Ashutosh Srivastava, Chief Distribution & Retail, Oxigen Services
- Ashutosh joined Oxigen as an Executive Director for Retail Sales Operations. He is responsible for handling West and South India as a region which includes Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Mumbai, Tamil Nadu & Kerala. Ashutosh has over 29 years of cross functional Operations experience spanning multiple industries such as Telecom/FMCG, Consumer Durables, Advertising, Market Research etc.View More
- He has a proven track record across various domains and has expertise in the fields of Operations management; he has worked closely with Start Ups and is an expert in the establishment of Start Ups; he has rich experience in services related to customer centricity & has contributed towards innovative customer service & satisfaction solutions; he is also experienced in the domain of Strategic Planning & Team Building. In his long, illustrative career, Ashutosh has worked in top notch Corporates before joining Oxigen. He has held leadership positions in the past and previously worked with companies like Kodak India Ltd., Ceat Ltd., Zip Telecom Ltd. and Reliance Communications Ltd among others. He pursued his MBA from the Faculty of Management Studies (FMS), Jaipur. In his spare time, Ashutosh likes to travel, read and indulge in various adventure sports.
Deepak Sharma, Chief Digital Officer, Kotak Mahindra Bank
- Deepak Sharma heads Kotak Mahindra Bank’s digital initiatives where he drives digital transformation, business model innovation & future ready initiatives of the bank. He is responsible for efficiency, productivity, customer experience & growth of business through digital intervention across digital channels, lending, payments, investments, insurance, trade & forex, across Consumer, SME & Institutional banking segments. View More
- Deepak also leads the Innovation Lab, Design Studio, Fintech partnerships and Start-up ecosystem participation for the bank. Under his leadership, Kotak launched several innovative and global first products like 811, Jifi, Hashtag banking, Bharat Banking, M-Store & Kaypay, apart from new initiatives like API Banking, BYOD Biometric Banking & Robotic Process Automation. Deepak believes in constant innovation and focuses on building business models which are customer centric, value accretive and disruptive. Deepak has worked across various international markets and brings global perspective to his business. Prior to this, he was responsible for setting up the Bank’s highly successful Non Resident Indian (NRI) & International Remittance business. Deepak also played a key role in launching the Bank’s affluent banking programme - Privy League. With over 24 years of experience, Deepak’s professional tenure spans across the banking, telecom and service verticals. Prior to joining Kotak, he was part of the leadership team of Consumer Banking at Standard Chartered bank from 2003 to 2008. As National Head for Corporate Business, he was responsible for building the corporate payroll and Wealth Management business. Deepak has completed an advanced programme in Strategy from IIM Calcutta & Lead Certified in Corporate Innovation from Stanford GSB. He is a member of the FICCI National Committee on Fintech 2017-18, Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) apart from participating at various trade & Government initiatives on Digital India Roadmap. He is also associated with the NASSCOM Startup 10K program and mentors fintech & start-up ecosystems on an ongoing basis.
Narayanan SP, CEO, NSDL Payments Bank
- SP is working with NSDL Payments Bank as its CEO Designate. NSDL Payments Bank is about to soft launch its banking services and is in the process of obtaining final approval from RBI for commencement of business. View More
- SP has earlier held leadership positions as Business Head of Mobile Financial Services with Idea Cellular and as Country Head of Value Added services with Idea & Vodafone and in a leadership role with Reliance Communications. Prior to his telecom stint he held leadership position in ICICI Ventures and was Senior Vice President with ICICI Limited. SP has successfully led the Go To Market execution of Idea Money Mobile wallet across select telecom circles while at Idea from an early conceptual stage. Under his leadership non voice revenues across telecom companies have grown multifold during his tenure. He had changed the VAS organization in Idea into an agile and responsive organization based on consumer centric genre from an organization that was structured along technology bearers such as text, voice and data by influencing all stakeholders. He has led transformation projects in Idea and successfully project managed several building blocks such as Service Delivery Platform, Business Intelligence, Customer Life Cycle Management, Content Partner Settlement Portal and VAS Incremental Revenues through Intelligent Segmentations. SP graduated in Chemical Engineering from IIT (BHU) Varanasi and done his PGDM from IIM Ahmedabad.
