Dr Srinivasan Ramani earned his PhD at IIT Bombay. He has worked as a researcher at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Bombay, and at the Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh. He was the founding director of the National Centre for Software Technology (NCST), where he played a key role in creating India’s academic network ERNET that brought the Internet to India. He was the first director of Hewlett Packard Labs India in 2001. He has served as a member of the Expert Panel of Advisors of the United Nation’s Task Force on ICT for Development. He has also served as Chairman of the Computer Society of India and as Chairman of the International Council for Computer Communication. He moved on to the International Institute of Information Technology in 2007, where he now serves as a professor.
Manish Dalal is the Vice President for VeriSign, Asia Pacific. Manish leads the business development, marketing, and partner management activities of the Naming business in Asia-Pacific. He was previously Yahoo’s Senior Director of mobile products for India. He worked with Yahoo! for approximately 5 years and helped build the mobile and broadband business at Yahoo!, which included key broadband partnerships with AT&T and British Telecom (BT) in the US. He was formerly a Principal at Strategy Consulting Firm Pittiglio Rabin Todd McGrath (PRTM), where he spent several years consulting to senior management in blue-chip telecom companies like Qualcomm, Cisco, and Qwest. Manish also led Motorola’s product management efforts in the cellular messaging space. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Engineering from Rochester Institute of Technology, a Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University, and an MBA from the University of Chicago.
Dr. Ganesh Natarajan is Chairman of the National Committee for IT & IT Enabled Services for the CII for 2009-2011 and was the Chairman of NASSCOM in 2008-09. He has created major corporate success stories in IT skills development and software exports like APTECH and ZENSAR and is a champion of technology proliferation for enabling an inclusive India. He is also the co-author of the books “Knowledge Management: Enabling Business Growth,” “Inspired,” and “Unleashing the Knowledge Force.” Ganesh has a doctoral degree in Knowledge Management from IIT Bombay. He is a recipient of the Asia HRD Congress Award for Contributions to the Organisation through HR, as well as the Ernst & Young in 2005 Award for exceptional entrepreneurship www.ganeshnatarajan.com
Dr. Mira K. Desai is an Associate Professor at S.N.D.T. Women’s University, Mumbai, with formal qualifications in commerce, development communication, distance education, extension education, participatory research, and women’s studies. She has professional experience in mainstream print (newspaper), television (researcher, scriptwriter and anchor), Internet (content provider), and alternate media (newsletter editor and documentary filmmaker) environments besides field experience in rural women’s empowerment programme Mahila Samakhya at Gujarat before becoming an academician since 1997. A recipient of a Government of India award for her book manuscript for neo-literates in the year 2002, she has four books and numerous journal publications to her credit.
Sanjukt K. Saha is an IIT Kanpur alumnus and the founder of One Billion Minds, a unique open innovation ecosystem where thousands of early stage innovators from around the world unleash their minds on challenging problems facing people and society in emerging nations. He was previously executive vice president for India operations at Patton Electronics, and has worked for FTSE and NYSE listed companies as well as start-ups. He has an MBA from the European School of Management and Technology Berlin, and has attended executive programmes at INSEAD & McGill University. Sanjukt has strong interests in globalisation, strategic investing and open innovation, and is widely travelled and networked. http://www.linkedin.com/in/sanjukt
Sunny Ghosh is the Chief Executive Officer of WOLF Frameworks, an emerging Cloud Computing company that helps innovators convert killer ideas for cloud applications to reality and promotes a powerful, yet simple way for developing business software for the Internet. He is an avid golfer and a seasoned startup specialist, and was previously with NetGalactic, Skelta, Episerver and DigiMaker. He started his career in the telecom domain with Motorola. He holds an honours degree in mathematics with specialisation in competitive product strategies, intellectual capital and software business management from NSRCEL, IIM-Bangalore. He is a voracious reader, and a core committee member of the Bangalore Knowledge Management Community. http://in.linkedin.com/in/sunnyghosh
Nirmal Jain, founder and chairman of India Infoline Ltd (IIFL), is a first generation entrepreneur, who is credited with building one of the largest financial services companies in India in just about a decade. A PGDM (Post Graduate Diploma in Management) from IIM (Indian Institute of Management) Ahmedabad, a rank holder Chartered Accountant and a Cost Accountant, Jain began his career in 1989 with Hindustan Lever Limited (HUL), the Indian arm of Unilever. He then set up equity research unit ‘Inquire’ and eventually founded his own independent research company, which is now known as India Infoline Ltd (originally incorporated as Probity Research). Today, IIFL has subsidiaries and offices in Colombo, Dubai, New York and Singapore. He is also passionate about contributing to society, especially in the fields of education and healthcare for the under privileged, for which he has set up the IIFL foundation.
