Ravi Shankar Ivaturi is the Business Operations Sr. Director for Technology business at Unisys. His contributions include Knowledge Management in the form of Collaboration, Innovation and Inventions, and a strategy to Acquire, Retain and Propagate knowledge.

Ravi has over 20 years of experience in Manufacturing and Technology Industries. He served as a Member of the CII’s Knowledge Commission between 2012 & 2015. He is an active member of K-Community, Bangalore Chapter.

He has filed (jointly with his colleague) the first patent application from Unisys India, and later on contributed to the invention culture becoming part of the organization.

His paper titled “Harnessing Knowledge Management for Innovation” was published in the book “Next Generation KM: Insights and Practice for Resilient Organizations”, edited by Dr. Madan Mohan Rao, and published by ARK Group.

Ravi was conferred with the Knowledge Management Leadership Award at the Global KM Congress in June, 2014.

Management professional with over 15 years of experience in being an Entrepreneur, Mentor, Startup Evangelist, Team Builder and Coach for Startups. He is competent in setting up new initiatives, managing cross functional teams and business operations, creating strategic marketing plans & budgets, developing product campaigns, conducting market research, and organizing various state level events, Startup Ecosystem Management. He is very passionate about heading the Startup Cell of Karnataka and manages the entire ecosystem for Government of Karnataka. He is involved in,

– Planning & Strategy, Implementation of all Programs and Schemes under the Karnataka Startup Policy 2015-2020.

– Setting up and review performance of incubators, PPP (Public Private Partnerships), Funding through events like Tourism Challenge, ELEVATE, IDEA2PoC Grant Funding Scheme.

– Community Engagement – To conduct various outreach programs to publicize the policy to increase registrations.

– Promotion of Ecosystem through Startup Portal, Organizing promotional events both in India and Abroad, Network with Startup Ecosystem, Industry Experts, Mentors, Investors, Academia and Associations to build strong partnerships for policy execution.

– Formation of Policy Guidelines with regulations to promote ease of doing business for Startups in State.

An IAS Officer of 1990 batch, Mr. Gaurav Gupta presently is the Principal Secretary to Government, Commerce & Industries Department, holding concurrent charge of Department of Information Technology, Biotechnology and Science & Technology, Government of Karnataka.

As Principal Secretary, IT, BT and S&T, in a span of last one year, he has been instrumental in creating several Centres of Excellence in new technologies such as IOT, AI & Robotics and also one on Cyber Security, with active collaboration from the industry, academia and stakeholders. He has worked to enhance the ecosystem for the Infotech & Biotech Industry in Karnataka. Programs like ‘Bengaluru Tech Summit’ & ‘Elevate 100’ to promote technology startups were initiated during his tenure.

During his previous position as Commissioner for Industrial Development and Director of Industries & Commerce, a position that he held from October 2014 to February 2017, he was instrumental in conduct of highly successful mega investor summit “Invest Karnataka” in February, 2016, and also in successful organising of “Pravasi Bharat Divas” in Bengaluru in January, 2017.

He is graduate from IIT Kanpur in Electrical Engineering and Post graduate from IIT, Delhi. The IIT Kanpur has conferred ‘Distinguished Alumnus award’ in recognition of his exceptional services

His designation is Vice President & Global Head – Quality & Enterprise Risk Management

Devender Malhotra, is currently working as Vice President & Global Head – Quality & Enterprise Risk Management for Wipro and driving Quality, NextGen Delivery, Knowledge Management, Business Excellence Initiatives and Enterprise Risk Management. He is a Business Transformation leader and Strategic Advisor to CXOs, and also a board member of National Accreditation Board for Certification Bodies (NABCB). Having 24+ years of experience, he is a renowned speaker at India and Global level forums. He has won various awards like Best Paper Award from Asian Network for Quality, Most Talented Quality Professional Award, and Top Operations Excellence Deployment Leader of the Year.

Rudolf is the Chief Knowledge Officer at Afcons Infrastructure. Afcons is among the leading infrastructure companies with presence in India, Africa and Middle East. Under his leadership Afcons has made strides in Knowledge Management and Innovation and been recognized with the MAKE award for India, Asia and Global as well as the inaugural MIKE Award.

