Mr. M. Nagarajan (IAS)

Commissioner, Higher Education Department, Government of Gujarat

Profile:

Shri. M Nagarajan is an IAS Officer of 2009 Batch, Gujarat Cadre. Currently he is working as the Commissioner Higher Education, Gujarat state.

He has a working experience of 22 years in various government departments including Indian Railways, Indian Audit and Accounts Department and Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and in the Indian Administrative Service(IAS).

He worked as District Collector in Arvalli District Gujarat. He contributed in bringing services delivery and industrial development of this tribal area. Later he was the District Collector of Kutch District, which is India’s largest district in terms of area, and is a very strategic location for India’s defence.

Prior to that, he was leading the Surat Smartcity Mission as CEO of the Surat Smart City Development SPV. Under his leadership Surat was awarded by Government of India for showing highest momentum in Smartcity implementation. He is a member of Expert Group on IT and Cyber Security by Ministry of Rural Development, Govt. Of India.

He has made major interventions in health, education and rural development. He believes that technology can be a game changer in India’s development. He has conceived and implemented projects in Digital Village, Smart Village, Rural Startups, Rural Broadband, Smart Cities, Smart Urban Transportation, eHealth and mHealth for Rural and Urban communities.

He has a Masters in Public Policy and Masters in Economics. A bureaucrat by profession he believes that technology is a great enabler of social change. He has been awarded by Election Commission of India (ECI) for Innovative use of Technology in Elections in the Gujarat 2012 elections.

His projects have won major awards that include SKOCH Award of Excellence, CSI-Nihilent Award, Manthan Award, Financial Inclusion Payment Systems award . He has been chosen as District Collector Digital Champion – 2014.He is an avid blogger and a Startup mentor.

Mr. D.R.Parmar

Joint Commissioner of Industries,
Industries and Mines Department,
Government of Gujarat

Profile:

A highly accomplished, dedicated and disciplined professional with more than 25 years of experience in working on issues related to energy regulatory, implementing industrial policies and electricity reform sector in developing country as India. Extensive work in regulatory affairs and management of energy sector projects, sector analysis, sector reforms, private sector participation and empirical knowledge of promoting green energy through tariff intervention blended with regulatory approach has recognized him for producing extraordinary results. Diversely experienced from start up to work out, turnaround and rapid growth – resolving long standing problems and creating solution that improve operational efficiency. He leverages expert analysis and insights to promulgate lean approach and team empowerment that drives organizational improvements and instills best practices. He is presently working with incentives and facilitation to Industries in attracting investment in the State of Gujarat.

Dr. Preet Deep Singh

Lead One District One Product at Invest India

Profile:

Dr Preet Deep Singh leads the One District One Product team at Invest India under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India. The program aims to put at least one product from each district of the country on the world map. He likes to tinker with any data and is ranked in the top 10% of all researchers on SSRN (Social Science Research Network). He holds a PhD in Finance from IIM Ahmedabad. His research revolves around Startups and Perception. He teaches a course on Blockchain in Finance at IIT Kanpur. Apart from his own startup, he has supported State Governments in their Startup Policy as a consultant and has led the Startup India initiative.

Mr. Hiranmay Mahanta

Chief Executive Officer, i-Hub Government of Gujarat

Profile:

Mr. Hiranmay Mahanta is CEO of Gujarat Start-up and Innovation Hub (i-Hub) the nodal agency of Govt of Gujarat to develop Innovation and Startup Ecosystem in the state. As an entrepreneur, he cofounded Techpedia in college to showcase innovations across universities in public domain to build a strong innovation culture across youth. For this he was awarded by Former President, Dr. A.P.J.Abdul Kalam at IIM-Ahmedabad. He is passionate to develop and harness inclusive innovation and start-up ecosystems, processes, pedagogies & institution building involving youth, academia, industry, and other actors to create sustainable innovation driven enterprises. He has been instrumental in conceiving & deploying youth centric innovation & start-up ecosystem for universities and helping various state governments and universities to shape policies and deploy them. He is a member of Global Shaper community an initiative of world economic forum. At present he acts as an as a member of AICTE start-up policy implementation committee at MHRD. Through this he is making national strategy to take the innovation and student start-up movement across 10,000 plus colleges affiliated with AICTE across all states to harness creative potential of students across disciplines. He has been nominated to contribute to a dozen Technology Business Incubators to support young start-ups. He has contributed to the start-up policy formulation and deployment strategy of over five states in India.

