Shri Ajay Prakash Sawhney Secretary
Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology Government of India
Shri Sawhney is a Mechanical Engineer and an IAS Officer of Andhra Pradesh cadre (1984 batch). He has handled various assignments in the State of Andhra Pradesh, covering land administration, law and order and quasi-judicial functions, rural development, health & family welfare, communication & information technology, e-governance and elections etc.
He played a lead role in the Total Literacy Campaign taken up in Nizamabad district in the early nineties. He has also catalysed the establishment of the International Institute of Information Technology in Hyderabad and its emergence as one of the premier institutions in computer science education and research in the country. He has spent more than ten years in assignments relating to information technology and e-governance and has led the formulation of innovative policies and implementation of several major e-governance, communications and broadband projects. He has also worked as the Principal Secretary to Chief Minister of AP after the reorganization of the State of Andhra Pradesh.
He has also held important positions in the Govt. of India as Joint Secretary Training in the Department of Personnel and Training and as the President and CEO of the National e- Governance Division, which assists the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology in the implementation of the National e-Governance Plan.
Shri M.S. Rao, IAS
President & Chief Executive Officer National eGovernance Division
Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology Government of India
Shri M. S. Rao, IAS is an Engineering Graduate from IIT, Kharagpur and is an MBA in Project Management from the University of Hull, UK. He joined the Indian Administrative Service in 1987 and belongs to the Assam Meghalaya Cadre. During 1987-2000 he served in various capacities under the Government of Assam, including Deputy Commissioner of Cachar and Dibrugarh District. During 2000-2004, he served in various senior capacities under the Government of Meghalaya. During 2005-2009, he served as the Deputy Chairman, Visakhapatnam Port Trust under the Ministry of Shipping and during 2009-2012, he served as the Development Commissioner, Visakhapatnam Special Economic Zone under the Ministry of Commerce & Industry, Government of India. Since 2012, he has been serving in various senior capacities under the Government of Meghalaya, Presently, he is the Additional Chief Secretary to the Government of Meghalaya, Power, Home (Police), Political and Labour Departments and Chief Executive Officer of Meghalaya State Skills Development Society
Shri Gopalakrishnan S, IAS Joint Secretary
Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology Government of India
Shri Gopalakrishnan S. is presently working as Joint Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY), Government of India, New Delhi.
He is a 1991 Batch Officer from the Indian Administrative Services (IAS) from Tamil Nadu Cadre. He has worked at state and central government in areas such as transport, HR, commerce, census, food, IT, etc.
At MeitY, his responsibilities include data protection framework, digital payments, Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence, emerging technologies, start-ups and innovation.
Dr Uday Babulal Desai Director
IIT Hyderabad
Dr Uday B. Desai received the B. Tech. degree from Indian Institute
of Technology, Kanpur, India, in 1974, the M.S. degree from the State University of New York, Buffalo, in 1976, and the Ph.D. degree from The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, U.S.A., in 1979, all in Electrical Engineering. Since June 2009 he is the Director of IIT Hyderabad. This position is equivalent to that of President of a University.
From 1979 to 1984 he was an Assistant Professor in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at Washington State University, Pullman, WA, U.S.A., and an Associate Professor at the same place from 1984 to 1987. From 1987 to May 2009 he was a Professor in the Electrical Engineering Department at the Indian Institute of Technology - Bombay. He was Dean of Students at IIT-Bombay from Aug 2000 to July 2002. He has held Visiting Associate Professor's position at Arizona State University, Purdue University, and Stanford University. He was a visiting Professor at EPFL, Lausanne during the summer of 2002.
From July 2002 to June 2004 he was the Director of HP-IITM R and D Lab. At IIT-Madras.
