Forbes India and
AWS have joined
hands
to bring
you
the stories of inspirational leaders and secrets of the ultimate mavericks of the new-age, Digital
Native
Businesses.
The year-long campaign will bring forth indulging
conversations with digital native leaders where-in they’d shed light on their revamped business
models,
technology prowess and their vision for the future. This shall serve as the beacon for those looking
to find
solutions to their troubled working structure.
The volume and variety of data that your organization holds or
accesses today
is
much greater than it was a few years ago. Next year it will be greater still. As your data
resources grow, so do
the opportunities to draw more profound, more powerful insights about your customers,
competitive landscape and internal processes.
In the last few years, digital transformation has been afoot at companies big and
small. 2020 became a wakeup call for those that still needed a nudge. As we went indoors and
work went remote, the only blueprint for survival worth its claim recommended tightening the
purse strings
on all things but digital -capitalizing on data analytics, cloud computing, AI and ML, to
continue work and serve
customers. Digitisation has often been touted as a tool to gain an edge over competition. In
2020, it also
became the survival tool.
The Mavericks - CTO Conversations will bring together
technology leaders of
Digital Native Businesses in India who took the challenge head-on and wielded
the power of technologies to drive, survive and thrive during a crisis to share
their lessons, many successes and even failures.
The conversations with the CTOs will be about their hands-on approach to the
ever-changing world of digital solutions. CTOs are the executors of the founder's
vision. Their methods of adaptation of the infrastructure decide if companies will
succeed or fail. This changes their leadership scope--making it a more public-facing
role. These conversations will focus on how a technology edge and digital solutions
enhanced their businesses to scale and keep their focus on customer-centricity by
delivering a superior experience.
CTO
GAMES24x7
Head of Data Science
Ecom Express
Assistant Editor
Forbes India
Head of Data Science
PayU
Chief Technologist
AWS Solutions Architecture
In the third instalment for CTO Conversations, we discussed how Modern apps are disrupting economic models, payments operating models and consumer behaviour. At a time when everyone is pouring millions into tech, reliance on modern apps can increase efficacy. But with more than 500 million new apps expected to be built over the next few years, organisations will have to find a balance between managing technology and building new features.
It becomes a CTO's prerogative to deploy this tool efficiently.
In the fourth chapter, we will discuss how the FinTech industry is capitalising on the benefits of the cloud. It is creating an epochal disruption, the impact of which is yet to be seen. Exponentially growing computing power, widespread internet penetration, and increased internet speed and coverage, coupled with demand-side stimulants like need for inclusive financial services, customer expectations, and the business need to reduce costs while providing faster, safer, and more reliable services are some of the key factors shaping the FinTech revolution in India.
Editor
Fobes India
CTO
PolicyBazaar
Co-Founder & COO
WazirX
EVP & Head Technology
CoinDCX
CTO
BigBasket
Tech evangelist (India/ASEAN)
Epic Games
CPO & CTO
Nykaa
Head, Solution Architects (India) DNB
AWS
Moderator
Fobes India
In the second chapter of Forbes India-AWS 'The Mavericks' CTO Conversations, we discussed the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML).
Digital native businesses have been pioneers in leveraging the power of AI and ML.
Over the years, AI/ML adaptation and inclusion has not only brought massive structural shifts to economic models,
payments operating models and consumer behaviour,
it has also made it easier for organisations to agile during industry shifts and provide a greater return on investments.
In the first chapter of The Mavericks - CTO Conversations, we discussed the prowess of Data and Data Analytics that will have a huge play in the success and efficiency to fulfil market needs hereon.
Head of Data & Analytics, Asia Pacific & Japan
AWS
Head-technology
Delhivery
CTO
Meesho
CTO
DREAM11
MD
Matrix Partners India
Cameron is the Head of Data & Analytics for Amazon Web Service (AWS), across Asia/Pacific & Japan, and a well-known authority in enabling organisations to become data driven. With over 30 years' experience in creating and implementing innovative approaches to data enablement, and leveraging information technology solutions as a competitive differentiator, driving innovation and growth.
With global experience, across Asia, Europe, and the U.S, specialising in Financial Services, Telecommunications, and FMCG verticals, enabling organisations to leverage analytics resulting in those organisations entering new markets, creating new products, realising growth targets, and significant increasing in operational efficiency.
