Mr. Prahlad Kakkar

Advertising and Branding Guru, Jury Member
Prahlad Kakar founded Genesis Film Production Pvt. Ltd. in 1977 and virtually invented local television advertising, after having assisted Shyam Benegal, one of India’s most renowned filmmakers. “To tell a story in 30 seconds in the most engaging way possible” remains Prahlad’s raison d’etre for remaining passionate about ad filmmaking even twenty-five years later. Genesis, as is common knowledge in the business, continues to train generations of dedicated filmmakers.

Through the years, corporations like Nestlé, PepsiCo, Britannia, Levers have continued to communicate their brand stories through PrahladKakar. Making films that capture the dreams and aspirations of his vast target audience, Prahlad has ruled the ad film making business and has won several awards for technical excellence, Innovation and creativity in advertising & marketing over the years in India.

Mr. Vinod Kumar

Managing Partner & Country Manager – India & Middle East SDRC INDIA ADVISORS
Starting his career in international collaborations and projects, in 1989, saw Vinod at the nerve centre of various successful Joint Ventures and Colllaborations in Electronics & Telecom, Media & Publishing, Industrial & Consumer Electronics, Hospitality and Finance, with Multinational corporations entering India through the FDI route.
In his corporate honcho avataar, Vinod, continued to helm important and visionary new ventures and projects including the first email service in India and went on to launch Microsoft first exclusive distribution in India, followed by SUN & IBM certified IT Training with a network of over 140 centres across India, training over 1,25,000 engineers in IT in the next four years.
Vinod, led a Big 4, IT Consulting organisation in India, setting up its wholly owned subsidiary in the US, after securing venture alliances with Baan, Lotus IBM, the New Jersey Institute of Technology, the XML World Group and executed multi million contracts for Texaco, DST Systems and other large corporations throughout the world, before overseeing the buyout of the company by a US based corporation, in an all cash deal. Vinod went to lead the development & successful sale of an indigenously developed navigation and geographic information system, based tracking patent and business.
As the Managing Partner for India and Middle East at SDRC India Advisors, he presently invests in profitable, innovative, Small and Medium Companies. Vinod leads the SDRC team in Risk Profiling, Assessing Growth Potential and deciding on Investment for Seed and Venture Financing to MSMEs in innovative and disruptive technologies, apart from day to day overseeing and leading extensive research and analysis of linkages, growth potential and market factors of SMEs involved in over 29 clusters across 11 Sectors including Food Processing, Dairy, Leather, Pharma, Engineering and Automotive in over 19 states of India.
As an investor and mentor, with a passion for growing innovative and disruptive brick and mortar, Small and Medium companies with a high growth trajectory, Vinod, supervises and mentors investments of over 135 m $ apart from mentoring over a thousand Entreprenuers, across various sectors under the India SME Forum’s Mentor 4 Entrepreneur Program. Vinod’s experience in startups, seed, equity & development financing and capacity building of MSMEs has successfully lead to innovative strategies in equity & growth capital investments in SMEs apart from the development of successful strategies for a nationwide Capacity Building Framework at the India SME Forum.
Vinod passionately addresses and conducts workshops, motivational seminars and leadership sessions for Small and Medium Entrepreneurs and currently serves as the Honorary President at the India SME Forum, apart from advising various government agencies and institutions to strategize and deal with current issues and future challenges.
Vinod is member of the Board of World Union of SMEs headquartered in San Merino, nominated as a Member of India’s Central Bank, the Reserve Bank of India’s Standing Advisory Committee on Flow of Institutional Credit to MSME Sector under the Financial Inclusion Development Department and is also a nominated member on the High Powered Monitoring Committee under National Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe Hub under StandUp India of the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises of the Government of India.
Vinod has a Graduate Engineering Degree in Electronics and Telecommunication & a Masters in Business Administration.