Dr. Lovneesh Chanana
Vice President - Digital Government (Asia Pacific and Japan) SAP
Dr. Chanana is an experienced professional in Public policy, ICT in Government, business development, consulting and capacity building. Well verse with Government, Corporate and Government-Industry requirements by virtue of experience in both Government (13years) and IT Industry (10Years). His expertise lies in Results-focused management professional equally aligned with academia to drive the passion of industry-academia collaboration and ensuring the transfer of industry knowledge to academia and vice versa. He has worked with many academic Institutes including Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, Indian Institute of Management Indore, University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, Malviya National Institute of Technology, Jindal global business school etc.
Mr Virat Bhatia Chairman
ICT & Digital Economy Committee FICCI
and
Managing Director - Strategy & Policy Apple India
Mr Virat Bhatia is Apple India’s Managing Director for Strategy & Policy since January 2018.
Virat leads Apple’s strategy and policy work in India to support all lines of Businesses and Operations, which includes manufacturing and retail; Product Lines such as iPhone, iPad, iMac, Apple Watch and Apple TV; and Service Offerings, including App Store, Apple Music, Apple Pay and iCloud.
Before joining Apple, Virat served as one of AT&T’s ranking executives outside the US. During his tenure of over two decades with AT&T, he served in several different roles and positions, including as the Regional President, AT&T International Affairs for South Asia and as the Chairman of AT&T in India. Prior to that, he has worked with Hyatt International Hotels, Coca Cola and J. Walter Thompson in different roles.
Virat has been involved with the ICT sector since its liberalization in 1994. He has led several Global and National Industry chambers. He has served on multiple national policy committees and Joint Working Groups, at the invitation of the Government of India.
Virat chairs FICCI’s National Committee on ICT & Digital Economy. He also serves as the Vice Chairman of the Paris based ICC Commission on Digital Economy. In 2014, the UN Secretary General appointed him to the Multi-stakeholder Advisory Group of the UN Internet Governance Forum.
An alumnus of the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Virat holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics and a Master’s in Business Administration. He has attended Advance Management Programmes at Kellogg’s School of Management, and Wharton Business School.
Mr Parminder Singh Co - Chair
ICT & Digital Economy Committee FICCI
and
Head of Business Development, Centre and State Government BU Wipro Limited
Mr. Singh is a government strategy professional, with over 12 years of experience, responsible for leading Government Engagement Strategy, skilled at building impactful relationships, working across organizational boundaries, and influencing key stakeholders. Mr. singh earlier was responsible for leading Government strategy in South Asia for Hewlett Packard, DuPont, StarTV where I was responsible for growth of Government business and Public Policy initiatives in South Asia.
Dr. Rohini Srivathsa
National Technology Officer Microsoft India
As National Technology Officer at Microsoft India, Rohini is responsible for leading strategic initiatives to accelerate digital transformation across industries and the government. Over the past year, Rohini has been instrumental in steering programs that leverage AI and other emerging exponential technologies to drive innovation for inclusive socio-economic growth.
Rohini began her career in R&D at AT&T Bell Laboratories in the US. Prior to joining Microsoft, she has been in strategy consulting at Boston Consulting Group and IBM Global Business Services, working with clients across India and emerging markets. In her 25 years in the industry, she has held various roles in the areas of cloud, artificial intelligence, analytics and mobility, spanning across diverse sectors including financial services, telecom, consumer and technology. She has over 20 technical publications to her credit in ACM/IEEE and other international journals. Rohini is also associated with the MIT Sloan School of Management as an expert for their program on Artificial Intelligence and Business Strategy.
Rohini earned her PhD in Computer Engineering from UT Austin and holds an MBA from Wharton. She is a voracious reader and loves Hindustani classical music and photography. She lives in Bangalore with her husband and two children.
Dr. Murali Kota CTO
Manipal Group Co-Founder Vijna Labs
Mr. Kota has done us PhD from MIT, US and is currently the Co-Founder at Vijna Labs, and CTO of Manipal Groupl. He has extensive experience in Technology Innovation in AI and IoT based Integrated Hardware, Software and Solutions for Security, Surveillance, and Authentication Applications.
