Startup ICON Summit & Awards 2023

Nupur Garg

Jai Rupani

Shanti Mohan

Kunal Bahl

Satish Chander

Shivani Bhasin Sachdeva

Aanchal Saini

Lawyer turned entrepreneur Aanchal Saini is the CEO of India’s first and the largest fashion rental service — Flyrobe. 
The world is moving towards a shared economy and we are capitalizing on this consumer behaviour shift in the fashion industry for the past 5 years. Founded RENT IT BAE and acquired Flyrobe to make the business 10X. 

Her core belief is that sustainable fashion can transform the world with the contribution of now booming fashion rental industry. She advocates on fashion that is eco-friendly and cost-effective. Thus, catering to a mass audience through omnichannel expansion in the country and overseas is in her ‘to-dos’. 

Prior to establishing her love for fashion sustainability, she was a practising lawyer at Delhi High Court for 7 years. 

Her key accomplishments include - setting up the Delhi International Arbitration Centre and becoming a true fashion rental aficionado.

Kanika Tekriwal

A pursuer of optimism, drive, and excellence - Ms. Kanika Tekriwal, CEO & Founder, JetSetGo, first entered the aviation industry at the age of 17, hustling college and a full-time job. Her dream is to enable the fastest possible connectivity from point A to point B.

With over a decade of hands-on experience in the aviation industry, Kanika Tekriwal is redefining what it means to fly through pioneering JetSetGo which currently manages and operates India’s largest private jet and helicopter fleet. Through analysing the market, Kanika identified the two main concerns of jet owners with JetSetGo she went about fixing this.

Kanika is pioneering air taxis with intracity connectivity in India using EvTOL’S. Her focus is on using the third dimension, the sky, as the future of transport.

Her expertise and vision have brought her the National Entrepreneurship Award from the Govt. of India and numerous coveted lists, such as Forbes’ 30 Under 30, BBC’s 100 Most Inspirational Women, Women Transforming India by Niti Aayog, Young Global Leader by World Economic Forum, CNN’s 20 Under 40, Game Changer by Times She Unltd and Leading Wealthy Women under 40 List by Hurun India.

Sanjeev Bikhchandani

Karthik Prabhakar

Karthik Prabhakar is Managing Partner at PeerCapital. He brings with him a wealth of experience across the entrepreneurial and investing ecosystem from his former role as the Managing Director and Partner at Chiratae Ventures. At Chiratae, he led worldwide efforts on fundraising and business development apart from investments, divestments and org building. He has always been eager to contribute to the start-up ecosystem of India and brings his VC operator chops to PeerCapital’s team, making him a force to reckon with. 

An IIM- Bangalore MBA grad,Karthik has been recognized as one among the 40 Under 40 in the alternative investments space in India by AAAIF. For three consecutive years from 2016 to 2018, Karthik was recognized amongst the global top 100 Rising Stars in the venture industry by Global Corporate Venturing, held in California, US.

His investments for Chiratae include Blowhorn, Buystars, EarlySalary, Exly, GoodMeetings, Living Consumer (stake sold), LetsVenture, Manthan Systems (support) (stake sold), Nestaway, Newgen (support) (BSE: NEWGEN), PlayShifu, PlaySimple (acq by MTG) and Tamasha.live.

Nupur Garg

Nupur Garg is a leading investor in private equity and venture capital and an expert advisor to large institutional investors. She is the founder of Winpe (https://winpeforum.com), a not-for-profit initiative to enhance gender diversity in the investing ecosystem.

Nupur serves as Chairperson of the board of Kids Clinic India Limited and an independent director on the boards of companies including Indigo Paints Limited, Kerala Infrastructure Fund Management Limited and SIDBI, the Indian development finance institution. She is an independent member of the investment committee at the Fund of Funds managed by the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF), the quasi sovereign wealth fund sponsored by the government of India, and an advisor toand a member of the investment committee for the Dutch Good Growth Fund (DGGF) investment funds mandate given by the Dutch government for investments in SMEs in frontier markets across 75
countries. She has served as an external expert on the investment committee for the INR 10,000 crore Fund of Fund for Start-ups for investing in the Indian start-up ecosystem. Nupur advises select fund managers on a confidential basis on matters related to institutionalization, best practices and governance. She also mentors female entrepreneurs across various platforms.

Nupur was listed in the BW VC World Most Influential Women 2022, Forbes W-Power list of Self Made Women 2020, among India’s top 100 Women Leaders in Finance (AIWMI 2019), awarded the Vedica Women’s Alliance’s Women Leader in D&I 2022, Women Empowerment Entrepreneur Award 2019-20 and the Business Excellence and Innovative Best Practices - Academia Award 2019.

