Advisors

Mr Kuldip K Sharma - Advisor, Strategy & Finance

Mr Sharma is a senior banking professional with banking and finance certifications, with over 35 years of qualitative experience in the spectrum of leadership, general management, branch operations and marketing in the banking industry. Kuldip has hands-on experience in incubating, nurturing and developing businesses from inception to finish with good exposure to most geographical regions of the country.

Mr Sharma is a keen planner and strategist and a master at nurturing and steering teams. His forte is in building organizational capability and developing/managing human resources. Recognized by managements for exceptional performance in recording turnarounds and impacting bottom-lines, reflected in a number of unique and special awards throughout his career.

Mr Sharma has worked with both public and private sector banks and his last assignment was as Executive Director with a large old Private Sector bank. Mr Sharms is a Post Graduate in Physics, Economics and a MBA, CAIIB

S K Virmani – Legal Counsel

Mr Virmani is an ardent and successful investor in the Rural and Real Estate verticals. Besides being an investor in SeedKapital, Mr. Virmani is a practising lawyer with an experience of about 32 years in the field of corporate, litigation, taxation, consumer, property related matters, disputes resolution, land acquisition etc. He has been practising in Delhi High Court and Supreme Court of India. He has been retained by corporates like Bharti Airtel Limited and its group companies, Emaar MGF Lands Pvt. Ltd., Techpark India Pvt. Ltd, Duraline India and many others. Mr. Virmani has also been ratained by many group housing societies for their legal work.

Mr. Virmani was Secretary of Delhi Tax Bar Association for two years and also served the Bar as its Vice President. He has authored several books and is also associated with various journals at Delhi High Court and Supreme Court.

Mr. Virmani got a law degree from Kurukshetra University in 1979 and graduated from Dyal Singh College in the year 1976.

Sunil Sapra - Advisor

Sunil Sapra is the Country Manager- India/ SAARC with Astaro AG. Astro is the most popular European brand for internet security solutions. Sunil is an engineer from BITS, Pilani and over last 16 years, has developed expertise as start up specialist for regional operations of IT product multinationals in the field of ERP, Data Storage and Data Security. He started VERITAS Software’s North India operations back in 2002, built Hitachi Data Systems’ North India operations in 2005 and most recently turned around WatchGuard Technologies’ India business.

Sunil is a passionate entrepreneur and co-founded RISAN management consulting. RISAN provides India entry solutions to niche IT product multinationals as the India JV partner and also provides professional & success coaching to organizations and individuals.

He has also co-founded Asia Entry Pte Ltd. - A Singapore based investment and consulting company providing Asia business development expertise, joint ventures and investments to multinational and Indian IT product companies.

Amit Saxena - Advisor, Micro Finance

Amit Saxena is CEO & Founder at KARVY Finance, a NBFC supported by Private Equity Partners & KARVY Group, one of India’s largest Financial Services Intermediaries in Stocks & Commodities Broking, Registry Services, Wealth Management & other capital markets activities. KARVY Finance is focused on Capital Markets Finance, Corporate Finance, Mortgages & Retail Finance products with a target of $100 million loan portfolio by FY’11 and a $ 1 billion loan portfolio by FY’14.

Amit did his schooling at Doon School Dehradun, obtained a B.E. (Chemical Engg.) degree from B.I.T.S Pilani, worked in I.T. sales for a year and went on to do a MBA from IIM, Lucknow with a ‘Summer Associate’ stint at Citibank.

Amit started his career in 1998 and joined the ‘Start up Core Team’ at AVCO Financial Services (later Associates First Capital Corporation), a multinational financial services organization setting up base in India. Amit was involved in setting up the national distribution for Auto Finance, Sales Finance, Mortgages & Personal Loan products for the organization.

Post merger of Associates First Capital Corporation with Citigroup worldwide in 2001, Amit continued to hold various leadership positions including Division Business Head, National Product Head and Project Leader for country start ups in Asia Pacific region. In his last role at Citi, Amit was part of the Management Committee and served as the Vice President and Division Head for the largest and most profitable West India division of the country comprising over 100 branches with 500 direct and over 3000 outsourced employees.

Amit likes to play chess & golf and enjoys reading. Amit believes that one has to shape one’s own destiny regardless of the environment and contribute towards common good to the best of one’s abilities. In this struggle lies the source of indestructible happiness and goal of life.