Mr Sudipta Ghosh
Partner Data and Analytics PwC India
Sudipta has more than 17 years of consulting experience in the field of Data & Analytics and Enterprise Performance Management (EPM). Sudipta is currently the Data and Analytics leader responsible for defining the product/solution strategy, go to market initiatives and incubating differentiated solutions from an industry domain perspective at PwC India.
Additionally, Sudipta has responsibilities in the Consumer and Industrial Products and Services sector which includes market development along with execution responsibilities for both domestic and international markets.
Sudipta has wide experience in managing and architecting complex large-scale Analytics and EPM implementations in industry sectors like FMCG, Retail, Telco, Auto, Oil and Gas, Pharmaceuticals and Metals industry in a number of functional areas like Marketing, Finance and Human Resources.
Sudipta has been instrumental in successfully setting up the Analytics practice at PwC focusing around industry analytics, benchmarking and building analytical models. Sudipta was responsible for building the Corporate Performance Management (CPM) competency which involved providing solutions for the office of the CFO around Financial Planning, Budgeting, Forecasting and Consolidation. Additionally, Sudipta has also been involved in setting up the Mobile BI proposition for CXO suite.
Sudipta is a gold medallist from IIM Calcutta and a silver medallist from IIT Kharagpur. Sudipta is a visiting faculty at Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Kolkata and at Vinod Gupta School of Management (VGSOM) at IIT Kharagpur, taking courses in Business Intelligence, Enterprise Performance Management, Data Mining and Customer Relationship Management (CRM).
Sudipta has conducted multiple seminars on XBRL for Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), Institute of Cost and Work Accountants of India (ICWAI), and Associated Chambers of Business and Commerce (ASSOCHAM).
Sudipta is a member of the PwC global data analytics leadership team for defining analytical propositions and solutions across the PwC network of firms. Having executed a variety of roles like Project and Program Director, Business Development, Solution Architect and Business Process Analyst, Sudipta brings to the table a unique combination of domain/functional knowledge along with the technical acumen needed for providing end to end solutions from inception to reality.
Dr. Rajeev Sharma Scientist-D
Interdisciplinary Cyber Physical Systems Division Department of Science & Technology
Ministry of Science & Technology, Government of India
Dr. Sharma did his bachelor’s degree in Electronic& Telecommunication Engineering (AMIE) from Institution of Engineers, Kolkata (India) and Ph.D. from JNU, Jaipur, Rajasthan. Dr.
Sharma is Scientist ‘E’ in Interdisciplinary Cyber Physical Systems (ICPS) Division of Ministry of Science & Technology, Department of Science & Technology (DST), Govt. of India, New Delhi.
At present he is involved in ICPS programme of DST, which is mainly dealing with (i) e- Governance initiatives of DST (e-Office & e-PMU implementation) and (ii) R&D Activities related to ICPS Programme such as Interdisciplinary Cyber Physical Systems Research (ICPSR), Data Science Research (DSR), Internet of Things Research (IoTR), Cyber Security Research (CSR), Indian Heritage in Digital Space (IHDS), Epidemiology data & Analytics. The Union Cabinet in its meeting held on 6th December, 2018 has approved the National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber Physical Systems (NM-ICPS) of the Department of Science &
Technology (DST). The Mission have four major activities i.e.1. Technology Development, 2.
Human Resource & Skill Development (including development of CPS technology application tools for education at elementary and high school level), 3. Innovation, Entrepreneurship &
Start-Up Ecosystem and 4. International Collaborations.
The Mission (NM-ICPS) targets the establishment of:
• 15 Technology Innovation Hubs (TIH) to focus on generation of new knowledge through basic and applied research in areas that is mandated to them
• 6 Application Innovation Hubs to carryout translational research and work with Line Departments to develop prototypes, product development and implementations.
• 4 Technology Translation Research Parks (TTRP) with a focus to deliver products/
technology ready for deployment or commercialization, picking up from any of the previous technology readiness levels.