Rudolf has emerged as the face for Knowledge Management in India. He currently chairs the KM Global Network – the association of KM Societies from 12 nations: Singapore, Thailand, Japan, Russia, Australia, US, France, Indonesia, Israel, South Africa. He also chairs the Annual KM Asia conference and is empanelled with Asian Productivity Organization, Japan as a facilitator for Knowledge Management.

Rudolf firmly believes that the success of Knowledge Management lies in delivering Business Results. This philosophy was cultivated when he was the Head- KM for a decade at Asia’s Largest Direct Sales Company. He created path breaking programs to engage the 8000+ employees working in over 200 offices that resulted in Business Growth, Customer Satisfaction and Employee Engagement.

Rudolf is acknowledge as the pioneer who introduced Gamification to the discipline; he has been awarded ‘Among the 50 Most Admired Global KM Professionals’ at the Global HR Conference.

Nirupa oversees Brigade’s Retail, Office and Hotel ventures.

She also oversees HR, PR and Innovation at Brigade. She has an analytical bent of mind and has introduced a data oriented approach towards decision making in the company.

Nirupa has the serial entrepreneurial bug in her and has successfully conceptualised multiple award winning F&B outlets such as HIGH Ultra Lounge and The Art Café in Bangalore.  

She launched India’s first and only real estate accelerator called Brigade Real Estate Accelerator Program, an initiative to mentor high-tech start-ups in real estate, including retail and hospitality.

She has been identified as one of CNBC’s “Young Turks” and has previously won the:

• Face of the Future 2018 – India Travel Awards –South, by DDP Publications (TravTalk)
• Construction Woman of the Year 2018 – India, by Construction Times
• Woman CXO of the Year 2017-South, by Realty Plus

Nirupa is passionate about writing. Her articles are regularly published in the news and trade journals. She loves sports and regularly runs. She is trained as a six sigma Black Belt.

Ramesh Gopalakrishnan is the Global Head of Delivery and Operations at Mindtree. In his current role, Ramesh ensures that Mindtree delivers a consistent and predictable experience for clients. He is responsible for customer satisfaction, project delivery parameters, and process implementation. Ramesh is actively involved in developing the delivery systems, technology capabilities and project management competencies.

As more clients entrust Mindtree with their transformational programs, Ramesh and his team are focused on building the delivery capabilities to successfully deliver on this promise. Ramesh joined Mindtree in 2000, prior to which he worked at Tata Infotech. Ramesh holds a degree in Engineering from the University of Calicut.

Over the years, I have been connecting the dots between the subtle aspects of work, how they interplay, and what that means for the future of work. I am particularly intrigued with the transformation of “work” that we are currently witnessing, which I see at an intersection of technology, psychology, and experience.

In my recent assignments, I have led and delivered award-winning Digital Workplace initiatives for some of the leading organizations in the world. These include modern intranets, enterprise community platforms, internal communications and employee experience programs, which are now industry case-studies.

In my 14 years of experience, I have had a chance to play a variety of roles in knowledge management, program management, community management, employee experience, culture championing, product management, process automation, business consulting and more. And currently, I am leading Happiest Minds’ Knowledge Management & Digital Workplace initiatives.

On the personal front, I absolutely love traveling & exploring new places; interacting with people from different cultural backgrounds. I’ve been privileged to travel (personally & professionally) around the world including USA, UK, Europe, Asia and Australia. I’m also a passionate follower of electronic music genre and try to attend local gigs and festivals.

Vivek Gupta is an accomplished technology leader with demonstrated track record of building organizations. Being a Cloud expert, he was instrumental in helping organizations across the domains to embrace Cloud technologies. Most recently Vivek was

working as Head & Director of Business Development for India & SAARC region for Alibaba Cloud where he was responsible for overall business development including all lines of business in India & SAARC region.

Vivek comes with rich experience in client and applications partnerships roles for internet & software industry. Prior to joining Alibaba Cloud Vivek was part of the leadership team at Amazon Web Services (AWS), Servicenow, salesforce.com, Red hat & has experience across US, APAC & Europe markets.

He has also been a regular Speaker at premier industry-wide conferences on technology trends like Open source, Cloud Computing etc.