Arun Jethmalani is the CEO of ValueNotes (www.valuenotes.biz), which specialises in the management of competitive and market intelligence, information and research. Prior to ValueNotes, Arun ran an equity research and advisory service. This was preceded by a stint in management consulting, where Arun helped some of India’s largest corporations on their market entry strategies, project financing, and feasibility analysis. His 25-year working career spans IT services outsourcing, management consulting, market research, equity research, competitive intelligence and web publishing. His weekly investment column, called ‘Value for Money’, published in the Sunday Economic Times, ran for almost ten years. Arun is a regular speaker at competitive intelligence, technology, Internet, finance and outsourcing events; and has lectured at several educational institutions. Arun holds a B.Tech. from IIT, Bombay and an MS from Duke University.
Dinesh Kumar Jain has been Joint Secretary, Ministry Of Panchayati Raj,Government of India, since 2008. He is also Mission Leader for the e-Panchayat Mission Mode Project. He has a B.Tech. in mechanical engineering from IIT Kanpur and an MBA from the UK. He joined the Indian Administrative Service in 1983, starting off with the Maharashtra cadre. He was previously collector & DM (Solapur) and Secretary, Rural Development & Panchayati Raj, Maharashtra; he has also worked with UNIDO (2002-07) in manufacturing system design in the auto component sector.
Nitin Gachhayat graduated with Chemistry honors and then later did his MBA at FORE School of Management, Delhi. He started his career with a couple of consulting firms in Delhi. As a social entrepreneur, he co-founded Drishtee (www.drishtee.com) with Satyan Mishra and Shailesh Thakur, for whom he leads the technological integration front efficient service delivery to rural communities. He also specialises in segments of legal and statutory, franchisee policy and development and monitoring systems management. Nitin also led the team working with a focus on ‘developing services that work for poor.’ During his work in the segment, Nitin has been recognised as a Young Leader by Asia Society for the year 2010.
Satyan Mishra, managing director and co-founder of Drishtee, is passionate about creating an ecosystem for the rural and other marginalised communities for facilitating organic growth and overall development. His concept reflects in Drishtee operations in more than 10 states of India where the focus is on improving community access to services and products via a large network of thousands of micro-entrepreneurs. Services like education, health, and finance have been Drishtee’s key focus areas. Satyan, an MBA in International Business from Delhi School of Economics, now has 11 years of entrepreneurial experience. Satyan comes from Bihar and is dedicated to his work and passion. He was nominated as ZDNet Asia’s Technopreneur of the Year later in 2006 and presently is a member of international forums like the Clinton Global Initiative and has been an Ashoka fellow since 2004.
Dr. Keval J. Kumar is Adjunct Professor at the Fellow Programme in Communications at MICA, Ahmedabad, and Visiting Faculty at Jagran Institute of Communications and Management, Bhopal, Indira School of Communication and International School of Business and Media, Pune. He is a former Professor and Director, Symbiosis Institute of Mass Communication, and former HOD Department of Communication and Journalism, University of Pune. He has been Visiting Professor at the Institute for Media Studies, Siegen University, Germany. He has also taught at Ohio State University, Jacobs University Bremen, and Bahrain Training Institute, Bahrain. He is the Chief Advisor to the NCERT on Media Studies. Dr. Kumar is the author of Mass Communication in India (Jaico Books), and co-author of Environmentalism and the Mass Media (Routledge). He was President of the Media Education Research Section, International Association of Media and Communication Research (IAMCR), from 1998 to 2006. He is an Associate Member of ORBICOM, the Association of UNESCO Chairs in Communication.