Dr. Avik Sarkar
Former Head, Data Analytics Cell NITI Aayog
Government of India
Dr. Sarkar held diverse roles and positions like Product Strategist, Scientist/Researcher, Policy Advocate, Product Development, customer interaction in Service industry, Technical Sales/Pre-Sales or Business Development in understanding customer needs to target analytics solutions. He has applied his analytics successfully across various Have experience across various industries like telecommunication, retail, automobile, manufacturing, internet, environment, insurance, automotive, heavy equipment, economic forecasting, governance, health-care, education, defense, predictive maintenance and more
Mr Anurag Sharma
Vice President Growth Initiatives Tech Mahindra
Anurag has 28+ years of experience in IT and Technology Industries spanning Technology R&D, Design & Development, Business Development & Sales, Organization Strategy and Business Operations.
Anurag heads the Growth Initiatives function focusing on Sales Transformation for Tech Mahindra. He previously headed India SBU Solutions and Strategy, Global Business Strategy and Large Deals for Tech Mahindra for the Enterprise Business, where he defines and executing Growth Strategies for the organization. He is driving initiatives for the organization to participate in and win Large Outsourcing Deals. Anurag’s deep Industry experience spans conceptualizing, developing & taking technology solutions to market for diverse business needs; Leading global customer business acquisition process for IT Services; Leading IT Services growth strategy formulation initiatives among others. Specifically, a combination of hands on working on complex electronics solutions, Applied Smart Card Solutions and IT Industry gives Anurag a unique strength to understand and convert business opportunities in the current Digital & IOT market space.
His previous organizations worked at include HCL Technologies (Multiple responsibilities including Head of Business Acquisition and Crafting Growth Strategy for IT Infrastructure Business), HCL Perot Systems in several roles (Heads of Marketing, Operations, Strategy, Vertical Head, Europe Pre-Sales Head); Schlumberger (Smart Cards Solutions), Max India for Motorola and AMD Semiconductor business lines and ‘Center for Applied Research in Electronics’ (CARE) at IIT-Delhi.
Anurag is an M.Phil. in Computer Science (Director’s Medal), M.Sc. in Physics & Electronics (With Distinction), both from Dayalbagh Educational Institute, Agra (Deemed University) and MBA (Masters in Business Administration) from FMS, Delhi University.
Mr Vartul Mittal
Technology & Innovation Specialist,
Formerly - IBM, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Coca Cola
Vartul Mittal is a leading Technology & Innovation Specialist and a seasoned Digital Transformation & Automation leader.
He has been honoured with the following eminent awards in Digital Business Transformation
& AI –
1. Special Achievement Award in Artificial Intelligence at 1st AICRA (All India Council for Robotics & Automation) Global Summit & Awards’19
2. Most Innovative Digital Leader of the Year at 5th Inflection Summit & Awards’19 3. Smart Data Centre Management Award at 5th Edition of Data Centre Summit &
Awards’18
He has 13+ years of strong Global Business Transformation experience in Management Consulting and with Global—
Capability Centres with a remit to drive understanding and deliver Business Operations &
Technology Strategy solutions globally. He has delivered engagements for Fortune 500 organizations such as IBM, Barclays, Coca Cola India, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland, Standard Life Insurance and Citibank. He has lived and worked across multiple countries and cultures namely South East Asia, UK, Europe, Australia and USA involving senior client stakeholders from various industries like Financial Services Sector, FMCG and Retail. He has delivered engagements for Fortune 500 organizations such as Coca Cola India, Kotak Mahindra Bank, IBM, Royal Bank of Scotland, Standard Life Insurance, Citibank and Barclays.
Last but not the least, he is a notable keynote speaker on Robotics Process Automation, AI and Innovation among leading International Conferences and premier universities.
Mr Prashant Garg Partner
EY
Currently serving as Partner, ay EY India, Mr. Garg has ~20 years of working experience in the areas of Information Technology and Services
Mr Kapil Chawla
Head, Ecosystem Partnerships Digital Transformation Office Cisco Systems– India & SAARC
Mr. Chawla, Retail and Consumer verticals for Cisco's Digital Transformation team in India and the SAARC region. Mr. Chawla has more than 15 years of experience in Internet & Mobile industry spread across Payments, Media & Entertainment and e-commerce, across operational & strategic roles. Keen interest in analysing business plans/models, disruptive innovation & scalability of business ideas.
