Digital Innovation Summit & Awards

Pramod Varma

Dr. Pramod Varma is the former Chief Architect of Aadhaar, India's digital identity program that has successfully covered more than 1.3 billion people. He was also the chief architect for various India Stack layers such as eSign, Digital Locker, and Unified Payment Interface (UPI), and Data Empowerment and Protection Architecture (DEPA), and all of which are now working at population scale in India. He played an integral role in architecting India’s digital health infrastructure (ABDM), vaccination & immunization infrastructure (Co-WIN and DIVOC), and Unified Health Interface (UHI).

He is currently the CTO of EkStep Foundation, a not-for-profit creating learner-centric digital public goods under Project Sunbird (sunbird.org). These power India’s largest digital learning infrastructure called DIKSHA providing learning opportunities to 200+ million children and 10+ million teachers in India. Sunbird building blocks are used in other learning, skilling, and capacity building efforts in India and other countries. As part of this effort, he also helped design India’s digital education & skilling architecture blueprint called NDEAR.

In addition, he is the Co-Founder of FIDE.org, he is the genesis author of the open source beckn protocol (becknprotocol.io) that helps create decentralized open discovery, fulfillment, and transaction networks. Beckn protocol is the base protocol for India’s new commerce infrastructure efforts such as Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC.org), Kochi Open Mobility Network (KOMN), and Namma Yatri (nammayatri.in).

He is also an adjunct faculty and Co-Chair at the global Center for DPI (CDPI.dev) , a nonprofit, helping countries design and architect their own Digital Public Infrastructure systems in addition to building local capacity.

He is an advisor to Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), National Payment Corporation (NPCI), Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN), National Health Authority (NHA), Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), Turing Institute Identity Initiative in the UK, and helps with many Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) initiatives in India and across the globe. He is a regular speaker and evangelist for open source efforts and actively advocates Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) investments as a means to drive inclusive and equitable economic growth.

Pramod holds a Master’s and Ph.D. degree in Computer Science along with a second Master’s in Applied Mathematics. His interests include Internet scale distributed architectures and intelligent systems. He is passionate about technology, science, society, and teaching.

Amod Malviya

Amod Malviya is a co-founder of udaan. He founded udaan in 2016 with Vaibhav Gupta and Sujeet Kumar, who were both former senior executives at Flipkart.

Prior to founding udaan, Amod was heading technology at Flipkart. Most notably, he built and scaled Flipkart’s engineering platforms. Amod previously worked with ApnaPaise (formerly Apnaloan), i2 Technologies, Itellix Software Solutions and Riya Internet Technologies.

Amod is known to be amongst India’s top tech minds.

He has done his BTech in Electrical Engineering from IIT, Kharagpur.

Umang Bedi

Dilipkumar Khandelwal

Beerud Sheth

Beerud Sheth is the co-founder and CEO of Gupshup, the leading conversational engagement platform. Gupshup helps businesses engage their customers better through personalized conversational experiences. The company operates in 40+ countries, has over 45k customers and delivers 10 billion messages every month.

Sheth previously co-founded Elance (now Upwork; NASDAQ: UPWK), which pioneered online freelancing. Its online platform enables businesses to tap into a network of millions of freelancers worldwide, enabling over $3.5 billion in gross transaction value.

He has a Masters in Computer Science from MIT and a Bachelors in Computer Science from IIT Bombay, where he was awarded the Silver Medal. Beerud recently received the distinguished alumnus award from IIT Bombay. He is based in Silicon Valley.

Deepak Sharma

Deepak Sharma heads Kotak Mahindra Bank’s digital initiatives where he drives digital channels, payments, transformation, business model innovation and future-ready initiatives of the bank. He is responsible for efficiency, productivity, customer experience and growth of the business through digital intervention across consumer and SME segments. Deepak also leads the Mass & Millennial customer segment, Innovation Lab, Design Studio, India Stack, Fintech partnerships, and the start-up ecosystem participation for the bank. 

With close to three decades of experience, Deepak’s professional tenure spans across banking, telecom and consumer services industries. Under his leadership, Kotak has launched several innovative and global-first products such as 811, Jifi, Hashtag Banking, KayMall, WhatsApp Banking and Cherry – the investment super app, apart from new initiatives like API platforms, Open & Connected Banking, Conversational Banking Bot ‘Keya’, Biometric Banking, Cross-border remittances on Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and OCEN (Open Credit Enabled Network), among others. 