Mr. Ravi Varmora

Founder Univia Agritech & Director Varmora Plastech Pvt Ltd

Profile:

Mr.Ravi Varmora began his entrepreneur journey with Varmora Plastics, gaining unparalleled experience in the business branding space while also establishing himself as a respected and valuable member of the Patidar Community. He is currently heading the Varmora Plastech- a Homeware brand robustly. Mr. Ravi is widely known for his dynamic personality, dedication, and spotless leadership. As a seasoned Director and a visionary, he is passionate about advancing Indian communities, especially the rural farmer’s community.

In addition to Varmora Plastech Pvt. Ltd, he is also the proud Founder of Univia, an agritech company. His passion for empowering traditional farmers and through his mission to impact millions of Indian Farmers is commendable. He plans to shape up a more unbiased and genuine farmers community with Advanced Agricultural Advice, a 360* degree Agronomy solution through this innovative platform.

Mr. Bhaskar Bhatt

Director and Associate Professor,
School of Design,
M.Des. in Industrial Design,
National Institute of Design

Profile:

Bhaskar Bhatt pursued his postgraduation in Industrial Design from National Institute of Design (NID) and graduation in Engineering from Bangalore University.

Bhaskar Bhatt has around 20 years of professional experience across industries including consulting, Institution building, teaching and research. He has served as an Assistant Professor at NID Ahmedabad and IIT Gandhinagar where he played an instrumental role in launching new design programmes. He also served as an Associate Dean at ISDI School of Design and Innovation, Mumbai where he formulated and implemented innovation-centrist strategy in academic collaboration with Parsons New School of Design, New York which resulted in several patents.

Bhatt’s research interests lie in affordable med-tech innovation, systems design and strategy for developing markets. Bhatt, in collaboration with Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, had led funded innovation projects on maternal health with clinical testing in Kenya, Nepal and India. His works have been published in leading conferences in Norway, United Kingdom, Singapore and India, and he has presented at Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) & Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) summits. Bhatt served on the Steering Committee on Innovation at Goa Institute of Management, India and was a member on the board of Venture Studio, supported by Stanford University. He also contributed as a regional editor for The Encyclopedia of Design, Bloomsbury UK and has edited many books on innovation.

Bhaskar Bhatt was an advisor to the Student Start-ups and Innovation Policy, Government of Gujarat, and provided his expertise in evaluating innovation-focused start-ups. In addition, he delivered seminars on strategy, user experience and product innovation.

Bhaskar Bhatt is an Associate Professor at Anant National University.

Mr. Nagaraja Prakasam

Chairman & Co-Founder of Nativelead Foundation
Innovator | Angel Investor | Mentor | Fund Advisor

Profile:

Nagaraja (Naga) Prakasam holds a B.E. degree from Thiagarajar College of Engineering, India. An MBA degree from the San Diego/Kennesaw State University, United States. As a globetrotter traveled 26 countries now resides in Bangalore.

Nagaraja (Naga) Prakasam is a versatile and passionate leader with around 3 decades of global experience (decade in the USA, rest in India). Retired at 41 from full time work, enjoys growing startups across the country. Being a lead angel investor, lead 16 deals, invested in 27 start-ups, served 12 boards, seen 7 exits, 2 write-offs. Author of a forthcoming book “BackToBharat – In search of a sustainable future”. Spearheaded Impact thinking in Indian Angel Network and co-founded IAN Impact. His personal mantra is “Start-ups should focus on India’s strength – People, Problems, Tech (PPT)”.

Advisor, Partner at Acumen – New York based $100M impact venture fund. Served as an independent director in one of its portfolio company, Guardian – a micro finance venture working in Water and Sanitation.

Co-Founder, Chairman of Nativelead Foundation (NLF) – enables entrepreneurship in non-metros of Tamil Nadu, with the vision to Enable, Nurture, Incubate, Invest (Native Angels). Nativelead grown into 242 angels in Madurai, Trichy, Coimbatore, Erode, Tuticorin, Karur, Tirunelveli with 10 investments, touching 120 startups, 37 colleges. Recognizing this unique initiative Nativelead CEO has been appointed to lead the newly formed Tamil Nadu Startup and Innovation Mission (TANSIM).

