George works with AWS customers globally to build secure, scalable, and modern solutions for the advertising and marketing industries. With more than ten years building start-ups focussing on customer experience, real-time behaviour and performance analytics, and audience engagement solutions, George is passionate about helping AWS customers to reduce their undifferentiated heavy lifting and leverage the cloud to achieve their unique business goals.
Board Member Category: Speaker
AVEEKSHITH BUSHAN
Aveek works for Aerospike as Regional Director & General Manager for Asia Pacific. He has two decades of experience in sales, technology, market development and consulting roles. Aveek has worked for enterprise companies like IBM, Oracle and Deutsche Bank; and has also led MongoDB’s solution architect team in APAC. He is passionate about solving real-world technology problems for customers in the region and loves teaching, blogging and playing badminton.
ABHISHEK KUMAR
Abhishek heads Knorex’s engineering effort where he works with cross-country development teams to ensure quality and timely delivery of products and technologies. With over 12 years of experience in product design, development, architecting solutions, developing large-scale systems, he charts the effort in architecting Knorex product and design solutions for different enterprise use cases. Abhishek started his career as a researcher at Infosys India before leading the product development team across the region for SQL Star. Abhishek received his Master’s in Management of Technology from NUS, Singapore.
Shiney Eapen
Vivek Bhargava
SOUMYA MOHANTY
Soumya Mohanty is Managing Director and Chief Client Officer- Insights Division at Kantar. She brings with her over two decadesyearsof experience in market research and consumer behaviour across sectors. She specializes in innovation, brand, and communication research and was named ET’s Most Promising Female Leader for 20-21.
Her experience spans three areas-Data Analytics/Consumer Insights; building a resilient and commercially strong business and creating high performing teams. To be able to unearth human stories in data, take the voice of the consumer to board rooms or use data to make a real social impact is what keeps her going.
Soumya also has a keen interest in the application of translating analytics and using multi-source data for compelling business decisions. She is a regular speaker at industry fora and has presented insightful papers at various symposia.
Over the years Soumya has worked across leading companies like Kantar, Nielsen and Ipsos.
An Economics(Hons) graduate from Delhi University, she is an alumnus of Indian Institute of Mass Communication.
SIDDHARTH PURI
HARISH BHAT
Harish Bhat is Brand Custodian, Tata Sons. He joined the Tata Group in 1987, as an officer in the Tata Administrative Service.
He is Chairman of Tata Coffee Ltd. He is also a Director on the Boards of several other Tata Companies, including Tata Global Beverages Ltd., Titan Company Ltd., Trent Ltd., Tata Starbucks Pvt. Ltd., Infiniti Retail Ltd., Tata Unistore Ltd. and Tata AIA Life Insurance Company.
During his career of 31 years with the Tata Group, Mr. Bhat has served in several senior roles. These include stints as Managing Director of Tata Global Beverages Ltd., Chief Operating Officer of the Watches and Jewellery businesses of Titan Company, and also in the telecom business of the Group. He has played a key role in several strategic moves over the past two decades, including the launch and nurturing of many iconic brands of the Tata Group, the successful turnaround of the jewellery business, as well as the acquisition of Tetley.
Mr. Bhat is an alumnus of BITS Pilani and IIM Ahmedabad, graduating at the top of his class in both Institutions. He won the IIM Ahmedabad Gold Medal for scholastic excellence in 1987. In 1997, he won the Chevening Scholarship for young managers, awarded by the British Government. In 2017, BITS Pilani honoured him with its Distinguished Alumnus Award. In 2017, he was also awarded the “Champion of Excellence” recognition by the Advertising Agencies Association of India, for his three decades of contribution towards nurturing great advertising and building great brands. He represents the Tata Group on the Executive Committee of the World Federation of Advertisers
He has strong professional interests in consumer behavior, marketing, strategy and business history. He has been a member of the Consumer Insights Panel of the Economic Development Board, Government of Singapore. He is a member of the Board of Governors of the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI). Two of his personal interests are fitness and great food.
Mr. Bhat is passionate about writing, and is a prolific writer who contributes regularly to national newspapers such as Hindu Business Line and Mint. In 2012, his first book was published by Penguin. Titled “Tata Log”, the book narrates stories from the modern history of the Tata Group, set to an overarching theme. His second book, titled “The Curious Marketer” was published in 2017 by Penguin Random House. This book discusses why curiosity is very important to marketers, and how we can improve our curiosity quotient.
