Eric Garcetti is a committed public servant, educator, and diplomat. He was confirmed in a bipartisan vote as the 26^th United States Ambassador to the Republic of India on March 15, 2023.

After serving twelve years as a Los Angeles city councilmember, including six as City Council President, Garcetti was elected as the 42^nd Mayor of the City of Los Angeles in 2013 as the youngest mayor in Los Angeles history, and he was re-elected in 2017 with the widest margin ever recorded in his city.

During his mayoralty, Garcetti led Los Angeles through crisis, charted a bold green future, and launched record investments in infrastructure. Under his watch, Los Angeles was named the best run city in America by the What Works Cities initiative of Bloomberg Philanthropies and Garcetti was named Public Official of the Year in 2019 by Governing Magazine.  Garcetti oversaw a period of record economic growth and opportunity, won the Olympic and Paralympic Games for Los Angeles in 2028 and left the city with a record budget surplus. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Garcetti was praised for leading Los Angeles’ aggressive response, building the largest testing and vaccination sites in the world and adopting many of the earliest public health protections while keeping critical sectors of the economy going.

While Mayor, Garcetti was elected by his global peers to serve as Chair of C40 Cities – a network of 97 of the world’s biggest cities taking bold climate action.  At COP26 in Glasgow, he represented the world’s urban leaders delivering the Cities Race to Zero pledge, a commitment of over 1,000 global cities to implement net-zero carbon futures.

Garcetti served as a naval officer in the reserve component for 12 years and was selected as Rockefeller Next Generation Leadership Fellow, an inaugural Asia 21 Fellow of the Asia Society, a Young Fellow of the French-American Foundation, a Rodel Fellow at the Aspen Institute, and a Reboot Fellow.  In 2005, he was awarded the New Frontier Award given each year by the Kennedy family and Kennedy Library to a young elected official who embodies President Kennedy’s vision of service.

Garcetti earned a B.A. at Columbia College, Columbia University as a John Jay Scholar and his roommate’s father, William Clark, was a predecessor of his as U.S. Ambassador to India. Ambassador Garcetti studied Hindi and Indian culture and history while at Columbia and went on to earn a Master’s degree at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.  After graduating, Ambassador Garcetti was selected as a Rhodes Scholar, studying at The Queen’s College, Oxford and the London School of Economics and Political Science. While in England, he met his now-wife Amy Elaine Wakeland, who was a fellow member of his Rhodes Scholar class. They have one daughter and have been foster parents for more than a decade.

A fourth-generation native of Los Angeles, Garcetti is a proud card-carrying member of the Screen Actors Guild and is an avid pianist and photographer.

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Shereen Bhan is the Managing Editor of CNBC-TV18 with over two decades of experience in the field of Television Broadcast, tracking corporate, policy news and events that defined the business landscape in India. For more than a decade now, Shereen has been not only producing and anchoring flagship, award winning shows like 'India Business Hour' and ‘Young Turks', she has also been hands-on in guiding and molding young business journalists.

She has been responsible for breaking a range of news stories that have redefined the Indian economic landscape in recent times and has also interviewed some of the biggest names in business and politics, both domestic and global. Shereen is also the Anchor & Editor of the award winning show 'Young Turks', one of India's longest running shows on entrepreneurship – a section that over the last 20 years has successfully built a niche category in business news programming.

Shereen is also the Author of Young Turks, a book published by Random House India. Shereen has interviewed some of the biggest names in Business from legendary investor Warren Buffet to Bill Gates, Satya Nadella, Richard Branson, Sheryl Sandberg, Indra Nooyi to name just a few. She has also spent several years tracking the political- economy and has interviewed several Finance Ministers and other Cabinet Ministers over the years.

Over the course of her 22-year tryst with business journalism, Shereen has been the recipient of the 'Best Business Talk Show' award at the News Television awards for two years consecutively. She also won the 'FICCI Woman of the Year' award for her contribution to the Media in 2005, and was named a 'Young Global Leader' by the World Economic Forum. She also won the ‘Best Business Anchor Award’ at the ‘News Television Awards’ in 2013 and the ‘Best English News Anchor Award’ in 2018.