Rajesh Jain is founder-chairman and managing director of NetCore Solutions, a messaging and mobile data services company based in Mumbai. Netcore’s SMS service, MyToday, launched India’s first direct-to-consumer SMS super-store. In 2008, Netcore was awarded the Mobile Innovation Award at 3GSM in Barcelona. In May 2010, NetCore acquired Greynium, which runs OneIndia, India’s largest portfolio of local language Internet portals. Rajesh is also founder–chairman of Emergic Venture Capital, which has invested over $20 into a dozen companies such as Novatium, Rajshri Media, and mChek. One of Rajesh’s early ventures, India World Communications, which was launched in 1995, grew to be one of the largest collection of India-centric websites. IndiaWorld was acquired by Satyam Infoway in 1999 for US$ 115 million in one of Asia’s largest Internet deals. Rajesh holds a B.Tech. degree in Electrical Engineering from the IIT-Bombay, as well as an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University. Rajesh blogs daily at http://emergic.org
Dr. Amir Ullah Khan is dean and research director at the Bangalore Management Academy and an Adjunct Professor at the Edith Cowan University in Western Australia. He also teaches at the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade in Delhi and the Indian School of Business at Hyderabad. He is an Electronics and Communication Engineer from Osmania University. He studied at the Institute of Rural Management at Anand and has a PhD in Economics and Business Studies from the Jamia Millia University. He has worked as Researcher for the Ministry of Finance, Government of India and the UNDP at Project LARGE (Legal Adjustments and Reforms for Globalising the Economy). He then was Academic Head at the Indian School of Finance and Management, after which he worked with Encyclopedia Britannica as Executive Director and Editor and then with the India Development Foundation. His latest book for SAGE is titled ‘The WTO deadlocked: Understanding the Dynamics of International Trade.’
Dr. Arjun Kalyanpur is CEO of Teleradiology Solutions, Bangalore. He obtained his medical education from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi. He then obtained fellowship training in Radiology at the Cornell University Medical Centre in New York and completed a radiology residency at the Yale University School of Medicine, leading to certification by the American Board of Radiology. In 2002, Kalyanpur co-founded Teleradiology Solutions, which currently teleradiology reporting services to over 80 hospitals and clinics in the US, Singapore, Europe and India. He is an active member of the Radiologic Society of North America and the Indian Radiology and Imaging Association. He is a reviewer for Emergency Radiology as well as for the Indian Journal of Radiology and Imaging. He received the Modern Medicare Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2007. In 2009, he was listed as one of the 50 Pathfinders in Indian Healthcare by the journal Express Healthcare. In 2010, he was nominated as a ‘Man Of The Year In Medicine and Healthcare’ by the American Biographical Institute. www.telradsol.com www.teleradfoundation.org www.radguru.net www.teleradtech.com
Ashis Sanyal was formerly Senior Director (e-Governance), Department of IT, Government of India. He has a Master of Technology degree in Microwave Communications Engineering from Calcutta University. He started his professional career as an Engineer in Ministry of Communications through Engineering Services in 1975. From 2001 onwards, he was responsible for implementation of e-governance projects, drafting policy guidelines, strategy and frameworks. He was the Mission Leader of the US$850 million Core e-Gov Infrastructure Project of State Wide Area Networks involving 29 States and 6 Union Territories and also served as the alternate Mission Leader for the US$1.4 billion project of establishing 100,000 Common Services Centres in the rural India, under the National e-Governance Plan of the Government of India. He has published more than 45 technical papers and participated in dozens of international conferences. He was recognised as the ‘e-Governance Person of the Year 2008’ by Dataquest magazine, was a recipient of UNDP Fellowship at National Institute of Standardisation & Technology, Boulder (USA) in 1991.
