Comsnets Business Track
Mobile VAS in India and Everywhere

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Panalist Profiles

Harit Nagpal
Ashish Gupta
Gene Landy
Ashwin Mahesh
Sean Blagsvedt
Vish Desai
Marc Naddell
Srinivas Gopal

Karthee Madasamy
Pratapa Bernard
Rohan Verma
Dr. Rajesh Srivathsa
Krishna Durbha
Manoj Dawane
Jasmeet Gandhi
Sumanth Vepa

Marc Naddell – Vice President, Partner and Developer Program, NAVTEQ

Marc leads a fast-paced international team providing complete development resources, information and technical support to application developers around the world for building innovative location-based services (LBS) for enterprise and/or consumers using dynamic positioning technology and NAVTEQ® maps. Marc's team engages with key technical and strategic partners to accelerate development by providing choices in geospatial platform tools, business channels, value-added technologies and alternative content. NAVTEQ Network for Developers (NN4D) is a dynamic online web portal and community that provides developers and business partners with the technical and business support needed to build, showcase and launch the most innovative location-enabled solutions. NN4D also hosts an annual developer competition called the NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge, which has become the premier event in the LBS industry and a global symbol of LBS innovation and opportunity.

Marc joined NAVTEQ from Nokia, where he was the head of developer programs, based primarily at Nokia’s corporate headquarters in Espoo, Finland. While there he launched several developer and partner offerings, including Forum Nokia PRO. Prior to joining Nokia, Marc was with Motorola for several years, having worked in the mobile devices, cellular infrastructure, enterprise and semiconductor business sectors. Marc created and led the team that once launched Motorola’s Motocoder developer program (predecessor to MotoDev).

Harit Nagpal, Marketing & New Business Director, Vodafone Essar Ltd

He is responsible for providing strategic direction to the business operations of Vodafone Essar in India.

Over the last 6 years, Harit has held a number of different portfolios, the last one being Director Operations for the Mumbai circle.

Prior to joining Vodafone, he was with Shoppers’ Stop as Head of Operations & Marketing.
He has also had long innings at Pepsi, Marico and Lakme in the Sales, Marketing, Exports and Operations functions. He graduated in 1983 with a degree in Chemical Engineering from Punjab University and a MBA from FMS (Faculty of Management Studies) in New Delhi in 1985.

Ashish Gupta -Managing Director, Investment Advisor

Ashish is a co-founder of Helion and serves on the boards of Anantara, Jigrahak Mobility, Kirusa, Komli, MuSigma, Naukri, and Virtual Synaptics. He has invested in over 35 companies in the US and in India. His investments include Daksh (IBM), Odesk, Obongo (AOL), Speedera (Akamai), Make My Trip, Merittrac, and Kaboodle (Hearst). Ashish co-founded and helped grow two successful companies; Tavant Technologies and Junglee (Amazon.com) that pioneered comparison shopping on the internet.

Ashish has worked at Woodside Fund, Amazon.com, Oracle Corporation, and IBM Research. He has to his credit several patents, international publications, and a book by MIT press. He is a Kauffman fellow, the world’s leading venture education program.

He also holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University and a bachelor's degree from IIT Kanpur, where he was awarded the President's Gold medal.

Gene Landy – Shareholder& Chair of Technology Business Group, Ruberto, Israel & Weiner

Gene K. Landy is a shareholder of Ruberto, Israel & Weiner, P.C., Boston, MA, where he is the Chair of the firm's Technology Business Group. He is a graduate of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard Law School (cum laude). Gene’s practice covers domestic and international transactions for high technology businesses, from start-ups to publicly traded companies. His practice includes licensing, intellectual property, technology transfer, media distribution, business sales and acquisitions and investments.

Gene is the author of two books on digital technology and media law, and frequently lectures on technology law topics. His most recent book, The IT/Digital Legal Companion, published in 2008, is available on Amazon.com.

Ashwin Mahesh

Ashwin wanted to be a physicist, but since at first he didn't put much effort into becoming one, that didn't start well. After this, he went to business school, but although his grades improved, he decided he'd be better off working harder on his real passion.

He then trained as an astronomer. This was a lot more fun, since the world is much more livable at night. Besides, he discovered a star - although an unimportant one known only as the 'the companion to LkHα 234'.

After a couple of years of seeing stars, he thought he should try something closer to earth, with a reasonable chance of getting a job. This led to a decade spent as an atmospheric scientist studying clouds and snow in Antarctica, and also working on satellite-based detection technologies.
These isolating professions could only be sustained by some parallel career, which has taken the form of public affairs and development communication. He co-edits the public affairs magazine, India Together, and is on the Visiting Faculty at IIM Bangalore's Centre for Public Policy.

