Meet the Speakers of NEXT Growth Conclave 2018

NEXT Growth Conclave, an annual flagship program of NEXT Venture Corp., is the meeting place for the most disruptive groundbreaking startups, small businesses, entrepreneurs, investors, and other corporate executives. NEXT Growth Conclave is an initiative of M&S Next Venture Corp that aims to develop the startup ecosystem of Nepal. It is an event that showcases Nepal’s growing startup community and caters to its unique needs.

One of the major highlights of this event is the distinguished panel of speakers for the Conclave. Last year 20 world-renowned entrepreneurs and leaders took to the stage to talk about their experience in their respective business ventures. This year is no different. 12 speakers have been finalized as of writing this article, more speakers might be added in the future.

Without further adieu let’s know the speakers going to be present in the Conclave.

Speakers of NEXT Growth Conclave 2018

Dr. Binod K. Chaudhary

President – CG Corp Global, Nepal

I don’t think Binod Chaudhary needs any introduction among Nepalis. He is the richest person in Nepal! He is the chairman of CG Corp Global, a multi-dimensional conglomerate with a complementary business portfolio that comprises over 80 businesses on five continents and in 30 countries — including the United States, Rwanda, Serbia, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, India and China.

Chaudhary is a global player in Fast-Moving Consumer Goods and the brain behind Wai Wai, thanks to which, he has 2 percent of the world’s shares in the noodle market. He has controlling shares in the largest bank in Nepal and numerous hotel investments, joint ventures and brands worldwide — like Taj Hotel and Resorts, Zinc Hotels and the ultimate wellness destination, The Farm at San Benito. His other business interests include Telecom, education and financial services, which are among the 11 business verticals he runs within CG.

Biswas Dhakal

President F1Soft Group, Nepal

If you have used a mobile banking system, you probably have used software made by F1soft. Such is the ubiquity of F1soft’s software in Nepal’s financial sector. While most people may not know the company by its name, they sure know e-Sewa, a product of F1soft.

Biswas Dhakal is the president of F1Soft Group. He is a Tech entrepreneur, innovator, and a dynamic investor. He has a passion for technology fueled by his desire to become an entrepreneur has led him on a remarkable journey that is an inspiration for the aspiring youth of Nepal. The Fintech solutions developed by Biswas and his friends at F1Soft have reached out to every corner of the country and serves over 5 million people today.

Christy Ng

CEO, ChristyNg.com – Malaysia

Christy Ng is the founder and CEO of ChristyNg.com – an online shoe company specializing in handmade custom-made shoes, wedding shoes, high heels shoes and women fashion footwear. Ng worked as a waitress and sold flowers at Light Rail Transit (LRT) stations in Malaysia to earn extra money. It continued when she was in college. She went to Thailand, bought shoes from factories there and sold them at night markets in Petaling Jaya to pay for her studies.

Christy always had an entrepreneurial spirit and started designing shoes while holding a full-time job with a pharmaceutical company in 2010. She started a website to sell her shoes with savings of less than RM10,000 (about Rs. 275000) as start-up capital and the rest was history.

Sandeep Deshmukh

Co-Founder and CEO, ElasticRun – India

Sandeep Deshmukh is co-founder and CEO of ElasticRun, India’s largest virtual transportation network. Through its disruptive technology, ElasticRun has built a pan India transportation network in under 30 months. Prior to ElasticRun, Sandeep has worked with Amazon, Infosys, Apple, and DHL. He brings together a unique experience of building world-class technology products and running on ground national operations teams.

ElasticRun is an asset-light, variable-capacity logistics network. The company’s technology platform can build aggregated transportation capacity in tune with the requirements of its clients. It eliminates fixed set-up costs by aggregating logistics resources across channels. ElasticRun helps its customers reduce logistics spend by eliminating wastage in transportation capacity and run zero capital expenditure logistics functions. The company caters to clients in the e-commerce, pharmaceutical, food and automotive sectors.

Skannd Tyagi

Chief Dreamer, Tyagi Corporation – India

Skannd is a serial entrepreneur, painter, value-added investor, independent researcher, private pilot, designer, philanthropist, and a super-nerd. He has a passion for innovation and ideas which can be seen in the companies that he’s started. He has built businesses in the Technology, Digital, Robotics, and AI spaces.

As the Chief Technology Mentor at Neotec Hub, Eastern India’s largest technology incubator, he is currently mentoring 30 startups. As Secretary-General of the Indo Congo Development Forum, he is bringing business opportunities in the Democratic Republic of Congo to Indian entrepreneurs making it easier to do business and access the local govt. for support. He is a founding member of the Global Centre of Innovation and Industry and a core team member of the International Chamber of Business and Industry. He serves in the regional leadership of Business Networking International (BNI, Kolkata).

Milky Mahmud

Co-Founder, SHAJGOJ – Bangladesh

Milky Mahmud is the Co-Founder of SHAJGOJ, the world’s largest Bengali female lifestyle platform. Milky Mahmud keeps his eyes on finding true problems and building a consumer-centric practical solution, what fosters the venture growth. Moreover, he handles all the operations of SHAJGOJ. His vision is to make the company a one-stop solution for Bengali females has resulted in collaboration with national and international brands.