Dr. Usha Vyasulu Reddi, a Hyderabad based independent consultant on ICT for development, was formerly professor and director, Centre for Human Development, Administrative Staff College of India, Hyderabad, and the former director, The Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia, New Delhi. Earlier, she was Professor of Communication and Director, Audio Visual Research Centre, Osmania University. With more than 35 years of experience in teaching, production and research and practice in communication and technology, Reddi has been widely published and is recipient of a number of international fellowships for advanced research. She has also undertaken extensive consultancies for multilateral donor agencies in India and the Asia Pacific region. Her recent work entailed training of government officials in India and abroad on the essentials of ICT4D for government leaders.
B.G. Mahesh was one of the pioneers in the Indian Internet space and has been active since 1992. His first online portal was Mahesh.com which became one of the most popular Indian portals during the early 1990s. Mahesh co-founded Indiainfo.com in the year 2000. Mahesh launched Oneindia.in and Click.in in the year 2006, which focus on Indian language and classifieds respectively, on the Internet and mobile. These portals were acquired by Mumbai based Netcore in April 2010. Mahesh did a major part of his schooling from Kendriya Vidyalaya, followed by National College Basavangudi, Bangalore. He received his undergraduate degree in Computer Science and Engineering from SJCE, Mysore and graduate degree in Computer Science from University of Alabama at Birmingham. http://twitter.com/bgmahesh http://www.linkedin.com/in/bgmahesh http://www.mahesh.com/
Sunil Saxena is a career journalist with over three decades of experience in print journalism, new media, social media, journalism education and media research. He incubated Gaon Ki Awaaz, India’s first mobile-based news and information service for rural India that won two South Asian awards for innovation. As Vice President of the Internet company of The New Indian Express Group, he set up twelve websites in five languages, and also set up the Group’s online information and research service. As a print journalist, he has held key positions in leading Indian newspapers (The Times of India, The New Indian Express, The Pioneer) and magazines (India Today, India Week). As a journalism educator, he has been the Dean of the International Media Institute of India and of the Asian College of Journalism. He has also had two stints with The Times School of Journalism. He has authored two books – Breaking News and Headline Writing. http://www.easymedia.in http://twitter.com/easymediaindia
Pavan Duggal is India’s leading cyberlaw and e-commerce law expert. He is a practicing Advocate at the Supreme Court of India. He has been a consultant to UNCTAD and UNESCAP on Cyberlaw and Cybercrime respectively, consultant with the Council of Europe on Cybercrime, and a reviewer for Asian Development Bank. Pavan is the President of Cyberlaw Asia, and a member of the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center Panel of Neutrals. Pavan has been the Member of the Public Interest Registry’s .Org Advisory Council. He is a member of ICT Policy and Governance Working Group of the UNICT Taskforce. He is the Legal and Policy Consultant to Internet Mark 2 Project. Pavan is a member of Panel of Arbitrators of the Asian Domain Names Dispute Resolution Centre at Hong Kong. He is a member of Advisory Committee on E-Governance in Karnataka and BPO Steering Committee of ASSOCHAM. Pavan heads his niche law firm Pavan Duggal Associates. He has been a Member of the Nominating Committee, Membership Advisory Committee and Membership Implementation Task Force of ICANN. He has published six books and been a columnist to the Economic Times for eight years.
N. Ravi Shanker, Joint Secretary, Department of Information Technology & CEO of NIXI (National Internet Exchange of India), Ministry of Communication & Information Technology. He is also responsible for e-Learning, e-Infrastructure and Internet Governance at DIT. He is country representative on MAG of IGF and GAC of ICANN. He is a member of the Indian Administrative Service with 27 years of experience in public administration and public policy.