Advisor, 1st Resident Mentor, serving over a decade at NSRCEL, IIMB; Investment and Incubation Committee, IIT Madras Incubator; Mentor at CIIE, IIMA;

Along with Principle Scientific Advisor (PSA) Office to GoI, conceptualized and advising to build KisanMitr – national digital platform to make Atmanirbhar Farmer. NITI Aayog Consultation Group member, Science, Technology and Innovation Sector headed by Vice-Chairman, NITI Aayog. Member of NABARD round table on Agri Entrepreneurship.

Expert jury Panel: Govt. of India National Entrepreneurship Award, Govt. of Karnataka Elevate, Govt. of TamiNadu TanSeed, Forbes 30 under 30.

Advisor – Startup Oasis; VIT – TBI; Cultural IP Rights Initiative (CIPRI); 3i Mobility – Shell Foundation-World Research Institute (WRI); Grameena Incubation Center by Bhagavatula Charitable Trust (BCT).

Indian Institute of Management (IIMB) case study on 3 of his portfolio GoCoOp, Saahas Zero Waste and Freshworld are now published in Harvard Business Publishing and taught in colleges all over the world.

Mr. Kamal Bansal

Managing Director, GVFL Limited

Profile:

Mr. Kamal Bansal is the Managing Director of GVFL Limited

He is responsible for overall leadership to GVFL Limited. He overseas GVFL’s impact in Gujarat in terms of Innovation, job creation etc.

Professional Experience:

Finance Professional with rich experience of over 2 decades in Venture Capital / Private Equity Investing, Capital Markets, Institutional Equities Research, Investment Banking and Debt Capital Markets.

A unique 360% experience of investing/fund raising in unlisted early-stage companies as well in public equity capital markets.

Skilled in Investment appraisal, business due diligence, Fund structuring, shareholders agreements & post Investment support in early part of career with India’s leading Venture Capital Firms.

Hands on experience of closely working with entrepreneurs at the strategic as well as operational levels.

Exposure to fund raising & operations for Venture capital funds.

Successfully conceptualized and built-up the business of Investment & Merchant Banking covering entire gamut of services.

Strong knowledge of Listed Equities gained as Head of Institutional Equities Research and Sales.

Dr. Kaustubh Dhargalkar

Author & Design Thinking Coach

Profile:

Dr. Kaustubh Dhargalkar – Author, It’s Logical: Innovating Profitable Business Models (Sage Publications)

Dr. Kaustubh Dhargalkar is an entrepreneur-turned-academician & Innovation evangelist, founded three companies from 1990 to 2005 in the domain of productivity enhancement technologies for manufacturing. Exited all his companies in 2005, took a year off to learn the science of Yoga.

He holds a Ph.D in Corporate Innovation & Design Thinking.

Currently, Kaustubh is the Dean – Business Design, Innowe, REDX & NISP @Weschool. He consults large corporates (HP, Daimler India, Mercedes Benz, Citibank, TDK-Europe, Mahindra Group, Capgemini, Eaton etc.) on ‘How to Enhance their Innovation Quotient’. He trains executives in Design Thinking and Breakthrough Concept Creation. His views on innovation and strategy are sought by publications such as Knowledge@Wharton, Springer, E&T-Europe etc.

Kaustubh has been recognised as the Top Seven Global Innovators at the Smart City Congress, Barcelona-2015 for his paper titled, “A collaborative business model for reducing the REAL carbon footprint of electric vehicles” http://www.smartcityexpo.com/en/awards2015.

He has been a runner-up at the Wharton School’s prestigious Global Innovation Tournament in 2010. He has two TEDx talks to his credit.

He has trained more than 5000 individuals over 50000+ hours of training in the space of Design Thinking, Creative Problem Solving, Breakthrough Ideation.

A teacher at heart, Kaustubh is a visiting faculty at IIT-Bombay, IIM-Siramur, ICT-Mumbai etc. He is a mentor at various startup incubators and has mentored more than 150+ startups over the last decade, helping them scale by building robust business models.

He is the recipient of the ‘Entrepreneurship Educator & Mentor Award by the Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship- Government of India jointly with Intel, British Council, EDII & NEN in March 2015.