More notably, Shereen has been ranked no. 1 in IMPACT's '50 Most Influential Women In Indian Media, Marketing & Advertising List for 2022, and has been consistently featured on the list from 2018, 2019 and 2020.

At the prestigious ENBA 2019 Awards, she won the News Television Editor-in-Chief of the year in the English category and the Best Anchor, English and continued her winning streak at the 2020 edition of ENBA Awards as well by bagging the Managing Editor of the Year – English and Best Anchor – English awards.

Her other notable awards include the prestigious Bharat Asmita National Award 2022 for excellence in Business journalism; India's Most Trusted Business News Anchor award by IDEASFEST 2022, as well as the Outstanding Contribution to Media award by the esteemed AIMA’s 12th Managing India Awards 2022.

Nicholas Brathwaite has over 25 years developing technology and building technology-oriented businesses. Before Celesta, Nicholas was also co-founder and partner of private equity firm Riverwood Capital, and from 1996 to 2007, he served as the CTO at Flex, where he oversaw the launch and growth of several of Flex’s largest business units, including an innovative push into product development.

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Keyvan Esfarjani is executive vice president, chief global operations officer and general manager of Manufacturing, Supply Chain and Operations at Intel Corporation. He is responsible for the company’s worldwide manufacturing operations, including Fab Sort Manufacturing, Assembly Test Manufacturing and strategic planning, as well as corporate quality assurance, corporate services and supply chain.

Previously, Esfarjani led the company’s non-volatile memory worldwide manufacturing, responsible for leading the strategy and operation for Intel memory fabs, component assembly/test, and 3D NAND and Optane SSD manufacturing. In this capacity, Esfarjani oversaw internal fab operations, supply agreements and sub-contractor engagements.

Esfarjani’s tenure with Intel began in 1996 as an industrial engineer, after working in the automotive industry for four years. Since that time, he has held various leadership roles in process engineering, yield and manufacturing, to enabling 16 technology startups, with expertise spanning across logic, memory and chipset technologies. Esfarjani was the Intel D2 plant manager in California for process development and manufacturing. In 2010, he became the co-CEO of the IM Flash Technologies joint venture with Micron. In 2016, Esfarjani set the vision and strategy for Intel’s internal memory manufacturing. He led the Dalian fab conversion from chipset to memory in seven months and then construction of a fab expansion in 11 months. Esfarjani recently led the strategy in partnership with FSM for independent memory Technology Development operation and startup for Optane in the Fab11x Rio Rancho. 

Esfarjani earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in industrial engineering and operations research from Purdue University.

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Debjani Ghosh is the President of the NASSCOM since April 2018. A veteran of the technology industry, she is the first women at the helm of the organization’s three-decade history.

Driven by a strong belief in the need for human-centric technology that enhances lives and livelihood, Debjani is a vocal advocate for the ethical and responsible use of technology. Under her leadership, NASSCOM actively works with the industry to ensure responsible practices and build trust as a core competitive advantage for the tech industry in India. Under her guidance, NASSCOM has prioritized the development of a Responsible AI Resource Kit, in partnership with leading industry stakeholders, to promote the adoption of responsible tech solutions. 

Back in 2019, NASSCOM under her leadership coined the term “Techade” to define a decade where technology will play a transformative role to create a sustainable, equitable and safe future, powered by human-centric innovation. Debjani also believes that by the end of this Techade the Tech Industry in India will be established as the world’s leading technology ecosystem and the "I" in innovation will stand for India, fuelled by India’s young talent, the growing confidence in our capabilities to solve for the world and our proven success in building open and interoperable tech ecosystems like the Digital Public Infrastructure, to deliver at scale services grounds up.

Debjani is also a vocal advocate for building a truly inclusive technology sector where talent and meritocracy thrives above all. In January 2018, Debjani was felicitated by the President of India under the auspices of the ‘First Ladies’ program, which honors exceptional women pioneers in their respective fields. In 2020, she has been honored by Vogue as the Tech Leader of the year 2020. Recognizing her contribution in the field of technology, Debjani was also facilitated in ‘40 over 40 - World’s Most Inspiring Women’ list by Fe:maleOneZero (F10) Magazine in 2022. 