SWAPNIL SINHA
Dr. Kushal Sanghvi
Kushal Sanghvi is every bit the Media Evangelist. A penchant for advertising, media and communications drove him to this industry where he has thrived since the last 22 years.
A large part of his innings has been with media companies and digital/ tech. He sees New Media as an integral part of brand expansion. Globally and across Asia his roles with iconic companies such as Reliance Group, Fremantle Media, Havas Media, The Times of India Group has led to unparalleled intelligence in Media thereby creating marketing success stories for those brands and has been pivotal to scale business and operations for those companies. Someone who has been part of various start up teams and then gone ahead to make them successful ventures in terms of people, it’s clients, defining processes and of course scaling and running those businesses.
At his capacity as Managing Director, South Asia at Havas Digital which he founded in India and went ahead to have teams across the region, he also led the company for its social media across a global committee that was headquartered at Paris and its earliest times also started out Mobext the mobile advertising solutions agency under Havas too.
He has essayed roles in Print, Television, OOH, Content and the invention of interactive television in India for the pioneering show ‘Indian Idol’ for Sony Television in the country. Having worked with over 400 brands in his career till now he always willing to learn more and that’s what keeps him going daily. Has also been involved with the Govt of India too and helped them in various facets of marketing, brand and technology.
Being a creative thinker with a passion for creating products, content, platforms and solutions his most poignant creation being the inception of Rediff.com as a founder member, a tipping point in his career graph.
In his role at the Reliance ADA Group he leads all digital transformation across all Reliance group companies working closely with the CXO’s and has incorporated a digital marketing services company for the Group.
An MBA from NMIMS, he loves playing mentor and terms people management as a stepping stone to achieve targets and has been an active guest lecturer in leading institutes across India: the various IIM’s, IIT’s, NMIMS, SP Jain, JBIMS, ISME, MET, Rizvi, Wellingkar, MICA, ISB, Indira Institute, Somaiya, Nirma Institute, XLRI, FMS, Symbiosis to name a few. He has done his doctorate in consumer behaviour with regards to the impact of the various roles of media and communication triggers. He has also been part of platforms like Teach for India and in his spare time also teaches at various NGO’s, slums and villages across the country as he believes that education is a two way process and a country like India that has its largest population in its youth and also in smaller cities needs to all be trained and envisioned for a better India.
He is receipent of over 50 awards locally and internationally in the domain of advertising, marketing, media, content, digital marketing and technology and has been voted by various tabloids, publications, media like Exchange4media, Afaqs, Campaign, World Brand Congress as being among the top 10 digital marketers in the country for many years now. Afaqs has featured him as among the top 50 newsmakers in media in 2014 and 2015.
Kushal is a regular speaker at various media and marketing events and platforms such as FICCI, IAMAI, Ad Club, Afaqs, E4M,TFMA, NASSCOM, MIPCOM, Campaign, Adobe, ICOM Global, CII in India and globally to name a few where he loves to champion the cause of media and garner new talent into this industry. Recently in 2014 was one of the only 2 Indians to speak at Websummit, Ireland which is the largest digital marketing festivals in the world that attracts over 70,000 people. Has also spoken regularly at the largest mobile marketing platform at World Mobile Congress at Barcelona in 2014, 2015, and 2016 which has over 1,00,000 people attend in and he was one of the few Indian’s to speak there. He has been part of the jury for various marketing, media, content, television, advertising awards in the last over 8 years. He is also on the board of some leading international marketing and media associations like CEBIT, TFMA, Ad Tech, ICOM Global, GIIFFA, DMAI to name a few. He has also been involved in mentoring various start-ups especially in the mobile, ad-tech, data- analytics, social-media, e-commerce, gaming, media space and has also invested into some of the same ventures too.
In his spare time Kushal loves to read, write, paint and sculpt, dabble in cooking, watch movies, travel and explore the world, meet new people and explore new cultures, hike, listen to all sorts of world and Indian music. He loves all that’s tech and is often always the first to try new technology, gadgets and more. He is a car freak and loves to drive, often dabbles in a game of badminton and tries to keep fit with being in nature and doing his walks or a good swim.