Anurag Batra – Advisor, Media & Entertainment

Mr. Anurag Batra is a B. Tech in Computer Sciences, a degree, which he acquired before pursuing his post-graduation from the prestigious Management Development Institute (MDI), Gurgaon. He is an entrepreneur, journalist, internet evangelist and media expert and the Chairman and Managing Director of the exchange4media group, which includes exchange4media.com, India's leading media industry website, PITCH- India's only Advertising, Marketing and Media magazine, Impact the marketing weekly, Franchise Plus - India's Business Opportunity Magazine and Realty Plus - India's leading monthly real estate magazine. Batra has a multi-industry experience, having worked with India's largest advertising and media services firm HTA (now JWT and Mindshare), and in the Real Estate industry.

Mr. Anurag Batra is a member of the Sales & Marketing committee of the Delhi Management Association and on the Executive Committee of the Association of Indian Magazines (AIM). Mr. Batra has been regularly called upon to speak at various international forums including the prestigious NAB(National Association of Broadcasters) in Las Vegas and The American Business Media Forum in New York and Florida, and he contributes extensively to various national and international publications. In 2006, the prestigious Management Development Institute (MDI) and Mr. Batra's Alma matter awarded him the "Most Distinguished Alumni of the Decade Award".

Mr. Batra also writes an extremely monthly column "Enterprisingly Yours" for the entrepreneurship Magazine DARE.

Prasanta Misra – Advisor, Agriculture & Irrigation

Prasanta is well known for his pioneering contributions in the area of Plasticulture and is better known as the father of Plsticulture in india.He is the founder of National Committee on the Use of Plastics in Agriculture(NCPA) which is now renamed as NCPAH in the Minisrtry of Agriculture,Government of India.He has close to 38 years of close association with Indian agriculture and rural engineering.He served as Joint Secretary ,NCPA for more than 25 years-since its inception.His dedication and efforts have resulted in large scale adoption of modern technologies in the agriculture and horticulture sector such as drip and sprinkler irrigation ,green house and shade nets,lowtunnels,lining applications,post harvest technologies as well as a range of modern agriculture technologies leading to significant water conservation,improvement in quality and quantity of agricultural produce etc.

Earlier he had been working with Maharashtra Agro Industries Development Corporation,Indian Petrochemicals Corporation and had served as Vice President-all india plasticulture market development with Reliance Industries Limited

Prasanta is presently working as Chief Consultant to the Government of India in the Ministry of Agriculture.He is also a free lancing consultant to several organisations both in the private and public domain.His main interest is rural development,rural engineering for improving farm income,value addition in the agri sector,micro planning for farm sector as well as information networking using IT technologies for last mile knowledge sharing as well as end to end planning.

Prasanta is an Engineer from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur(1967-72 batch)followed by Management specialisation from Indian Institute of Management,Ahmedabad(1972-73).

Hemant Batra – Advisor, LPO

Hemant K. Batra is an international Strategist Business, FDI, Corporate & Commercial Lawyer, with practice concentrated across the Globe in general, specifically in India/South-Asia. He is Lead Partner at Kaden Boriss Legal LLP, a Corporate/Commercial law firm. Apart from being in law practice, he is also fond of writing & speaking on current topics of general importance be it on legal or social or political issues.

He is the elected Secretary General of SAARCLAW (South Asian Association For Regional Co-operation In Law) and enjoys a quasi-diplomatic status. SAARCLAW is an Association of the Legal communities of the SAARC countries namely Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan & Sri Lanka (Japan and China being observer members). He is also the Chairperson of the Organizing Council of International Infrastructure & Construction Law Arbitration Moot (IICLAM) founded by National University of Singapore, Singapore International Arbitration Centre and Kaden Boriss. National Law School of Delhi has also joined IICLAM as one of its partners. He is member of the Advisory Board of Organization for International Cooperation (OIC), based in Marlton, New Jersey, USA, which is a citizen based, non-partisan, non-profit organization dedicated to solving greatest international challenges.

He is the Managing Head-Legal, Kaden Boriss Consulting [affiliate of Kaden Boriss (UK) Ltd.], a legal/knowledge process outsourcing & legal services Company engaged in undertaking assignments for both Indian and overseas clients seeking to outsource their legal, para-legal documentation & documentation management, regulatory and compliance work. Its head office is located in the corporate metropolis - Gurgaon being part of the National Capital Region (Delhi). He is Director-Legal with Kaden Boriss (UK) Ltd. incorporated in the United Kingdom and Kaden Boriss Services Pte Ltd. incorporated in Singapore.

He began his legal career in 1991, when he was admitted to the prestigious New Delhi Bar; and inducted in one of India’s largest firms of Solicitors - Shroff & Co. In 1995 he joined Kesar Dass B. & Associates (KDB) as a Partner and rose to become Managing Partner of its Corporate Office in 2000. In 2005, he took over as the Director – Legal Services of Kaden Boriss Consulting Private Limited. In 2006, the Corporate Office of Kesar Dass got renamed as Käden Boriss.

He has written several publications as well as lectured widely. He is a visiting Guest Speaker to various international universities and institutions. Until 2010, he has spoken as a Speaker at more than 100 international conferences, seminars and workshops on varied topics of commercial importance.

He has travelled extensively around the world including USA, UK, Australia, China, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Burma, South Asia, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Holland, France, Germany, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Hungary etc.

Deepankar Sengupta – Advisor, Financial Services, ITeS

Deepankar Sengupta is a part of the global leadership team within the Financial Services Practice at IBM. He brings to bear over 15 years of diverse experience having worked in companies like IBM, Accenture and Citibank. Deepankar's experience has a unique blend of global consulting and sales leadership roles with Fortune 100 firms, combined with some solid hands on grassroots level entrepreneural background in the IT enabled services and social enterprise space. While in India, he was involved with some of the pioneering e-governance and mission mode projects across the country like the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan, Panchayati Raj and various state government initiatives in the municipal and city governance areas. Deepankar was one of the first entrepreneurs in the country to create from scratch a world class IT enabled services company in the healthcare data processing space.

Deepankar's consulting experience includes leadership roles around developing and nurturing C-level client relationships, business development, creating from scratch cross-cultural, multi-country teams and profitable services business units across the Americas, EMEA and Asia Pacific. His domain expertise spans across various industries like Banking, Financial services, Travel and Transportaion, Chemicals, Petroleum and Natural Resources.

His interests beyond work include Philosophy, Humanism and participating in community based activities around peace, culture and education. An IIT Delhi alumnus, Deepankar currently lives in Singapore with his wife and daughter.

Sujit Panigrahi – Advisor, Technology

Sujit is currently Co-founder and CTO at Convergent Technologies (CT) and Co-founder and COO at Sequoia Fitness and Sports Technology [S-FAST].

Sujit takes deep interest in Technology, Design, Sports and Employability.

As the CTO at Convergent Technologies (CT), he and his team enable organizations across the globe identify key building blocks and to develop optimal solutions with low total cost of ownership. CT has expertise in Enterprise Applications, Content Management, CRM, Line of Business Integration, TV Graphics, Real-time Sports and Parliamentary Election Results Systems amongst other Technology Solutions. In 2005, CT launched "SmoothGreen" - a Content Management System.

As the COO at Sequoia Fitness and Sports Technology Private Limited (S-FAST), Sujit and his team have launched LivePLUS, India’s 1st Fitness Assessment, Intervention and Monitoring (AIM), which aims at improve the Fitness Levels of School Students across the country. LivePLUS aims at making a difference to the Fitness Levels of 34 Crore young children over a period of time.

Prior to this, Sujit was the Head of Technology (Additional Director General - Technology) for Commonwealth Games Delhi 2010. Sujit and his team were responsible for planning, designing, commissioning, operations and decommissioning of a fully-integrated Multi-sport, Multi-venue Technology Infrastructure in all Competition Venues, Training Venues, Games Family Village, International Broadcasting Center (IBC), Main Press Center (MPC), Technology Operations Center and other Venues to support the conduct of the games and to deliver results from each of the 23 Venues to the world. His first organisation, AmSoft Systems did the Television Graphics for Barcelona Olympics 1992, in collaboration with PESA Systems, Spain. This system was reused at Atlanta Olympics 1996 and Sydney Olympics 2000. Sujit has worked with ESPN Star Sports, NDTV, DD and Zee TV in developing TV Graphics for delivering Television Graphics and Real-time Results Systems and Services for Sports and Parliamentary Elections.

Sujit has done both Master of Engineering (Systems and Information) and Master of Management Studies from BITS Pilani, India.

Bharat Joshi – Advisor

As Director for Associated Container Terminals Limited and group companies, Bharat is involved in new product development, projects and growth & investment strategies. Prior to joining ACTL, Bharat worked with Maersk Logistics during 2001 till 2004 in Mumbai, Nhava Sheva port and in New Delhi. He has trained with Mr. Pradip Shah at IndAsia Fund Advisors, an investment bank in Bombay and with Konsortuim Logistic Berhad, Malaysia's leading logistics company.

Bharat is a Radio Broadcaster for AIR (All India Radio), and regularly writes for various print and online publications, including Wall Street Journal and Containerisation International. Bharat is considered a key thinker on various subjects, and has addressed fora in India, China and Slovenia. He is on board of the India Supply Chain Council, and has also been acknowledged in UNCTAD's World Investment Report 2006.

