Board Member Category: Keynotes 2024
Gulshan Verma
Gulshan Verma is a digital technology and media executive with over 20 years of experience building fast growing organizations across the USA, UK, APAC and India.
Currently Gulshan leads JioAds – the advertising arm of Jio Platforms Limited which reaches more than 450M users.
Prior to JioAds, Gulshan was the Head of Advertising and part of the management team at Disney+Hotstar, India’s largest streaming platform where he grew the platform’s revenues more than 8x over three years. He has held other leadership positions in Times Internet Limited, Outbrain, Komli Media, Yahoo!, Ernst & Young, McKinsey & Co and IMG.
Gulshan holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, MSc. Political Economy of Transition in Europe and a BSc. Economics from the London School of Economics.
ANISHA SINGH
DEEPAK SHARMA
Deepak Sharma works towards building future of financial service by creating digital platforms to serve billion users and building world class financial service platforms out of India. Currently he is involved in helping Jio Financial Service (JFS) & Blackrock build digital product, platform & distribution capability. Deepak also works as CEO/Board Advisor on Digital led growth strategy. He is a member of Customer Advisory Board of Airtel. He is an investor & mentor to early-stage ventures.
As President & Chief Digital Officer at Kotak, he was leading digital strategy & scaling digital capabilities at Kotak for over a decade. This included driving digital channels,payments, transformation, business model innovation and future-ready initiatives of the bank. Deepak was also involved in setting up Innovation Lab, Design Studio, Development Centre and the start-up ecosystem programs for the bank. Under hisleadership, Kotak had launched several innovative and global-first products such as 811 Digital Bank, Hashtag Banking, Wealth tech platform-Cherry. He had also set up two highly profitable business for Kotak- Non-Resident Global Indian business & Affluent Banking.
Deepak actively works with big techs, VCs, start-ups, policy makers & the global fintech community to bring best-in-class products and solutions in the financialservice space. He focusses on confluence of deeptech, consumer insights, market trends and regulation to build scalable platform led business model. Deepak has worked across various international markets and brings a global perspective to business. During early part of his career, he was involved in setting new business with Standard Chartered Bank & Telecom majors Hutchison.
Deepak has completed an advanced programme in Strategy from IIM Calcutta, Technology Leadership Program from MIT and Stanford LEAD Certificate in Corporate Innovation.
SHIREESH JOSHI
Shireesh Joshi is Chief Business Officer & President – Network Expansion for Open Network For Digital Commerce (ONDC). He is responsible for expanding the network in terms of participants and domains. Previously he held roles with Procter & Gamble, PepsiCo, Airtel and Godrej, where he managed multiple brands, geographies and market positions simultaneously and worked on businesses across India, China and South Asia, working with various cultures and languages and has over 30 years of experience delivering successful results with organisations and teams of varying capability and scale. An industry and function leader, he often speaks at industry conferences, serves on various marketing award juries. He is an alumnus of IIT Kanpur and IIM Bangalore.
SHINEY EAPEN
PRABHVIR SAHMEY
Prabhvir is a highly experienced business leader with more than 15 years of digital advertising & technology experience. He currently serves as Senior Director, Samsung Ads India. & SEA A leading provider of Advanced TV advertising solutions.
As a founding executive of Samsung Ads India, Prabh was instrumental in setting up the Indian arm of the business. Armed with a deep understanding of ad tech, media and viewership preferences Prabh is tasked with driving commercial expansion and adoption of CTV in the country. Prior to Samsung Ads Prabh pioneered programmatic advertising at Google, headed up search and mobile at Mindshare and worked at multiple technology driven media solution companies. He was recently named in Exchange4media’s Digital 40 under 40.
GAURAV MEHTA
NALIN MEHTA
Professor Nalin Mehta is an award-winning social scientist, journalist and author who has held senior leadership positions in major Indian digital, print and TV news companies;
been a communications expert with international financing institutions and the UN in Geneva, Switzerland.
He has taught and held research positions at universities and institutions in Australia, Singapore, Switzerland and India. Most recently, Mehta has been Executive Editor, Times of India – Online; Consulting Editor, Times of India and Managing Editor, India Today (English TV news channel).
He has also held senior positions with the Global Fund in Geneva, Switzerland, and UNAIDS.
Alongside executive leadership position roles in the media industry, Mehta has held senior research fellowships at National University of Singapore; Australian National University, Canberra; La Trobe University, Melbourne; and International Olympics Museum, Lausanne, Switzerland. Mehta has also been Adjunct Professor at IIM-Bangalore, Associate Professor of Sociology at Shiv Nadar University and Senior Research Fellow at India Development Foundation.
Mehta is the author of five best-selling and critically acclaimed books, including India On Television (winner of the Asian Publishing Award for Best Book on Asian Media, 2009) and Behind a Billion Screens (Shortlisted as Business Book of the Year, Tata Literary Live, 2015). His latest co-authored book, Dreams of a Billion (2020) is a national bestseller. Mehta was founding Co-Director of the Times Lit Fest Delhi (2015-18) and a founding editor of the international peer-reviewed journal South Asian History and Culture (Routledge) as well as the Routledge South Asian History and Culture book series.
A DFID-Commonwealth scholar, Mehta has a Ph.D in Politics from La Trobe University, Melbourne; M.A. International Relations, University of East Anglia, UK, and B.A. Journalism (Honours) from University of Delhi.