In her last and most recent full time role, Nupur led the private equity and venture capital funds business in the region for IFC and is widely credited with establishing IFC’s brand and credibility as one of the most respected institutional investors in this space. Under her stewardship, the portfolio doubled in size and returns, moving from a negative IRR to delivering gains for the first time in its
history.

Nupur is a CA and an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management, with executive education from Harvard Business School.

Nupur loves to spend time with her mother, husband and 7 year-old son, travel to new places, read and do 1500-piece puzzles

Sankalp Agarwal

Sonali Jindal

Vipul Sharma

Amit Ramani

Mr. Amit Ramani is the Founder & CEO of Awfis Space Solutions, which is India’s largest homegrown flex workspace provider with 42,000 seats across 75+ centers in 12 cities in India. He started Awfis Space Solutions with a vision to revolutionize the office space delivery ecosystem in India through technology-backed just-in-time solutions.

Mr. Ramani is also the Vice President of the Indian Workspace Association (IWA) that has been established by the country's top flex workspace operators to chalk out strategies and represent the problems faced by the industry to the government as well as other stakeholders.

In addition to this, he is also the Vice-Chairman & Strategic Advisor of NCUBE India, a pioneer in providing corporate interior design and build solutions to major corporations across Asia.

Prior to founding Awfis, Mr. Ramani was the COO of NELSON Global, where he managed operations across 37 locations globally, and led the company towards being recognized as one of the top five global design firms. He has over fifteen years of experience in the areas of master planning, strategic planning, design management, workplace & business process improvement, six-sigma based strategies and facility planning.

Given his solid background, Mr. Ramani has provided innovative and complex project services to multinational corporations such as Astra Zeneca, Duke Energy, Bank of America, AT&T, Marsh McLennan, Bristol Myer-Squibb, Lockheed Martin, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Toyota. He has also worked with organizations such as HOK Consulting, Toyota Motor Sales and The Environments Group.

Mr. Ramani is a member of RICS, NASSCOM and the Young President’s Organization (YPO) Delhi Chapter - a group comprising 200 top business leaders and owners. He is also an active member of the International Facilities Management Association CoreNet for eight years, and serves on the board of its Charlotte Chapter. Mr. Ramani’s  work has been published in the Journal of Corporate Real Estate and he is a frequent speaker at industry forums such as CoreNet Global Summit on topics ranging from real estate strategy to the development of effective work environments. Additionally, Mr. Ramani has also been a guest lecturer at Cornell University, New York University and Texas A&M. He is the recipient of the prestigious IFMA Foundation award for three years in a row owing to his contribution to the field of real estate and facility planning.

Shivani Bhasin Sachdeva

Niraj Singh

Ankur Gattani

Ankur Gattani, VP, Growth and Marketing, WebEngage. Ankur has over 13 years of experience including as a customer, mentor and advisor to WebEngage in his previous roles. 

Ankur is an IITB / IIM Cal graduate who will be taking charge of the entire growth marketing function at WebEngage to sharpen WebEngage’s positioning as a thought leader in retention marketing and a champion of building enduring businesses. 

Ankur’s stint at Foodpanda Global to drive CRM efforts led to the transformation of 1 message-per-country regimen to a 1:1 personalized messages on multiple channels across 45 Countries, 20+ timezones and Languages. The speed of roll-out earned his team accolades and a speaker invite from Salesforce to share the story at Dreamforce - a flagship event by Salesforce. 

Ankur has dabbled in ideas in eCommerce and created a consumer FMCG brand as well, is a big believer in driving stories and analogies to help customers understand the brand proposition better. The ecosystem will need 100s of more retention professionals as founders mature to think beyond acquisition driven growth and he’s gearing WebEngage up to drive the entire education and community play forward.

Kavish Kothari

Akshay Ghulati

Akshay Ghulati is the Co-founder, Shiprocket Global & Strategy, a leading tech-enabled e-commerce fulfilment platform in India. Akshay leads the Strategy and Global Expansion team and is responsible for managing the overall revenue functions of the business including marketing, account management and customer service. His key responsibility is to make Shiprocket the most trusted logistics and fulfilment platform for e-commerce sellers. 
 
Akshay has an exemplary academic background and extensive experience in the e-commerce industry. Having graduated from the prestigious Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania with a BSc degree in Economics he then went on to pursue his MBA from Harvard Business School. Akshay joined Shiprocket in 2016 as the Chief Business Officer and in January 2020 he was appointed as a Co-founder.
 
Throughout the course of his career, Akshay has worked with notable organizations in senior positions. Prior to joining Shiprocket, Akshay was associated with e-commerce heavyweight Amazon in the UK where he served as a Senior Manager for the Pan-Europe FBA division. Before joining Amazon UK he worked with Smile Interactive Technologies as Director for Incubations and Investments. He was also associated with A.T. Kearney as a Senior Business Analyst at the start of his career and later with The Parthenon Group in the UK as a Principal.
 
