Dheeraj is an award-winning strategist in Asia. He has led his teams to win over 50 effectiveness awards including a Gold for Effectiveness at Cannes Lions 2017 and a Grand Effie at India Effies 2017. He has also won the Grand Prix at Spikes Asia 2019 and a Silver Lion at Cannes 2019. Dheeraj has been the recipient of the Jay Chiat Planning Award, the Asian Marketing Effectiveness Award and the Yahoo Big Idea Chair. He was on AdAge’s (India) list of Ad People of the Year, 2015 and amongst the top 40 advertising and marketing professionals in Asia Pacific in Campaign Asia’s top 40 under 40 list for 2014.

Under his leadership Leo Burnett India has been awarded the No 1. ‘Agency of the Year’ in Leo Burnett’s global network of 86 agencies. Leo Burnett also ranked in the Top - 5 agencies in the Economic Times, Brand Equity Agency of the Year ranking 2019. He is the author of two bestsellers on the Indian consumer market. His latest release, India Reloaded – Inside the Resurgent Indian Consumer Market is published by Westland in India and Palgrave, internationally. His previous book, Consumer India – Inside the Indian Mind and Wallet, published by John Wiley & Sons, is a recommended read at Wharton Business School’s course on emerging markets. Dheeraj has spoken at the Cannes Lions Festival of Advertising; the Next 4 Billion Conference, Denmark; Harvard India Conference, Boston and the Asian Marketing Effectiveness Festival amongst other platforms.

Sapna Chadha is the Senior Director of Marketing for both Southeast Asia and India at Google, currently based in Singapore. She joined Google 6 years ago as Head of SMB Marketing in India. Later, she became the Country Marketing Director of India and then moved to Singapore in 2017 when she took on responsibility for Southeast Asia as well. Starting her career in the US, she moved to Asia more than a decade ago to pursue her passion in and for the region and has not looked back now spending half of her career in Asia. She cares deeply about making the internet equitable from a gender diversity lens and has been a pioneer of the Internet Saathi program where we have trained over 30 million women on digital literacy.

Frederique Covington Corbett – who goes by "Freddie" - is "driven by the passionate pursuit of ideas that transform."

Freddie is the Senior Vice President, Global Brand Strategy and Planning based at Visa's headquarters in San Francisco. In this role, she is responsible for developing and overseeing global brand strategies that enable Visa's strategic priorities and support their deployment within all international regions and markets. She leads the company-wide efforts to evolve the Visa brand in the physical and digital world through a focus on corporate purpose.

Freddie holds a doctoral degree in "Global leadership and change" from Pepperdine University in Los Angeles, California. She received both a BA and MBA from La Sorbonne University (CELSA) in Paris, France. Furthermore, she is a graduate of the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government for the "Women and Power" Public Policy Program.

Freddie's work has been globally recognized with numerous awards. In 2020 and 2018, she made the list of Asia-Pacific's 50 most influential Chief Marketing Officers, as chosen by the editorial team at Campaign Asia.

Adam Morgan is the highly respected author of ‘Eating The Big Fish: How Challenger Brands can compete against Brand Leaders’, a seminal work in the world of branding. It not only popularised the term ‘challenger brand’ but outlined a process for doing more with less whose principles have been widely praised and much imitated around the world. His consultancy, eatbigfish, has created entirely new ways of thinking about the development of distinctive brands and the cultural conditions necessary to support them, reshaping how many large corporations have thought about structuring their businesses for success. His ideas will challenge your habits and the formulas of the past, provide new ways to think about insight, sources of growth, and sources of meaning for modern businesses and the people who run them. Adam is a highly sought after thought leader for business and marketing conferences around the world, inspiring them with his passion for brands, strategy and the challengers of the future.

Mr. Damodar Mall is the Chief Executive Officer of the Grocery Retail Business at the Reliance Retail Ltd.