Mr. Gupta holds a Master’s Degree Business Administration from Nagpur University. Vivek is an avid follower of cricket, football, and sports in general. He enjoys traveling and meeting with people from diverse cultures across the globe

Dinesh is a Product leader with Microsoft. He has extensive global experience in digital workplace, knowledge management, organizational learning and culture change. Over the last 16 years, he has had the opportunity to work on a wide variety socio-technical ecosystems in large and mid-sized enterprises from traditional KM and collaboration in the early 2000s and Enterprise 2.0 in the mid 2000s to where we are now with “Digital Workplaces”. His current area of focus is figuring out the right balance between productivity and security/compliance.

 

Prof. Rishikesha Krishnan has been on the faculty of the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, India, since 1996, where he is currently Professor of Strategy. He held the Jamuna Raghavan Chair in Entrepreneurship from 2007 to 2010. He completed a 5-year term as Director of the Indian Institute of Management Indore in December 2018.He was educated at IIT Kanpur, Stanford University and IIM Ahmedabad.

Prof. Krishnan’s main areas of interest are strategy and innovation. Some of his recent publications have appeared in MIT Sloan Management Review, Global Strategy Journal and Management International Review. He is listed in the Thinkers50 India list of most influential management thinkers from India. Prof. Krishnan’s book 8 Steps to Innovation: Going from Jugaad to Excellence (co-authored with Vinay Dabholkar) won the Best Book Award for 2013-14 from the Indian Society for Training & Development. His earlier book From Jugaad to Systematic Innovation: The Challenge for India proposed a blueprint for how India can enhance its innovation output.

Prof. Krishnan was a member of the expert committee set up by the Government of India in 2017-18 under the chairmanship of Justice BN Srikrishna to propose a data protection framework for India. He is a member of the board of the Higher Education Financing Agency (HEFA) and Sundaram Asset Management Company Ltd.

S Vaitheeswaran (“Vaithee”) is the Chief Executive Officer of Manipal Education & Medical Group (MEMG), which oversees all the business verticals of the Group.

Vaithee was also the Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer of Manipal Global Education Services Private Limited (MaGE). In this role, he was responsible for running and growing the company’s medical schools and multi-disciplinary universities in Antigua, Dubai, Nepal, and Malaysia.

In India, Vaithee steered MaGE’s fast-growing professional learning business (Manipal ProLearn), largest banking domain training institute (Manipal Global Academy of BFSI), skill testing and assessment service (MeritTrac) and nurtured skill development through a JV company (Manipal City & Guilds).

Vaithee was responsible for identifying and building future growth engines, including new campuses, investments, and acquisitions for the company. He helped launch major initiatives to expand MaGE footprint in ASEAN countries with Malaysia as the hub, and Dubai as the center in the Middle East and Africa. He also ramped up the company’s corporate training programs, making MaGE one of the largest training providers in the IT and BFSI industries.

Vaithee has around 35 years of rich experience in the corporate world in the areas of Sales & Marketing, Supply Chain Management, Operations, and Global Marketing. He has spent a large time in the Automotive Industry and held the positions of Director – Sales & Marketing and COO – Eicher International. Before joining Manipal, he worked with Infosys where he led the Hi-Tech and Manufacturing vertical for their BPO Unit.

At Zone Startups, Ajay oversees India program operations, which includes the flagship India accelerator operations in joint-venture with BSE and Department of Science & Technology, Government of India; as well as, new initiatives, including corporate innovation programs and thematic accelerators under the Zone Startups brand. Apart from accelerators and innovation programs, Ajay has been leading in setting up several distinct properties under the entrepreneurship umbrella, ranging across reality shows, diversity and CSR programs and events / conferences.

Over the past 4 years, Ajay has successfully led setting up accelerators with Barclays, Axis Bank, Lodha Group; as well as, corporate innovation programs with Visa, Thomson Reuters, HDFC Bank, Viacom18, Shell Foundation, ICICI Lombard, EY and Australia Institute of Sports.

Ajay is also the brain-child behind conceptualizing and building, Fintegrate Zone, India’s largest FinTech conclave.

Prior to Zone Startups India, Ajay was the Director – India Operations for SkillsDox Inc., a Canadian ed-tech company; wherein he helped the company set up in India and establish its initial partnerships, as well as raise INR 150 Cr through media equity.

In an earlier role, Ajay worked for the Government of Ontario, Canada for 5-years, where he was responsible for bilateral trade and investment relations between Ontario and India, wherein he helped over 100 Canadian technology companies access the India market.