With multiple feathers in her cap, before joining NASSCOM, she was the first woman to lead Intel India and the Manufacturers' Association for Information Technology (MAIT), she was also a member of the executive council at NASSCOM. She believes that learning never stops, and a trainable mindset is the biggest strength one can have. 

Debjani holds a bachelor's degree in political science from Osmania University in Hyderabad, India, and an MBA degree in marketing from S.P. Jain Institute of Management and Research in Mumbai, India.

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Amitabh Kant served as the G20 Sherpa of India during its Presidency year. He was CEO, NITI Aayog (National Institution for Transforming India) - the Gov't of India’s premier policy Think Tank. Prior to that he served as Secretary, Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion.

Amitabh Kant is a member of the Indian Administrative Service, IAS (Kerala Cadre: 1980 Batch). He is the author of “Branding India – An Incredible Story”, Incredible India 2.0 and has edited The Path Ahead "Transformative Ideas for India" and has been a key driver of “Make in India”, Startup India, “Incredible India” and “God’s Own Country” initiatives which positioned and branded India and Kerala State as leading manufacturing tourism destinations. These campaigns have won several international awards and embraced a host of activities – infrastructure development, product enhancement, private-public partnership and positioning and branding.

Until March, 2016 Amitabh Kant was posted as Secretary, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) – Government of India. He has worked as Secretary, Tourism, Kerala, Joint Secretary, Tourism, Govt of India, District Collector, Kozhikode & CEO, Delhi- Mumbai Industrial Corridor.

Prof. Abhay Karandikar is currently serving as the Secretary, Department of Science and Technology at the Ministry of Science and Technology for the Government of India. He is also at IIT Bombay. He formerly served as Director of IIT Kanpur and the Dean (Faculty Affairs) and the Institute Chair Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at IIT Bombay. He has been instrumental in developing many pathbreaking technologies and has been at the forefront of several large initiatives both at the institute and the national level. He is the founding member and chairman of the Telecom Standards Development Society of India (TSDSI), India’s standards body for telecom. He has also served as the coordinator of Tata Teleservices IIT Bombay Center of Excellence in Telecommunications (TICET) and the National Center of Excellence in Technology for Internal Security.

Prof. Abhay Karandikar received his M.Tech. and then a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from IIT Kanpur in 1988 and 1994, respectively. Following it, he joined the high performance computing group of the Center for Development of Advanced Computing. In April 1997, he joined IIT Bombay as a faculty in the Department of Electrical Engineering and continues to be associated with the institute. Since then, he has held several administrative positions including Dean (Faculty Affairs), 2017-2018; Professor-in- charge, IIT Bombay Research Park, 2014-2017; Head of the Department, 2012-2015; and Head of the Computer Center, 2008-2011.

Prof. Karandikar's current research interests include frugal 5G and rural broadband, device to device communication, software defined networking, network function virtualization and 5G core network, and quality of service and resource allocation in wired/wireless networks. His large research group comprises research scientists, engineers, scholars and senior managers. They have together developed several pathbreaking technologies. These include Linux based MPLS router, Emergency Communication System for Force 1, Low Cost Cellular Backhaul for Rural Access (CeBRA), Mobile Social Networking Platform (MSNP) and several others. In 2002, he co-founded and incubated Eisodus Networks in IIT Bombay's business incubator. The aim was to develop metro Ethernet switch for broadband access network. Later, the company secured investors' funding and in 2007, became a part of Tejas Networks.

Prof. Karandikar has 20+ patents to his credit, papers in international journals, contributions to IEEE, 3GPP standards and contributed chapters in books. He has been an invited speaker in national and international forums. He has led 20+ sponsored research projects with industries and government funding agencies and served on numerous national committees as an expert member and advisor. Currently, he is working as a consultant to provide technical expertise in design and implementation of BharatNet, Government of India’s flagship initiative under Digital India program.

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Ambassador (ret.) Atul Keshap serves at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as President of the United States India Business Council, whose members are dedicated to the growth of commercial ties between the world's two largest democracies.

Ambassador Keshap is a retired career senior Foreign Service Officer who recently served as Charge d'Affaires at the United States Embassy in New Delhi, leading the U.S. Mission's engagement with the government and people of India. Prior to that, he served as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, with policy responsibility for U.S. relations toward eleven countries of Southeast Asia and helped lead the bureau's domestic and overseas response to the covid-19 pandemic.