Deepak actively works with big techs, VCs, start-ups & the global fintech community to bring best-in-class products and solutions in the financial service space. Deepak has worked across various international markets and brings a global perspective to business.  

In his previous role, he was responsible for setting up the Bank’s Non-Resident Indian (NRI) & International Remittances businesses. He also played a key role in launching the Bank’s affluent banking programme - Privy League. 

Prior to joining Kotak, he was part of the leadership team of Consumer Banking at Standard Chartered from 2003 to 2008. Thereafter, as National Head for Corporate Business at Standard Chartered, he was responsible for building the corporate payroll and Wealth Management business. 

Deepak has completed an advanced programme in Strategy from IIM Calcutta as well as the Stanford LEAD Certificate in Corporate Innovation. He is a member of Airtel Customer Advisory Board, Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Digital Transformation Committee, FICCI National Committee on Fintech, and a number of start-up industry forums. He regularly participates in various trade and Government initiatives on the Digital India roadmap and mentors fintech and start-up ecosystems on a regular basis. 

Roopan Aulakh

Roopan has 15+ years of experience across Venture Capital, corporate development and technology. Currently an MD at pi Ventures, she invests in early stage Deeptech startups across diverse sectors. Prior to pi Ventures, she invested in early to growth stage global startups at Applied Ventures (corporate Venture Capital arm of Applied Materials). Before becoming an investor, she worked in DeepTech as a technologist. She holds a BTech degree from NIT Jalandhar and an MBA from ISB Hyderabad

Ameera Shah

Viral Gandhi

Umakant Soni

Umakant Soni is one of the prominent AI strategists and entrepreneurs from India, focused on incubating, investing and co-creating AI for the developing world with more than 15 years of experience in AI area and investments in 16+ companies. He is General Partner, ART Venture Fund, a $100mn venture fund to support AI & Robotics companies. He confounded ARTPARK and was the founding CEO of ARTPARK(AI & Robotics Technology park) a not for profit research park seed funded by Govt. of India, focused on democratizing the fruits of AI & Robotics for society. He has also co-founded AI foundry, an investment company, focused on “building leapfrog AI ventures for next 6bn users”. Before this, Umakant co-founded pi Ventures (India’s only Artificial Intelligence focused $32 m early-stage venture fund) along with Manish Singhal. He was general partner and part of the investment committee at pi that has backed some of the leading AI companies (Sigtuple, Applying AI to pathology (www.sigtuple.com), Niramai, Applying AI to early breast cancer detection(www.niramai.com), Locus.sh, Ten3T Health (Intelligent heart patch), frontdesk.ai (chatbots for enterprise), Wysa (Chatbots for mental wellness), Switchon(AI for industrial systems) and others. He is also advisor for pixis, a generative AI company. He was also nominated as an expert from India’s side on GPAI(Global Partnership on AI) for innovation and Commercialization group. He also advises Fortune 500 companies in the area of AI strategy, investing and disruption as well. He is a noted keynote speaker on developing impact via AI & deep tech innovations in emerging markets. Prior to this, he started one of the earliest Artificial Intelligence companies out of India, Vimagino, focused on providing emotionally intelligent chatbots to help solve sales and support issues on web and mobile for companies in 2009-10. He also has been an advisor and investor in startups in food, education, and logistics.

He spent the early part of his career growing 3 Intra company ventures as part of Wipro’s Innovation arm (India’s leading IT services company) and creating strategies for investment and growth in advanced technologies(focusing on web services and SOA). He has 2 patents published in the area of autonomic process systems. He is an alumnus of IIT Kanpur and enjoys painting abstracts in his spare time.

Anu Acharya

Nappinai NS

Ms.  N.  S.  Nappinai,  Supreme  Court  Advocate  and  founder  of  Cyber  Saathi™,  is  a  senior  and renowned  lawyer  with  about  32  years  of experience,  specializing  in  Constitutional,  Criminal,  IPR and cyberlaws.

She  is  Amicus  Curiae  before  Supreme  Court  in  Prajwala  vs.  Union  of  India  to  formulate methodologies to remove child sexual abuse material and violent videos of offences against women from online platforms. She is Advisor - Tamil Nadu eGovernance Agency & Advisor - Maharashtra Cyber police. Ms. Nappinai represented the Govt of Kerala in the recent decision of the Kerala High Court  on  data  protection  during  the  covid  pandemic.

Nappinai  founded  Cyber  Saathi,  a  non  profit organisation to take forward her work on cyber laws and cyber safety. 