An IIT-Bombay and IIM-Bangalore alumnus, Damodar worked in Sales and brand roles at Unilever prior to founding a retail venture that went on to become the DMart Supermarket Chain. He was then with Future Group in various leadership roles and was part of Kishore Biyani’s core team.

Damodar writes an invitation blog for Forbes India.

His first book SupermarketWala - Secrets to wining Consumer India, provides business insights for shaping consumer business and modern retail, in India. His recently published book “Be a SupermarketWala” is a business primer for supermarket entrepreneurs. Apart from English, this book is being published in Hindi, Marathi, Telugu & Gujarati.

He has received the Golden Spoon Award for the most admired Food & Grocery professional of the year, at the India Retail Forum.

Sameer Seth, Co-founder and Partner of Bombay Sweet Shop, O Pedro and The Bombay Canteen, has over 10 years of experience in the restaurant business in India and the USA. Driven by the passion to build restaurants that fit in the Indian context - both socially and culturally - he, along with his business partner Yash Bhanage, developed the concepts behind Bombay Sweet Shop, O Pedro and The Bombay Canteen.

Kannan has spent over 3 decades running diverse FMCG businesses including personal care, food and beverage, health care and home care.

He has held senior leadership positions including National Sales Head and Marketing Head at Hindustan Lever, VP Corporate Strategy at Unilever , Chief Operating Officer at Dabur, CEO of Innovative Foods and Operating Partner, India Equity Partners.

He presently represents Fireside on the boards of several companies in the portfolio including MamaEarth, YogaBar, Kapiva, Magic Crate and AnkaSummor.’

Rishad Tobaccowala is an author, speaker and advisor with four decades of experience specializing in helping people, organizations and teams re-invent themselves to remain relevant in changing times.

Rishad’s best-selling book “Restoring the Soul of Business: Staying Human in the Age of Data” was published globally by Harper Collins in January 2020 and focusses on helping people think, feel and see differently about how to grow their companies, their teams and themselves in transformative times. The Economist Magazine called it perhaps the best recent book on stakeholder capitalism.

Rishad speaks on change, future trends and transforming work forces to a range of industries from technology (Google, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, LinkedIn), to media ( NY Times, Conde Nast, Univision), to blue chip firms ( Walmart, Procter and Gamble, H&R Block, Bayer) to Industry Associations (Blue Cross Blue Shield, US Olympic Swimming, Radio Advertising Bureau). Rishad also teaches programs on Change Management, Upgrading Your Mental Operating System and How to Lead with Soul for many firms and guest lectures at The University of Chicago and Northwestern.

Rishad’s advisory clients include global firms such as Publicis Groupe and many executives at Fortune 500 and FTSE 100 companies, private equity organizations such as Growth Catalyst Partner, Venture Capital firms such as Greycroft and technology platforms such as Crisp, Trendline and many more.

Best known as the father of the Indian gaming industry, Vishal Gondal sold his first entrepreneurial venture India Games to Walt Disney. A health and fitness enthusiast, he runs marathons, treks and goes skydiving. A notable angel investor, Vishal was listed among the top 50 executives in the mobile content space by the UK based 'Mobile Entertainment' Magazine alongside noted people like Steve Jobs. His passion for technology, fitness & gaming led him to his next venture 'GOQii' which is focused on helping people make a change towards a healthier lifestyle and be the force of good. He has brought his knowledge and love for interviewing people to a whole you platform by hosting a podcast series ‘Beneath the Force: The Vishal Gondal Show, he has conversations with personalities from various walks of life providing a sneak peek into their fascinating lives while in his own style.

Rajesh Jejurikar is the Executive Director and leads the Automotive and Farm Equipment Sectors at Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd.

Rajesh has diverse experience across Packaged Goods, Advertising, Automotive and Farm Equipment. He joined Mahindra in 2000 as Vice President – Marketing for Automotive Sector and went on to hold senior positions, becoming the Chief Executive of the Automotive Division and Member of the Group Executive Board in 2010. He was the Chief Executive – Tractor & Farm Mechanization of the Farm Equipment Sector in 2013 and became the Sector President in 2015.