Across his 28-year career as an American diplomat, Ambassador Keshap served at postings in India, Morocco, and Guinea, and as United States Ambassador to Sri Lanka and Maldives. He has served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, as U.S. Senior Official for Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation, and as an Office Director in the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs and in the Bureau of International Organization Affairs.

During his career, Ambassador Keshap helped advance U.S. relations with India, including work to finalize an agreement on civilian nuclear energy cooperation, U.S. participation in a trilateral consultation with India and Japan, and the U.S.-India-Japan-Australia Quadrilateral coordination. Ambassador Keshap has negotiated or advanced bilateral and multilateral initiatives at senior levels with counterparts from the European Union, United Nations, ASEAN, APEC, and governments across the Indo-Pacific, Middle East, Africa, and North and South America. Ambassador Keshap also served at the Department of Defense as the National Defense University’s Vice Chancellor for the College of International Security Affairs. Earlier in his career, he served as Director for North Africa and Middle East regional affairs on the National Security Council staff in the Executive Office of the President of the United States.In 2018, Ambassador Keshap received one of the State Department’s highest honors, the Distinguished Honor Award, in recognition of his leadership in advancing U.S. interests in the Indian Ocean region. He is also the recipient of a 2019 Presidential Meritorious Rank Award, as well as numerous individual State Department Superior and Meritorious Honor Awards, and seven senior executive performance pay awards.

As Executive Vice Chairman, Edward Knight manages global government relations and serves as a senior advisor on public policy and litigation.

During his tenure as Nasdaq’s General Counsel from 2001 to 2019, Knight championed many causes for investors and public companies: proxy reform; corporate governance modernization, including the JOBS ACT passage in 2012; regulatory reform; immigration reform; and enhancing the self-regulatory organization model. He has worked tirelessly to ensure Nasdaq’s U.S. equity market maintains its position as the premier global marketplace for capital formation.

Knight currently serves as a member of the Advisory Board of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and is a member of the District of Columbia, Texas and Supreme Court Bars. He is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations and sits on its Committee on Corporate Affairs. Knight is Vice Chairman of the Board of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Chair of the U.S.-India Business Council. He is also chair of TechNet's Executive Council. He is a member of the Nasdaq Dubai Board and the Board of the World Federation of Exchanges. He is based in Nasdaq’s Washington, D.C., office.

Before serving as FINRA’s General Counsel from 1999-2001 and then NASDAQ’s General Counsel, Knight served as General Counsel of the U.S. Department of the Treasury from September 1994 to June 1999 — the longest tenure since the position was created in 1934. Upon his departure, he received the Alexander Hamilton Award, the Department's highest honor. He also received the Honor Award from the Secret Service. Before being named Treasury General Counsel, Knight served as Executive Secretary and Senior Advisor to Secretary of the Treasury Lloyd Bentsen. He also served as a member of the Obama Transition Team at the U.S. Treasury Department in 2008-2009.

Prior, he was a partner with the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer and Feld in Washington, D.C. A Texas native, Knight received his Bachelor of Arts, with honors, in Latin American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin and his Juris Doctorate from the University of Texas School of Law.

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Arun most recently served as the Chairman and CEO of KPMG in India, an organization consisting of several thousand professionals engaged in providing assurance, tax, and advisory services. He was a member of the global board of directors of KPMG.

He previously served in President Obama’s Administration as Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Global Markets and Director General of the U.S. & Foreign Commercial Service (USFCS). As the Administration’s lead official to promote U.S. exports, foreign direct investment, and enhanced market access around the world, he led a team of 1,700 professionals in 78 countries and all 50 United States.

Prior to his stint in Washington, DC, Arun was a partner and a member of the board of KPMG LLP in the US. Based in Silicon Valley, he led KPMG’s Management Consulting practice in the West for many years.

He has also been a company mentor and entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

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Ankit Mehta is the Co-founder and CEO of ideaForge Technology, a next-generation drone systems company that manufactures advanced Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for Defence and Enterprise applications. Under his leadership, ideaForge has become the global technology leader in the VTOL Micro and Mini UAV space and is the market leader in the defence and homeland security UAV segment in India with more than 90% market share. ideaForge UAVs have been instrumental in saving the lives of service personnel and civilians in anti-terror operations, disaster response and security & surveillance missions. 

