Comsware Business Speakers

Kiran Anandampillai
Director, Engineering, OnMobile Global Private Limited, Bangalore, India

Kiran presently is responsible for all consumer products in OnMobile and has been with the company since inception in the year 2000. He has played an active role in shaping the growth of OnMobile from a start-up with big dreams to the No.1 Mobile VAS player in India, by delivering value to its telecom, media and corporate clients. Over the years, he has worked on developing the speech recognition for the Indian market; OnMobile’s core platform MMP2500 for VAS and many innovative VAS applications.

Kiran has over 13 years of telecom industry experience with an expertise in Telecom Switching, Speech Recognition and Mobile VAS. Prior to joining OnMobile, he worked for Infosys as Project Manager and was responsible for developing Telecom speech services. Kiran has a BE in Telecommunications from BMSCE, Bangalore.

Ritesh Banglani
Senior Investment Advisor, IDG Ventures India, Bangalore, India

IDG Ventures India is a US$150 Million early-stage technology venture capital fund backed by IDG, the world’s largest IT-focused media company.

Prior to joining IDG Ventures India, Ritesh was a product manager with Adobe Systems in Bangalore, where he focused on creating new business models for Adobe's online media properties. Previously he managed the mobile games business at July Systems and introduced pioneering mobile games services in American and European wireless markets. Earlier in his career he worked in field operations roles at Synopsys Inc.

Ritesh holds a B.Tech in Electrical Engineering from IIT Delhi and an MBA from INSEAD, where he graduated on the Dean's honours list.

Naina Krishna Murthy
Managing Partner, Krishnamurthy and Co., Legal Consultants, Bangalore, India

Naina Krishna Murthy counsels various legal entitles on corporate law and governance issues in both routine and extraordinary transactions, including mergers and acquisitions, initial public offering, recapitalization, asset sales, dividend, stock repurchases, charter and bylaw amendments, preferred stock designation and dissolutions. She has substantial legal experience in respect of corporate restructuring, corporate governance, offshore jurisdiction. She has advised corporate boards and special committees on governance issues and in connection with complex transactions.

Naina established Krishnamurthy and Co. in November 1999. She is a graduate from National Law School of India University and was recruited by Arthur Andersen in Mumbai where she provided advice in the area of business law for three years. Afterwards, she worked in New Delhi with a leading law firm in India for about a year where she was in charge of some very high profile investments into the country in the power and telecom sectors.

She is currently advising the Central Government and Government of Andhra Pradesh on the establishment of a Fabrication Facility for the semiconductor industry in India. She has recently been appointed as Co-Chair of the Grievance Redressal Board at Infosys Technologies Limited. Naina is the author of numerous articles on various aspects of corporate and intellectual property law and is a frequent speaker regarding current corporate and intellectual property law practice and developments.

Gene K. Landy
Esq., Chairman, Technology Group, Ruberto, Israel & Weiner, P.C., Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Gene K. Landy, a shareholder at Ruberto, Israel & Weiner, PC, in Boston, MA, holds degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (SB 1969) and Harvard Law School (JD cum laude 1975).

His practice is both domestic and international in nature and concentrates on information technology-related transactions. His clients include technology companies, from start-ups to publicly traded companies. His work includes licensing, intellectual property, technology transfer, business sales and acquisitions, and investments.

Mr. Landy is a member of the International Technology Law Association, American Intellectual Property Law Association, MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge, the Intellectual Property and Science and Technology Sections of the American Bar Association, and TiE-Boston.

Dr. Giridhar D. Mandyam
Vice President of Technology, QUALCOMM Internet Services, San Diego, California, USA

From 1989 to 1994 Dr. Mandyam held positions with Rockwell International and QUALCOMM Inc. In April 1996, he joined the Wireless Business Unit at Texas Instruments, Dallas, TX, to work primarily on CDMA chipsets. In September 1998, he joined Nokia Research Center (NRC) in Dallas as a Senior Research Engineer. In June 2002, he became director of the Radio Systems Group in NRC’s Radio Communications Laboratory. In August 2004, he also became the first head of the newest Nokia Research Center division in San Diego, California. In January 2005, he became Chief Technologist of Nokia Mobile Phones – North America, and continued until October 2006 when he assumed his present position at QUALCOMM.

Dr. Mandyam is inventor or co-inventor of fourteen issued US patents. He has also published over 70 conference and journal papers, and 4 book chapters. He is a co-author of the text Third-Generation CDMA Systems for Enhanced Data Services (Academic Press, 2002). He is presently a member of the editorial board of the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications. Dr. Mandyam is a Senior Member of the IEEE.

Born in Dallas, Texas, Giri received the BSEE degree (Magna Cum Laude) from Southern Methodist University in 1989, the MSEE degree from the University of Southern California in 1993, and the Ph.D. EE degree from the University of New Mexico in 1996. At SMU he was a University Scholar and Hyer Society Scholar. While at USC he was a Teaching Assistant in the Signal and Image Processing Institute, and at UNM he studied under a NASA Fellowship.