With an MBA from S.P. Jain Institute of Management and Research, he was awarded the British Chevening Scholarship to study at the Manchester Business School, UK. Rajesh attended the Advanced Management Program at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

Rajesh is a Director on the Board of Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. and serves on the Boards of several Mahindra Group companies. He is also an Independent Director on the global board of Aliaxis Group SA, Belgium.

Rajesh serves on the Governing Council of S. P. Jain Institute of Management.

Rajesh has been honoured by AsiaOne magazine as the "Global Indian of the Year 2020-21". The award recognizes distinguished global leaders whose valuable contributions have made an indelible mark on the global business dais.

An alumnus of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, Mainak Dhar has 25 years of experience in the corporate world working with blue-chip multinationals- Procter & Gamble General Mills, and currently, Kimberly-Clark, where he is the CEO for India and South Asia. His experiences in leading teams and businesses across diverse markets across the Asia Pacific region, with roles ranging from regional brand/business unit leadership to leading in-market operations, makes him appreciate how to build great brands with scale, while at the same time building appreciation of just how much of an accelerator local insight and executional excellence can be.

His passion at work is to develop strong organizations and leave a legacy by creating a 'smell of the place' which unleashes people through an inspiring purpose, simplifying work and creating an entrepreneurial environment led by ideas, not hierarchy.

His passions outside of work are family, fitness, and writing. He considers his most important role to be the best possible father and husband he can be and holds a black belt in karate. Mainak is also a bestselling author with over 20 books to his credit, which have been translated into multiple languages such as French, Portuguese, Vietnamese, Japanese and Turkish, reaching millions of readers worldwide.

Govindraj Ethiraj is a television and print journalist who has reported and written on Indian business for over 25 years. He is a media executive and entrepreneur whose public interest journalism ventures are safeguarding the transparency, accuracy, and integrity of news in specific and the internet in general in India and world-wide. He also founded the award-winning IndiaSpend (indiaspend.org), a public interest journalism outfit which use data to write and syndicate stories in areas like health, education, environment and FactChecker (factchecker.in) which monitors media, politicians and other figures for accuracy. Govindraj was named a 2018 McNulty Prize Laureate in recognition for his leadership with BOOM, IndiaSpend, and FactChecker. He is a Fellow of the Inaugural Class of Ananta Aspen’s India Leadership Initiative and the Aspen Global Leadership Network, and winner of the 2014 BMW Responsible Leaders Awards.

As a strategic planner in global advertising agencies, Matthew spent the first half of his career working in Europe, Asia, and North America trying to change what people thought about his clients’ brands. In 2006, after interviewing the famous decision scientist, Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice, he realized that to really help his clients he needed to understand how people arrive at their choices. In 2008, while CSO of FCB in San Francisco, he persuaded the network to set up the Institute of Decision Making, a think tank that acted as a bridge between marketing practitioners and academics studying decision making. His book, The Business of Choice was published in 2015 and won Marketing & Sales Books “Marketing Book of The Year” and the American Marketing Association’s prize for best books in marketing. The revised and updated second edition was published in 2020 and was a medalist in the Axiom Business Book Awards. The Business of Choice has been published in four different languages, including Chinese and Spanish.

Chaka Sobhani is Global Chief Creative Officer of Leo Burnett Worldwide and Chief Creative Officer Leo Burnett UK and Fallon. Before joining the ad industry, Chaka spent over a decade as an award winning film-maker and in television. Highly awarded amongst all the major honours, she has been privileged to serve as jury member and President numerous times at the world’s greatest awards shows including Cannes, D&AD, One Show, the Andy’s, Art Directors Club, Eurobest, Clios, LIA’s, the IPA and the British Arrows. She has featured in Campaigns Top 10 Creative Leaders consistently for the past 5 years, as well as Adweeks Creative 100 and the Creative Pools Top 100 Influencer list. She is also a regular speaker at Cannes, AdWeek, the One Show Exec Summit, D&AD, The Big TV Festival, Google Rare, the IPA, Creative Equals and Facebook’s Internationals Women’s Day.