Ankit Mehta, an IITB alumni was listed as one of the top 35 entrepreneurs under the age of 35 in India. He also features among the top 50 most innovative leaders by World Innovation Congress. He was invited along with 200 other CEOs to discuss the future growth of India with the Honorable Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi. Ankit is Co-Chair, FICCI Committee on Drones and is also a member of FICCI Young Leaders Forum. He is a member of the Drone Task Force and AI Task Force and is playing a prominent role in defining & standardizing the UAV regulations in India by providing neutral policy suggestions to positively impact the entire industry.

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As the CEO & co-funder of Stellapps, Ranjith has spent the last 12.5 years, innovating, and deploying Internet of Things (IoT) solutions and frameworks for digitizing the dairy industry across India and providing technology & data-led premium market value-chain linkages to small holder dairy farmers.

With Stellapps’ revenues approaching $100m run-rate, he is currently focused on scaling the organization, stabilizing the margins and providing value-added services to the farmers including dairy market linkage, financial services, and Agri/dairy inputs as well as high-quality, differentiated dairy nutrition to the consumers. He believes that the modular farm-to-consumer smartMoo IoT platform can help unleash this value for all the stakeholders in the dairy ecosystem – including alternate credit scores and data-led insurance underwriting mechanisms for small holder dairy farmers.

Ranjith has over 27 years of software industry experience and was earlier the Global head of Wipro's Telecom Value Added Services Practice. Having delivered solutions for global clientele across USA & Europe such as Microsoft, AT&T, Nortel, Nokia, British Telecom, and others.

Sandip Patel is the Managing Director for IBM India/South Asia region. He is responsible for all of IBM's sales, marketing, services and delivery operations in the region, including Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka. In addition, Sandip also plays a key role in enabling capabilities across IBM’s global missions in India, including research and innovation labs. Sandip took up this role in 2020 with a mandate to make IBM the number one hybrid cloud, AI, and consulting expertise company in India/South Asia.

Most recently, Sandip was the General Manager for the Insurance industry at IBM. In this role, he was responsible for IBM’s business across all brands in the Insurance industry, working extensively with Financial Services, Insurance and Healthcare clients in the US and globally. Prior to this, Sandip was the President of Aetna International where he had full P&L responsibility for the internal business at Aetna. Before joining Aetna, he served as the General Manager for IBM’s Global Business Services division for India / South Asia and has served as a partner in various leadership roles at IBM, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Coopers & Lybrand in his professional career. Sandip has managed and participated in a variety of multi-disciplinary organization-wide transformation projects, addressing enterprise strategy, global expansion, operations and technology transformation, and culture change, in different regions around the world.

Sandip holds a Bachelor’s degree in Commerce from the University of Calcutta and a Master’s degree in Business Administration and MS in Management Information Systems from Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. He is also a qualified Chartered Accountant in India.

Dr. Arogyaswami Paulraj is a Professor Emeritus at the Department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University where he has been since 1993. He is a pioneer of MIMO wireless communication, the author of over 400 research papers, two textbooks, and a co-inventor in 66 US patents. He has won over a dozen awards, notably the Marconi Prize and Fellowship, 2014 and the IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal, 2011.

Ms Nivruti Rai joins Invest India after an illustrious 29 years at Intel as a global business and technology leader. She has been part of the leadership team in various industrial bodies and government committees, bringing a wealth of experience in working closely with industry associations, business leaders, and government leaders. Ms Rai brings her vast global business leadership experience and invaluable technological expertise across multiple industrial sectors, including semiconductors, electronics, automotive, telecommunications, healthcare, and manufacturing, to Invest India.

She truly believes in the power of technology to transform lives and has been at the forefront of several key initiatives and interventions in the Indian ecosystem. She contributed significantly towards indigenous technology development, start-up ecosystem, electronics manufacturing ecosystem, and policy formulation, especially in critical and emerging technologies. Along with that, Ms Rai also initiated skilling & training programs, enabled rural connectivity initiatives, and set up Applied AI research centres in India, bringing together innovation, aspiration, and opportunities in the hinterlands of the country.

