A Software Intelligence Board Room :
Keeping Digital Transformation Momentum with Secured Resilient Business Systems

Kirti Patil - Senior EVP & Chief Technology Officer Kotak Mahindra Life Insurance

Kirti Patil, Senior Executive Vice President & Chief Technology Officer at Kotak Mahindra Life Insurance Co. Ltd. (Kotak Life), spearheads its technology and digital function. She is a member of Kotak Life’s executive management council that charters company’s growth.

Kirti joined Kotak Life in 2003. Over the years, she has been instrumental in giving Kotak Life’s tech strategy a cutting edge by implementing several transformational initiatives including mobile based selling, video based customer calling, OCR/ICR based BPM, RPA, BOTs etc. to improve customer experience.

Driven to build excellence through technology, Kirti has been an early adopter of several technologies like datacentre virtualisation, hyper converged infrastructure, flash storage, data reduction technologies and block level replication to name a few. With over two decades of experience spanning manufacturing and BFSI sector, Kirti has won several industry accolades for her initiatives.

She started her career with Bayer India and moved on to International Rectifier where she was responsible for implementation of IT systems in the APAC region. Later she re-joined Bayer and handled their technology integration and standardisation across 12 group companies in India.

Kirti holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering from VJTI and an MBA from Mumbai University.

An advocator of women’s empowerment, Kirti also has passion for reading and loves cooking.

Mukesh Malik - COO, Aditya Birla Capital

Mukesh Malik joined the Aditya Birla Group in July 2016. In his role as the Chief Operating Officer, ABCL, Mukesh is responsible for setting vision, strategy, policy formation and execution for Information Technology & Operations to enable future growth. He partners all our businesses / functions to bring in new technologies & operating platforms, build digital assets and leverage these for business growth. He also leads Quality & Business Excellence across Service, Sales and Operations.

Prior to joining the Aditya Birla Group, Mukesh worked with Citibank for 10 years. As Managing Director, he steered Citi’s Operations, Customer Service and Technology organization in South Asia. He also headed Citi’s global delivery centres in India, including Chennai which was established and grown significantly under his leadership. During his stint with ABN AMRO Bank (1999 – 2006), he headed its Retail Bank (West), Service and Business Solutions. In his last assignment, he was Country Operations Head across all its businesses. Mukesh started his career with Bank of America in 1991 and played key role in bank’s consumer banking launch and subsequent significant growth, before leaving in 1999.

Having worked with large global banks for 25 years, Mukesh brings rich experience from very diverse leadership roles in business, operations, technology, customer service, finance, client analytics, human resources & financial modelling in the consumer and corporate banking space.

Mukesh is a Chartered Accountant and an alumnus of Shri Ram College of Commerce, Delhi.

V. Laxmikanth (VLK) - Managing Director, Broadridge Financial Solutions India

V. Laxmikanth (VLK) is the Managing Director of Broadridge Financial Solutions (India) Pvt. Ltd; a wholly owned subsidiary of the US based Broadridge Financial Solutions Inc. (NYSE:BR); a leading provider of investor communications, technology-driven solutions, and data and analytics to the financial services industry. He is also part of the Executive Leadership team at Broadridge. At Broadridge, he is responsible for delivery of product development and operations from its India-based centers. His leadership spans execution, product and technical innovation and business strategy. Prior to the spin-off of Broadridge from ADP, he was part of the executive leadership team of ADP India since 1999. He was responsible for the delivery of Information Technology Solutions and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) Services across all businesses verticals of ADP. He has been associated with the IT industry since 1982 and has been instrumental in having established and run multiple companies over three decades such as ADP India, DE Shaw India and Intergraph India.

He is an active member of industry and academic forums like NASSCOM, AMCHAM, HYSEA, CII, CISI, etc.

Monesh Dange Mohan - Partner and Leader – Advisory Markets India, EY

Monesh Dange is the Markets Leader for Advisory Services in India, the largest service line by revenue and headcount with 8,000 professionals and more than 150 partners in the region. He is responsible for evangelizing Digital in all aspects of advisory business while also focusing on acquisitions, new markets, and new solutions to further strengthen the market leading growth. With a rich experience of over 23 years, Monesh is a veteran technology practitioner and continues to help clients evaluate, consume, adopt and be advised on a wide variety of technologies through their evolution cycle and incubating new age digital practices. He has been a trusted consultant to several global enterprises in their digital transformation journey. Monesh was previously leading EY’s Technology Consulting business in India.

At EY and outside, Monesh has been a steering committee member, program leader, global solution architect and risk advisor for clients across Banking and Financial Services, Energy, Gems & Jewellery, Healthcare and Pharmaceuticals, Oil and Gas, Professional Services, Real Estate and Telecom and IT/ITes sectors. A notable speaker at technology forums, Monesh often represents EY at Business Solution conferences and has even led a national debate on feasibility of ERP Deployments for Small Scale Industries. He is also part of various industry bodies, councils and forums in India.

Monesh is a qualified Chartered Accountant from ICAI and a law graduate from Bangalore University with specialization in Banking, Corporate Finance and Securities.

Nilkanth (Neel) Iyer - Country Manager & SVP India, CAST

Nilkanth Iyer is responsible for strategy, sales and business development for CAST India. As such, Nilkanth works with CAST’s strategic partners, including global system integrators and enterprise customers to help them better manage outsourcing operations and work with channel partners to improve software portfolio analysis and measurement. Nilkanth is a proven business strategist with a distinguished track record in the IT products and services industry, specializing in application development, lifecycle management and DevOps leadership for more than 16 years.

Nilkanth’s background includes leading the strategic build-out of the cloud ecosystem for IBM India-South Asia, where he spent more than 7 years. Prior to joining IBM, Nilkanth led the sales for Telelogic, a collaborative lifecycle management solutions provider which was acquired by IBM. Nilkanth holds a Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering from Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute and a Master’s in Communication Management from the Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad.

Ed Nair - Consulting Editor- Technology, Business World

Ed Nair is a writer, researcher, and speaker on business technology, global sourcing of technology and BPM services, and digital business. He is the Consulting Editor— Technology with BusinessWorld, India’s premier business publication group. He is also engaged in providing advisory and content services to the technology industry and working with B-Schools on research, case development, and teaching. Over the past 30 years, Ed has worked in the enterprise technology, tech publishing, and analyst/ consulting sectors in various roles in India and US. He was VP- Content and Research at UiPath, a hypergrowth unicorn status enterprise software company. Prior to that he was the Group Editor- Business and Technology at CyberMedia India, India’s leading tech media company. In the early part of his career, he was an analyst with IDC. Ed is very well-networked with senior tech and business executives globally. Ed has written over 1000 articles, editorials, and special reports; led over 50 industry research projects; and chaired and presented sessions at several industry conferences globally. He holds a graduate degree in electronics engineering from the University of Bombay and an MBA from Thunderbird School for Global Management at Arizona State University.