He has been featured as a ‘Changemaker’ on the Dr. Subhash Chandra Show (Zee Business) in June ’17. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZGd7Clz0xE

His views are sought by Knowledge@Wharton.

He has authored the book, ‘It’s Logical: Innovating Profitable Business Models’ (SAGE Publications) ISBN: 978-93-5388-402-4 (ePub)

He is a keen Yoga enthusiast. His article on ‘Pratyahara and the Creative Thinking of Nobel Laureates’ has been published in the ‘Universal Brotherhood through Yoga’, a compendium of 75 influential minds in the field of Yoga.

Mr. Pratapaditya Chakravarty

Global Director,
Talent Development – HCL Statestreet Services

Profile:

In my current organisation, I am responsible for building the talent development function for Global Custody Operations in the Capital Markets domain. We are in the process of creating the largest proficiency inventory of any organisation apart from leading many organisational development initiatives, leadership development initiatives, career development initiatives, and coaching initiatives… and all of this piggy-backing on a wellthought out hybrid learning architecture with a robust learning experience platform at its core.

I have built a Global Learning Organisation from scratch in the domain of employability and entrepreneurship education. Created and delivered a world-class blended-architecture based developmental model for faculty-members in 21 countries across the globe thereby impacting thousands of students in hundreds of educational institutions to get better jobs and / or to become entrepreneurs. We have helped the learning organisation to transition to a direct-to-home learning & engagement model. Impacted ~2000+ faculty members ~100,000+ students.

Pioneered a unique corporate university for the capital-markets sector. Developed and implemented innovative learning-delivery strategies that impacted intermediaries and consumers to increase product & domain awareness thereby leading to an increase in wallet-share. Impacted 30,000 intermediaries ~200 locations through creating awareness around prudent investment practices.

Spearheaded a start-up social enterprise in the skill-development sector. Lead crossfunctional teams that collaborate as a focused unit to achieve aggressive performance goals and drive the evolution of concepts into achievable business strategies that have a social impact at the base of the pyramid. Initiated 20 learning centres since inception. Anchored an industry vertical for a university of national importance. Created a learning management system and built world-class IP across various sectors.

Built and sold an eLearning company to fund a social venture. I had started-up an EdTech enterprise, which built a low-cost LMS solution using students of Engineering as interns, and then the solution was sold off to a few Corporates. We finally sold it off to another eLearning company. We spent around a million and half of rupees in building the organization including the POC and building a small team, and finally sold it off for 4x the input-value. End to end, the whole process got over in 10months. It was a ‘me too’ low-value solution, but it delivered what we needed… start-up funding for our social venture.

Catalysed a large scale learning & development deployment in a multi-million-dollar brick & mortar retail start-up. Co-Anchored the drive to create the establishment groundup. Created the centre of Operations Excellence, built on people, process, and valuesupporting strengths of knowledge, accuracy, responsiveness, timeliness, and ease of doing business. Created more than 900hrs of IP, more than 300 trainers and 1 end-to-end business process.

Led a tactical role in a large scale learning & development buyout in a telecom conglomerate. Masterfully transitioned and reorganized operations through the buyout of a training organisation. Facilitated the ‘Change’ for all personnel. Stabilized fragile workforce while achieving unprecedented growth and greatly improved customer service quality. Coached a team of performance managers to interface with various businesses. Created a few but meaningful metrics, including a significant one of measuring performance of trainers.

Conceptualised, built, project-managed and lead the largest financial inclusion effort for NBFCs (non-banking financial companies) in India. Created the blue-print for the largest deployment in the financial inclusion space and then project-managed the entire effort by enabling my team. The effort focused on building prudence around one’s investment practices. Have close to 16,000 Investor Awareness Programs under my belt, off which ~3500 programs conducted in my avatar as an entrepreneur and 12,500 of them conducted while I was with Reliance Capital. 400 odd locations and 220 districts touched and impacted in all close to 500,000 citizens.

