Over the last decade, India has emerged as a technological and economic power and a land of IT opportunity. Conventional wisdom has been that India is an excellent destination for business and technology services outsourcing, but not a crucible for product innovation. But is this really true? Lately, a new breed of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and startups are challenging this premise and helping ignite the IT Product Revolution.

To help us understand the What and How of this revolution, we have put together an panel of pioneers to address the following:

• Technology areas where the innovations are taking place
• Products being developed for the Indian market
• Leveraging Indian Products in the global market

This is a "must-attend" event. As a budding or seasoned entrepreneur, you can learn about the opportunities in India. If you are a technical or business professional, this is your chance to explore employment options and if you work for an established public company, this is a sneak preview into the burgeoning innovation in India.

Program Details

The Panel

BD Goel (Moderator), Group Director, Technology, PartyGaming - A pioneer of consumer and B2B internet , B.D. led the development and operations for Internet Shopping Network , Travelocity, Disney's Infoseek/GO Network, Neoforma, e2open and Aztec.
Along with deep technology expertise B.D. brings substantial executive and General Management experience to PartyGaming. As Senior Vice President and GM of Commerce at Infoseek/GO Network he was responsible for eCommerce division P&L and at Neoforma as Executive Vice President of Product and Services B.D was responsible for product, operations and professional services.
B.D Goel is a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and also holds a Masters in Electrical Engineering.

Sumir Chadha, Senior Managing Director, Westbridge Capital Partners - Sumir co-founded WestBridge in 2000 and oversees all investment activities and management of the firm. Sumir has eight years of venture capital investing experience in India and focuses on services and software companies. He serves as Chairman of the Board of AppLabs, and is on the boards of Astra, Emagia, July Systems and marketRx. He also serves as an observer on the board of Celetronix. Prior to co-founding WestBridge, Sumir was a key member of the Principal Investment Area at Goldman Sachs & Co, based in New York and Singapore, where he focused on venture capital investments in services and software companies in both the United States and India. He led or was a key member of the investment team for over 17 technology investments, including high- profile success stories such as FreeMarkets (NASDAQ: FMKT), webMethods (NASDAQ: WEBM) and Techspan. These investments totaled over $140 million of venture capital. His career began as a management consultant at McKinsey & Co in New York and New Delhi, where he specialized in the internet and wireless industries. Sumir is also the co-founder and Chairman of the US-India Venture Capital Association (US-IVCA). Sumir received an M.B.A. from Harvard University with Distinction and a B.S.E. in Computer Science from Princeton University.

Dr. Anand Deshpande, Chairman and Managing Director, Persistent - Anand completed his B. Tech. in Computer Science Engineering from IIT Kharagpur in 1984 followed by a Ph.D. from Indiana University, Bloomington in 1989.  Dr. Deshpande began his career as a researcher at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories before returning to India in 1990 to start Persistent Systems.
As an active member of the international database community, Dr. Deshpande has been instrumental in bringing several premier international conferences to India like VLDB (1996, Mumbai) and ICDE (2003, Bangalore).   He was the Co-Chair of the Industrial Program Committee for ICDE 2005 (Tokyo) and Organizing Chair of COMAD 2005 (Goa).  Dr. Deshpande is the Chairman of Computer Society India Pune Chapter, Executive Committee Member of Maharatta Chamber of Commerce Industry & Agriculture, Executive Committee Member of NASSCOM.
Dr. Deshpande has been at the helm of Persistent Systems since inception.  Persistent today is recognized as a leader in offshore software product development and has grown to over 2400+ persons and $33 million in revenue, and is serving global leaders such as Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Shinsei Bank, etc.

Sandip Gupta, President and CEO, Ensim - Sandip has led in the telecom and service provider industry for a decade, directing the strategy, design, development and implementation of large-scale operational and business support systems. At Ensim, he helped pioneer service enablement and automation solutions for the service provider hosting industry and influenced the adoption of commercial software solutions for tier-1 operators. He worked with key industry partners like Microsoft, HP, and Accenture enabling service providers to deliver high-margin services. Sandip was also senior manager at Indus Consultancy Services, leading the definition and deployment of next-generation IT and application infrastructure, resulting in benefits for global Fortune 500 financial, telecom and retail companies; and oversaw all business development, strategic planning and marketing activities.

Ajit Nazre, Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers - Ajit joined KPCB in 2003. His areas of investment include enterprise software and services, material science pertinent to energy, environment and life sciences.
Before joining KPCB, Ajit was with SAP for 5 years. At SAP, he worked for Dr. Hasso Plattner, CEO, Chairman and co-founder, SAP. Ajit played a key role in formulating and executing SAP's internet strategy (mySAP.com). He co-founded SAPMarkets, a fully owned company of SAP, focusing on Marketplace applications and technology. As the Managing Director of SAPMarkets Americas, Ajit grew the business to $100 million in six quarters. In 2002, he laid the foundation for SAP Inspire, SAP's New Venture Unit. Prior to SAP, Ajit worked for six years in the medical device industry, first at Zimmer, Inc., a division of Bristol Myers and Squibb and then at Mathys AG (Synthes) in Swizterland. During this time he managed the development of several new product lines and received seven U.S. and four European patents.
Ajit has an undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from the College of Engineering Poona (COEP), India. He holds an MS in Mechanical Engineering from Michigan Tech, a PhD in Biomechanics from the Technical University of Hanover, Germany, and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.

Shirish Netke, Head of US Operations and Chief Strategy Officer, Aztec - has extensive experience in sales and marketing of leading edge technologies in more than 30 countries. He joined Aztec from Sun Microsystems Inc. where he spent more than a decade in senior management roles in the areas of international sales, marketing and channels management. His recent roles included channels director for a $700M business unit and strategic sales director for software. Shirish has also served as Chairman and CEO of the SchoolTone Alliance, the first-ever alliance of technology vendors for portal computing in schools. He is currently the chairman of the Software Economic Council ( www.bpmforum.org/seco) which is a software industry consortium to improve software economics, development and performance. He has testified before the California State legislature on e-commerce and before the US Federal government on web-based education. Before joining Sun, Shirish was one of the first 25 employees of Wipro Technologies where he worked on M&A opportunities for the CEO and was instrumental in launching their system integration business in the aerospace and defense market. He earned a Bachelor of Technology degree from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur and an MBA from the University of Rochester.

The Sponsors

PartyGaming Plc is the world’s leading online gaming company. It owns the world’s largest poker room, PartyPoker.com, and the world’s largest online casino, PartyCasino.com and has a customer base that spans 170 countries.

PartyGaming is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FT-SE 100 share index. With 4 billion shares in issue, the company is valued at more than $8.5 billion.
Founded in 1997, the Group has more than 1,250 employees in three locations. The head office is in Gibraltar, product development and customer services are in Hyderabad, India and marketing services is in London.

Anurag Dikshit, a co-founder and Group Operations Director of PartyGaming, graduated with a B.Tech degree in CS&E from IIT Delhi in 1994 and Vikrant Bhargava, also a co-founder and Group Marketing Director, holds a Bachelor's Degree in Technology in Electrical Engineering from IIT Delhi.