Mr Deepak Maheshwari
Director - Government Affairs, India, ASEAN & China, Symantec Corporation
Deepak Maheshwari heads government affairs across India, ASEAN and China in Symantec, the global leader in cyber security. With over two decades of experience as a public policy and regulatory affairs professional, he has a keen interest in the interplay of technological innovation and socio-economic development. An oft-invited speaker, his articles, views and quotes have been widely and frequently published.
He has been closely associated with various industry and professional bodies.
Currently, he is a member of the committee on Artificial Intelligence set up by the government of India, co-chair of US India Business Council’s Digital Economy Committee and adviser to the Global Public Policy Committee of IEEE. Till recently, he was the Global Chair of the IEEE Internet Initiative and also the chair of BSA Asia Pacific Policy Committee as well as that of AMCHAM’s Cyber Security Committee. Earlier, he served as the elected secretary of ISP Association of India (ISPAI) for two consecutive terms. He co-founded National Internet eXchange of India, NIXI and helped form the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI).
A graduate in engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, he is also a law graduate and has earlier worked in Microsoft, MasterCard, Sify and HCL.
Mr Bhairav Acharya
Public Policy Manager, India and South Asia Facebook
Mr. Acharya works in the areas of privacy and data governance, content regulation, emerging technologies, cyber security, internet governance, digital economy, and related fields at Facebook. I am a common lawyer with degrees in law and technology from UC Berkeley and the National Law School of India. In fourteen years of professional experience, he has:
• argued before the Indian Supreme Court
• deposed before parliamentary committees
• served on government advisory bodies
• worked with an American tech policy think tank
• worked in-house with a multinational technology company
• drafted proposed legislation
• published extensively on technology policy and free speech
• worked closely with civil society and international organizations
• spoken at conferences and lectured at universities
• managed a pro bono legal services non-profit; and more.
Dr. Deepak Garg
Director leadingindia.ai (Leading the Change in Institutions for Excellence)
Head, Computer Science and Engineering, Bennett University and Director, NVIDIA-Bennett Center of Research on Artificial Intelligence
He is leading the largest Development, Skilling and Research initiative in AI and deep learning in India with more than 1000 institutional collaborators. He is a chief consultant for algorithmguru.com, a resource for algorithms. Deepak is considered as one of the Algorithm and Deep Learning Gurus in India. He has received many awards for his teaching skills and innovative pedagogy and is admired for change management in higher education. He has done his Ph.D. in efficient algorithm design in 2006. His active research interests are designing efficient deep learning algorithms. He is Senior Member of IEEE and ACM and Life Member of CSI and IETE. He served as chair of IEEE Computer Society, India from 2012-2016 and on the Board of governors of IEEE Education Society, USA (2013-15). He has handled funding of around INR 500 million including RAENG, UK on MOOCs, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. He has 100+ publications with 650+ citations and Google h-index of 13. In his 20 years of experience he has delivered 300+ invited talks and conducted 50+ Workshops and 15+ Conferences across the country. He has Supervised 13 Ph.D. and 35 PG students. Deepak is an ABET PEV, NBA and NAAC expert and served on ABET criteria committee of Computing Accreditation Commission. He is Chair, Steering Committee for Annual IEEE International Advance Computing Conference (IACC-2009-ongoing) and IEEE MOOCs, Innovation and Technology in Education Conference (MITE-2012-Ongoing). Deepak is an active blogger in Times of India with the tag name of “Breaking Shackles”.