Dr S Pandian

Professor, IIT Madras

Profile:

Distinguished Scientist, Former Director, Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikotta, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) & Former Director, ISRO Propulsion Research Complex, Mahendragiri , ISRO

Prestigious awards : National Aeronautical prize in 2014, ISRO Merit Award 2011, ISRO Performance Excellence Award in 2016, ISRO Team Excellence Award 2012

Significant contributions to PSLV C11 - Chandrayaan and PSLV C25-Mars mission (Mangalyaan) thermal and trajectory design, GSLV Mk-II and GSLV Mk-III trajectory design. I have also contributed for various interplanetary missions, viz., to Venus, Mercury, Asteroids and Adithya (L1 point-SUN-EARTH).

Dr S Pandian

Professor, IIT Madras

Profile:

Distinguished Scientist, Former Director, Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikotta, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) & Former Director, ISRO Propulsion Research Complex, Mahendragiri , ISRO

Prestigious awards : National Aeronautical prize in 2014, ISRO Merit Award 2011, ISRO Performance Excellence Award in 2016, ISRO Team Excellence Award 2012

Significant contributions to PSLV C11 - Chandrayaan and PSLV C25-Mars mission (Mangalyaan) thermal and trajectory design, GSLV Mk-II and GSLV Mk-III trajectory design. I have also contributed for various interplanetary missions, viz., to Venus, Mercury, Asteroids and Adithya (L1 point-SUN-EARTH).

Dr. Praveen Kumar B

Scientist- ‘F’ and Head, Armament Material Technology Centre, at ARDE, DRDO, Pune.

Profile:

B.Tech. - NIT, Trichy & Ph.D. - IIT, Madras.

Prestigious awards: DRDO Young Scientist Award and DRDO Technology Award as Team leader

Expertise in: Surface Engineering Technologies, Piezoelectric Materials, Processing of Ceramics, and Porous Ceramics.

Dr. Sandip Dhakecha

Executive Director Flair College of Management and Technology Ontario, Canada.
Founder and CEO of CogniKite Consulting Inc.

Profile:

• Over 15 years of Teaching, Administrative and Operational experience - Performed Administrative and Academic roles at University level.
• Currently Leading Flair College of Management and Technology as an Executive Director. Also Founder and CEO of CogniKite Consulting Inc. Canada.
• Author for the book “Breaking The BLOCKCHAIN MYTHS”.
• Responsible for all the areas related to Academics starting from Program design, Curriculum development, Learning experience design, Assessment Effectiveness and, Ministry approval, Government Compliance to Stakeholders Management.
• Champion Storyteller and EdTech implementer
• 4 years of corporate experience as a General Manager - International marketing operations.
• Two Master's degrees in Management and Commerce, MBA with Marketing and M.Com. with Finance.
• Successfully managed a pool of management faculties helping them to create various active learning strategies along with designing students’ learning experience.
• Successfully developed and implemented long to short-term strategies for faculty and students development.
• Effectively implemented state of the art approaches to improve teaching and learning practices, evaluation methods, rubrics development with integration of new digital approaches to teaching and learning process.
• Extensive knowledge and experience in teaching range of management subjects to undergraduate and postgraduate students.
• Excellent skills in classroom management and optimization of student’s engagement to make students learning experience a worthwhile.
• Outstanding ability to use active learning instructional strategies to create excitement and enhanced learning in the classroom.
• Effective communicator, self-motivator, highly optimistic, safe and quicker decision taker, always ready to take responsibilities, a quick learner and an effective team player

Shashikant Chaudhary

Cofounder, BabyVerse

Profile:

Shashikant a serial entrepreneur, currently cofounder of BabyVerse, his 10th venture. He has invested in more than 25, very interesting startups. He is Limited Partner in leading seed funds like Blume and IIFL.

He was Managing Director, India for GlobalLogic. Managing more than 4000 engineers in India. GlobalLogic is one of the world leaders in the space of OPD. GlobalLogic gives it services to more than 250 companies like Google, Linkedin, Intel, Microsoft, Verizon, Samsung, Boing, Sandisk etc. Globallogic was acquired by Hitachi for valuation close to 9.6 Billion.

He has over 39 years of experience in senior management and Academics. He did BE in 1983 and MTech in 1985 with honors and 3rd in order of Merit in University. He is conducting an innovative course on entrepreneurship at VNIT.

He has been instrumental in bringing Nagpur on IT map of India. Recently Shashikant was awarded Global Nagpur Award Individual Professional (IT) In recognition of Individuals contribution towards Nagpur development and improvement towards becoming a global city.