At Mapunity, his job as the head lets him explore many ways in which technology can help meet the challenges posed by social problems, and act as an evangelist for some of those things to happen.

Vish Desai

As Product Expert, SAP NetWeaver Mobile, Vish Desai is part of the team that is currently building the next generation mobile capabilities for SAP NetWeaver. As part of SAP NetWeaver, SAP NetWeaver Mobile allows SAP customers to mobile-enable all of their SAP and non-SAP enterprise data, and make it available instantly to their mobile workforce.

Before joining the SAP NetWeaver Mobile product management team, Vish Desai worked as an account manager, a business development manager, and product manager for YASU Technologies in Irvine, CA and Hyderabad, India. Vish's work experience also includes several years of team lead and data architect positions at Convera & Intel in Portland, OR, USA, as well as at Citibank, Tokyo, Japan and Tata Consultancy Services, Bangalore, India.

Srinivas Gopal – General Manager, Marketing VAS, Idea Cellular

Initial years of his career began with the Old Economy – Multi Billion Dollar German Chemical Plant Construction Giant –Uhde Gmbh & India’s leading packaging concern Paper Products and handling sales for India and Nepal.

Developed innovative consumer packaging solutions to all leading FMCG brands in India & Nepal. Subsequently associated with the Internet ,Mobile & Media industries starting 1999, with leading organizations as Sify, BPL Mobile, Times Internet part of TOI group MTV in various leadership capacities over the last decade. During this span he has contributed towards multiple innovations & firsts as Mobile Enabled Vending Machines, GPRS powered ATM’s , Mobile Content Applications & Market Development,SMS based Mobile Advertising, Wap Advertising, Mobile Advergaming, M-Banking to name a few.

In his current capacity as General Manager –Marketing VAS at Idea Cellular he co-heads the VAS Business Function for Idea Cellular Nationally.

Has recently been featured as a “Front Runner” in India’s leading Business Magazine Business India.

Karthee Madasamy -Director, India Investments, Qualcomm Ventures

Karthee is Director for India Investments at Qualcomm Ventures and is based in Bangalore. Karthee has over 14 years of experience in the wireless and multimedia industries and has worked in product development and management roles at various startups. Prior to his current role, he worked as a management consultant at Boston Consulting Group and as an associate at the venture capital firm, JK&B Capital.

Karthee currently manages and actively serves as a board observer for Qualcomm Ventures investments in Validity Sensors, Pixsense, Kirusa and Tessolve. Karthee holds an MBA from the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago and an MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan

Pratapa Bernard, Head of Marketing & Product Management, OnMobile.

Pratapa brings over 16 years of Sales, Marketing, and Management experience in Information Technology, Communication and Telecom products and services. As Head of Marketing & Product Management, Pratapa is responsible for the company's marketing activities and oversees the planning and execution of its product strategy. Prior to joining OnMobile, Pratapa spent over 8 years at IBM and held various positions of responsibility including Country Manager for eBusiness Solutions. As Head of IBM's Networking Products Group, Pratapa was responsible for growing the product revenues 16-fold in three years. Earlier, he started his career as a Customer Support Executive at Pertech Computers Limited.

Rohan Verma – Director, MapmyIndia

Rohan leads MapmyIndia’s marketing efforts at CE Info Systems, focusing on building the brand by introducing innovative and disruptive products to Indian market, such as MapmyIndia.com and now, MapmyIndia Navigator. Rohan conceptualized and created MapmyIndia.com in the summer of 2004, after completing his first year of college at Stanford University, USA. At Stanford, Rohan Received the President’s Award for Academic Excellence, and was also awarded Best Work Study Student by the University Registrar in 2004. While in the US, Rohan worked for Intel as a summer technical intern and at McKinsey as a summer business analyst. Rohan graduated from Stanford in 2007 obtaining a Bachelors of Science in Electrical Engineering. After graduation, Rohan decided to plunge into the Indian entrepreneurial arena, with a conviction that mapmyIndia could help people in India benefit from the power of maps and location-based services. Rohan is 22 years old. He enjoys dance a lot, and has performed widely in Delhi with the Danceworx Academy, and around USA with Stanford’s Hindi Film Dance team. Rohan has been brought up in New Delhi, and studied at Delhi Public School Vasant Kunj where he was the Head Boy.

