Ashank Desai

Ashank is an industry veteran well known for his focus on education and entrepreneurship. He founded Mastek and led it to be among the top software companies in India. He is a founding member and past chairman of NASSCOM. He was also the President of Asian Oceanian Computer Industry Organization (AOCIO) founded for the development of IT in over 20 countries in the Asia-Pacific region. He has been a member on the governing boards of IIM Ahmedabad and IIT Jodhpur. He also serves on the advisory boards of SJM School of Management, IIT Bombay. He is the Vice-Chairman of Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE) and charter member of TiE.

The first program that Ashank Desai wrote in Mastek was a FORTRAN program to invert a large 200X500 matrix on a memory constrained, 64kb computer to solve a structural design civil engineering problem.

Professional Career: Founder & Ex-Chairman of Mastek

Education: MBA IIM Ahmedabad, MTech IIT Bombay

Awards/Recognition: Fellow of Computer Society of India, Distinguished Alumnus by IIT Bombay

S Mahalingam

Mahalingam is a TCS veteran. He has held a diverse portfolio of roles including Project and Delivery Centre Management, Marketing, Human Resources, and Learning & Development, before becoming the CFO in 2003. He played a key role in carving out TCS Division from Tata Sons and then managing the preparation, road shows and complete transition to being a publicly listed company He is credited with successfully managing TCS’s hedging strategy through some of the most turbulent currency fluctuation periods. At TCS, he is credited with developing the software factory and assembly line tool based model to solve the Y2K problem. He currently serves as Independent Director in the Boards of a few listed and unlisted companies. He is also a member of governing boards of a few non profit organisations in the Education, Healthcare and Legal Service sectors

Mahalingam - the first non-engineer non-science graduate employee of TCS- joined in 1970 and retired from TCS in 2013 after a 42 year career.

Professional Career: Ex-CFO of TCS

Education: CA

Awards/Recognition: CFO of the Year by International Market Assessment (IMA), Best Performing CFO by CNBC-TV 18

Prof. S. Sadagopan

Prof S. Sadagopan is the Founding Director of IIIT Bangalore, a premier new generation university set up in the 1990’s with a focus on IT, where he leads visioning, planning and executing growth. His research of over 25 years spans Computer Science, Operations Research, MIS and Enterprise Computing. He consults extensively with some of the largest private and public enterprises in these domains. He has also authored five books in the areas of MIS, ERP & IT trends.

Prof. Sadagopan started his career in the Systems Engineering Group in Engineers India Ltd in 1973, soon after his undergraduate degree and before his graduate studies in USA

Professional Career: Founding Director of IIIT Bangalore (since 1999), Professor at IIM Bangalore (1995 to 1999) & IIT Kanpur (1979 to 1995); Semester-long teaching assignments at RUTGERS - The State University of New Jersey - USA (1997) and AIT, Bangkok, Thailand (1990)

Education: PhD and MS from Purdue University, USA, BE (Hons) from College of Engineering, Guindy, University of Madras

Awards/Recognition: JN Tata Scholar, Fulbright Scholar, Fellow – IEEE (UK), Computer Society of India (CSI), Institution of Engineers (India); Cisco - Digital Pioneer Award; BITES - Lifetime Achievement Award, Rotary Honour of Vocational Excellence, Intel India Technology Excellence Award; College of Engineering, Guindy, Distinguished Alumnus Award

Saurabh Srivastava

Saurabh Srivastava is an IT industry veteran with over four decades of experience being an entrepreneur and investor. He founded and chaired IIS Infotech, which got listed post-merger, as Xansa on London Stock Exchange. He has served on the National Executive Committees of CII and FICCI. He has served on Indo-EU Round Table, Prime Minister’s National Innovation Council and IT Ministry’s Committee on software exports. He is passionate about promoting entrepreneurship and has co-founded the Indian Angel Network and is Chairman Emeritus of TiE Delhi. He has also invested in over 100 startups and serves on the boards of several Indian and global organizations.

His public service commitments have included the National Innovation Council, SEBI Committee on Alternative Investment Funds, Software Technology Parks of India, Bombay Stock Exchange Hi-Tech Advisory Panel, Telecom Centre of Excellence, Railway Expert Committee, PM’s Empowered Committee for Awards on Excellence in Public Administration and the National Expert Advisory Committee on Innovation, Incubation and Technology Entrepreneurship.

Saurabh was part of the Software India Seminar - a roadshow showcasing India's expertise in software services in the USA during 1987 - where the idea of NASSCOM was first conceived.

Professional Career: Co-founder & Former Chairman of NASSCOM, NASSCOM Foundation, IVCA; Chairman Emeritus TiE Delhi, Co founder Indian Angel Network

Education: Masters Harvard University, BTech IIT Kanpur

Awards/Recognition: Padma Shri, Honorary Doctorate in Technology from University of Wolverhampton, UK, Lifetime Achievement Award from DataQuest, Distinguished Alumnus from IIT Kanpur

Krishnan Narayanan

Krishnan Narayanan is co-founder and President of itihaasa Research and Digital. He brings over two decades of experience in digital consulting and technology commercialization. He spent 13 years with Infosys, where he was a member of the Infosys Labs Management Council, managed a global transformation program in partnership with Microsoft and collaborated with research & innovation clusters from the U.S., Netherlands and Australia. He founded a water start-up in India. He has a Bachelor of Technology degree from IIT Madras and a management degree from XLRI Jamshedpur.