Ajay began his career working in Tanzania (East Africa) for 4 years, where he was involved in World Bank and African Development Bank projects. During this term, he assumed the role of an “intrapreneur”, and built a social enterprise in the agri-inputs value chain, wherein he built revenues in excess of $1Mn within the first 1.5 yrs.

Ajay is an MBA in Marketing & Finance and a B.Com in Financial Management from Mumbai University has 13 years of cross-functional work experience with startups, international business and Governments, across North America, East Africa & South Asia.

Vijaya Kumar Ivaturi (known as IVK) is the Co-Founder and CTO of Crayon Data, a Big data & AI product company at Singapore with a development center in Chennai.

He is also an active member of Indian Angel Network, a syndicate for early stage capital to invest in the start-up companies. His current technical interests and activities include Recommender systems and Choice theory, Product and Taste affinity graphs, Customer analytics, Text and Graph mining in both B2B and B2C contexts. He worked at Wipro for more than two decades before entering into the startup world. He was one of the core group members to set up the telecom business in Wipro , and led the wireless and telecom applications businesses before becoming Wipro’s CTO.

He is one of the core members of CII’s Innovation council and a charter member of TiE. He serves on the governing council of CMI Algo Labs, an industry-academia initiative by Chennai Mathematical Institute. In social impact segment, he is a partner with Acumen Fund in India and helps their investee companies in education and other sectors.

He holds a BE degree in Electronics & Communications engineering and an advanced leadership certification for senior executives from McGill University in collaboration with Lancaster University, UK and IIM, Bangalore. He has been with ICT industry for the last 30 years and is one of the leading experts in innovation management and advanced technologies incubation in India.

Madhurima Agarwal runs the NetApp Startup Accelerator, based out of Bangalore. She has over 15yrs of experience, spread across enterprises and start-ups. Madhurima’s worked in the global capital markets as a stock picker. She’s been an entrepreneur and currently dons the hats of a mentor, advisor and investor for startups. Madhurima is an alumna of IIM, Ahmedabad and worked globally with renowned financial firms like Goldman Sachs and Fidelity prior to joining NetApp. In this era of digital innovation, Madhurima aspires to provide leadership in enterprise innovation and execution by providing high quality business inputs and working with top quality startups.

Madhurima is passionate about giving back to the ecosystem by nurturing innovation through helping and enabling start-ups and building successful companies. She also champions the cause of diversity. Madhurima is a leader of the WIT (Women in Technology) group at NetApp and focuses on professional development of women in the workplace.

linkedin.com/in/madhurimaagarwal

As the head of the Digital Workplace practice, I help customers imagine the future of work for their employees. My team works at the intersection of design, technology and behavioral science and helps conceptualize and implement modern, persuasive and immersive intranets, collaboration and learning experiences.

I additionally head the Digital Workplace Reimagination initiative within TCS, designing, building and implementing social collaboration, HR apps and Microlearning platforms for 400,000 associates.

Outside the office, I am an open source enthusiast, a classical violinist, guitarist, amateur cellist, columnist for various newspapers, and used to be a Radio Jockey with Chennai Live 104.8. You can listen to my music here – https://soundcloud.com/krishashok 
https://soundcloud.com/parodesynoise

I mix pop culture, science fiction, Indian traditions and humour on my personal blog here – http://krishashok.me

Dr. Richard Lobo currently heads Strategy, Strategy Execution, Global Business Excellence and Continuous Improvement for India, US, UK and Kenya Operations at Tata Chemicals. He has over 15 years of experience in leading Businesses, anchoring Business Excellence, Business Strategy, Innovation, Operational effectiveness and EBITDA Improvement for multi-million USD enterprises.

Dr. Richard has a base in Bio-Technology and Microbiology from the University of Mumbai and pursued his Management from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta with a specialty in Corporate Strategy from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. He holds a Doctorate in Alternate Medicines, a Master Black Belt in Six Sigma, A certified Computer and Electronics Professional, Three time Gold Standard champion at the Tata Business Excellence Leadership Program and is trained in Strategic Thinking through TMTC (Tata Management Training)-Harvard Business program

Dr. Richard contributes as a member on the Technical Advisory committee – SQC and OR, Indian Statistical Institute since 2012. The Indian Statistical Institute is declared by an Act of Parliament as an Institute of National Importance.