After graduating in computer science, he pursued his career in the telecom sector from 2005 to 2013, subsequently, delivered in Asia, Africa and Europe. In early 2013, while researching about startups, Milky Mahmud noticed the Bengali language had less amount of content in beauty and lifestyle space. Since the inception in may 2013, shajgoj.com continuously generates contents about Makeup, Skincare, Recipe, Fashion and on other lifestyle aspects in Bengali.

Tashi Wangdi

Founder and CEO, iHUB – Bhutan

Tashi Wangdi is the founder and CEO of iHub, a business incubator to support and promote startup culture in Bhutan. iHUB is the innovation hub that provides co-working space, common network, Internet services, and basic office assets to entrepreneurs.

Tashi Wangdi witnessed a strong need for economic development through innovation and entrepreneurship in his home country of Bhutan. He has been a speaker at Better Business Summit 2018, winner of South Asia Leader Connect Network 2018, and the Co-host of TechStar Startup Weekend.

Upaul Majumdar

General Manager, Soaltee Crowne Plaza – Nepal

Upaul Majumdar is responsible for the operations of the Soaltee Crowne Plaza Kathmandu. He took charge of hotel operations of the Plaza on July 26, 2015. Upaul has more than 27 years of experience in the hospitality industry with significant expertise in hotel operations & marketing.

Prior to his current role, he was the Chief Executive Officer at Hotel Annapurna Group which owned two hotels in Nepal. He started his career with Oberoi Hotels as a management trainee and has gained experience with catering and hospitality in India, Nepal & Bangladesh. To the event, Upaul brings his knowledge of the Nepal hospitality market, the real estate asset perspective as well as a strong understanding of the airline catering business.

Rajeev Chitrabhanu

Angel Investor, Emeritus CEO, JM Financial Services – India

Rajeev Chitrabhanu is one of the earliest (16 years ago) and successful angel investors of India. He is also the Emeritus CEO of JM Financial Services Limited (the Joint venture partner of Morgan Stanley and India’s largest Investment Bank). Morgan Stanley is America’s top Investment banking company.

He has led the IPOs of several of India’s largest companies such as Tata Consultancy, Maruti, Bharti -Airtel, Cadila Healthcare and has been involved in Mergers and acquisitions for Cadburys, Nestle etc. Personally, he has been the first investor in companies like Nazara, rentmojo, and fisdom. Rajeev Chitrabhanu serves on the board of Manipal Cigna and he served on the Advisory board of a few Global Private Equity Funds like TPG, Bessemer Venture etc. He has been an advisor to the US-India Investors Council.

Dileep Agrawal

Founder/Chairperson/Managing Director, WorldLink Communications – Nepal

You probably have been sleeping for the past 15 years if you don’t know about Worldlink. Worldlink is Nepal’s largest ISP and one of the most reliable ones. Its founder is Mr. Dileep Agrawal. He founded and established the network company in 1995 when he was completing his undergrads from Bates College in Maine, USA.

Over the years, he has registered tremendous sustained growth as the Chairperson of Worldlink. Today, Worldlink provides services ranging from Internet and data connectivity to cloud computing and managed enterprise services. WorldLink has grown to be not only the largest ISP in Nepal, but one of the largest IT services companies employing over 2,900 people throughout the country. Mr. Agrawal is in-charge of overall corporate management, strategy and business development.

Bobby Liu

Senior Director, Topica Edtech Group – Vietnam

Bobby Liu is the Senior Director at Topica Edtech Group and he is also Co-Director of the Topica Founder Institute. Topica Edtech Group is a multinational educational technology company. It provides online education solutions including bachelor’s degree programs, English speech tutoring courses and technology platform for massive online open courses in a variety of fields.

Bobby Liu has tons of experience under his belt. He has worked in 5 different countries. He started a co-working space/incubator called Hub.IT, a space that provided young entrepreneurs with a conducive environment to innovate and share collective experiences. This contributed to promoting an entrepreneurial spirit in Hanoi and all over Vietnam. Later, this company was acquired by Topica.

Rahul Narvekar

Founder and CEO, The India Network – India

Little did little Rahul Narvekar, who grew up in a chawl of Mumbai, know that he will be building a company worth $85M in the future. Rahul Narvekar, the founder CEO of The India Network and Founder Director of Scale Ventures – an early stage investment fund, is an entrepreneur who started his career at an early age, as a door to door salesman to support his education.

After being expelled from his entrepreneurship programme for asking “ too many questions “ and “ being a troublemaker “ he set up his first venture in cable advertising in 1994, then was a co-founder of Asia’s first interactive music channel (channel oxygen) in Mumbai in 1999. In 2013 he partnered with NDTV to set up www.indianroots.com for selling Designer and Ethnic wear to the Global Indian diaspora. An angel investment of Rs.84 lakhs turned into a company valued at 550 crores within 2 years. Exiting this in 2016 he set up scale ventures group – an early stage angel fund and The India Network, an on-ground community for startups focused on Tier 2, 3, 4 and beyond cities of India.