With exceptional business acumen, Akshay’s career features several milestones. He was the youngest full-time employee for A.T. Kearney India post his bachelor’s degree at a time when the firm only hired MBA graduates. Akshay also helped set up the United Stock Exchange, which was the 4th pan India stock exchange. The organization was later acquired by Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). Akshay was also recognized as the top performer at Amazon and was awarded the Just Do It award.
 
Akshay plans to make Shiprocket the leading SME e-commerce fulfilment platform both in India and key international markets. Passionate about the food supply chain in India Akshay is learning more about sustainable farming. A movie buff, he loves travelling and playing poker. He also frequently works with and supports NGOs that work towards educating girls.  
 

Sai Deo

Akash Saxenaa

Akash Saxenaa is currently the VP at Samsung India Electronics, and heads the Enterprise Business for Samsung Southwest Asia. He is a multinational strategic leader with an extensive background driving revenue and profits in hardware, software, and services businesses
Akash Saxenaa’s career is hallmarked with success and key business milestones. He has held top leadership positions at industry giants like Samsung, IBM, and HP, devising unique strategies to drive revenue, P&L and new business opportunities. He is well versed in the Indian/APAC market and execute strategies to penetrate key customers in highly competitive markets.

He is an eclectic blend of an innovative, result-oriented and motivational leader, is efficient in team management and people skills, possesses a deep understanding of the technology industry and has the ability to navigate cultural barriers
 

Aparajita Puri

Swati Arora

Swati Arora is Director ,Sales at Slack India . She has over 14 years of experience working across industries - banking, corporate travel, technology in managing and building commercial business teams .  Swati has extensive background in strategy & planning, general management & leadership and has spent a large part of her career driving growth and change management while scaling businesses. Before joining Slack, Swati held leadership positions at Expedia Group , Citibank and Lehman Brothers 

Harleen Bhatti

Shalil Gupta

Ashwin Moduga

Vivek Sehgal

Vivek Sehgal has rich experience of more than 22+ Years working in the IT Industry. He currently Heads the Business & Technology Alliances For Alibaba Cloud in India, helping Alibaba Cloud Product & Services Business  & growth of their Market Share in Indian market. Prior to joining Alibaba, Vivek has been associated with Market Leaders like Microsoft, Citrix, VMware, CA Technologies with various Leadership roles spanning across Business Units including Sales, Technology Consulting & Presales. Throughout the career, Vivek has been instrumental in helping Large organizations adopt Cutting Edge  technologies like BigData, Automation, Cloud Solutions etc allowing them to make significant Business impact by the use of Technology.

Ritika Mathur

Sruthijith KK

Bhawna Agarwal

Bhawna Agarwal has joined the leadership team of HPE recently as Country Head- High Velocity Growth & Compute. She is responsible for developing the growth strategy for India and designing programs and setting direction for its execution. She acts as a key advisor to senior leadership in exploring new growth opportunities, focusing on exploring the right market strategies and partnerships to enhance the overall portfolio delivering growth in new and existing market segments in India.

She is an award-winning Digital leader & an entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience in leading media houses, Internet companies & startups in India. She has held several leadership & founding roles at platforms like NDTV gadgets, Yatra.com, Seventymm & Times Internet where she successfully incubated new businesses, led the scale up and built high performance teams. In her most recent role, she was the CEO of NDTV Gadgets where she led the company to become the #1 digital tech platform in India & amongst the Top 15 in the world. She is also engaged with several leading startups as a Board Advisor & mentor to help drive strategy for growth. She currently also serves as a Chairperson of the Sub-committee for New Emerging industries for CII in India.

Bhawna is an alum of Harvard Business school. She was recognized as Asia’s Greatest CEO in 2017 by AsiaOne Magazine; Top 50 most Innovative Leaders of 2017; Exceptional Women of Excellence in 2018; Global CIO 200 Leadership Award 2018 & Top CEO Leadership with HR Orientation in 2019.

Ronnie Screwvala

Ronnie’s first foray was Cable TV in India and for the first two years of that journey he found no takers and only advise was to treat it as a failed start up and move on, but with him staying at it he was credited with having pioneered Cable TV for all of India.

Entrepreneurship is about finding and seizing opportunities and moving on from failures and Ronnie saw an opportunity in toothbrush manufacturing and after many setbacks went on to build one of the largest toothbrush operations in India, at a time where there was no eco-system for PE Funding or bank debt to start ups. The other opportunity was TV Home Shopping but it was well before its time and was a big failure, but not enough for him to question if he should stick it out as an entrepreneur.

Ronnie went on to build a media and entertainment company - UTV, where post many pivots and four almost near bankruptcies and 15 years of focussed work with strong co-founders and a large team, it scaled to a size spanning all aspects of Content and Platform and then he divested UTV to The Walt Disney Co in 2012.