Providing unique thought leadership across the data and analytics industry with a mix of business, consulting, and technical experience providing a pathway for organisations to navigate the hype, from information flood control, through to cognitive computing, underpinned by robust engagement methodology, complex strategy and program management.
Nag comes with 25+ years of diverse experience in web and computing infrastructure. He is currently the Head of Technology at Delhivery, driving next-generation logistics and transportation platform initiatives.
Before this, he was associated with Amazon as Head Transportation Financial Systems. During his stint with Amazon, he played a crucial role in launching last mile operations in Los Angeles and San Francisco, was involved in Managing seven key world Inbound fulfilment services and has also led critical projects like transportation payables systems, automating invoice auditing, self-invoicing, and automation of accounting services. He also brings in rich experience from organizations like Yahoo Inc, where he led the Product team for Southeast Asia; Freecharge.in & Yatra.com, where he worked as Chief Technology Officer.
Academically, He is M.S. Engineering from Texas A&M University, USA & B.E. Mechanical Engineering, from Osmania University, Hyderabad, India.
Meesho is India’s largest social commerce platform, enabling millions of individuals to start and scale their social selling businesses with zero investments.
Back in 2015, Sanjeev Barnwal teamed up with his college batchmate and friend Vidit Aatrey to build an ecommerce startup for small businesses at a time, when everyone told them that e-commerce is saturated. Five years and two pivots later, they have today built India’s largest social commerce platform at Meesho.
Meesho has already empowered 10 million+ entrepreneurs, mostly women, and is on its way to create millions more. Through its platform, it enables entrepreneurs to start online businesses with zero investment and provides them with the right supply, social sharing tools, logistics solutions and payment capabilities to their business.
Prior to Meesho, Sanjeev worked with Sony in Japan.
Amit Sharma is the Chief Technology Officer of Dream Sports and Dream11. Amit has been with the organisation since 2016, building India's largest sports technology infrastructure.
Prior to joining Dream Sports, Amit worked for over a decade on some of the most complex large scale distributed systems with large consumer companies like Yahoo! and Netflix in California.
Amit has completed his Masters in Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts. While working in the US, Amit also completed his MBA from Leavey School of Business.
Apart from being a passionate Manchester United fan and a fitness enthusiast, Amit is also an avid traveller.
From a young age, Rajat has always been determined to pursue excellence. A Gold Medalist in school, a Silver Medalist at IIT, and, again, a Gold Medalist at Indian School of Business, Rajat's academic record speaks for itself. Post IIT, Rajat joined McKinsey as a management consultant, where over a five-year stint he worked on developing insights for multiple sectors, specializing in telecom and IT services.
During his stint at McKinsey, Rajat worked on several topics that are relevant for start-ups - for example, setting up a lean organization, institutionalizing a strong performance management system, leveraging technology to drive sales force effectiveness, maximizing marketing RoI, fundamentally achieving a lower cost base and many more.
Additionally, Rajat has spent time helping streamline his own family business (a SME in Delhi) and has hands-on experience in operations, sales and marketing.
At Matrix, Rajat is looking to work with leading entrepreneurs, helping them build their businesses and tap the full potential of the consumer-tech opportunity in India.
Rakshit was born in the small town of Bhavnagar in Gujarat, India. He did his schooling at Fatima Convent High School and went on to pursue mechanical engineering from MSU Baroda. He then went to the University of Minnesota for his master’s in Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science. His knack for technology allowed him to be a part of several great teams at companies like SAP, where he finished his tenure as the Director of Technology. He has also been the founder and CEO of QURATER, a company that built SAAS enterprise software products before he went on to become the VP and CTO at BigBasket.
Arvind Neelakantan provides technology leadership at Unity India. He is instrumental in the adoption and growth of the company's solutions across product verticals. Arvind particularly specializes in enabling film/animation studios around the world to harness the power of real-time rendering. He served as Disney India's lead software architect and was responsible for driving innovation through research and development (R&D) activities and oversaw interactive content development. Prior to Disney, he was in the United States for close to 10 years, where he served as a full stack engineer at Nickelodeon in Los Angeles. At Nickelodeon, he played a key role in the company’s technology business developing core game features and during the major transitions to cloud based computing.