Ms Rai led Intel India as Country Head for the past seven years driving growth and investment in India. During her tenure at Intel, she worked on Microprocessors, Hard and Soft Intellectual Properties, Platform HW/SW, AI, and Sensor Hub engines. Most recently, she also led the worldwide automotive foundry business as Vice President of Intel Foundry Services, where she was building Autonomous Driving, Advanced Driver Assist Systems, Infotainment, Power delivery solution and Microcontroller Units on Intel Foundry process nodes for global automotive customers. At Intel India, she drove the establishment of a comprehensive framework for Cloud, Network, Edge computing, and Devices, also fostering research collaborations with the government and industry.

Ms Nivruti Rai is the recipient of the prestigious Nari Shakti Puraskar from the Hon’ble President of India for her remarkable contributions in the field of technology.

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Vishnu Ramakrishnan leads Business and Product Commercialisation as part of the Founder’s Office at The ePlane Company. Adept at balancing the diverse aspects of a quickly evolving deep-tech startup, he effortlessly juggles tasks on both product & people levels. Formerly a Data Scientist at Mu Sigma, he evolved from being a Decision Scientist where he played a vital role in setting up innovation and R&D teams for some of the key analytic players to becoming a part of the technical leadership. He was also one of the founding members of the Quantiphi Innovation Hub (QiH). With a keen eye for detail and a knack for creative problem solving, he believes in setting up well-rounded frameworks to optimize long-term goal achievements. An ideopraxist, passionate about creating a meaningful impact, he also co-founded Blank Solutions - a social technology startup; that built refreshable Braille Boards for visually impaired children. Evidently, a man with many feathers to his hat, he continues to explore new horizons and becomes a treasured asset to anyone he collaborates with.

As Chairman of Catamaran, Ranga oversees the effectiveness of the firm’s investment strategy, governance processes and alignment with the firm’s vision.

Ranga has over 30 years of experience in the global IT and financial services industries. He was the President of Catamaran between 2018 and 2022, steering it through the volatility of the pandemic. He was the Chief Financial Officer of Infosys Ltd (NYSE: INFY) until November 2018. During his 18-year tenure with Infosys, Ranga was an integral part of the growth and transformation of the company and played leadership roles across a wide spectrum of areas—consulting, finance, M&A, risk management and corporate planning—culminating in the position of CFO. Prior to Infosys, Ranga worked at ICICI Ltd and executed responsibilities across corporate credit, treasury, equity portfolio management and corporate planning.

In 2017 and 2018, Ranga received the Best CFO Asia award from Institutional Investor magazine. Ranga holds a PGDM from IIM Ahmedabad, a master’s degree in technology from IIT Madras and a bachelor’s degree in engineering from the University of Mysore. He is a member of CPA, Australia.

Ranga currently serves as an Independent Director on the board of HDFC Bank, India’s largest private sector bank. He is on the board of IIM Bangalore, a leading business school in India.

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In addition to his role as India Partner, Sudhir Rao is also the founding managing partner of IndusAge Partners – an India and US focused venture fund. Sudhir has been a leading industry pioneer in the capital markets in India for over 33 years. He was one of the founding directors of Karvy Investor Services Ltd. and Karvy Stockbroking Ltd. involved in providing Investor Services, Merchant Banking and Retail Financial services.

Srinath is a Wall Street trader turned Aerospace Engineer with over 10 years of experience in Engineering, Finance, and Project Management. He has a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from College of Engineering, Guindy, and Masters degrees in Financial Engineering from Columbia University and Aerospace Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Srinath believes in using his multi disciplinary experience to solve large scale problems that humanity faces today. He started Agnikul with the simple idea that going to space shouldn't be the hardest part of living in and working from space.

