An IIM-A alumnus and a Chartered Accountant, Anand Kumar Bajaj is the Founder, MD & CEO of PayNearby. With over 22 years of experience in Digital Payments and Mobility, Anand holds six patents in banking technology and has worked earlier with YES Bank, ICICI Bank, and Ernst & Young. Previously, he was the President and Chief Innovation Officer at YES Bank, where he led several high-impact programs in digital payments. At PayNearby, Anand steers the company’s strategic direction and growth, and he, along with his team, is committed to enabling the reach of digital payments and financial services at the first mile by empowering retailers.
Key note speaker |Host of #hustlechat series |entrepreneur| Plug & Play Insurtech (Batch 7) Silicon Valley|Plug & Play Finsurtech (Batch 3) Singapore
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Naby love salsa dancing, poetry and InsurTech (in that order). When she is no not exploring her side hustles, she run Coverhero an insurtech startup focusing on evolutioning insurance services focusing on the needs of Millenials and GenZ. Coverhero Launched our First product Hustlecover.com to fill the gap of financial insecurity for the growing Gig Economy and self employed generation. Coverhero was selected to the first cohort of Qantas AVRO accelerator program competing with 500 other startups. Coverhero was a finalist of the top 15 companies of TechCrunch Startup Battlefield Australia and recently completed the Plug and Play Insurtech program (Batch 7) in Silicon Valley. Coverhero has been featured in Global Insurtech news, Business and technology media as an emerging startup in fintech.
Graduating with a Masters of Philosophy in Management at the age of 22, she has had 18 years of experience in a wide range of industries across Senior level positions spanning across Academia ( Business studies, Research Methodology and Design), Management Consulting, Documentary production, Travel & Destination Marketing and Technology. Naby's Research background is in social science where she deeply studied human behaviour in her Academic career. She is currently taking a break from her Phd to focus on building technology driven solutions that solve community problems. I am not a new face to the start up scene in Australia with number of my own startups, and Business ventures working closely with founders and catalyser of innovation in the Australian Startup Ecosystem in the last decade . She has advised the United Nations Development Project on building start-up ecosystems and designed accelerator programs to drive innovation in developing Nations. I was an Australian delegate of at the G20 Young Entrepreneurs conference in Berlin in 2017. I am a Key Note speaker, commentator, thought leader and an advocate for diversity of thought in financial services and technology sector and Nominated fr Female fintech leader of the year 2021 and 2022 in Australia
Pushkar Mukewar is the CEO and Co-Founder of Drip Capital. In his 13-year-long career, he has worked across various geographies and has an in-depth understanding of the global financial services industry. Pushkar realized the huge potential of addressing the working capital gap for small businesses in emerging economies which became his inspiration behind starting Drip in 2016. Drip offers a unique trade financing product targeted toward small businesses engaged in cross-border trade by making the underwriting and financing of international B2B transactions seamless.
In the past, Pushkar was a venture capitalist at Saama Capital and was involved with several high-growth start-ups in India, including Paytm, Snapdeal, and Bluestone. He has also been a Consultant with Oliver Wyman in the US, UAE, and Switzerland, where he advised several financial services clients on strategic and operational issues. He started his career at Capital One where he developed credit risk analytics for the subprime consumer loans business.
Pushkar holds an MBA degree from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and an MS degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta. Pushkar is also a thought leader and influencer in the global trade finance ecosystem. His opinions are routinely published in leading publications like Forbes, Fortune, and Financial Express, to name a few. He has won numerous awards, including BW 40 under 40.
Ravi Ravulaparthi is CEO & Co-Founder of Qapita, a digital equity management platform. Prior to founding Qapita in 2019, Ravi was Director at Rippledot Capital. Ravi is also a Member of the Board of Directors at Whispir. He has previously worked in investment banking and corporate development in Asia Pacific region for nearly 2 decades and has expertise in capital raising, corporate finance advisory, mergers &acquisitions and principal investments.
Shanti Mohan is a serial entrepreneur and the Co-founder of LetsVenture - India's largest online platform for startup investments - connecting investors and founders who are looking to build disruptive companies together and bring value-added products to the market.
LetsVenture is backed by Accel, Chiratae Ventures, Nandan Nilekani, Ratan Tata, Rishad Premji, Mohandas Pai, Sharad Sharma, Anupam Mittal.
A second time entrepreneur, Shanti is on a journey to provide a complete marketplace for startups to make fundraising easy and transparent. With this mission in mind, LetsVenture has established multiple brands such as trica, which is a private platform enabling exclusive access to India's top private companies & VC Funds, trica Equity - a SaaS tool for Cap Table & ESOP Management with a built-in protocol for ESOP liquidity, Women Investor Network (WIN) - a cohort-based learning program to empower women as angel investors and secure their seat at leadership tables, and LV Fuel, a collective of ambitious founders at LetsVenture looking to nurture and fuel the next generation of entrepreneurs across India. Shanti is also the founding venture partner for the recently launched RBF Fund N+1 Capital.
Over the years , Shanti has also worked with HPE in Cupertino, California, where she was a part of the product team for 10 years. Her passion to make an impact eventually motivativated her to became an angel investor herself.