Anand Lunia is a founding Partner at India Quotient. He loves writing on startups, studying market opportunities and helping entrepreneurs. Earlier, he was a partner at Seedfund, known for its exits in Carwale and Redbus. He co-founded Brainvisa, an EdTech startup, after graduating from IIM Lucknow. His angel investments include Faasos, Mydentist and Inkfruit. His picks at Indiaquotient include Lendingkart, Sharechat, Iimjobs, Loantap, Sugar, Faballey among others.

Umang Bedi the Co-founder of Dailyhunt and Josh, was the Managing Director at Facebook India and South Asia, where he was instrumental in growing India to the largest market in the world for Facebook and driving exponential revenue growth. Before Facebook, Umang was the Managing Director at Adobe for the South Asia region and was responsible for growing the business in India making it one of the leading markets for Adobe in the APAC and global regions. Umang is an alumnus of Harvard Business School and an engineering graduate from the University of Pune. He is the recipient of the ’40 Under Forty: India’s Hottest Business Leaders Award’ given by The Economic Times and Spencer Stuart in 2014, ‘GQ’s 50 Most Influential Young Indians’ for 2016 & 2017, Fortune India 40 under 40 in 2017, ‘Influencer of the Year‘ in 2018 by Business World and ‘Media Game Changer of the Year’ in 2019 by the International Advertising Association. He is a Fellow of the seventh class of the Kamalnayan Bajaj Fellowship and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.

Apaksh brings a unique combination of passion, strategy, technology, innovation & start-up experience to One Impression. Apart from being an angel-investor in many new-age startups, Apaksh is a serial entrepreneur at heart, with One Impression being Apaksh’s third venture. He has previously co-founded Alternate Design in 2015 and founded SummerLabel in 2016.

As the Founder & Chief Executive Officer of One Impression, Apaksh spearheads the brand at a global scale. Apaksh has built One Impression from ground up, leading to strong growth & noteworthy success. His in-depth knowledge and passion has made One Impression one of the leading global players for Influencer Marketing.

In 2020, he was featured in Forbes -30 Under 30 Asia, for his contribution to the creator economy. Apaksh has graduated as a Civil Engineer from the prestigious Punjab Engineering College in 2014.

Raj has been the youngest Indian to speak at United Nations Headquarters Vienna on entrepreneurship, he has also delivered 200+ speeches in 26 countries. And have about 1.5 million followers across all the platforms.

Raj Shamani is India's most popular motivational speaker and business content creator with over 1 million+ subscribers across all digital platforms. His podcast ‘Figuring Out’ has 239.1K audio downloads and 500K+ views. iTunes even listed his podcast as Top 10 business podcasts in India.

Akshay Munjal has played a vital role in transforming the landscape of Indian education since 2008. He founded the BML Munjal University in 2014 and Hero Vired in 2021. Prior to this he headed Mindmine, a professional skills development venture of the Hero Group. Currently he is the Founder and CEO at Hero Vired, a premium EdTech venture that enables professionals and aspirants to transform their higher education journey into real-world opportunities.

Gauri Devidayal is the Co-founder and CEO of Food Matters Group which include brands like The Table, The Table Farm, Magazine St. Kitchen, Iktara, Mag St Bread Co, Miss T Delivery, Mag St Toppings, and most recently, Mag St. Café.

Last year, Gauri launched her second podcast, ‘This Round Is On Me’, which features thought leaders and visionaries in different industries to learn from their past experiences and share their thoughts on future trends. Gauri was listed in Forbes India’s 120 Leaders of Change, GQ’s list of the 50 Most Influential Young Indians, LuxeBook’s Top 50 Women in Indian Luxury, and is on the Managing Committee of the National Restaurant Association of India. She is also on the Indian Advisory Board for GLEAM Network, a global mentoring program for the F&B industry and a member of the Governing Council of the ASCENT Foundation, a not-for-profit enterprise for entrepreneurs. Occasionally, Gauri also writes for print and online publications on her favourite subject - food and travel.