Sandeep Murthy, Partner, LightBox
- As an early investor in InMobi, InfoEdge and Shopclues, three of India's billion dollar technology companies, Sandeep Murthy is one of the builders of India's Internet economy. And he hasn't just seen the highs and lows play out as an investor, but actually roughed it out in operational roles including one as the CEO of Cleartrip in 2006 for three years.View More
- Sandeep did his undergrad in both business and engineering from the University of Pennsylvania as well as an MBA at Wharton. After teaming up with a friend to build a digital music company and a few years of living the Bay Area dream, he moved to New York City to join InterActive Corp (IAC) where he helped launch Gifts.com. He started to explore the India technology opportunity and ultimately moved to Mumbai to manage investments for Sherpalo Ventures, a fund based out of Menlo Park in California. Today he's a co-founder and partner at Lightbox, a Mumbai-based venture capital firm investing in Indian consumer technology companies. The firm’s most recent investments include Furlenco, Droom, Melorra, Embibe and Faasos. He works closely with entrepreneurs to build out internet-based models of consumption in India.
Bhaktha Keshavachar, Co - founder & CTO, Ezetap
- Desperate to put "Made in India" on a product designed and manufactured in India, Bhaktha has led the architecture and development of the flagship mobile payment product and platform which enables any merchant, retail or enterprise, to accept payments in all digital forms in a smart way. View More
- Ezetap's product crafting involves hardware design, mechanical design (both ID and MD}, firmware development, mobile (and other platforms) app development and server application development. Bhaktha worked for a large microprocessor company for more than a decade before taking the entrepreneurial plunge and co-founding Ezetap. Bhaktha was born and brought up in Bangalore. He studied in a Govt. School till his middle school, was a Josephite during high school and pre-university; and got his degree in engineering from UVCE. He also has a Masters from Arizona State. His main hobby is bare-foot long distance running and occasionally also loves riding his bike on Sunday mornings to de-stress.
Krishnan Dharmarajan, Executive Director, Centre for Digital Financial Inclusion, CDFI
- Krishnan Dharmarajan heads the Centre for Digital Financial Inclusion (CDFI), Institute for Financial Management and Research as its Executive Director. The Centre aims to develop and scale digital payment innovations and digital financial products and platforms aimed at poor or otherwise excluded population segments. View More
- CDFI partners and supports various organizations, including Government agencies in India at the Central and State levels, in evolving program implementation frameworks that leverage technology to provide benefits to the poor. The emphasis has been on re-imagining service delivery to the poor around innovations in the financial space. Prior to joining CDFI, Krishnan was Commissioner (Systems), CBEC, Govt of India where he worked on conceptualization and establishment of the Goods and Services Tax Network. Krishnan also worked for five years at the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India as Principal Consultant and Advisor for India’s National e-Governance Plan, where he was variously responsible for Program Monitoring, Strategic Planning, Capacity Building, Institutional Restructuring and Multilateral Funding for large e-governance programs. This was preceded by 18 years of work spanning establishment of nation-wide indirect tax systems, telecom regulation, revenue administration and systems engineering. Krishnan received Government’s commendation for development of a mobile banking framework for the unbanked in the year 2010. He is recipient of the President of India’s award for distinguished service in the year 2006. Krishnan took early retirement from the Indian Revenue Service in 2014. He is a Computer engineer and a post graduate in management.
Badal Malick, Principal Innovation Officer, Catalyst
- Badal Malick is the Principal Innovation Officer at Catalyst , an innovation platform focused on 'digital finance for the underserved,' which works with Governments and industry players in an Action Lab format. Trained in physics and economics, Badal loves to tinker with big ideas. He is passionate about disruptive innovation and large-scale change, which is reflected in his professional trajectory. View More
KA Srinivasan, Partner & CFO, Ventureast
- K A Srinivasan (KAS) is a Partner & CFO at Ventureast, focuses on Fintech and Food tech sectors. Besides investment, he also oversees the Fund administration, Investor reporting, Valuation and Deal structuring. He assists the portfolio companies in designing their internal controls and monitoring processes.View More
- KAS has over 25 years of experience in finance & accounting and operations with multiple verticals - Manufacturing, Processing and Services. Prior to joining Ventureast, he set up his own Finance and Accounting Outsourcing (FAO) business, and sold it to Aditya Birla group. He was the Global Finance Controller for Sutherland Global Services, a US based BPO, wherein he set up the shared services platform and implemented ERP across the globe. He held several senior positions in A V Thomas group and also managed their agro operation. KAS is a Chartered and Cost Accountant by profession. He is passionate about photography, tamil literature, sketching and loves to travel with family.
