing and Systems from SP Jain, Mumbai and a B.Tech from National Institute of Technology, Calicut.

Profile:

“Sandeep Kalra is a Senior Vice President and General Manager with HARMAN Connected services, with the responsibility of leading the Software Enabled Business unit globally. In his role Sandeep is responsible for working with leading ISV’s, Platform providers and Enterprise customers across Industry verticals helping establish large scale Outsourced Product Engineering and Digital Transformation led relationships.

Sandeep brings to this role two decades plus of strategic, operational and execution leadership in global outsourcing. Sandeep joined HARMAN Connected services from HCL Technologies, a leading IT services organization having led diverse business across Outsourced Product Development & IT services in North and South Americas. Sandeep is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, India and is based out of New Jersey.”

Profile:

Sarathy Rajagopalan is Director, Product Management, for PayPal in India, and is responsible for managing Products for Merchant, Global Operations, and Financial Risk Management. He joined PayPal in 2008 to support Partner Facing Products for Merchant. Sarathy is an adept product leader with over 17 years of experience in the technology industry, predominantly at Silicon Valley. Prior to PayPal, he was leading Consumer Product Management at LSI LOGIC, an organization that specializes in Semiconductors in the Bay Area. Sarathy holds a Master’s Degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Binghamton, and an MBA from Santa Clara University.

Profile:

Subi brings more than 20 years of development experience to Misys. He has a strong background in creating and leading world class functions that deliver value added products and services to customers, while ensuring company profitability. Subi is responsible for quality assurance and testing across all Misys product lines globally. He joined us from ADP where he was Vice President, Research & Development (R&D) responsible for defining the R&D strategy, aligning it with the company’s global strategy and managing its execution across the 1,700 strong R&D organization in India. Prior to this, Subi served as Managing Director at Optimal Solutions where he defined and executed the APAC strategy, managing the APAC business including sales, business development, delivery and operations. He also spent four years with Oracle where he was Head of Supply Chain Management Business Unit and later Head of Operations for PeopleSoft.

Profile:

Sumit Sood is a tenured executive with over 19 years of global experience in the IT services industry. With a focus on managing large engineering and digital opportunities in the Asia Pacific region, he is responsible for GlobalLogic’s India operations. Prior to joining GlobalLogic, Sumit spent over 14 years at Virtusa, a global IT services company. During his time there, he created outsourcing and transformational experiences for Fortune 500 enterprises across the banking, telecom, and media and entertainment industries. He successfully expanded Virtusa’s client services business in the Middle East and Asia Pacific regions, and he also helped establish European operations for the company’s banking and insurance verticals. Prior to that, Sumit served as the global delivery head for Virtusa’s Financial Services segment, including setting up a new delivery center in Chennai, India. Sumit holds a Bachelors of Engineering in Computer Science from Punjab Engineering College, along with a Postgraduate Diploma in Business Management (Finance) from XLRI. He is a founding member of the World Wide Institute of Software Architects. In his free time, Sumit enjoys playing golf and is an avid reader of humor and history.

Profile:

Ushasri T S is the Senior Vice President and General Manager for Manhattan Associates in India (NASDAQ: MANH). In this role, she is responsible for Manhattan Associates’ strategic direction, growth and development in India. Manhattan Associates’ India operations play an instrumental role, alongside the company’s Atlanta-based R&D unit and global service units, in developing leading-edge integrated supply chain technology platform solutions and deploying the same.

One of the early women leaders in the Indian IT industry, Usha has more than two and half decades of experience in various IT and technology firms. Her key competencies lie in business transformation, technology management and development of business units from ground up. She has worked in several senior leadership, technology and managerial roles with leading Indian and MNC organizations. She has held key positions such as the Senior Managing Director of Cisco’s India Global Delivery Center (India), Managing Director of Force Computers India, Chief Technology Officer of Digital Globalsoft, and Vice President at Wipro Technologies.

Usha is a recognized thought leader at leading industry forums. She was named the Chief Executive Officer of the Year, 2011 by the Indian Institute of Materials Management (IIMM), a premier institution in India in the field of materials and supply chain management. She is associated with BOS, COE for Supply Chain, IIM Bangalore, GIC National Council, NASSCOM. She is an ardent champion of women in technology.

Usha has been recently awarded with “WOMEN SUPER ACHIEVERS AWARD For Brand Excellence” in the category of ‘Women Leadership in the Supply Chain & Logistics Sector’ as presented by ABP News.