Amitabh Singhal is the Director of Telxess Consulting Services and Vcon. He was a founder and former president of the Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI). He also was a founder, board director and CEO of National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI). He helped conceptualize and set up NIXI as a public private partnership between ISPAI and Department of Information Technology, Government of India and was involved in restructuring NIXI as an autonomous Registry and Regulator of the .IN Domain (Indian ccTLD). He was the spokesperson of India’s ISP industry for over a decade, contributing many articles and forum lectures. He was earlier senior VP at GTL and is now on the Board of Public Interest Registry (PIR), a Virginia based non-profit, which runs the .ORG Domain (the 3rd largest gTLD after .COM and .NET). Amitabh graduated from the Institute of Management Studies and from Delhi Vishwavidyalaya.
Dr. Alwyn Didar Singh, author and expert in PPP, IT and e-commerce is a senior Indian civil servant. He is presently Secretary to the Government of India in the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs. Didar has earlier held senior positions in the Central Ministries of Road Transport and Highways, Commerce and Heavy Industries and before that as CEO of two IT companies in the State of Punjab in India. Didar is a strategy expert who has worked with several international agencies, including International Trade Centre; UNCTAD; World Health Organisation; ILO; South Centre, Geneva and the Commonwealth Secretariat, London. Didar has a PhD in the policy and administration of electronic commerce and several publications including three books to his credit in the areas of e-commerce, e-government and trade.
Dr Hanuman T. Chowdary is director of the Centre for Telecom Management and Studies in Hyderabad. He was the first and founding Chairman and Managing Director of Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL), India’s International Telecommunications Corporation. He initiated the restructuring of the DOT, first by its separation from the Posts and constituting the operations into corporations. He wrote the draft National Telecom Policy (NTP) in 1989. He drafted the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) Bill, which has become the basis for the final TRAI Act. He was a governor of INTELSAT, Washington, and INMARSAT, London. He has consulted for UNDP and ITU, and governments such as South Africa. He was Chairman of the Andhra Pradesh Electronics Development Corporation and the state’s IT advisor, and member of the Prime Minister’s National Task Force for Information Technology (NTFIT). He is a Senior Member of the IEEE (New York), and is a prolific writer and speaker.
Prof S. Sadagopan is the founder Director of the Indian Institute of IT, Bangalore (IIIT-B), established in September 1999. He has taught at two premier educational institutes in India, namely, the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IITK), during 1980 – 1995 and the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIMB), during 1995-1999. He is the author of two textbooks published by Prentice Hall & McGraw Hill. He has dozens of publications to his credit. He consults widely to public, private and social sector companies. He has travelled across all the continents and writes frequently on all aspects of Information Technology addressing a wide range of audiences that include students, educators, researchers, policy makers and the general public. He is considered one of the authorities on IT in India, in all its aspects. He is a Fulbright Fellow, Member of the ACM, IEEE – Computer Society and AIS. www.iiitb.ac.in/faculty/ss
Fred Noronha, based in Goa, has been a professional journalist for over 25 years. He has received many credits for his work including Panos Fellow in 2001 (reproductive health and gender issues), Sarai Print Media Fellowship 2001 (studying the contribution of South Asia to GNU/LINUX), co-founder of Bytes For All – a widely appreciated site and e-zine studying the use of IT and Internet for development, member and administration team for the GoaNet mailing list for expatriate Goans worldwide, and founder member of India-Linux Users group. His authoritative pieces have appeared in Indo-Asian News Service, The Telegraph (Culcutta), The Herald (Goa), Third World Network Features, Radio World International US, Inomy (Internet News), ZDnetindia.com, Dawn Science and Technology Page (Karachi), Deccan Herald (features) and Goa Today (Internet column). Mr Noronha holds an M.A. English Literature and a Bachelor in Commerce from University of Bombay and an Advanced Diploma in Journalism from IIJ-Berlin. http://in.linkedin.com/in/fredericknoronha http://twitter.com/FN www.facebook.com/fredericknoronha
