Our speakers

Som Satsangi, SVP and MD, Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Somshubhro Pal Choudhury, Co-Founder & Partner, BIF Ventures

Somshubhro Pal Choudhury is a Co-Founder and Partner at BIF Ventures (Bharat Innovation Fund). Previously, Som was the Managing Director of Analog Devices India, wholly owned subsidiary of $12B+ global semiconductor company headquartered in Boston, and was based for almost 2 decades in Silicon Valley in various roles: Global Product Management & Marketing Director at NETGEAR, first employee of an early M2M/IoT startup in the energy management/Smart grid space and held several management and engineering roles at Cadence Design Systems. Som is currently on the board of US India Science and Technology Fund (USISTEF), a grant initiative by both Governments to foster cross-border joint collaborative research and Entrepreneurship. He is on the board of multiple deeptech startups, and in semiconductor startup selection committee of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). He was previously a board member of Industry Body, IESA (India Electronics & Semiconductor Association). Som is an active advisor and mentor to several startups and co-chairs India's Deeptech ecosystem building thinktank and community, TiE MatrixForum and the conference TiE Matrix Global Summit. He is an MBA from Wharton, University of Pennsylvania, and an engineering graduate from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur and North Carolina State University. He is also a co-author of a book “New Kind of Computational Biology” that was recently published by Springer.

SONAL KALRA, Chief Managing Editor, HT

Sonalde Desai, Distinguished University Professor Emerita, University of Maryland; Professor, National Council of Applied Economic Research

Sonalde Desai is Distinguished University Professor Emerita at University of Maryland College Park and leads the National Data Innovation Centre at NCAER, New Delhi. She is one of India’s most respected demographers, dealing primarily with social inequalities in developing countries. The India Human Development Survey, which she leads, is a pioneering large-scale national panel survey tracking changes in Indian society since 2004. Desai’s scholarly work has been published widely across the world. She also serves on several government committees such as the Steering Committee for NSS and Expert Committee on Benchmarking RBI Statistics. She was elected president of the Population Association of America in 2022. 

Sonali Jindal, Co-Founder and COO, Ring/ Kissht

Sonali Kulkarni, MD and Lead, Financial Services, Accenture in India

Sonia Dasgupta, MD & CEO, Investment Banking, JM Financial Ltd.

Ms. Sonia Dasgupta is the Managing Director & CEO of the Investment Banking division at JM Financial. A seasoned investment banker, Ms. Dasgupta brings over 25 years of rich experience. A graduate of the prestigious Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad, she has held key leadership positions in JM Financial, including Head of FIG Coverage, Head of M&A Origination, and Head of Group Borrowings. During the journey, she has been at the helm of numerous landmark transactions as well as led advisory and fund- raising transactions for a large number of domestic and overseas clients.

Ms. Dasgupta's leadership experience and proven track record in structuring marquee transactions has earned her multiple recognitions. In 2023, she was named one of India's 100 Most Influential Women by Business World. Earlier, in 2019, she was honoured as one of the Top 100 Women in Finance by the Association of International Wealth Management of India(AIWMI).

Sreedhara Narayanaswamy, Head of Innovations Centers, Center of Excellence, Cloud Engineering (Oracle Cloud Infrastructure), Japan & Asia Pacific, Oracle

Sreedhara is the Head of Innovations centers, Center of Excellence, Cloud Engineering (OCI), Japan & Asia Pacific at Oracle. The Innovations Center is the cross-functional cloud engineering domain team focused on identifying and exploiting the latest technical trends and then designing mission critical customer accelerators & solutions for Oracle Cloud in Data Science - AI/ML, Neural Networks, Deep Learning, IoT, BlockChain, and Security. Enrichen and Inculcate the culture of innovation across the Centers of excellence, spanning Japan & Asia Pacific.

Prior roles in Oracle - Senior Director, Data Base Engineering R&D & Chief Architect India Development Center R&D.

Sreedhara has taken up several Senior Executive leadership roles at Ca Technologies (Now Broadcom), NetApp, Dell Technologies, HP Inc. & OpenText

Sreedhara has been the frontrunner and leader for a multitude of cloud based products entailing that of: development, strategy, integration, transformation, operations, conceptualizing novel designs (granted patents) & execution. He has garnered change in that of myriad areas transmuting technologies, services and offerings in the realm of cloud based platforms, of respective firms. He has 33 years of Product & Cloud services R&D experience.

He has enabled several firms to encompass and embody End2End competence, expanding their business scope, in addition to transforming their legacy based technologies & infrastructure to current generational specification requirements. On several occasions, enterprises have been able to place at the top of their respective market share, due to the impact of changes brought about by Sreedhara.

Sreedhara has done a Leadership Program from Yale University USA. He holds a MS in Computer Science & Engineering in addition to a MBA in Global Management from the University of Phoenix, USA. He is BE Computer Science graduate from Sri Jayachamarajendra College of Engineering, Mysore, India.

Sreedhara has been awarded ten US patents & currently has eleven patents pending. He has authored & developed W3C Web services Access Protocols – WS-Eventing, WS-SOAPAssertions, WS-Enumeration, WS-EventDescriptions, WS-Fragment, WSMetadataExchange & WS-Transfer. He is working group member of India AI & Global Partnership of AI (GPAI) by IT Ministry of India.

SREERAMAN THIAGARAJAN, Co-founder & CEO, aawaz.com

Sridhar Rajagopal, Head - Marketing, Strategy, Sales and M&A, Otis India

Sridhar Rajagopal is the head of Sales, Marketing, Strategy and M&A for Otis India. Sridhar has had a variety of interesting assignments in Otis.  He headed two JV companies in India and led the acquisition of service portfolio companies across India, Singapore, Philippines and Japan. Prior to his current role, he headed the Marketing, Communication and Strategy function for the Northeast Asia Region covering Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan.  Prior to joining Otis, was working in the glass flacconage business for global brands like Body Shop, L’Oréal and Revlon.