Pratik Jain, Director, Actis
- Pratik is responsible for originating and executing transactions in the financial services sector for Actis in South Asia. He focuses on both Balance Sheet and Non Balance Sheet driven businesses and most recently led Actis’ investments in Pine Labs, India’s largest digital retail payments platform and Profectus Capital, an SME focused NBFC lender set up by Actis. He was also responsible for leading Actis’ exits in Anthelio, a healthcare technology company and Integreon, an LPO business.View More
- Pratik has over 11 years’ experience in Private Equity investing having started his career at General Atlantic, where he focused on investments in the financial services, media and telecom sectors. Prior to that, he worked at JP Morgan as an equity research analyst covering the IT services sector. Pratik is an alumnus of IMT, Ghaziabad, from where he completed his MBA in Finance.
Vishwas Patel, Chief Executive Officer, Avenues India Private Limited
- As the Founder-CEO of Avenues India Private Limited, Vishwas has guided the company to become South Asia's No. 1 ecommerce service provider.View More
- The company's first initiative, CCAvenue® was launched in September 2001 and it today provides payment gateway services to over one hundred thousand eMerchants across the world. The solution is India's largest direct debit engine, which connects to more than 55+ Indian banks in real time and processes all types of Credit Cards, Debit Cards and Digital Wallets. ResAvenue®, the second initiative is the fastest growing Hospitality solution and more than 1500 hotel properties in the Middle East and Asia are using ResAvenue's state-of-the-art booking engine, distribution and payment gateway services. EventAvenue®, the third Initiative was India's first and the industry's leading online registration and payment gateway software that is used by event organizers, corporations, schools, universities, associations, temples, non-profit and government organizations, and more, for conferences, trade shows, sporting events, class admission registrations, donation collection, webinars and other event managements. Vishwas has been featured extensively in many publications and has been bestowed with many awards including the Asia-Pacific Information Security Leadership Award by (ISC)2 the non-profit global leader in educating and certifying information security professionals, in Bangkok in 2007. Vishwas is also the Vice Chairman of the Payments Council of India which represents the digital payments industry in India. He is also been elected to the executive council as well as to the governing council, the highest elected representative body of the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) representing the entire gamut of digital businesses in India that addresses the challenges faced by the digital and online industry including mobile content and services, online publishing, mobile advertising, online advertising, ecommerce and mobile and digital payments among others. He is also an active speaker at many Internet related forums. He is also an active investor providing Seed and Growth funding to over half a dozen internet companies. Prior to founding Avenues, Vishwas was a practicing counsel on the Original Side of the Bombay High Court. He also co-founded the SEASONS Group of Companies, which owns the fashion brand 'SEASONS' (www.seasonsIndia.com), which today is the top name in the branded Indian ethnic garments industry and is retailed at over 1500 top outlets in over a 100 cities around the globe. Vishwas is also involved in his family's construction business, which has constructed several landmark structures in India's financial capital, Mumbai. Vishwas is a Commerce graduate and holds a Degree of Law from the Mumbai University.
Niren Shah, Managing Director, Norwest Venture Partners India
- Niren is a Managing Director at Norwest (NVP) India and has been leading NVP India for over 10 years. Niren brings more than 20 years of Investing, entrepreneurial, financial and operating experience from leading global financial institutions to consumer and technology companies.View More
- Niren focuses on both Private equity and late stage Venture investments with special interest in sectors such as Financial Services, Internet, Consumer and Technology. Niren has overseen more than 30 investments at NVP India and has directly facilitated 14 such investments. Investments include Cholamandalam Finance, Pepperfry, IndusInd Bank, ING Vysya, Jain Irrigation, RBL Bank, Quikr.com, Swiggy.com, RevX, Shriram City Union, Yes Bank, Five Star and Kotak Bank. Niren also has a strong exit record having overseen more than 15 exits, of which he has directly facilitated significant exits for 9 of his companies Prior to joining NVP India, Niren was the Senior Director of Strategy and Ventures at eBay Inc. (Nasdaq: EBAY) in California, where he helped drive the worldwide strategy across eBay’s Global Marketplaces. Prior to eBay, Niren was part of the original team at Baazee.com, Inc., the leading Indian eCommerce player in the mid-2000s (which was eventually acquired by eBay). Prior to his entrepreneurial journey, Niren was an investment banker with KPMG focusing on the Financial Services and Technology spaces and before that, a Registered Equity Dealer on the Bombay Stock Exchange. Niren is a rank holder Chartered Accountant and a Gold medallist Masters in Commerce from University of Mumbai.