Ranjeet Singh is the Co-Founder & CEO of Pratilipi, the largest Indian language storytelling platform with over 360,000 writers publishing over 5,000,000 stories in 12 languages and over 25+ Mn monthly active readers.

Through Pratilipi, Ranjeet has carved a space for young writers and readers of Indian literature to read and write stories in their regional languages. He has completed his Bachelors degree from KIIT University, Bhubaneswar in Computer Science and Engineering and MBA from FMS, Delhi & 30+ certifications from Harvard University. He has been a 2015 Fellow of Startup Leadership Program.

Prior to Pratilipi, Ranjeet was associated with Vodafone where he looked after Marketing, Retail and Channel Sales.

He has been featured in Forbes 30 under 30 & Entrepreneur India 35 under 35.

Hitesh Dhingra is the Co-founder and Managing Director of The Man Company, India's first 'Men Only' premium grooming essentials brand that offers 100% natural products with no harmful chemicals, made from premium essential oils; products ranging from hair, face, beard to body and fragrance. Gurugram-based serial entrepreneur, Hitesh comes with comprehensive experience and in-depth knowledge of the entrepreneurial ecosystem, building a company from scratch in India's ever-evolving market and retail sector. Since 2009, he has co-founded a series of startups starting from Letsbuy.com to Trulymadly.com, and finally The Man Company in 2015. Through his latest venture, Hitesh has found his niche and plans to continue working strenuously to reach new heights.

Salone Sehgal is the world's first female General Partner of a games and interactive VC fund. She co-founded Lumikai Fund, India's first early-stage interactive media and gaming VC, anchored by the world's largest games and media conglomerates. She has 15+ years of experience as a global games & new media investor, games entrepreneur, and former M&A banker. Previously, she was Principal at London Venture Partners (LVP), Europe's pioneering seed-stage gaming VC. She was also Co-founder & CEO of TrulySocial, a venture-backed gaming company. Prior to that, she left her banking career as VP, Barclays Global COO Office with previous experience in Investment Banking with Morgan Stanley. She has served as a BAFTA Games Award Juror in 2017, recognised as Top 30 Women in Mobile, Top 100 Asian Stars in UK Tech, and was awarded the Iconic Women Leaders award by WEF.

Anirudh Pandita is a founder of Loco, India’s leading game streaming platform. Loco has been a pioneer in the live game streaming and esports sector in India, paving the way for gaming to go from a niche hobby to a mainstream national interest. Loco has grown rapidly over the past 12 months, with monthly active viewers scaling by 6x, monthly active streamers scaling by 10x, and live watch hours scaling by 48x since June 2020. Anirudh is also a founder and board member of Pocket Aces, India's leading digital media entertainment company. Prior to embarking on his entrepreneur journey, Anirudh was at Valo Group LLC, a value-oriented hedge fund based in Philadelphia. Also, he has worked in investment banking and private equity at Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Istithmar World Capital in New York, London, and Dubai. He was recently featured on Fortune’s 40 under 40 list 2021, the second time he has appeared on the list.

Matt Chitharanjan is the Co-Founder and CEO of Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters, India’s largest specialty coffee brand. An extremely passionate coffee geek, Matt embarked on his entrepreneurial journey in 2013, with a vision to make specialty coffee accessible in India and introduce the consumers to the richness of Indian coffee estates. At Blue Tokai, Matt oversees the overall roastery and café business, while also lending his expertise to finance, production, e-commerce, customer service and people & culture.

Before starting Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters, he worked at The Institute for Financial Management and Research (IFMR) in Chennai. Matt started his professional journey as an analyst with Rosen Consulting Group, post which he moved on to work as a business development advisor with The United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Narayan Sundararaman is the Head of Marketing at Bajaj Auto Ltd. He is a seasoned marketing professional and business leader with over two decades of experience in sectors ranging from FMCG to media to electronic vehicles. He is a brand-maker possessing a proven track record in category expansion, P&L delivery, business strategy and delivering high-growth marketing programs.