Profile:

Venkat Krishnapur is a 30 year industry veteran having entered the software/ software assisted industry in 1985. He started his career at Hindustan Aeronautics Limited developing and using CAD/CAM software for the manufacture of Aircraft structural components. In 1994 he joined Computervision - a Massachusetts based Company that pioneered the development of CAD/CAM software . He later joined McAfee (then Network Associates) in 2003. He has been with the security industry since then, having been responsible for the creation of both Enterprise and Consumer Development teams and driving product development at McAfee. He is now part of Intel Security Group – a part of Intel post the acquisition of McAfee by Intel in 2011.

As a leader his interest is in creating world class teams, products and processes that enable multi-site development of high quality software products. As a past member of the local executive team, Venkat has also driven a number of People and Process initiatives that have resulted in a number of benefits at a site level for both employees and the business. In his charter of driving innovation, Venkat has also contributed significantly in developing a number of next generation products that go beyond providing just digital security.

As an external spokesperson, Venkat has represented ISecG in a number of media events that include Product launches, Panel discussions and Presentations. He also holds a number of patents in Security. He is an M.Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai.

Profile:

“Venkatesh is a Senior Executive with over 23 years of experience in Engineering Software Products and Services space. He started his career as an Intellectual Property developer in the CAD/CAM space and was one of the two people that pioneered a new product in the Product Lifecycle (PLM) space. As Head of Quality and Productivity he led the efforts to certify and assess the organization for ISO 9001 and CMMI L5. He was also one of the pioneers who adopted the Theory of Constraints (TOC) led techniques to reduce waste and improve productivity at the grass roots level . He has incubated nascent businesses and software products into their growth phase and has led cross-location, diverse multi-cultural teams for clients with strong people orientation and mentoring skills.

He has essayed a wide spectrum of key leadership and management roles over the last 13 years while being part of the Top Management of a publicly listed company in India for over 6 years. Currently he leads the Schneider Electric Process Automation India Research Center (IRC) in Hyderabad responsible for the end to end ownership of products and systems delivered from India”

Profile:

Ajay, currently Director of Engineering at Qualcomm, has over 18 years of experience in designing and delivering SOCs and IPs into multiple markets from networking routers, PC chipsets, integrated graphics, mobile phones and IoT devices. Most recently he and his team have been working on designing and productizing specific feature rich end devices besides just connectivity and reducing BOM costs of the end device platforms across segments. He has Masters Degrees in Physics and Integrated Electronics &Circuits from IIT Delhi.

Profile:

Amit is currently leading the Data Science and Java CoE from ADP India. He has 17 years of industry experience in end-to-end product development including conceptualization, solution, design, architecture and development. Amit also leads the global Incubation teams towards identifying, evaluating and prototyping new product ideas using state of the art technologies and machine learning algorithms. As a part of Data science and Analytics CoE, he is actively building embedded analytics solutions in the fields of optimization, predictive analytics, semantic search using NLP and advanced visualizations.

Profile:

Arijit Biswas is currently a machine learning scientist at the core machine learning team in Amazon, Bangalore. His research interests are mainly in deep learning, machine learning and computer vision. Earlier he was a research scientist at Xerox Research Centre India (XRCI) from June, 2014 to July, 2016. He received his PhD in Computer Science from University of Maryland, College Park in April 2014. His PhD thesis was on Semi-supervised and Active Learning Methods for Image Clustering. His thesis advisor was David Jacobs and he closely collaborated with Devi Parikh and Peter Belhumeur during his stay at UMD. While doing his PhD, Arijit also did internships at Xerox PARC and Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago (TTIC). He has published papers in CVPR, ECCV, ACM-MM, BMVC, IJCV and CVIU. Arijit has a Bachelor's degree in Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering from Jadavpur University, Kolkata. Arijit is also a recipient of the MIT Technology Review Innovators under 35 award from India in 2016.

Profile:

Jay, abbreviated to JD, has journeyed across multiple specialisations within Design—lived and worked in multiple Geos. In his current role, as one of the first Design Practitioners in a VC firm, JD works closely with Founders, CEOs across SAIF's portfolio companies: from some of India's most recognised to the promising young startups.

Profile:

Krishnendu Chaudhury aka Krish is a lifelong student of computer vision. Currently he heads the Flipkart Imaging sciences. Before joining Flipkart, he was with Google Research, Mountain View. He has about two dozen international patents and publications in most major conferences and journals of image, computer vision and pattern recognition.