Dhanya Menon
Partner, ALMT Legal, Bangalore, India

Dhanya is a corporate-commercial lawyer and her areas of expertise include joint ventures, mergers and acquisitions, foreign direct investments, venture capital and private equity. Her practice is currently limited to Indian law exclusively. Prior to ALMT Legal, Dhanya spent several years at a leading Mumbai based law firm, gaining experience in corporate and commercial transactions, joint ventures, foreign investments, venture capital, exchange control regulations, securities and capital markets, cross border and private equity transactions. Dhanya has authored articles and research papers relating to corporate laws and has attended seminars & conferences in relation to her areas of expertise. Dhanya has also addressed a biotech seminar on issues relating to technology transfer and licensing.

  • Bar and court admissions: Bar Council of Maharashtra & Goa, 1998.
  • Education: National Law School of India University, Bangalore (BA/LLB, 1998)

Madhavan Parthasarathy
Chief Sales & Distribution Officer, Virgin Mobile India, New Delhi, India

Madhavan Parthasarthy has 20 years of experience in the sales and telecom operations working on distribution strategy, building channels and running large sales and operations teams with various organizations, including Pepsi, Unilever, Nestle and Tata Teleservices. Having worked with 3 start up companies, project management at launch has been a key strength. Prior to Virgin Mobile India, he was the Dy Chief Operating Officer with Tata Teleservices. His degrees are in the areas of Science and Business Administration.

Sunzay Passari
Vice President — VAS & Sevices, Essar Teleholdings Ltd. & BPL Mobile Communications Ltd., Mumbai, India

Sunzay Passari is currently working as Vice President – VAS & Devices with Essar Teleholdings Ltd & BPL Mobile Communications Ltd. In his present role, he is responsible for the development, deployment and business of all Value Added Services, Content and Applications across all operating telecom companies of Essar Group, within India and internationally. In addition he is also spearheading development of innovative 2G and low cost 3G devices for India and developing markets. He is a pioneer in introducing mobile data services in India. He is has successfully launched R-World for Reliance Infocomm Ltd. and TataZone for Tata Teleservices Ltd. He has extensive experience in introducing value added services across platforms – Voice, SMS, USSD, Java, Brew, MMS, WAP, LBS, Streaming, Video etc. He has in depth understanding of mobile telecom and device technologies, with equally sharp business acumen and creative bent. After spending almost a decade in financial world – capital markets and private equity business, he decided to take a plunge into emerging wireless telecom arena. And over the last decade, he is credited with bringing in VAS cult in India, by launching many innovative products and services.

Dr. K. K. Ramakrishnan
DMTS, AT&T Labs Research, Florham Park, NJ

Dr. Ramakrishnan joined AT&T Bell Labs in 1994 and has been with AT&T Labs Research since its inception in 1996. Between 2000 and 2002, he was at TeraOptic Networks, Inc., as Founder and Vice President. Prior to 1994, he was a Technical Director and Consulting Engineer in Networking at Digital Equipment Corporation.

At AT&T Labs Research, he has been involved in several technical and strategic activities in networking and information distribution, including Quality of Service, Congestion Control, Virtual Private Networks IP Telephony, Metro Area Networks and Multimedia network design. He has published over 100 papers and has over 80 patents issued. His contributions on congestion control, channel access protocols (for Ethernet and Cable), network interfaces, operating system support for network I/O, signaling and IP Telephony have been adopted and implemented in the industry. K.K’.s current work is on a range of topics spanning from overlay networks and multimedia distribution to transport and link layer protocols that are designed to be robust against failures and losses.

K.K. is an IEEE Fellow. He became an AT&T Fellow in 2006, recognized for "fundamental contributions to communications networks with lasting impact on AT&T and the industry, including congestion control, traffic management and VPN services". His work on the “DECbit” congestion avoidance mechanism was recognized in the 1995 retrospective issue of ACM Sigcomm Computer Communication Review as one of the 16 most important papers published over the previous 25 years in ACM Sigcomm publications. The work once again recently received the ACM Sigcomm Test of Time Paper Award in 2006.

K.K. has been on the editorial board of the IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking and IEEE Network Magazine and has been a member of the National Research Council Panel on Information Technology for NIST. He is the General Chair and Technical Program Chair of several recent workshops and conferences on communications and protocols. He has participated in numerous standards bodies working on communication

Education: MS degree from the Indian Institute of Science (1978), an MS (1981) and Ph.D. (1983) in Computer Science from the University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA.

Dinesh Tiwari
 Partner, Alcazar Capital Limited, Dubai, UAE

Dinesh Tiwari is a Partner at Alcazar Capital Limited and is responsible for Business Development in the Indian sub continent region. He is also an executive member of the Investment Committee. Before joining Alcazar Capital Limited, he helped establish Standard Chartered Bank's private equity franchise in India. Over the past 12 years, he has also worked with Actis ( UK based US$ 3.5 bn emerging markets private equity fund) and ICICI Venture ( India's first private equity fund), where he has made investments across sectors including technology, telecommunication and manufacturing. He has successfully exited investments through IPOs and strategic sales, especially in the technology sector.

Dinesh holds a Bachelors degree in Physics and an MBA from IIM Bangalore. In his spare time, he takes courses on private equity and entrepreneurship as a guest faculty at various management institutes.