Shradha started your story in 2008 with the mission to give a voice to unsung entrepreneurs and small businesses and has dedicated the past decade to passionately telling their stories and enabling their success.

Today, she has built YourStory into the most influential voice in the Indian startup ecosystem, by celebrating the stories of entrepreneurs and telling stories that inspire hope.

Shradha is widely recognized as a champion and builder of the Indian entrepreneurial ecosystem. Her own circle of influence includes key ecosystem stakeholders, including founders, investors, accelerators, industry bodies and governments.

Shradha has a social media following of more than 1.5 million, and for the second consecutive year, has been featured on LinkedIn’s most powerful influencer list, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi and actor Priyanka Chopra.

Pranay Gupta is the Co-Founder of 91springboard, the first co-working hubs company in India. They have a pan India network of coworking hubs & are instrumental in creating communities that help businesses grow.

He is an IIT Delhi and IIM Ahmedabad alumnus, he was instrumental in setting-up and running of IIM Ahmedabad’s incubator – including programs like Mentoredge, Power of Ideas and iAccelerator.

He loves to coach and help entrepreneurs.

Ved Prakash is Chief Knowledge Officer at Trianz, a global professional services firm helping Fortune 1000 organizations transition to a digital enterprise by leveraging on Cloud, Analytics, Digitalization& Security. Ved has a global experience of 26 years in the Information Technology and Consulting industry in a variety of leadership roles with strategic, business and operational responsibilities. He has earlier spearheaded Knowledge Management in Montreal-headquartered CGI. Prior to CGI, Ved was with Wipro for twenty years where he was the Chief Knowledge Officer for six years. Under his leadership, Wipro was the proud recipient of Global, Asian and Indian MAKE (Most Admired Knowledge Enterprise) Awards over several years. Amongst his other leadership roles in Wipro, he was the Delivery Head for Healthcare & Life Sciences business, and Practice Head for Energy & Utilities vertical.

Ved has conducted KM Strategy and Visioning workshops for CXOs across the globe. He has been an invited speaker in many national and international forums. He has been a member of several national bodies on KM. He has been recognized with Most Impactful KM Professional, Most Influential KM Professional, and Global KM Leadership Awards in the past. He holds an MBA from Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, and a B.Tech in Computer Engineering where he was a Gold Medalist.

A leading authority in the global IT sector, Krishnakumar Natarajan co-founded Mindtree in 1999 and has played key roles in building the company’s innovative approach to delivering IT services and solutions to global 2000 enterprises. Today, his mission as Executive Chairman is to focus on leadership development and ensure a high quality of governance. He also actively mentors different business groups within the company and works closely with the start-up ecosystem to bring in innovative models of business transformation for clients.

In his prior role as CEO and Managing Director, Krishnakumar was responsible for making Mindtree a global IT player. Krishnakumar ’s efforts as a business leader has been recognized worldwide, winning him several laurels. Businessworld& Forbes ranked him amongst the most valuable CEOs in India in 2016. He won Bloomberg UTV’s award as the CEO of the Year in 2010, Business Today CEO of the year award in 2014 and was recognized by Chief Executive Magazine’s as one of the twelve global leaders of tomorrow. EY honored him with Entrepreneur of the year 2015 in Services. His efforts resulted in Mindtreewinning the “Most promising company of the Year” in 2013 by CNBC TV18.

A 37-year IT industry veteran, Krishnakumar held several key positions at Wipro before co-founding Mindtree. In 2013, Krishnakumar served as Chairman of the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), where he worked to strengthen the Indian IT industry to build a globally competitive ecosystem.

Social enterprises and Philanthropy are other Key interests of Krishnakumar. He is an active partner of Social Venture Partners- an organization involved in impactful Philanthropy. Along with his wife Akila he runs their Personal foundation “MeLa” which is focused on helping high potential rural girls to attain professional qualifications and helping Senior Citizens age gracefully.

Krishnakumar is an active member of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). He is also a regular speaker at international IT industry conferences and a faculty member at management schools around the world. He has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the College of Engineering, Chennai, India, and a master’s degree in Business Administration from the Xavier Institute, Jamshedpur, India.