An  alumna  of  Stanford  CDDRL,  Chevening  UK  and  IVLP  USA,  Nappinai  trains  judges,  police, Armed forces and intelligence agencies at National and State Academies and has addressed sessions at National and International Conferences. She has given an inspirational Tedx talk on “Becoming Fearless & Showing Up”.

Ms.  Nappinai  recently  participated  and  submitted  before  a  UN Ad  Hoc  Committee  in  New  York, USA and is now presenting at the next session of the UN meeting as Panelist on the need for using technology to combat transnational cybercrimes. 

Ms.  Nappinai  has  presented  as  Expert  in  Cyber  Laws  before  various  Government  Committees dealing with policy issues on cyberlaws.

Ms. Nappinai presented recently before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on IT on Securing Citizen Rights Online (2021);- She presented on Electronic Evidence before the Criminal Reforms Committee (2021);

Ms.   Nappinai   has   presented   before   the   Lok   Sabha   Parliamentary   Committee   on  Women Empowerment, on Cyber Safety online (2020); 

She has presented before the National Cyber Security Center, part of the Prime Minister’s Office on India’s proposed National Cyber Security Policy 2020 – 2025;

on Government Committees, as Expert, on (i). Cryptocurrencies & Blockchain; (ii). Amendments to Information Technology Act, 2000 (“IT Act”); & (iii). Electronic Evidence.

Nappinai  is  a  prolific  writer,  who  oft  contributes  on  leading  publications  and  has  authored  the seminal  book  on  cyberlaws  titled  “Technology Laws  Decoded”.  She  has  contributed  a  Chapter  on Social  media  in  Nani  Palkivala’s  Festschrift.  Her  recent  publication  is  on  Cyber  Safety titled ‘CSassy Tales - Cybercrime Stories & The Law’, published by Oakbridge (2022).

Nappinai was an Expert Member, Tamil Nadu “State Child Policy Committee” – 2015 – 2016, for formulating  the  cyber  security  aspects  under  the State  Child  Policy.  She  is Advisor  to  many  non profit organisations supporting social causes.

S Sadagopan

Divya Manchanda

Sudip Mazumder

Vivekanand Pani

Jayanth N Kolla

Kailash Nadh

Rajesh Sehgal

Rajesh is a long-term investor with tremendous breadth and   depth   of   experience   managing   early   stage investments, private equity and public equity funds for over 2 decades. He has on-the-ground experience across emerging market countries, analysing various industries and businesses spanning different stages of their lifecycle. Rajesh has the distinction of being the Founding Chair of the India chapter of CRUF, a global body set up in 2005 by users of financial reports for users of financial reports to be an open forum for learning about and responding to the many accounting and regulatory changes that affect corporate reporting. He is a Board Member of the Mumbai chapter of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneur), a global non-profit community that works to help entrepreneurs in all ways. At TiE, Rajesh is co-Chair of the FinTech focused special interest group that spearheads TiE Mumbai’s focussed effort to help the FinTech community. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Apar Industries Limited.

Rajesh started his career as Deputy Manager -Corporate Finance at SBI Capital Markets Limited in 1996 and swiftly moved into the Treasury & Investments Group where he was involved with investing in equity and fixed income securities. In 1999, he was hired by Dr. Mark Mobius to join the Emerging Markets Group (EMG) at Franklin Templeton in their Mumbai office. He spent the next 17 years working with Dr. Mobius, helping the EMG invest in equity markets across Asia, Africa, East Europe and Latin America.

Rajesh managed investments in equities and equity related instruments of companies, large and small, listed and unlisted, across emerging market countries through public and private equity funds. His investment experience ranges all across the deal spectrum from deal sourcing, screening, financial modelling, evaluation, diligence, closing,  post-investment  monitoring  including  board  representations,  providing  value-add  to  the  investee company, working on exit and ensuring exits from such investments. He has also been instrumental in fund raising for all Franklin Templeton Private Equity funds and completely involved in related LP (Limited Partner) interactions globally.

Rajesh has been active in the Indian startupecosystem since 2007 when he made his first startup investment. Since then he has been a prolific angel investors having invested in over 20 startups, worked closely with the management teams in most cases and successfully secured exits in a handful of these startup investments.

Rajesh is a Wharton alumnus in addition to being an XLRI management graduate specialising in finance and marketing. He is a CFA charter holder and has earned a post-graduate diploma in Securities Law from Mumbai University.

Gopichand Katragadda

Kashyap Kompella

Kashyap Kompella is an award-winning industry analyst, best-selling author, educator, and advisor.  

Kashyap is the CEO of “RPA to AI Research”, an AI advisory and analyst firm with presence in US and India.  

Kashyap is a visiting professor for AI at  

1. BITS Pilani School of Management (BITSoM) 
2. Institute of Directors  
3. Center for American Studies, Poland.  

Kashyap has been ranked by Thinkers360 as the #1 thought leader on AI globally (October 2021). 

Kashyap has a bachelors degree from BITS Pilani, an MBA from ISB Hyderabad, and a master’s in business laws from National Law School Bengaluru.  

He is a CFA charter holder and a For Humanity certified AI Auditor. 

Kashyap is the co-author of the bestseller “Practical Artificial Intelligence: An Enterprise Playbook”. 

RPA2AI advises enterprises, public sector agencies and financial investors on AI technologies, AI investments, AI Risks, Transformation Roadmaps, and AI Ethics & Governance. 

Additional Biographic Details: 

Kashyap is a visiting professor for AI at the Institute of Directors which trains tomorrow’s boards, and at the BITS Pilani School of Management (BITSoM), which is the flagship b-school established by the Birla group, one of India’s most respected industrial groups. 

Kashyap has been an invited speaker at Stanford, Ohio State University, University of Minnesota, Loyola College, Indian School of Business, Indian Institute of Management, TEDx, AI World Boston, AIIM San Antonio, European Leadership Forum Denmark and Digital Davos.  

Kashyap’s work has appeared in the BBC, Economist, Guardian, Mint, Eenadu, Economic Times. He is a frequent contributor to The Hill, the influential media site that’s closely read in the White House and on Capitol Hill.  

Kashyap’s writings have been translated into French, German, Dutch, and Hindi. His commentary is cited as a reference in EU Parliament Library.  

Kashyap is the co-chair of the IEEE Planet Positive 2030 Economics and Regulation committee, a global interdisciplinary group of senior academics, industry leaders and policy experts working on climate and sustainability solutions.  

Kashyap is the co-host of the Law 4.0 forum, that aims to upskill law students and lawyers on AI, its Regulation and LegalTech for Industry 4.0.  

He writes several columns on AI for leading media outlets globally, including “AI Ethicist” for Information Today (USA). He writes the AI Governance column for Enterprise AI (TechTarget). He is a For Humanity certified AI Auditor and has been ranked by Thinkers360 as the #1 thought leader on AI globally in October 2021.  

Hemanth Satyanarayana

Jaspreet Bindra

Jaspreet Bindra is the Founder of Tech Whisperer Limited in UK, which does Thought Leadership and Advisory work on Digital Transformation and Digital Technologies like AI (including Generative AI), Digital Transformation, Web3, and the Future of Work.

Jaspreet was the Group Chief Digital Officer at Mahindra Group, a $25bn conglomerate, and a Regional Director at Microsoft (Search/Devices/Online) before that. He is the author of the bestselling book ‘The Tech Whisperer: On Digital Transformation and the Technologies that Enable It’, published by Penguin Random House, as well as ‘The Immune Organisation: Future Proofing Organisations from COVID-like Disruptions’, published by Amazon Westland.

He was recognised as the inaugural ‘Digitalist of the Year’ by Mint and SAP in 2017, is an Educator at Duke Business School Corporate Education, Moderator/Educator for Harvard Business Press, Expert at Singularity University, and Visiting Faculty at Ashoka University, and served earlier as a Scholar-in-Residence at the Indian School of Business. He is also an accredited Coach (PCC ICF)

Jaspreet started his career with the Tata Group, as a part of the Tata Administrative Services, and is a Chemical Engineer and an MBA in International Business. He is currently completing a Masters in AI, Ethics and Society at the University of Cambridge.

Jaspreet has worked extensively in AI over the past decade – in Mahindra Group implementing AI, as a Chief Evangelist for Findability Sciences a Boston based Enterprise AI company, an AI advisor to leading businesses, and has spoken and written extensively on Generative AI across global and Indian audiences.

He divides his time between Cambridge, UK and Gurgaon, India

Rupesh Khare

Venkatesh Hariharan

Venkatesh Hariharan (Venky) is the Public Policy Director for FOSS United, an organization that represents the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) community in India and India Representative of the Open Invention Network (OIN), an organization that protects the FOSS community from patent litigation. 