In 2021 alone, she has made over 14 investments, including Jar, Goat brands, Giva, Spottabl, Junio, Animall, and Bimaplan to name a few, securing her a position as one of the top 32 angel investors in India by Inc42. This passion has also moved her into the ranks of various regulatory committees and fintech sandboxes run by SEBI, DPIIT and others. Her areas of expertise include consumer internet, embedded technology, and enterprise.
Varun Mittal is experienced at the cross-section of digital business building and financial services in South East Asia and global emerging markets. He has developed and implemented strategy, technology rollout, ecosystem management, and regulatory engagement for financial institutions as well as digital and internet technology companies. He undertook his MBA at the National University of Singapore and graduated with computer science engineering as his undergraduate major. Currently he leads digital for Singlife with Aviva building better way to achieve financial freedom. He is founder of "The Fintech Nation" project comprising book, podcast and investment fund to support fintech ecosystem in Singapore.
With over 24 years of work experience in various functions of banking with core competence in the areas of Business Strategy, Product Development and Digital Financial Services with a deep understanding of technology as an enabler. Prior to India Post Payments Bank, he has worked with leading banking institutions such as Bank of Baroda, Axis Bank and Equitas SFB in various roles spanning across Project Lead and Domain Expert on Payment Products and Inclusive Banking. During his last assignment with Equitas Small Finance Bank as the Chief Digital Officer, Venkat has been part of the founding team for the Bank and is credited with creating a digitally enabled Banking access through multiple payment systems and channels, thereby leading to business growth and differentiated customer experience. Venkat has also been a key industry spokesperson and is closely engaged with the government and regulatory institutions in policy formulation in a rapidly evolving industry. Venkat has demonstrated his acumen in launching new businesses, by identifying and capitalizing on business, market and process opportunities; leveraging technology to drive revenue, streamlining operations and improving client experience. He is skilled at driving innovation for top and bottom line growth. Venkat has successfully led cross-functional teams to deliver change in complex and challenging environments. He has extensively worked in the financial inclusion space leveraging fintech and digital led innovation to make a difference. Venkat has graduated in Mathematics and Economics from Osmania University and completed the Executive Management Programme from Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata
National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) was incorporated in 2008 as an umbrella organization for operating retail payments and settlement systems in India. NPCI has created a robust payment and settlement infrastructure in the country. It has changed the way payments are made in India through a bouquet of retail payment products such as RuPay card, Immediate Payment Service (IMPS), Unified Payments Interface (UPI), Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM), BHIM Aadhaar, National Electronic Toll Collection (NETC Fastag) and Bharat BillPay. NPCI also launched UPI 2.0 to offer more secure and comprehensive services to consumers and merchants.
NPCI is focused on bringing innovations in the retail payment systems through use of technology and is relentlessly working to transform India into a digital economy. It is facilitating secure payments solutions with nationwide accessibility at minimal cost in furtherance of India’s aspiration to be a fully digital society.
For more information, visit: https://www.npci.org.in/
Payments Council of India was formed in the year 2013 catering to the needs of the digital payment industry. The Council was formed inter-alia for the purposes of representing the various regulated non-banking payment industry players, to address and help resolve various industry-level issues and barriers which require discussion and action. The council works with all its members to promote payments industry growth and to support our national goal of ‘Cash to Less Cash Society’ and ‘Growth of Financial Inclusion’ which is also the Vision Shared by the RBI and the Government of India. PCI works closely with the regulators i.e. Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Finance Ministry, and any similar government, departments, bodies, or institutions to make ‘India a less cash society.
For more information, visit: http://paymentscouncil.in/
Fintech Convergence Council (FCC) after successfully hosting the largest Virtual Fintech Conference - Global Fintech Fest in the month of July 2020, and partnered with the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) as Global Satellite Event Partner for Singapore Fintech Festival (SFF)2020 to host the India leg of Singapore Fintech Festival (SFF). The India Leg of Singapore Fintech Fest (SFF) was organized by FCC and UNCDF jointly.
Fintech Convergence Council (FCC) represents the Fintech industry and traditional companies in the BFSI space. The purpose of the council is to encourage collaboration, seek complementarities and build synergy between leading BFSI companies and the emerging Fintech start-ups. The council has worked towards interpreting the regulatory and legal framework, aggregating the concerns and feedback of the various players within the larger Fintech community, communicating it to regulators and lawmakers, and organizing events and gatherings for the industry participants to meet, share ideas and work together in the interest of creating a safer, more open and more collaborative operating environment through a transparent forum. The vision of the council is to “To proactively work towards growth of Fintech and penetration of financial services to support our national goal of financial inclusion, moving towards a digitally empowered country.”
It has been the endeavor of FCC to showcase India's Fintech landscape to the world, and no better platform than the Singapore Fintech Festival. The agenda brought together who from the Indian Financial space over the 5 day event. The line up of events also included a curated session matching Indian start-ups with global investors. The Deal Friday platform provided a unique opportunity to early-stage Fintech start-ups from India to pitch and have one on one meetings with a broad spectrum of investors looking for investment opportunities in India.
For more information, visit: https://www.fintechcouncil.in/