Rajnish Khare, Head Digital Transformation, Social Business, HDFC Bank
- Rajnish is a senior Banking Professional, having 20 years of experience with HDFC Bank, Citibank, Standard Chartered, Reliance Retail and ICICI Bank.View More
- He is currently, Head Digital Transformation, Social Business & New Media and Mobility Banking and is responsible for Digital, Social & Mobility Strategy for HDFC bank and inculcating Innovation as a culture & using innovation as a strategic differentiator to gain leadership position in chosen markets. Earlier, he was Chief Innovation Officer for Citibank and prior to that Head - Remote Banking. Digital Payments & Business Innovations, at Standard Chartered Bank, a leading UK based Bank with strong presence in Asia. He specializes in Digital, Mobile, Social Strategy Formulations and Execution and has a versatile domain knowledge in BFSI sector encompassing almost areas except treasury operations. He is an MBA in Marketing & Operations from Goa Institute of Management and holds in bachelor degree in Electrical Engineering from Harcourt Butler Technological Institute, Kanpur.
Jitendra Gupta, MD, PayU
- Jitendra is Founder and MD of Citrus Pay, a leading digital payments company in India. He has more than 12 years of work experience in banking and financial services industry and considered an expert in payments industry. Prior to Citrus, he was working with ICICI bank for 7 years, wherein he was part of founding team of Retail cross sell and Investment banking division in the bank. View More
- During his last stint with the bank, he led the whole initiative of stitching a joint venture between ICICI bank and First Data in Indian market. This was a unique JV ever done between a bank and an independent payments company. In last 4 years, he has grown Citrus in to 300 member+ strong team and raised over USD 30 million so far. Citrus counts its investors base from Sequoia Capital and E-context Japan to Ascent Capital in Series C round. He has graduated from Sydenham College, Mumbai and a qualified Chartered Accountant.
Piush Kothari, Head – Strategy, Digital Business & Customer Analytics, Aditya Birla Payments Bank
- Piush is the Head – Strategy, Digital Business & Customer Analytics for Aditya Birla Payments Bank, where he is responsible for contributing in the overall strategy for the organization, revenue generation from all Digital channels, and leveraging advanced analytics to build customer insights. Prior to taking up this role, he was a part of the Chairman’s office at the group.View More
Archna Shukla, Editor in Chief, NewsCorp VCCircle
- Archna Shukla is a journalist with close to two decades of experience with leading publications such as The Indian Express, Mint, The Economic Times and Business Today. At VCCircle, she leads the editorial teams across vccircle.com, techcircle.in
Mihir Gandhi, Director, Leader - Payments Transformation, PwC India
- Mihir is leading the Payments Transformation practice in PwC India. He has 14 years of experience in advising clients on areas like strategy development - market assessment and business plan, payments business build out, operational efficiency and process design, vendor selection and implementation support. View More
- He has assisted multiple government and private sector local and international clients in setting up bill payment systems and also setting up card schemes in India. In addition, he was also the Engagement Manager for the setup of the domestic card scheme RuPay.