Ms. Shah is a Managing Director in Fortress Investment Group LLC’s Intellectual Property Finance Group based in Washington DC, where she focuses on a wide variety of investment opportunities in connection with intellectual property and technology. Prior to joining Fortress in 2013, Ms. Shah worked for Intel, most recently heading Intel’s Global Wireless Patents group, overseeing Intel’s patent procurement, licensing, transaction and monetization activities and their development partners. At Intel, Ms. Shah also held wide-ranging and deep technical responsibilities, as well as led Intel’s standards bodies interactions. Before joining Intel, she was with the law firms of Dorsey & Whitney, and Fish & Richardson where she worked on patent prosecution, licensing and litigation matters. Ms. Shah is recognized as one of the World’s Leading IP Strategists by Intellectual Asset Magazine in the IAM 300, awarded to individuals with an established track record in developing and rolling out world-class IP value creation programs. Ms. Shah began her legal career as an examiner in the United States Patent Office and was an engineer in the auto industry. Ms. Shah holds a J.D. along with a B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Prof. Ajay Kumar Sood is the Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India (PSA to GoI) from April 2022. He is also the Chairperson of the Prime Minister’s Science, Technology & Innovation Advisory Council (PM-STIAC). Prof. Sood is also a National Science Chair at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore.  He was a member of the Prime Minister’s Science, Technology, and Innovation Advisory Council (PM-STIAC) from 2018 to March 2022 and from 2009 to 2014, he had also served as a Member of the Scientific Advisory Council (SAC) to the Prime Minister of India.

Prof. Sood has a Doctorate in Physics from IISc Bangalore. His research interests include the Physics of Quantum materials, soft and active matter. He has published more than 450 papers in peer-reviewed journals and holds several patents. 

His work has been recognised by many awards, including the Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award in India. He was President of the Indian National Science Academy (2017-19), President of the Indian Academy of Sciences (2010-12), and Secretary-General, The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), Trieste, Italy (2013-2018). He was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society, UK (FRS) in 2015. 

He has also received the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, the G. D. Birla Award for Scientific Research, the TWAS Prize in Physics, the Millennium Gold Medal of the Indian Science Congress Association, the Sir C. V. Raman Award of the UGC, the Homi Bhabha Medal of the Indian National Science Academy, G. M. Modi Award for Science and Technology, 25^th SIES Sri. Chandrasekarendra Saraswathi National Eminence Award in the category of Science & Technology and Asutosh Mookerjee Memorial Life Time Award by Indian Science Congress, among others. He has been conferred Doctor of Philosophy (Honoris Causa) by many universities. He serves as Associate Editor in a reputed International Journal, ACS Nano.

Arun Venkataraman is the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Global Markets and Director General of the U.S. and Foreign Commercial Service. He was appointed by President Joseph R. Biden and confirmed by the U.S. Senate on April 7, 2022, to lead the federal government’s efforts to promote exports abroad and attract inward investment. He was officially sworn in on April 25, 2022.

Venkataraman has over 20 years of experience advising companies, international organizations and the U.S. government on international trade issues. Most recently, he served as Counselor to the Secretary of Commerce, advising the Department of Commerce on trade and other international economic matters. Before joining the Biden-Harris Administration, Arun was a Senior Director at Visa, leading global government engagement strategy on a range of international policy issues including digital economy, trade, tax and sanctions. He also served as Trade & Investment Policy Advisor at Steptoe & Johnson LLP, where he counseled multinational firms and other organizations on e-commerce, intellectual property rights and U.S. and foreign trade policies.

During the Obama Administration, Venkataraman served as ITA’s first-ever Director of Policy, where he helped shape the U.S. government’s responses to critical challenges faced by firms in the U.S. and in markets around the world, including China and India. He also served in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) where he led the development and implementation of U.S.-India trade policy, for which he received the agency’s Kelly Award for outstanding performance and extraordinary leadership. He also served as USTR’s Associate General Counsel, representing the United States in litigation before the World Trade Organization and in negotiations on international trade agreements. Prior to USTR, Arun was a Legal Officer at the World Trade Organization, and served as Law Clerk for Judge Jane A. Restani at the U.S. Court of International Trade.

Born in Coimbatore, India, and raised in Houston, Venkataraman holds a juris doctorate from Columbia Law School, a Master of Arts in law and diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and a Bachelor of Arts from Tufts University.

Sriram Viswanathan has more than 30 years of technology business operations and venture capital experience. Prior to Celesta, Sriram was the founder of IndusAge Partners, a cross border venture firm investing in innovative companies in the US-India Technology corridor. Sriram spent nearly 20 years at Intel Corporation in various senior management roles, including vice president of the Intel Architecture Group (IAG), vice president of Intel Capital and general manager of Intel’s Incubation and Innovation Group.

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