Bharat is a graduate in B.Sc. (Hons.) Business and Management Sciences from the University of Bradford, UK. He has completed an advanced course in Supply Chain Management from the Institute of Logistics and Transport, UK. The European Logistics Board also accredits him as a European Senior Logistician.

Dr. Ankush Sabharwal – Advisor, Healthcare Finance and Strategy

Ankush serves on the board of advisors with an intent to grow the medical outsourcing business at HarVa. After finishing his degree in medicine Ankush got an opportunity to work on a few merger and JV deals in the healthcare industry while practicing regular medicine. Ankush from then became involved in the growth of his family business of running and operating hospitals.

That’s what made him shift from medicine to Healthcare strategy. He went on to pursue an MBA from CASE Western Reserve UNIVERSITY in corporate finance and strategy. He completed a fellowship in Healthcare Market Development from Cleveland Clinic, one of America’s leading healthcare systems.

After coming back to India he was involved in an independent consultancy project in turn key hospital projects. He now serves on the Board of Jeewan Mala Hospital and routinely is looking after growth and new business opportunities.

Prof. Suneel Sharma – Advisor, Education

Professor in the area of IT & Entrepreneurship at GDGWI-Lancaster University, UK.Dr. Suneel Sharma has obtained Integrated Master's degree in Technology from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani and Ph.D. in the area of Computational Finance. He has also completed Entrepreneurship Educator Course jointly from Indian Institute of Management – Bangalore and Stanford University.

He has taught advanced courses in IT & Entrepreneurship. His research interest includes Financial Methods and Computational Models. His intellectual contributions have been published as refereed articles and papers at national and international journals. He has four edited books to his credit. He has guided research projects at University of Nottingham, University of Wales, UK. He is Reviewer of many articles for the Journal of Data Mining & Knowledge Discovery, Norwell, USA.

Other than teaching, he is actively involved in doing Social work in developing education at rural places of Rajasthan & Haryana. He has been nominated as Resource Person by The Resource Alliance UK.

Arpita Verma - Advisor

Arpita is the Director of the Oscar Group, a leading manufacturer and marketer, since over two decades, of consumer electronics in India. For the last 9 years, Arpita has been involved in the business development and launch of a host of new technology products, under the "Oscar" brand specifically focusing on the rural and semi urban sector, making Oscar a leader in the vale-for-money segment.

Before this, Arpita was the Vice President, E-Commerce of a 100% women owned health care start up, based out of Chicago, USA. She was instrumental in garnering venture funding and forging strategic partnerships for the market development for an innovative, first-of-its-kind, concept in health care kits.

Arpita is an MBA in finance and marketing from University of Chicago, USA and a Graduate in Economics (Hons) from St. Stephens, Delhi University

Smita Bankoti – LPO Advisor

Smita is a practising advocate with nine years of work experience having practised in Supreme Court of India, High Courts-Delhi, Ranchi and Bhubhneswar as well as the Trial Courts and varied Tribunals such as: Central Administrative Tribunal, State and National Commission, Debt Recovery Tribunals etc. Smita is an empanelled advocate with Union Public Service Commission (UPSC), Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL) and with Steel Authority of India Ltd. (SAIL).

Smita is a Legal Consultant/Advisor for High Point Rendal (I) Ltd. and Adhunik Group of Companies. Smita was also an Associate Counsel for the NGO, Common Cause and filed several Public Interest Litigation (PIL’s), covering a wide array of social issues such as health, safety, medicines etc. and extended legal assistance in preparing the report of the People’s Commission on Patent Laws for India prepared by National Working Group on Patent Laws and Public Interest Legal Support and Research Centre (PILSARC). Smita completed Bachelors Degree in Law from the Faculty of Law, University of Delhi and Masters Degree in Law from London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), UK.

Sheetal Thakur – Community Farming and Eco-Tourism Advisor

Sheetal Thakur is Founder and CEO of Freedom2Be, “Women on the move” a company that is into corporate leadership outdoor trainings especially for women. Sheetal is a born adventurer endowed with passionate love for nature and the animal world. Product of Sacred Hearts Dalhosie and Army Public Schools and a graduate in History (Hons) from Indra Prastha College Delhi. Played for J&K in National Junior Women Cricket, NCC ‘C’ certificate holder with ‘A’ grade, Best Young Lion for 2 consecutive yrs, a sharp shooter with 2cm grouping and has done Basic and Advanced Mountaineering course at NIM Uttarkashi.