With a work-ex in notable brands like Cadbury, Kraft Foods, Mondelez and ITC, Narayan’s experience also spans developed as well as developing markets and multiple geographies and cultures, particularly in India, South East Asia, Australia & New Zealand and Japan.

Jithin C Nedumala is the Founder and CEO of Make a Difference (MAD). MAD is an award-winning non-profit that delivers equitable outcomes for children in need of care & protection. He founded MAD at the age of 19 with a vision to enable vulnerable children to break out of the vicious cycle of poverty in a single generation.

Jithin was awarded the Ashoka fellowship for developing a Community-Powered Social Protection System. His other awards and achievements include Ashoka Global Youth Social Entrepreneur Award, Karmaveer Puraskar, Cordes Fellowship, and Youth Actionnet Fellowship.

As Founder & CEO of Ladies Who Lead, she has set out on this radical journey to co-create the future for women in the workforce and speed up meaningful change, in ways unimaginable. Through Ladies Who Lead, she is empowering, engaging, and enabling powerful women leaders, executives and entrepreneurs to grow and succeed through curated learning and networking experiences. Aabha is building an incredibly inclusive and unconventional members-only circle of leaders from diverse industries. She firmly believes that women in positions of power can pave the way by paying it forward and drive immense impact through incremental action.

Her trailblazing motto is to escape the women’s history time warp and forge the way to our future: Be everything you want to be, go after whatever it is YOU want!

Anil Viswanathan is Vice President – Marketing at Mondelez India Foods Private Ltd. Anil is part of India BU Leadership Team and is responsible to drive a consolidated Snacking strategy with holistic management of all marketing levers, that includes Insights, Analytics, Equity, Innovation and Activation, in line with Mondelez International’s "Local first, but not Local only" approach to business. Anil also leads the Consumer Digital practice for the business where he works closely with the BU & Global technology teams in driving the digital transformation agenda for the business. In his current capacity, Anil is also part of the Global Marketing & Brand leadership community.

In the past 4 years, Anil has driven marketing and creative excellence with his teams & partner network to create some of the most popular brand campaigns including the Thank You Activation for Cadbury Dairy Milk and the Not Just a Cadbury Ad activation for Celebrations Diwali.

Anil joined Mondelez India in May 2000 as a management trainee and has spent more than two decades in the company, across a variety of roles including Sales, Brand & Category marketing, Strategy and New Business Development. Over the last 20+ years, he has acquired several functional and shaping experiences across categories (Chocolates, Biscuits), functions (Sales, Marketing & Strategy) and geographies before returning to India in 2017 to lead our Chocolates Category Marketing. Prior to this, Anil was a part of the Global Chocolate Team driving chocolate innovation based out of Zurich, Switzerland.

Anil holds an MBA in Marketing & Finance from IIM, Calcutta and a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from IIT, Madras. He is married to Sangeetha, who works in the Non-Profit sector and they have a 14-year-old daughter, Suhasini.

Arvind Gupta is the Head and Co-Founder of Digital India Foundation, a policy think tank working in the area of digital inclusion. He is also an Adjunct Professor at IIT-BHU. He graduated with a degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from IIT-BHU, Varanasi. He has a Masters in Computer Science and MBA (Finance & Marketing) from University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. He has been on the Global FinTech Top100 list of Influencers and also the Member of World Economic Forum’s Global Futures Council on Digital Economy & Society, OECD Expert Member of Global Value Chains. He has been awarded the Eisenhower Global Fellowship for Innovation for year 2014 and Distinguished Centenary Alumni award from IIT-BHU. In his last role, he was the CEO of MyGov- a forum for digital inclusion through participative governance. Recently, he has been appointed as one of the members of the advisory council to curb digital monopolies.