Listen to these experts talk at MobileSparks 2016
There has been a surge at building and usage of apps. Andreessen Horowitz has predicted that global smartphone adoption will attain a global compound annual growth rate of 10.41 percent in the next seven years. By 2020, 80 percent of the adults on earth will own a smartphone.
Our very own country has been leading the way in this smartphone revolution, and we expect the 2016 edition of MobileSparks to be bigger and better. The key speakers this year are:
Rajiv Bansal - Joint Secretary, Department of Electronics and Information Technology
Rajiv Bansal, (IAS 1998, Nagaland), has served as Secretary at Central Electrical Regulatory Commission since April, 2013. He has had an illustrious and long career, holding various key positions like that of Director of HMT, Air India Limited, HMT Machine Tools Limited. Bansal has also served as part-time Official Director of Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd and has been the non-executive director of Andrew Yule & Company. He also has been Joint Secretary of Ministry of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises at Department of Heavy Industry.
Deep Kalra - Chairman & Group CEO, Make My Trip
Deep Kalra went to St. Stephens College, Delhi in 1987 to pursue Bachelors in Economics, from where he went onto pursuing an MBA degree at IIM-A.
He worked with ABN AMRO Bank and, as most of us are, was really excited about his first job. But after three years, a sense of incompleteness set in and he decided banking was not something he wanted to do for the rest of his life. Deep quit ABN AMRO and took a break for about a year to figure out what to do next.
While on his break, Deep got a number of well-paying marketing jobs but he decided to pick the craziest of all.
“I wanted to do something touch-feel, on-the-ground kind of a thing and hence I took up the job of bringing AMF Bowling Inc., to India,” said Deep.
After AMF, Deep could have started up something else but he felt he needed some more corporate experience before diving into it. The year was 1999 and looking for opening up new avenues, the Internet was the obvious answer. And after a little over a year with GE, Deep felt he was ready to take the plunge. MakeMyTrip was born in the year 2000. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Kunal Shah - Founder & Chairman, FreeCharge
Kunal Shah, founder and Chairman of FreeCharge, is an unlikely entrepreneur, if you go by usual parameters. He doesn’t come from the regular MBA or engineering background. He in fact is a BA in Philosophy from Wilson College, Mumbai, and dropped out of MBA from Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies. He founded FreeCharge in 2010, and in 2015, the company was acquired by Snapdeal for a whooping $400 million, lauded as one of the highest Internet acquisitions in India.
Ritesh Agarwal - Founder & CEO, OYO
The story of OYO and its 23-year-old founder and CEO Ritesh Agarwal, is India’s very own poster boy of a college dropout who went ahead to start a successful company. Born in Odisha, Ritesh was a part of the Thiel Fellowship for under 20 entrepreneurs. Started as Oravel in 2012, OYO Rooms today is present across over 200 Indian cities and has even expanded its presence in Southeast Asia.
Mohit Bhatnagar - Managing Director, Sequoia Capital
Presently, the Managing Director at Sequoia Capital India, Mohit Bhatnagar is on the board of Prizm Payments, Comviva, Micromax Mobile, IMImobile, Prizm Payments, Ujjivan Microfinance, Comviva, One Assist, Citrus Payments, Knowlarity, Near, Shuttl, Octro, Zomato, Daily Hunt, Clever Tap and Nearbuy.
Mohit has also co-founded a wireless startup in the US – Bright pod, and has served as Senior VP at Bharti Airtel.
Taru Kapoor- India Head, Tinder
Before becoming the head of Tinder India, Taru was an investment analyst with Sequoia India. A graduate from Harvard and IIT, Delhi, Taru was also a strategy consultant with The Boston Consulting Group. Taru comes with deep experience in product, growth strategy, business development, financial modelling and planning.
Jitendra Gupta- Founder, Citrus Pay
The founder and MD of Citrus Pay, Jitendra Gupta has over 12 years of experience in the financial and banking service industry and is believed to be an expert in the payments industry. Prior to founding Citrus, Jitendra, was working at ICICI Bank and was part of the founding team of the investment banking and retail cross-sell division.
Deepak Abbot - SVP, Products Growth, Paytm
Deepak Abbot has also served as the head of product marketing at Paytm. He comes with over 17 years of experience in mobile marketing, data analysis and growth hacking. Before this second stint at Paytm, Deepak was working at Times Internet. He has also worked with organisations like Reliance Entertainment Digital as Chief Product Officer, Product Executive at CyberMedia, UX consultant at Satyam Computers and General Product Manager at Zapak.
