Ashwini Vaishnaw is an Indian politician and former IAS officer who is currently serving as the 39th Minister of Railways, 55th Communications Minister and 2nd Electronics & Information Technology Minister in Government of India since 2021 and a member of the Rajya Sabha representing Odisha since 2019. He is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Earlier in 1994, Vaishnaw joined the Indian Administrative Service in the Odisha cadre, and has worked in Odisha.

Ashwini Vaishnaw pursued his BE degree from MBM Engineering College University of Jodhpur in 1992. After that, he obtained for MTech degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur in 1994. Later, he earned an MBA from Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania USA in 2010.

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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.

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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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.

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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Dr. Vivek Lall is Chief Executive of General Atomics Global Corporation based in San Diego, California. GA and affiliated companies operate on five continents. The company produces a series of unmanned aircraft (Predator/Reaper/Guardian) and provides electro-optical, radar, signals intelligence, and automated airborne surveillance systems. GA produces electro-magnetic aircraft launch and recovery systems, satellite surveillance, electro-magnetic rail gun, high power laser, hypervelocity projectile, and power conversion systems. GA is the principal private sector participant in thermonuclear fusion research through its internationally recognized DIII-D and inertial confinement programs. GA is a leader in development of next-generation nuclear fission and high-temperature materials technologies. 

Lall was appointed to the Advisory Board of the Quad Investors Network announced by The White House. He was also appointed through the Pentagon as a United States Technical Team member to the NATO STO (Science and Technology Organization). He also was appointed to the Industry Advisory Board of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). Lall serves on the International Advisory Group of the US Chamber of Commerce as well as Board of Directors of US Japan Business Council and the Global Board of Directors of the US India Business Council in Washington DC. He also serves as Senior Advisor to the Center for Commerce and Diplomacy at the University of California San Diego as well as on the Board of the Center for Advancing Global Business at San Diego State University. In 2018, he was appointed by the United States Government in a key advisory role to the US Cabinet Secretary heading Department of Transportation (encompassing entities like the Federal Aviation Administration) in Washington DC which affects US and global aviation policies and technologies. Lall served as Vice President of Aeronautics Strategy and Business Development at Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest defense company. Prior to that he has served as Chief Executive of U.S. and International Strategic Development at General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems. From 1996-2011, Vivek held numerous marketing and engineering leadership roles with The Boeing Company, the world’s largest aerospace company, including the Airplane Performance and Propulsion Group in Seattle. He was appointed as Vice President and India Country Head, Boeing Defense Space & Security in May 2007. He also worked as an adjunct faculty member at Embry- Riddle, McConnell Air Force Base. He also served as the founding Co-Chair of the US – India Aviation Cooperation Program launched in 2005. Prior to Boeing he worked for Raytheon and conducted research with NASA Ames Research Center in various multidisciplinary engineering fields. Lall was also a special advisor to the United Nations in New York, a role in which he steered the multi-nation body frame policy and its implementation in the area of broadband and associated cyber security issues. 

Lall earned a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering degree from Carleton University in Canada and a Masters of Aeronautical Engineering degree from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida. He also has his Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from Wichita State University in Kansas and his MBA from City University in Seattle. He has also completed management and executive courses at the American Management Association in Washington DC. 

Lall was conferred the President’s Lifetime Achievement Award by the President of the United States of America in September 2022. He is also an Ambassador of the State of Arkansas as well as a Kentucky Colonel which is the most well-known US colonelcies conferred to several past US Presidents. He was also granted the Grand Cross by His highness Mahmoud Salah Al Din Assaf. Cambridge (UK) has listed him as one of only 2000 Outstanding Scientists of the Twentieth Century. He was President of the Mathematical Association of America. He has authored over hundred articles in various journals. He was also trained as a private pilot at the Phoenix International Flight Training Center in Florida.

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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.

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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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.