Our speakers

Priyaranjan Kumar, President & Chief Human Resource Officer, Welspun Corp Limited

Prof S D Sudarsan, Executive Director, CDAC

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.

Prof. Ramesh Chand, Member, NITI Aayog

Prof. Satyanarayanan Chakravarthy, Founder & Director, The ePlane Company

Satya is the Co-founder of The ePlane Company. He is a Professor of Aerospace Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, India. He is also the Director of Aerostrovilos, a startup company aiming to produce micro gas turbines for decentralized power generation; share-holding Advisor to Agnikul Cosmos, a startup company aiming to make mini launch vehicles to launch micro- and nano-satellites into space orbits; Director of X2Fuels & Energy, a startup company aiming to convert any kind of wastes—municipal solid wastes and agri wastes—into crude oil. He is also involved in efforts to set up a centre for precision agriculture technology at IIT Madras, and to form consortium of industries and R&D institutions for making aircraft engines through 3D printing in India with governmental support.

He heads the National Centre for Combustion Research & Development (NCCRD) at IIT Madras supported by the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, with a fund of Rs. 47 crore, which is augmented by research funding over Rs. 54 crores with 33 industry projects on different aspects of combustion in automotive, aerospace, thermal power, and fire research. He has been awarded the HAL Prize for the best undergraduate in aerospace engineering in 1991, the Young Engineer Award by the Indian National Academy of Engineering in 2003, the Young Faculty Recognition Award by IIT Madras in 2009, the Dalmi-HEMSI-ACRHEM Award by the High Energy Materials Society of India in 2009, and the DRDO Academic Excellence Award by the Defence Research and Development Organization twice, in 2009 and 2016.

Prof. Satyanarayanan Chakravarty, Co-founder, The ePlane Company, Professor, IIT Madras

Prof. Tanuja Manoj Nesari, Director, AII India Institute of Ayurveda

Pronab Sen, Former Chief Statistician, Government of India

PS Jayakumar, MD, CEO & Executive DIrector, Bank of Baroda

Puneet Gupta, Vice President & MD, NetApp India and SAARC

Puneet Gupta is the Vice President & Managing Director for NetApp India & SAARC and has been instrumental in driving the overall business and operations of NetApp in the regions. An industry veteran with over 30 years of experience with Industry Leaders line IBM, Cisco & Tech Mahindra. Puneet is an alumni of IIT-BHU and IIM Bangalore and he has gained industry recognition through some coveted awards – the recent one being ‘The Most Promising Business Leader of Asia 2024’ presented by The Economic Times and One of the influential Leaders by Marksmen Daily.

R Doraiswamy, MD, Life Insurance Corporation of India