Our speakers

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

Probir Roy Chowdhury, Partner, JSA Advocates & Solicitors

Probir is a Partner in JSA’s Technology, Media and Telecommunications team. He is a sought-after industry specialist with particular emphasis on Fintech/Data Protection and Private Equity in the IT space.

Probir’s corporate practice involves transactions focused on the high technology industry including cross border Mergers & Acquisitions, Private Equity and Venture Capital transactions. His practice includes advice on Transaction Structuring, Entry Strategies and Foreign Exchange Regulations. He liaises with Government Regulators on a regular basis for cross-border transactions.

Probir’s niche practice includes product counselling for market leading technology companies, advising on cutting edge technology regulation issues, cross-border data flows and content and digital commerce. He has extensively advised and assisted his clients on various product and service offerings, including payment structures, direct carrier billing systems and contractual arrangements with payment aggregators, digital enablement service platforms, hub-based domestic person-to-person

money remittance technology solutions, products for financial inclusion and for direct card to merchant payments, among others.

Probir has consistently been ranked by ALB amongst the top TMT Lawyers, and Top Fintech Lawyers. He has been voted as the Next Generation Partner by Legal 500, BW Legal, Chambers and Partners and was voted as the Top International Lawyer by Forbes.

He has been practicing law since 2004.

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 Chandok, President, Microsoft India & South Asia

Puneet Chandok is President, Microsoft India & South Asia and is responsible for Microsoft’s overall presence and business in the area. He leads the company’s digital transformation in the era of AI and intelligent cloud.

At Microsoft, Puneet drives the company’s mission of ‘empowering every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more’, aligned with India and South Asia’s inclusive growth agenda. He leads a team that is committed to accelerating India & South Asia’s growth with AI and cloud at its core; and helps businesses reimagine how they bring intelligent data and technology to create value for their customers in a digital-first world.

Puneet has built and scaled several high growth technology businesses, in leadership positions at AWS, McKinsey and IBM. Puneet is passionate about ‘Performance with Purpose’, using technology to deliver impact at scale, and leading with empathy and from the heart.

Puneet has received an honorary Doctor of Philosophy (Honoris Causa) from Bennett University, acknowledging his achievements. He chairs the CII AI Council, is a part of the Executive Council at NASSCOM, and on Advisory Councils of Penguin Random House and NAMTECH.