Varsha Tagare - Senior Director, Qualcomm Ventures
A senior director at Qualcomm Ventures, Varsha Tagare was at Intel Capital investing in both Indian and US companies. Her current investments include Birds Eye Systems, Housing.com, Kirusa, AppsDaily and Apalya. She has also invested in companies like Pollex, Mobile365, JAMDAT, MCX and Canesta.
Sanjay Sethi - CEO and co-founder, Shop Clues
The founder and CEO of ShopClues, Sanjay Sethi is an IIT-BHU and IIT-Delhi alumnus. He has worked at companies like Tradebeam and eBay. Sanjay founded ShopClues along with Radhika Aggarwal and Sandeep Aggarwal in November 2011.
Dippak Khurana - co-founder & CEO, VMAX
The co-founder and CEO of Vmax, Dippak for the past 18 years has been focussed on new media and business models across mobile and Internet technologies. He has over the years built cross-functional understanding across products, tech and business models. He also founded Vserv in 2010, and in 2015 he founded VMAX.
Jon von Tetzchner - co-founder and CEO, Vivaldi
A programmer and businessman, Jon Von Tetzchner, founded Vivaldi Technologies and also launched Vivaldi.net, a community site. He is also the co-founder and CEO of Opera Software.
Amar Nagaram - Vice President, Engineering, Flipkart
The VP of Engineering at Flipkart, Amar Nagaram is passionate about building mobile and web products. He has also mentored and been advisor to several startups. Prior to joining Flipkart, Amar was involved in strategy development for @WalmartLabs and was also instrumental in setting up @WalmartLabs India Centre of Excellence.
Karthee Madasamy - Vice President & Managing Director, India, Qualcomm Ventures
The VP and Managing Director of Qualcomm Ventures, Karthee Madasamy, has over 20 years of experience in the space of multimedia and wireless industries. He has also worked in management roles at various semiconductor startups and also in the space of product development. He also serves on the board of Deckapp, Capillary, Portea Medical, MapMyIndia, Tessolve and Zopnow.
Cheolwon (Charlie) Lee - founder and Chief Executive Officer, True Balance
The founder of True Balance, Cheolwon (Charlie) Lee has made Gurgaon his home for over a decade. He came to India in 2002, when working with Real Networks, operating under the brand WiderThan (Real Networks is a pioneer in audio streaming with its Real Player software). He was a partner for HelloTunes VAS for the telecom service providers in his role as Head of Real in India.
Sandipan Chattopadhyay- Ex-CTO, Justdial
The ex-CTO of JustDial, Sandipan Chattopadhay, has been associated with Justdial from 2009 to 2015. After that, he has been a mentor to startups, and co-founder and Director Engineering for Mihup and is also CEO of Xelpmoc Design and Tech.
Sahil Sani- CEO, Just Buy Live
Sahil Sini is a graduate from Boston College and also gained significant experience in distribution through his family business. He also is the director of Sahil International.
Saurabh Arora- CEO, Lybrate
The founder and CEO of Lybrate, Saurabh Arora has significant experience clocked at organisations like Facebook and also holds a degree from Columbia Business School
Manish Rathi- Co-founder & CEO, RailYatri
Manish Rathi on his LinkedIn profile says - “Co-founded Stelling Technologies with a primary goal of trying to look at and come up with innovative solutions addressing the needs of an increasingly mobile world. Solutions which harnesses the power of Mobility, Information, Intelligence, and Interoperability is what excites us at Stelling Technologies.”
Gaurav Agarwal - Co-founder & CEO, 1MG Technologies
Co-founder of 1mg, Gaurav Agarwal, shifted from HealthKArt to 1mg along with Prashant Tandon in 2015. Prior to 1mg and Healthkart, Gaurav was a part of Zynga.
Shilpa Singh - Product marketing and Brand Development Manager, Cube26
A graduate from Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, Shilpa Singh has worked for the likes of Infosys, Tantra Entertainment and has been a freelancer before joining Cube 26.
India's biggest mobile-focussed startup summit, MobileSparks 2016 is happening on November 18, 2016 (Friday) in New Delhi. About 600+ startup founders, hundreds of developers and a dozen VCs have already registered to attend the event.
Please join us by using the code MS16CTA40 to book your tickets here with a 40-percent discount.