Rajnesh Singh is the Internet Society’s Regional Bureau Manager for Asia, based in Fiji. An engineer by training and entrepreneur by vocation, he has consulted on communications and power infrastructure, project management and business strategy for medium to large companies and organisations in the Asia Pacific region. Rajnesh has also worked extensively with the Asia Pacific and international Internet community, and has held several leadership roles, including founding Chair of ICANN’s Asia Pacific Regional At-Large Organisation (APRALO) and Chair of the PICISOC Chapter of the Internet Society. He has worked extensively on ICT policy, training and capacity building in the Asia Pacific region for UN agencies and private sector organisations. In 2008, Rajnesh joined the Internet Society to establish its Regional Bureau for Asia. He is also involved with a couple of Internet start-ups in the cloud computing and services sectors. www.jugad.in http://about.me/rajneshsingh http://twitter.com/rajneshsingh http://www.linkedin.com/in/rajneshsingh
Wolfgang Kleinwächter is professor for International Communication Policy and Regulation at the Department for Media and Information Sciences of the Unversity of Aarhus, Denmark. Before that he had appointments at the University of Leipzig/Germany, University of Tampere/Finland and the American University in Washington. From 1988-1998 he was the President of the Law Section of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR). He has been involved in the development of policies for the Internet Domain Name System since the middle of the 1990s. He has participated as an independent observer in all ICANN Board Meetings since Singapore (March 1999). He was a member of ICANN´s “Membership Information Task Force” (MITF) and became a co-founder of the “Civil Society Internet Forum” (CSIF). He is also the initiator of the ICANN-Studienkreis, an open platform of Internet activists from policy, economy, academia and the media. He has finished a book on Self-Regulation of the Internet and ICANN.
Patrick Kane is Senior Vice President and General Manager, Naming Services, Verisign Inc. He is responsible for the domestic and international business units supporting .com, .net, .tv, .cc registries and other related naming and directory services. He has been with VeriSign since the acquisition of Network Solutions in 2000 where he has been instrumental in the development and deployment of directory services, Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs) and IDN TLDs at Verisign. Prior to VeriSign, he served in many capacities with American Management Systems (AMS) and Electronic Data Systems (EDS) where he began his career as a Systems Engineer. Patrick holds a Bachelor of Science in Architectural Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.
Suchit Nanda is advisor to the Chairperson, Reliance Foundation, a philanthropic organisation in rural development, education and health. He is the founder and CEO of Nanda Netcom and Online Services, and has a rich experience having pioneered the online system (Live Wire! BBS) in the Indian subcontinent and one of the earliest ISPs, Live Wire! Net in India. He has consulted on ICT4D to IDRC, UNDP, and UNESCO. He did his B.E. (Electronics) from Bombay University. In 1991, while still in college, he co-authored `War On Virus,’ a book on computer viruses. In 2000-1 he joined the Board of Directors of Ideaventures which set up Jadoonet.com, a company that developed the first STB (Set Top Box) in India featuring Net on TV. Suchit is on the editorial committee for Digital Review of Asia Pacific (DirAP) and has authored a number of books and magazine articles. Suchit has travelled extensively and is a keen photographer and has held photo-exhibitions in many countries (http://www.photonicyatra.com). http://suchit.net
Vijay Shekhar Sharma is the chairman, managing director and founder of One97 Communications. He has more than 10 years of experience in the telecom and new media industries, having founded his first venture XS Corps while he was at college, which he sold to Lotus Interworks in New Jersey in 1999. He was previously with Riverrun Software Services Group Limited, Inter Solutions Software, and Startec Global Communications. In these roles he focused on the design and development of various products and applications for the technology, media and telecom industries. Vijay holds a Bachelors degree in Engineering from Delhi College of Engineering. He also actively supports a range of non-governmental organisations doing development work.
Venkataraman Balaji has been a worker in ICT for development and agriculture over the past almost two decades. He was on the staff of M S Swaminathan Research Foundation and participated in the setting up of “information villages project” that was featured in the UNDP Human Development Report 2000. He is currently placed at the Commonwealth Of Learning in Vancouver, Canada, while on leave from the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi- Arid Tropics (ICRISAT). In the last five years, while at ICRISAT, he was associated with the Virtual Academy for the Semi -Arid Tropics (VASAT) and with the Consortium for Knowledgge Management in Indian Agriculture.