Board Member Category: Speaker 2023
Gunjan Khetan
Gunjan Khetan is an accomplished business leader with 18+ years of international track record in overdriving revenue and profit of multi-million dollar brands and executing business turnarounds. He has delivered market-beating outcomes in varied categories across different regions including Asia, Europe and North America. Proficient at revenue and P&L management strategies with a strong emphasis on brand building and portfolio management, he has successfully led diverse, high performing teams with clear vision and purpose, setting them up for success. Gunjan is personally passionate about the impact of entrepreneurial thought leadership in enhancing nutrition and improving quality of life. He is an angel investor, a certified coach, an active startup mentor, a speaker and a BIPOC advocate. He loves reading, photography and shares a deep passion for traveling with his family (been to 38 countries but many more to go).
Rajat Khullar
Sonali Malaviya
Sonali Malaviya is the Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer at EssenceMediacom,South Asia. In early 2023, Essence and MediaCom joined forces to launch an innovative and new global agency designed to help clients grow in a rapidly evolving media landscape. EssenceMediacom will infuse the digital strategy, data-driven creative, analytics, and technology capabilities of Essence with MediaCom’s world-class scaled multichannel, audience planning and strategic media expertise. Sonali plays a powerful role in driving the integration of the digital and data-driven DNA of Essence with Mediacom’s multichannel, audience planning and strategic media expertise, facilitating client growth globally through an agile response to an ever-evolving media landscape.
Sonali has a deep conviction for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the workplace, having personally led agency and group-wide initiatives to embed the same. In 2021, Sonali was elevated to MD of Essence India. As a MD, she was leading Essence across its offices in Bengaluru, Delhi, and Mumbai. She was responsible for driving continued client-centric innovation in data, analytics, and technology, as well as business growth and company culture for the agency in India. Joining Essence in 2018, Sonali previously led the agency’s Google business in India and Southeast Asia as Senior Vice President, Client Services. Earlier, she served as Chief Operating Officer at Colorbar Cosmetics and Country Marketing Lead at Twitter in India. With over 20 years of experience in management, marketing and media across industries and markets, she has also held senior roles at Mindshare, PHD, Roy Morgan Research and MediaCom in India, the United Arab Emirates and Australia.
A postgraduate in business management from the Australian Graduate School of Management, Sonali strives to build strong, collaborative partnerships with clients and employees alike, and is an advocate of diversity and inclusion in the workplace. In addition, she is a firm believer in change as the only constant, and continuous learning and exploring are what keep her going.
Meenakshi Dawar
Shalini Poddar
Shalini is Head of Ads for Disney+ Hotstar in India. As part of her profile, she is responsible for delivering Ad Revenue for Disney+ Hotstar which includes Sales, Agency Partnerships, Strategy, Measurement and Ad Tech Solutions, CreativeWorks as well as Ad Operations.
Shalini comes with strong leadership experience of running ads businesses of tremendous scale, and shaping transformational partnerships and product interventions. Prior to joining Disney+ Hotstar, Shalini worked with Google for over 8 years. In her last stint, she was the head of business development for Google Play Apps for India, South East Asia and Australia. As India country head for Google App Ads, she delivered the largest turnarounds with triple digit growth, and led one of the largest ad transformations globally, migrating billions of app promo ads revenue to an automated Ad platform. Before joining Google, Shalini worked with Accenture Consulting for 8 years and has led multiple client engagements across sectors.
An executive sponsor for People and Development agendas at both Accenture and Google, Shalini has built several high-performing teams and is an active coach herself. She holds a Master’s degree in Business Administration (MBA) in Marketing and Finance from Indian Institute of Management Calcutta.
Vipul Gupta
The Founder and Director of Re’equil, one of the fastest-growing cosmeceutical brands, started the company in 2018. Vipul’s vision for Re’equil is to offer efficacy driven products that set the right expectations with the consumers. He believes that consistency paired with formulations rooted in science leads to efficacy and effective results. The idea for Re’equil is to restore the lost equilibrium of skin, hair, expectations, results and instills a belief in the customers that they are more than their skin and hair.
Aditya Swaminathan
Udit Verma
A technology expert with a penchant for developing unique tech-enabled solutions for businesses, Udit Verma is the Co-Founder of Trackier, a SAAS-based Attribution tracking and partner management platform that allows brands effectively manage and track their online ad campaigns. At a young age, Udit has already founded two tech-based ventures and has mastered an array of specialist abilities in business management including advertising, marketing, brand development, business development as well as operations management.
Utsav Malhotra
An Magna cum laude alumnus of Durham University, UK and IITB, Utsav is also a double gold medalist from NIFT where he pursued design. With a keen eye for product and a penchant for numbers, he found himself in leadership roles across businesses that anchored around lifestyle and luxury and sought hyper growth. Prior to his current role at Noise, he has had stints with Nicobar Design, AMPM, Fashion and You, Arvind Lifestyle Brands amidst others. Utsav lends his expertise to execute Noise’s vision and accelerate its business goals in the current avatar. He was recently included in the BW40u40 list for his achievements and contributions to the industry. Work life aside, Utsav has an affinity for travel and deep sea diving and is an avid connoisseur of Indian Art.