Hariharan has 32 years of experience in journalism and public policy with organizations like Indian Express, IIIT Bangalore, Red Hat, Google, iSPIRT and the Data Governance Network at IDFC Institute. In these roles, he has been involved in key policy issues like open source in government, open standards, software patents, Indian Language Computing, free speech on the Internet, privacy, building and evangelizing Digital Public Goods, and many others. His long term interest is in democratizing access to technology and knowledge.

Arvind Tiwary

Arvind Tiwary  runs SangEnnovate based in Bangalore, India. SangEnnovate is about leading change and innovation in a VUCA world and Whitewater rafting as Strategy?.

He is managing partner AxlerateNow a boutique consulting company?.

Arvind is also Chair Emeritus TiE MatrixForum?.

He provided leadership in developing a  #IoTForIndia vision. Over 2000+ startups are engaged with the IoT Forum. . Arvind is also active as  IET India IoT panel lead for IoT Security WG  and was co Chair for the premier #IoTNext event and Lead for WG3 in IoT4 Smart City Task Force( IOT4SCTF).

Experience and Competencies:?

Arvind brings 36+ years of Industry experience . Arvind has a multi disciplinary experience in helping financial institution, exploit Information Technology. He has worked in Sales and Marketing, managed software projects and acted as Product Manager and Chief Architect to large enterprise scale applications over three generations. He has also run operations with Board level responsibility in Hong Kong, Singapore and India.   Arvind is a popular speaker and has been adjudged the best speaker in many conferences and has participated in strategic planning (Business and IT) at the board level for many insurers. Arvind loves deep in-the-trench exploration of new trends like AI-ML #genAI, Web3 , #DeFI etc,?

Arvind is an alumnus of the Wharton Business School, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur and Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.  ?

Arvind is 63 years old, married with 2 children, is keen on golf and an avid reader of books on all topics, and loves long drives on the road less travelled?.

Prateek Dixit

Abhishek Chopra

CS Murali

Annie Joyce

Ashok Jhunjhunwala

Ganesh Gopalan

Jaya Kishore Reddy

Prof S D Sudarsan

Dr. Sithu D Sudarsan, presently working as Executive Director, C-DAC Bangalore has more than 30 years of R&D experience in India as well as the United States and a wide expertise in various technology domains namely, Semantic mining/BIG Data, cyber physical systems, cyber security, protocol analysis, sensor networks, HPC, real-time and high availability systems etc. He set up the Quantum Technologies group at CDAC Bangalore and contributing to various national initiatives.

Prior to his position at C-DAC Bangalore, Dr. Sudarsan was associated with ABB Corporate Research; The United States Food and Drug Administration (US FDA); University of Arkansas at Little Rock (UALR); Central Research Laboratory (Bharat Electronics Limited (CRL-BEL); ERDCI; CEDTI.

Dr Sudarsan has been honoured with prestigious awards like US FDA's Outstanding Service Award, US FDA's Group Recognition Award. He is the recipient of the Outstanding PhD Graduate Student Award, Academic Achievement Award & Professional Service Award at UALR, US. TrailBlazer Awards for Innovation as well as Collaboration at ABB.

Dr. Sudarsan completed his Ph.D. from University of Arkansas at Little Rock (UALR) USA, MS from Birla Institute Of Technology And Science (BITS) India, B.E from Alagappa Chettiar Government College of Engineering & Technology (ACGCET) India & PG Diploma in Management from Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), India.

He has to his credit more than 100 technical papers and 8 patents (3 granted). Dr. Sudarsan is a Fellow IETE and Senior Member IEEE.

Jayprasad Hegde

Ankit Bose

Manish Gupta

Vinod Sankaranarayanan

Sathyan S

Leslie D'Monte

Suresh Kumar K.K

Prasid Banerjee

Goutam Das

Shouvik Das

Sindhu Gangadharan

Rucha Nanavati

Tamaswati Ghosh

Roopan Aulakh

Roopan has 15+ years of experience across Venture Capital, corporate development and technology. Currently an MD at pi Ventures, she invests in early stage Deeptech startups across diverse sectors. Prior to pi Ventures, she invested in early to growth stage global startups at Applied Ventures (corporate Venture Capital arm of Applied Materials). Before becoming an investor, she worked in DeepTech as a technologist. She holds a BTech degree from NIT Jalandhar and an MBA from ISB Hyderabad

S Sadagopan

Rajesh Uppal

Umakant Soni

Ankit Bose