Vaibhav Lodha, Co-founder & CMO, ftcash
- Vaibhav is the Co-founder of ftcash, one of India's fastest growing financial technology company, recognized by Forbes, backed by PayPal and MasterCard. ftcash empowers the 60+ million underserved micro-merchants in India through financial inclusion using digital payments and loans. ftcash and Vaibhav were conferred by His Royal Highness Prince William & Kate Middleton as part of the UKTI Great Tech Program during their India visit in 2016. View More
- Vaibhav has spent last decade working at the intersection of entrepreneurship, social development and policy across 7 countries and 23 states in India. Previously, Vaibhav was a Director, Global Development at XPRIZE, leading the first global prize that targets the problem of access to water. He has been associated with The World Bank where he advised the Government of India on the institutional framework for a project worth $1 billion. Vaibhav started his professional career as a management consultant where he consulted several Fortune 50 clients. Vaibhav has received a number of accolades and awards over the last few years. In 2017, World Economic Forum selected him as a Global Shaper to represent the voice of millennials for their Annual Meeting at Davos. Vaibhav was chosen as 'Achiever of the Year - 40 under 40' by Businessworld, India. He was a German Chancellor Fellow under the patronage of the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany. In addition, he has been an iCATs Fellow, Swaniti Fellow, Acumen Fellow, Asia Foundation Development Fellow, and awarded ‘Power 30 under 30’, USA. He was recognized among 12 Global Leaders and given the ‘Gifted Citizen’ Distinction by La Ciudad de las Ideas, Mexico and Singularity University, USA. He was also honored with ‘Social Enabler’ among the 100 most inspiring Social Innovations around the world. Vaibhav is an avid speaker and contributor at international conferences & media outlets such as TEDx, Nobel Peace Committee for Business, World Economic Forum, CNN, Forbes, Entrepreneur Magazine among others. He sits on the advisory board for US-India Investors’ Forum, an initiative by US Consulate in Mumbai and FICCI Fintech Committee. Vaibhav strongly believes in the idea of experiential learning and three of his favorites projects have been the General Election Campaign in 2014 for the Prime Minister of India, participating in World's First Reality Show on Impact Investing, The Real Deal on NDTV and setting up a company to buy a Private Jet in Italy. Vaibhav is an engineer from National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli where he was awarded Distinguished Alumni Award – Young Achiever in 2017 and an alumnus of the Harvard University – Kennedy School of Government.
Abhishant Pant, Founder, Cashless Journey
- Abhishant is a Mumbai based Fintech expert, he was part of the founding team at m-pesa in India and has more than a decade of hands-on experience of payments landscape. View More
- On 13th march 2016 to enhance his understanding of the challenges and catalysts in Fintech's journey he started cashless journey (essentially he stopped carrying physical manifestation of money i.e. cash) experiment . During more than 300 days of journey he travelled length and Breadth of India, got invited by Swedish Govt. and did a comparative study with Singapore and Bangladesh market as well. He has spoken about the journey learnings via Ted Talks, Lectures at NUS, IIM and IIT's and at various Banking conferences, he is closely associated with the Fintech world (as mentor) via incubators like Barclays Rise and writes regularly on Fintech landscape opportunity and challenges. He is extensively covered by Media both India (TOI, HT, ET, Zee News, India News , Mid-Day etc ) and abroad (BBC, Dagnes Nayhter) and was recently named among TOP100 Fintech Professionals in Asia. He believes Mutual sharing of Gyan and having dialogue is the key to explore self and world more.
Manas Nath, NonStop Enterprise Division, Hewlett Packard Enterprises
- Manas Nath manages Hewlett Packard’s NonStop business in India. With over 22 years of experience, he is responsible for catering to the infra needs of clients in the payments domain as well as helping them drive innovations around new age technologies such as Blockchain. He is with Hewlett Packard for over 13 years and has held multiple technology roles in the organization such as Blade computing, Cloud and Mission critical computing.
Rohan Bagai, Partner, AZB & Partners
- Manas Nath manages Hewlett Packard’s NonStop business in India. With over 22 years of experience, he is responsible for catering to the infra needs of clients in the payments domain as well as helping them drive innovations around new age technologies such as Blockchain. He is with Hewlett Packard for over 13 years and has held multiple technology roles in the organization such as Blade computing, Cloud and Mission critical computing.
Sandeep Ghule, Co founder & CFO, TranServ
- Sandeep has spent 16 years building & marketing payment products at leading Banks in India. TranServ was cofounded by Sandeep with a primary objective of expanding electronic payments in India and reaching out to new customer segments. He manages Strategy, Finance and Regulatory aspects at TranServ. View More
- Prior to TranServ, Sandeep was Senior Vice President and Head of Card Products at HSBC India where he was responsible for Product & Marketing Strategy, Card Spends and delivering a seamless customer experience by working in close co-ordination with other payment functions such as distribution, technology, operations, customer service, compliance and risk management. Sandeep has held a number of key positions in the cards business including the Merchant Acquiring Business. Prior to HSBC, Sandeep was with ICICI Bank in their Ecom division and pioneered the concept of distributing online payment products through brick and mortar retail channels.
Shalil Gupta, CBO, News Corp VCCircle