Mr. Ravinder Bhan

Business Leader and Consultant
Internationally experienced Business Leader and Consultant having contributed to Growth and Value at businesses from India, Europe and Middle East, For over two decades, Ravinder, contributed at several companies in the region to grow and deliver real business results year after year. This included small, medium and large organization spread over 25 years, be it big giants like Crompton Greaves, Larsen & Toubro, Schneider or GE; medium sized manufacturers like Jyoti Ltd. Voltamp Switchgear, or small organizations like Delta Engineering, Uptime Engineers, High Volt Electricals & Hirect Engg.
Extensively experienced in Strategic Marketing, Change Management, Human Capital, Finance, Supply Chain, Project Management and Manufacturing processes, Ravinder is an Effective Team Builder, Trainer and mentor with a passion to bring out the best out of People. A top level professional net-worker – linked personally with over a thousand top notch professionals from across the globe.
Aggressive Initiative leader for making quick, visible and yet seamless transformation from ‘business as usual’ to “businesses that matter” even in a Not for Profit Organization/ Industry Association bringing enhanced value to all stake holders.

Mr. Tilak Raj Bajalia

Ex- Deputy Managing Director, SIDBI
Shri Bajalia is an Economics graduate with ICWA and Certified Associate of Indian Institute of Bankers. He started his career in a commercial bank in 1974 and moved to IDBI in 1983. During his about 30 years stay in IDBI he handled varied portfolio viz. Corporate & Retail finance, Recovery & NPA Management, Restructuring, Human Resource Management, etc. He set up Recovery Vertical and SME Vertical in IDBI. In Corporate Banking he handled Infra projects, Paper, Textile, Engineering, Mining Industry. He headed the Branch Office at Jaipur & Largest Branch of IDBI Mumbai. He headed HRD function of IDBI during its transformation into a Commercial Bank portfolio after 2011. Prior to appointment as DMD in SIDBI, Shri Bajalia was the Executive Director of IDBI Ltd.

Ms. Sushma Morthania

Founder & Director General, India SME Forum
Being an Entrepreneur herself, her wide travels, made Sushma explore and study the state and options for Small and Medium Business in India. Her own difficulties and social experiences as an Entrepreneur in India, made her feel a strong urge to help create an ecosystem to enable and aid the employment generating small and medium business owners, especially women.
As part of her commitment and vision, Sushma, oversaw the formation of the India SME Forum along with the present Founder Trustees of India SME Forum. She is personally involved as the Director General, in some of its outreach and knowledge sharing activities. Sushma lead a team of analysts and experts in creating a unique evaluation format, for the India SME 100 Awards, created specifically to score and rate SMEs across the length and breadth of the country on a single scale. Sushma has lead the team of researchers in conducting India’s largest MSME survey – State of the SME for the India SME forum which surveyed 3,30,000 MSMEs across 29 states, 371 clusters and 6000+ product lines, on the Entrepreneurial and Financial ecosystem, State of their Business & Use of Technology. A report based on the survey was shared with various State Governments, Policy makers, Institutions and various Ministries along with our analysis and recommendations.
Sushma passionately works for Small and Medium Entrepreneurs as the Founder Director General at the India SME Forum, apart from advising various government agencies and institutions to strategize and deal with current issues and future challenges. Apart from day to day overseeing and leading extensive research and analysis of linkages, growth potential and market factors of MSMEs involved in over 29 clusters across 11 Sectors. Some clusters covered are Food Processing, Dairy, Leather, Pharma, Engineering and Automotive in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Himachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Gujarat, Karnataka and Haryana
Sushma’s experience in startups and capacity building of MSMEs has successfully lead to innovative strategies in the development of successful strategies for a nationwide Capacity Building Framework, at the INDIA SME FORUM. Sushma’s belief in Women Empowerment and Entrepreneurship as the key for social and economic change in India, made her start encouraging & working with various clusters of artisans and backward class, self employed women, as a continuous social activity. Sushma was appointed in Jan 2015, to the National Board of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, India’s apex body for MSMEs by the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises. She also represents India on the B20 China SME Taskforce and is also Member of the Permanent Commission On Social Issues and Women Entrepreneurship for World Union of Small and Medium Enterprises (WUSME)