Sanjay Suri is working as CTO & CPO in the Nykaa.com which is an Active company headquartered in . The Nykaa.com office address is located at , . The company comes under industries, Present employees count around . The company was founded in the year . To Know more about Nykaa.com, you can visit their website nykaa.com An accomplished and enterprising Senior Software Development Executive with keen interest in building high impact teams and scalable software platforms. Specialties: bootstrapping startups, building Engineering organizations, prototyping solutions, heading product and engineering.
Satinder heads the Solution Architecture Function for Digital Native Business at Amazon Web Services. With over 26 years of experience, Satinder has worked across multiple technology domains of Cloud, Opensource and Enterprise Architecture. Before joining AWS, Satinder worked with RedHat, NetApp, Symantec and PwC . Throughout his career, he has worked with customers across different industry verticals advising them on areas of Technology Strategy, Architecture and Blueprints.
Vivek Gupta is the EVP and Head, Technology of CoinDCX, India's first crypto unicorn and the nation's safest cryptocurrency exchange. Vivek leads the firm's technology team with a firm focus on strengthening CoinDCX's product experience, while ensuring the platform remains reliable, secure and seamless for its end users.
Over the span of his career, Vivek has worked with multiple startups across different sectors including fintech, e-commerce and social commerce, gaining extensive experience in product engineering, technology and innovation, as well as scaling solutions for growth. Vivek holds Bachelors of Computer Applications (BCA) from Osmania University, Hyderabad.
Vivek is a firm believer of technology and the critical need for tech to be built transparently and simply – fundamental tenets of creating great user experiences. A technologist at heart, Vivek also believes that crypto is poised to proliferate, much like how the internet grew exponentially during the Web 2.0 era. To this end, Vivek is committed to harnessing his expertise in technology to make crypto safe and accessible to all.
Editor - Technology @Forbes_India. Write publish tweet repeat (not original. Saw something similar that inspired.)
I’m the Technology Editor at Forbes India. I write, host two podcasts — on tech, business and entrepreneurship — and produce them as well.
I've covered India's IT services, smartphone revolution, and startups, and the world's technology giants and their interest in India/Asia, from the vantage point of my base in Bangalore.
At a personal technology level, I still miss my BlackBerry — so use the Hub Plus on my Android phone — but love the new focus options on iOS 15.
More seriously, my daily fight is about staying optimistic as a story teller about the world of good that technology can be used for, in the face of all the evidently evil applications it’s being put to. For now, I’m still an optimist, but the climate crisis has really tempered my optimism.
Thing is, journalistically speaking, bad news is of course good copy, but writing about great tech and business and some cool way tech solved a human problem at scale can be really satisfying and fun too.
I’m not very good at scoops, although I like them as much as the next journo, but what I love most is to see the big(gest) picture explained.
Heads Business & Product at WazirX. An industry leader with 18 years of building & leading innovative businesses. Expert in quantitative markets, liquidity & economic systems. Leads crypto revolution in India by helping startups to #BuildForCrypto.
Saurabh is a diehard Sachin fan when it comes to focus and attitude on the work field. He also has a keen interest in DIY electronics and robotics as much as he loves playing cricket and tennis in his free time. He believes in the power of giving, and can be seen donning the coach hat helping those around him when they need it the most.
Thippesha Dyamappa is Chief Technology Officer at Upstoxwhere he heads the technology, strategy and product development vertical.
With his deep customer understanding and experience in managing key responsibilities at leading firms such as Amazon and Sabre Holdings, Thippesha plays a key role in driving Upstox's technology vertical.
Having spent nearly two decades in software engineering and building best-in-class companies with 600+ full-time employees and distributed teams globally, Thippesha has extensive experience in software engineering and business development.
Rounded, in-depth discussions covering all aspects of the business and leadership from the founder perspective. From the journey of the entrepreneur to what they believe in, to their business, success strategies and even some failures because the best lessons come from mistakes. The founder conversations will also be a deep dive into the DNB's technology play and its plans to leverage it to stay ahead of the competition.
In the fourth instalment of Forbes India presents AWS ‘The Mavericks’The Founder Conversations, Vipul Parekh,
co-founder of BigBasket, shares stories about starting an online grocery venture ahead of its time, connecting with farmers on grassroots level, and building a brand that not only survived but thrived in the pandemic.