Prof. (Dr.) S S Agarwal Director
KIIT Group of Colleges, Gurgaon
Dr. Shyam Sunder Agrawal is a World renowned scientist in the area of Acoustic Speech and Communication. He obtained Ph.D. in 1970 from Aligarah Muslim University, India. Having research experience of about 45 years first as a Scientist at the Central Electronics Engineering Research Institute Pilani and subsequently as Emeritus Scientist of CSIR and then as an Advisor to Centre for Development of Advance Computing (CDAC), Noida. He has worked as Guest Researcher at MIT, Cambridge and UCLA in U.S.A. and visited many universities and research institutions in USA, UK, France, Germany, Sweden, Italy, Japan and other Asian countries. His major areas of interest are Speech Perception, Speech Synthesis, Speech/ Speaker recognition and Development of Speech Data Bases in Indian Languages. He has published/ presented about 200 papers in National / International Journals and Conferences.
Received large no. of Hons. and Awards. Some of these include Sir C.V. Raman Award by Acoustical Society of India, Internationally Eminent Acoustician Award and Gold Medal from Acoustic Foundation and Acoustic Society of America, Honored to deliver Several memorial lectures such as B.D. Chaudhuri Memorial lecture, M. S. Narayanan Memorial lecture, Rais Ahmed Memorial lecture, Best project Awards by CEERI, Achut Menon Award and many other citations. He was awarded Senior Fulbright Fellowship, U.N.D.P Fellowships and Sr. East-West Centre Fellowship. He is a Distinguished Fellow of IETE, and fellow of CSI, ASI, ISPhS and other professional societies. He has been President of the Acoustical Society of India and the Board Member of International Commission on Acoustics, Vice President of ISPhS (USA), Vice- President and Chairman of BOE,ICC, ADEC and ELAN of IETE. He is also Country representative of O-COCOSDA, U-Star consortium & member of Indo-Japan Forum of NICT. He is currently working as Director General of KIIT Group of Institution and steering their Academic &
Research programs in Institutions of Higher Learning and engaged in several national and international collaborative research projects and Advisor to various National and International Institutions.
Mr Sourabh Gupta Co-Founder & CEO Vernacular.ai
A graduate from IIT Rourkee, Vernacular.ai, a platform that uses NLP to build multi-lingual chatbots for businesses, has raised seed funding from Kalaari Capital's K-Start.
Mr. Himanshu Sharma, CEO and Founder, Devanagari
Mr. Himanshu Sharma, CEO and Founder, Devanagari- Mr. Sharma has more than 9 years of experience as Entrepreneur. As a passion for technology, he started the journey of Devnagri a year back. Being a people’s person he truly beliefs technology makes a huge difference in people’s lives.
Mr Ankit Prasad Founder & CEO
Bobble AI Technologies
At the age of 24, Ankit Prasad founded Bobble Keyboard and leads the team as the CEO, backed by 16 reputed angel investors, and SAIF Partners, India’s most successful VC fund. His team works on bleeding edge technology to make mobile conversations expressive and personal. With just one selfie, users get free unlimited personalized stickers and GIFs- with their faces, in dozens of languages, in real-time.
Bobble is the most viral and engaged keyboard App with over 15 million users gained in less than three years of launch. The highest rated Android app (4.6/5) at its scale has the youngest user-base in India; 90% users are under 29! Its Net Promoter Score is ~64, and its engagement and growth are comparable to the best Apps globally.
Ankit’s leadership has enabled the team to partner with top names like Foxconn, Apple, Baidu, movie production houses, and several teams in the IPL, the biggest sporting event in India. He believes that any product that empowers users to deploy input modes (keyboard, camera, voice) would better understand and influence users' behavior including content, conversation, and commerce. The work being done by Ankit’s team to scale Artificial Intelligence features like, voice-to-text, next word predictions, transliteration, etc. across language barriers will surely boost India's productivity.
Ankit has a longstanding interest in technology & startup. He wrote his first program at the age of 6 and was formally appreciated by the District Collector. By the age of 16, he had made his first technology startup profitable. He dropped out from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi to pursue his entrepreneurial ambitions. At IIT Delhi, he won several major awards including Best Fresher, and Best Chief Editor. Ankit has a ferocious appetite for risk-taking and pursues objectives with relentless resourcefulness.