Perception in most cases is larger than reality and so in spite of so many failures, Newsweek termed him the Jack Warner of India, Esquire rated him one of the 75 most influential people of the 21st century and Fortune as Asia’s 25 most powerful and ranked 78 among 100 most influential people in the world on Time 100.

Having lived it and seen the misconception that it’s all about quick success and that failure is to frown on - he authored a book ‘Dream With Your Eyes Open’ as his commitment to champion entrepreneurship and evangelize failure.

Ronnie got the term “cat with nine lives” attached to him by colleagues and peers for the number of times he had failed, but reflecting on his setbacks and counting on his main virtue that success can never be timed and staying the course is the only option, Ronnie in his second innings decided to deepen his commitment to making India a better place through a focus on two of the largest sunrise sectors - Online Education & the not-for-profit rural / social space. He is Chairperson & Co-Founder of upGrad which zeros in on the massive Online Education market and the fact that Learning for every working professional is now a lifelong commitment. He, along with his wife Zarina,  are the  Co-Founders of The Swades Foundation, which is committed to empower one million lives in rural India every 5-7 years through a 360 degree model spanning Water, Sanitation, Health, Education and Livelihood to lift them out of poverty permanently.

As a hobby and passion Ronnie loves to tell stories that must to told via movies with his new brand RSVP and he owns 3 sports teams under the brand U Mumba in Kabaddi, Volleyball and Football even though he has never played any of the sports himself.

Siddharth Agarwal

Ajay Mahipal

Sunil Goyal

Kunal Khattar

Shivani Bhasin Sachdeva

Kavish Kothari

Sahil Aggarwal

Chinmaya Saxena

Karthik Prabhakar

Karthik Prabhakar is Managing Partner at PeerCapital. He brings with him a wealth of experience across the entrepreneurial and investing ecosystem from his former role as the Managing Director and Partner at Chiratae Ventures. At Chiratae, he led worldwide efforts on fundraising and business development apart from investments, divestments and org building. He has always been eager to contribute to the start-up ecosystem of India and brings his VC operator chops to PeerCapital’s team, making him a force to reckon with. 

An IIM- Bangalore MBA grad,Karthik has been recognized as one among the 40 Under 40 in the alternative investments space in India by AAAIF. For three consecutive years from 2016 to 2018, Karthik was recognized amongst the global top 100 Rising Stars in the venture industry by Global Corporate Venturing, held in California, US.

His investments for Chiratae include Blowhorn, Buystars, EarlySalary, Exly, GoodMeetings, Living Consumer (stake sold), LetsVenture, Manthan Systems (support) (stake sold), Nestaway, Newgen (support) (BSE: NEWGEN), PlayShifu, PlaySimple (acq by MTG) and Tamasha.live.

Manish Gupta

Abhishek Mohan

Mayank Jain

Ravinder Pal Singh

Sambit Dash

Saurabh Singh

Nupur Garg

Nupur Garg is a leading investor in private equity and venture capital and an expert advisor to large institutional investors. She is the founder of Winpe (https://winpeforum.com), a not-for-profit initiative to enhance gender diversity in the investing ecosystem.

Nupur serves as Chairperson of the board of Kids Clinic India Limited and an independent director on the boards of companies including Indigo Paints Limited, Kerala Infrastructure Fund Management Limited and SIDBI, the Indian development finance institution. She is an independent member of the investment committee at the Fund of Funds managed by the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF), the quasi sovereign wealth fund sponsored by the government of India, and an advisor toand a member of the investment committee for the Dutch Good Growth Fund (DGGF) investment funds mandate given by the Dutch government for investments in SMEs in frontier markets across 75
countries. She has served as an external expert on the investment committee for the INR 10,000 crore Fund of Fund for Start-ups for investing in the Indian start-up ecosystem. Nupur advises select fund managers on a confidential basis on matters related to institutionalization, best practices and governance. She also mentors female entrepreneurs across various platforms.

Nupur was listed in the BW VC World Most Influential Women 2022, Forbes W-Power list of Self Made Women 2020, among India’s top 100 Women Leaders in Finance (AIWMI 2019), awarded the Vedica Women’s Alliance’s Women Leader in D&I 2022, Women Empowerment Entrepreneur Award 2019-20 and the Business Excellence and Innovative Best Practices - Academia Award 2019.

In her last and most recent full time role, Nupur led the private equity and venture capital funds business in the region for IFC and is widely credited with establishing IFC’s brand and credibility as one of the most respected institutional investors in this space. Under her stewardship, the portfolio doubled in size and returns, moving from a negative IRR to delivering gains for the first time in its
history.

Nupur is a CA and an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management, with executive education from Harvard Business School.

Nupur loves to spend time with her mother, husband and 7 year-old son, travel to new places, read and do 1500-piece puzzles