This session was Moderated by Brian Carvalho, Editor, Forbes India.
In the third instalment of Forbes India presents AWS ‘The Mavericks’—The Founder Conversations, Prashanth Ranganathan, CEO of PayU Finance and founder of PaySense, sheds light on the process of digitising India's MSMEs, guiding and educating Gen-Z consumers, and the future of fintech in India.
In the second installment of Forbes India presents AWS ‘The Mavericks’—The Founder Conversations, Sanjeev Bikhchandani, founder of Info Edge, sheds light on how being an entrepreneur in the 90s was a Herculean task.
Taking us on his journey as a pioneer of Indian DNB sector, Bikhchandani explains the origin of Info Edge, how he built a juggernaut that's Naukri.com, why he invested in #Zomato, and what he looks for when investing in a new venture.
In the first chapter of Forbes India presents AWS ‘The Mavericks’—The Founder Conversations, we discussed all aspects of the business and leadership from the founder perspective. From the journey of the entrepreneur to what they believe in, to their business, success strategies and even some failures because the best lessons come from mistakes. The founder conversations highlighted the DNB's technology play and how it plans to leverage it to stay ahead of the competition.
Co-Founder & CTO
Zeta
Country Manager & Head - DNB
India and South Asia, AWS
Editor, Forbes India
Moderator
CEO, PayU
Finance & Founder PaySense
Co-Founder , BigBasket
Vipul is a serial entrepreneur and is now the cofounder of Bigbasket, India's largest online grocery business. He is currently the CMO and CFO of Bigbasket.
Before Bigbasket, he was an investment director at Peepul Capital, a leading private equity fund. He was also the Co-founder of Fabmall.
Vipul Parekh is an IIM Bangalore alumnus.
CEO, PayU Finance & Founder PaySense
Prashanth Ranganathan is the CEO of PayU Finance where he is responsible for driving the overall growth for PayU's consumer business in India and its ambitious plans to become one of the largest digital lenders in the country. Before joining PayU, he was the founder and CEO of PaySense, a leading digital lending startup that was acquired by PayU in January 2020.
Founder, Info Edge
Sanjeev Bikhchandani is an Indian businessman, who is the founder and executive vice chairman of Info Edge which owns Naukri.com, a job portal,
as well as the co-founder of Ashoka University. He was given the Padma Shri Award, the fourth Highest civilian award in India, in January 2020
He attended St. Columba's School, Delhi and finished schooling from there in 1981. There after,
he obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from St. Stephen's College, Delhi in 1984.
He completed his MBA from IIMA in 1989. He is ranked #68 in Forbes India Rich List 2020 with a net worth of US$2.1 Billion
Sanjeev after his PG left a job marketing Horlicks at HMM (now known as GlaxoSmithKline) in 1990 to set up two companies Indmark and Info Edge along with a partner.
The first company specialized in pharmaceutical trademarks and the second produced salary surveys and reports. In 1993, Sanjeev got Info Edge. In 1997, Bikhchandani set up Naukri.com, jobs portal, and later Quadrangle, an offline executive search business.
In 2005, Naukri.com was reported as being India's largest web-based employment site.
Building up in the websites business, Infoedge later launched other classified sites like 99acres in real estate, Jeevansathi in matrimony and Shiksha in education.
He is also an astute investor, having invested in unicorns like PolicyBazaar and Zomato. Additionally, he is a part of the 'Vision Circle' of FYI (Foundation for Young Innovators) - a shark tank for social initiatives exclusively open to high school students.
He won the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2008.
Co-Founder & CTO, Zeta
Ramki Gaddipati is the Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Zeta. He leads a strong team of
engineers to give the product a stable foundation. Ramki is extremely passionate about product
engineering with a strong sense of initiative and commitment to excellence at every
step.
Ramki has been associated with the Directi Group for the past 11 years. He led several tech
initiatives in various capacities and has developed and managed the delivery of several scalable
services. Ramki also co-founded Bridle Information and Technology Solutions and was named one of
Asia’s Best Entrepreneurs Under 25 by BusinessWeek in 2006.
He holds a Master’s degree in Management and Software Systemsfrom Birla Institute of Technology
and Science (BITS), Pilani.