Dr. Rajesh Srivathsa, Managing Partner, Ojas Venture Partners

Dr. Rajesh Srivathsa is the Managing Partner of Ojas Venture Partners, a young, Venture Capital firm focused on investing in early stage technology startups. Rajesh and the Ojas team aim to leverage their operational expertise to support entrepreneurs based in India and help create successful, scalable, internationally competitive companies. Before Ojas, Rajesh was the Business Head of the Mobile Terminals Business Unit (MTBU) at Aricent, Inc which licensed products and provided services across the mobile ecosystem. MTBU was created through the merger of several units from different companies, one of which was Emuzed, Inc., a startup based in California with R&D in India. As the CTO of Emuzed and Head of Sales & Marketing for the mobile business, Rajesh was responsible for customer acquisition & revenues, strategic business initiatives, ecosystem development & management and interfacing with a cross border engineering team for Emuzed’ mobile offerings.

Prior to Emuzed, he spearheaded development of video systems for the broadcast market at Lucent Digital Video, an internal venture funded by Lucent Ventures and subsequently acquired by Lucent Technologies. Before LDV, he was at IBM Watson Research Center responsible for development of advanced algorithms and implementation on embedded chips. He holds a Bachelor of Technology, Master of Science and a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the National Institute of Technology Karnataka, University of Texas at Austin and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign respectively. Rajesh has represented Lucent and IBM in international standard bodies such as MPEG and SMPTE. He has several articles and patents to his credit. Rajesh loves travelling and has travelled as far north as Finland and as far south as the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica. He is a student of Taekwondo and a practitioner of Vipassana meditation.

Krishna Durbha – Head VAS, Business & Marketing Application, Reliance Communications Ltd.

Krishna currently heads the Revenue and Marketing functions for the highly successful Value Added Services and Reliance Mobile World (RWorld) services. Since inception of Reliance Communications, he has been a key member and was involved in the growth of the network’s mobile subscribers from scratch to over 50 million. He has helped pioneer and popularize mobile videos, directories, guides, infotainment, classifieds, advisory services, m Commerce and mobile advertising etc.

He is a member of the CII’s core team for Mobile Data Services. He is also on the Board of the Mobile Marketing Association, APAC and on the CII Committee on Mobile Data Services. Having been a research analyst in Australia, he is in addition, an expert on Smart Phones and the Australian telecom Market.

An Engineer and an MBA from IIM (Ahmedabad), he has nearly 20 years experience in the Consumer Marketing & IT domains. He is a British Chevening Scholar, selected as a “Young manager for leadership” by Dept. of Trade & Industry UK, 1999 and an Endeavour Scholar (Australian Govt. Austraining), 2007.

Manoj Dawane, CEO, Mauj

Manoj is the CEO of Mauj Mobile - the wireless division of People Group, which owns interactive websites such as Shaadi.com, Fropper.com, Makaan.com and Astrolife.com. Mauj Mobile is a Mobile Media Consumer Business founded on Applications and Content Distribution, executed through storefronts and monetized through the company’s own fully integrated mobile advertisement platform. As CEO, Manoj leads the Mauj Mobile Team on their strategic growth path, both in domestic and international markets.With an experience of over 15 years in the field of Telecom and Software, Manoj has worked with some of the country’s leading telecom & technology companies, before joining Mauj Mobile. He is responsible for pioneering the prepaid cellular revolution in India, having been involved in the first retail prepaid business called ACE from Hutchison Max Telecom in 1997. He also introduced ‘Info services’ on the mobile with marketing and entertainment based services.

Immediately prior to taking over as CEO at Mauj Mobile, Manoj was the COO of Bharti Airtel for Western UP & Uttaranchal sectors and handled the P & L responsibility for this region. At Bharti Airtel he was also appointed as Business Head Innovation / New Product Development and VAS Management.

Jasmeet Gandhi , NOKIA India

Currently working at Nokia India (from July 08) as head of Services marketing and devices OPM. Prior to this spent 12 years at rediff.com India's premier online portal where I headed various functions that included product development, marketing and business development.
Aim: Create platform based solutions that deliver scalable solutions for business and choice plus value for money for the consumer.

Sumanth Vepa–Product Manager, TheCellar

Sumanth Vepa is the product manager for the Cellar – the Yahoo! India product and business incubator. The Cellar focuses on bringing innovative new consumer Internet services and mobile products to emerging markets (including India) through a combination of internal Yahoo! innovation and partnerships with startups. Prior to working for the Cellar, Sumanth was with Yahoo! Labs, IBM Research and Amazon.com in a variety of engineering, product management and business development roles.