Dr. Sridhar Mitta

Founder & Managing Director at NextWealth Entrepreneurs

A veteran of the industry, Dr. Sridhar Mitta has over four decades of experience in Information Technology and R&D in India and the United States.

An engineer, entrepreneur and philanthropist, Dr. Mitta has held several positions over his professional career. He was the first R&D Manager for Wipro Information Technology Limited in 1980, going on to work with them for 20 years. Embarking on the entrepreneurial path, Dr. Mitta then started several businesses in the course of his post-Wipro career, some of which include EnThink Inc. in Santa Clara, California, and e4e Labs.in Bengaluru.

Dr. Mitta is currently the Founder and Managing Director of NextWealth Entrepreneurs Pvt. Ltd, envisioning ‘social uplift through entrepreneurship.’ He continues to mentor startups in India, and advise the Karnataka State Government on several rural and urban initiatives.

He has also served as an advisor to several venture capital firms such as UTI Ventures, IDG Ventures, TVS Capital and Inventus Capital Partners. He was elected to the Board of Trustees of TiE Global for three years, and served as President of TiE Bengaluru Chapter for four years.

Arun Rajamani

Country General Manager, Pluralsight

Arun is a seasoned IT Leader with over 20 years of industry experience with companies like HCL and Microsoft where he ran their Education and Government verticals for India. He is passionate about India’s 2.5 Million+ developer community getting the best technical learning enablement possible.

Apalak Ghosh

Principal Consultant, Emerging Technologies Research, InfoTech Practice, CMR

Apalak is a lead analyst with CMR’s software and IT services research practice, based out of Gurgaon (near New Delhi). In this role, Apalak is responsible for overseeing development of reports, carrying out in-depth market assessments and forecasts on new and emerging technologies like Cloud Computing, Virtualization, Green IT, DataCenter adoption amongst others. Apalak has led new research initiatives to study adoption of Cloud Computing and Virtualization amongst Indian enterprises. He is frequently quoted in the media on the subject of Cloud Computing and DataCenters on popular TV channels such as NDTV and in leading business publications such as The Economic Times and The Hindu Businessline. He also writes a blog on the theme of Green IT/Virtualization/Cloud Computing. In this capacity he carries forward his rich experience as Manager, Software and Services Research and Consulting Practice, IDC India. Prior to his current role, Apalak has worked with TNS India as a research analyst for two years, before which he was with TransAsia Solution Seekers, Indonesia as a consultant for a year. His experience spans across key research areas such as brand tracking, product / concept testing, quantitative and qualitative research, and consulting. He has a rich exposure to research techniques such as face-to-face and telephonic interviews, profiling and discussions with stakeholders across diverse industry verticals such as IT and Telecom, Consumer Packaged Goods and Automotive. Apalak completed his Master’s program in Business Administration from the ICFAIBusinessSchool, Bangalore, specialising in Marketing. Apalak also holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from the Birla Institute of Technology (BIT), Ranchi capital of the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand.