TheTechPod

Sandeep Sekhar is a rare blend of an entrepreneur. He has actively contributed towards strengthening India’s ties with other nations like the US, South Africa and Fiji through his ventures.

Currently, Chairman & Global CEO of C Ahead Digital, a top global IT Consulting Company, Sandeep founded the company in 2004. In its initial days while exporting C Ahead services to US, Sandeep also formed an entity C Ahead Fiji. The entity facilitated the Indo-Fijiyan relationship and was fundamental in creating an IT Park initiative’s in Fiji. Sandeep has also actively participated in state delegations to South Africa as part of IBSA and BRICS programmes and has promoted business & cultural ties between the two countries.

Advait Kumar is the Co-Founder at Swajal. He is a young technocrat with a vision of community building. Advait Kumar is the Co-founder at Swajal Waters, India’s leading IoT-based public water purification company. Also, he spearheads technological innovations, business development, management, at Swajal with a singular vision of making clean drinking water available to everyone and eliminating the developing water crisis in the country.

Counting Penn State University as his alma mater, Advait is electrical engineering and economics graduate and has successfully pursued his higher education in Economics from the globally leading varsity. There, he co-founded and incubated Swajal in its first seed stage. He also led the development of multiple prototypes for Swajal’s IoT platform.

Gaurav Singh is the founder and CEO of Verloop.io - a customer support automation platform. He founded Verloop in 2015. Gaurav did his primary schooling at Rewa, a small town in India, but quickly picked a fondness for programming and technology. MagicTiger acquired his first company, GoDeliver and he founded Verloop.io promptly after.

Gaurav is a serial entrepreneur and a developer by profession. He fell in love with coding at the age of 13, and has extensive experience in designing scalable systems, personalization at scale and looks at company strategy and growth. He balances work with his passion for endurance cycling.

Gaurav has seen first-hand the challenges that growing companies face at every juncture. In this age of instant gratification, one of the biggest challenges, especially in mature markets, is engaging customers and building loyalty.

Aditya Jhaveri is the Founder & CEO of BLOX. He started as a single real estate broker by sheer chance. Over next 4 years, he did a lot of brokerage, bulk sales & other services for developers as a boutique firm. In 2016, Aditya cofounded Satellite Builders Pvt Ltd., to foray into real estate development at the age of 25. Over the last 5 years, SBPL has acquired 9 assets in residential and slum redevelopment. And, they have 3 active assets on the verge of market launch – Mulund, Tardeo and Khar which comprise of approx. 0.5 million sq. ft. saleable area. 

Aditya is an expert in slum and residential redevelopment. And, has a 100% consent and confidence of his rehab members. Whether society tenants or slum, which is quite rare in such large scale. The ability to manage 500 families, approx. 2000 people and have them out on rent, without conflict, is something he is very proud of.

Edifying over 1.3 million investors in India with in-depth market insights, Pranjal Kamra is the Founder and CEO of Finology, India’s biggest financial education and one-stop investment platform. At Finology, Pranjal holds the baton for Strategic Initiatives, Capital Allocation, and is also the face of the brand on its YouTube channel. 

The foray of Pranjal to the equity market was rather coincidental as he was still pursuing B.A. L.L.B. (Hons.) from Hidayatullah National Law University, Raipur back then. The market first caught his attention while watching a TV show with his father. After depicting interest, his father gave him the opportunity to manage a sum of Rs. 20,000. Within 10 months, Pranjal multiplied the investment by 10-fold and got hooked onto the market thereafter.

Hardika Shah is the Founder & CEO of Kinara Capital. Prior to launching Kinara Capital, she spent two decades as a management consultant with Accenture. Driving billion-dollar client projects across multiple industries around the globe. She has a decade of involvement in the social entrepreneurship field as a mentor with Santa Clara University, Stanford University, Accenture Development Partnerships, the Acumen Fund and Columbia Business School.

Recognized for her innovative and pioneering work with Kinara. Also, Hardika has received the Financial Inclusion Award from the Sankalp Foundation. And, she has won the people’s choice Live Audience Award at the Wall Street Journal Financial Inclusion event. Also, has received support from the Michel & Suzan Dell Foundation.

Ambi Subramaniam is the founder of SaPa India. His father and guru Dr. L. Subramaniam has been training Ambi Subramaniam from the age of three. Also, Ambi gave his first performance at the age of seven. He has received awards & recognitions including Ritz Icon of the Year Award, Rotary Youth Award, two Global Indian Music Awards.

Along with his sister Bindu, Ambi runs the SaPa in Schools program, which teaches music to over 35,000 young children in schools in India. He also co-hosts the “SaPa Show” on Sankara TV, which aims to teach global music to young children. Ambi is a youth delegate at the United Nations for the Sri Chinmoy Peace Meditation group.

Gaurav Jain is the Senior Vice President Technologies at IKS Health. He leads a strong technology team that has been instrumental in the design, development and delivery of emerging technology solutions and services that support the full spectrum of IKS Health services and its expanding business. Gaurav has been associated with IKS Health since its inception and has built the technology team from scratch. He has helped build credibility across the client base by providing innovative and robust solutions that address some of the most complex business issues faced by clients as well as improving the productivity and performance of internal staff.

Gaurav’s comprehensive grasp of evolving technology, years of experience in industry and management skills has enabled IKS Health to champion the use of innovative IT solutions. He is a passionate advocate of the need for organizations, particularly in the Healthcare sector, to develop the capacity to both imagine and execute technical innovation.

Bharat Panchal is working as a Chief Risk Officer for India, Middle East & Africa for FIS Global, a Fortune 300 and world’s no.1 fintech supporting the banking and payment services across the world. Bharat is responsible for creating risk culture at FIS and its ecosystem by way of designing, implementing and monitoring risk controls. During an interaction with TheTechPod - "Last decade was all about Digital Transformation in India", says Bharat Panchal.

Prior to FIS, he has been working as Chief of Risk Management for National Payments Corporation Of India (NPCI) for more than 8 years. He was one of the strong pillars since inception of NPCI, an umbrella organization for entire retail payments system in India.He managed key functions like Enterprise Risk Management, Compliance, Operational Risk Management, Ecosystem Cyber Security, Fraud Management and AML for NPCI and its ecosystem since inception of NPCI.

Anil Pinapala is the Founder & CEO of Vivifi Technologies. He is a FinTech entrepreneur with an experience of over 18 years in the Micro Loans/Digital Lending Industry. For the last couple of years, he has been working on expanding Credit Access in India with Vivifi – a FinTech NBFC – that offers Innovative Financial Products to customers across the Credit Spectrum with a focus on the Under-Served / Unserved Customers. Anil’s continuing vision has now enhanced the underlying Line of Credit by adding a payment layer to provide customers who never had credit with a true (Digital) Credit Card experience. During an interaction with TheTechPod - :India offers an excellent tech ecosystem on which lot of Fintech solutions can be built", says Anil Pinapala.

Prior to this venture, Anil founded and led TekFriday – a FinTech firm in Miami with an office in Hyderabad, that specialized in Lending Portfolio Management in digital sub-prime lending in USA. Tekfriday was eventually acquired by a Nashville-based Digital Lending company - Advance Financial. Anil currently sits on the board of this USD 250+ million revenue company along with being a minority owner of this company.