Profile:

Sam (Samir) Gulve has over 30 years of diverse, global technology industry experience. During his career, Sam has held various senior management positions at world-renowned companies such as Amdocs, AT&T Bell Labs, Avaya, Netscape, SSA, Spice as well as, at highly successful startups such as Kiva Software, Calico Commerce, Visual Insights and Shakti Systems. Sam is currently VP of Engineering and GM of India at EFI Inc. where he is currently focused on driving innovation and delivering a diverse portfolio of products. Before EFI, Sam was Managing Director for Spice, a diversified business covering handsets, retail, applications and value added services for mobile markets across Africa, Middle East and SE Asia. Prior to that Sam was Chairman & Managing Director for Avaya India. During his career, Sam has held key leadership roles in diverse functional areas including General Management, R&D, Engineering, Sales, Strategy and Operations. With over two decades in North America with global responsibilities and last 10 plus years in India.

Sam holds a B.Tech in engineering from Indian Institute of Technology -Bombay, M.S in computer science from Virginia Tech and has done substantial work towards doctorate in computer science from Illinois Institute of Technology.

Sam has won several industry recognitions in both continents and a few years ago, was chosen as one of the most influential technology leaders in India by a large peer group of technology leaders in Asia. Sam is passionate about mentoring young leaders in realizing their full potential. Sam is also engaged hands-on in applying deep learning, cognitive and stream processing technologies to manufacturing, printing and packaging domains.

Profile:

Supriyo Das is a Vice President, Product Engineering Services, Wipro Ltd. He heads the Product Software & Software Services business of Wipro’s Product Engineering Services. Mr. Das has more than 25 years of industry experience. He has deep expertise in Product Engineering Lifecycle especially in the areas of Servers, Storage, Software Products, Application Engineering and Cloud Computing. Mr. Das has successfully managed large integrated projects and built multiple new business lines. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in electrical & electronics engineering from Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra and a management degree from IIM, Kolkata.

Profile:

Laxmikanth is the Managing Director of Broadridge Financial Solutions (India) Pvt. Ltd; a wholly owned subsidiary of the US based Broadridge Financial Solutions Inc. (NYSE:BR); a leading provider of investor communications and technology-driven solutions for broker-dealers, banks, mutual funds and corporate issuers globally. At Broadridge, he is responsible for delivery of product development and operations from its India-based centers across Investor Communications and Securities Processing Solutions businesses. His leadership spans execution, product and technical innovation and business strategy. Prior to the spin-off of Broadridge from ADP, he was part of the executive leadership team of ADP India since 1999. He was responsible for the delivery of Information Technology Solutions and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) Services across all businesses verticals of ADP. Laxmikanth is a pioneer in the global delivery model in India, having established and run multiple companies over three decades such as ADP India, DE Shaw India and Intergraph India.

He is an active member of industry and academic forums. He is the Chairman of NASSCOM GIC Forum Hyderabad Chapter, member of ITsAP, CISI India Advisory Committee, Advisory Board of SPIC MACAY Hyderabad Chapter, member of Board of Studies of Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies and Past Chairman of AMCHAM.

Profile:

Laxmikanth is the Managing Director of Broadridge Financial Solutions (India) Pvt. Ltd; a wholly owned subsidiary of the US based Broadridge Financial Solutions Inc. (NYSE:BR); a leading provider of investor communications and technology-driven solutions for broker-dealers, banks, mutual funds and corporate issuers globally. At Broadridge, he is responsible for delivery of product development and operations from its India-based centers across Investor Communications and Securities Processing Solutions businesses. His leadership spans execution, product and technical innovation and business strategy. Prior to the spin-off of Broadridge from ADP, he was part of the executive leadership team of ADP India since 1999. He was responsible for the delivery of Information Technology Solutions and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) Services across all businesses verticals of ADP. Laxmikanth is a pioneer in the global delivery model in India, having established and run multiple companies over three decades such as ADP India, DE Shaw India and Intergraph India.

He is an active member of industry and academic forums. He is the Chairman of NASSCOM GIC Forum Hyderabad Chapter, member of ITsAP, CISI India Advisory Committee, Advisory Board of SPIC MACAY Hyderabad Chapter, member of Board of Studies of Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies and Past Chairman of AMCHAM.