The Panelists:Convergenz'08 (A PGSEM Event)

Dr. Aravind Sitaraman,
Vice President and Managing Director, Cisco Systems, India

Aravind Sitaraman is Vice President and Managing Director of CDO, India. He is also the executive sponsor for the India WAN FY08 and Chairman of India Civic Council.

Aravind has 22 years of work experience. After pioneering work in several start-up companies and experience with US high-tech companies such as Novell Inc and Oracle Corporation, he became one of Cisco Systems leading inventors with 54 US patents-- 34 issued, 3 allowed, and 17 pending. His inventions were in networking access, security, policy, and traffic shaping areas. Specifically, he was the Chief Architect of User Control Point and Service Selection Gateway. He assisted sales and marketing teams worldwide by presenting Cisco technologies to engineering teams of several service provider, telecommunication companies, and enterprises. Over the years, he owned several platforms such as Cisco 85xx, LS1010, and ONS 155xx and also software components such as ATM Signaling. He was the co-Chairman of the Voice on DSL standard and Chairman of Auto-Configuration Forum in the global DSL Forum. He has presented several research papers in the DSL Forum, ATM Forum, and IETF. He was also the Chairman of the Networking track of the first Network-Centric Warfare Conference in India.

Since his relocation to India in 2000, other than raising a new organization and assuming project responsibilities, he helped the budding Cisco organization in India to define processes, goals, and grow to 1500 employees. This includes creating presentations on Cisco including its technologies, culture, platforms, and work prospects in India; Creating process of interaction with functional groups such as human resources, finance, and work place resources; Evangelization in Universities, trade bodies, and recruits; Organization of several recruitment drives in Universities and cities including the creation of question papers, correction and selection criteria, creating and placing advertisements, and infrastructure arrangements; Lobbying government agencies and functionaries for change in several policies that affect business; Creating a University relations group that interacted closely with some colleges; Creating a Social Responsibility organization that facilitated employee participation in non-government organizations-- this later became the India Civic Council; Serve on the Core Group to make Cisco India wide decisions; Organized Cisco Technology Day that brings Cisco India employees up to speed on technologies and also showcasing to customers, work done in India in-house and with partners.

Since his relocation to India in 2000, Aravind has reestablished whatisindia.com in Bangalore as a non-profit organization seeking to influence policy in India and India policy world-wide. He has published several papers on strategic and social issues in The Hindu, BusinessLine, Deccan Herald, Rediff, India Abroad, India Currents, etc. He visited Kashmir, Punjab, and other Indian states on fact finding missions and submitted reports to US policy makers. As part of this effort, he has digitized several thousand millenniums old inscriptions in South India and sponsored historical research on India that has now spawned over 200 Web pages on Wikipedia, Encarta, and other Internet-based encyclopedias. He also created subject-based portals of over 300 issues facing India and created detailed analysis on over 200 subjects. He created a catalogue of academic institutions in India and India missions abroad. He is currently documenting Indian classical music.

whatisindia.com has its roots in 'Prakash,' not-for-profit policy advocacy group founded by Aravind Sitaraman in the United States in 1995. This group brought together thousands of Indian American scientists, professors, doctors, engineers, and professionals into a single voice. 'Prakash' has communicated with the US Congress, Senate, and Administration on many issues. Its publications have been acknowledged by many US leaders and some parts even placed as part of official records in the House of Representatives of the United States . In 1996, he was invited to visit the National Human Rights Commission of India in New Delhi . In 2006, he was invited to join the Asia Center in Bangalore.

He was on the Board of Studies of Anna University and PSG College in Coimbatore and helped shape syllabi for engineering schools in Tamil Nadu. He also taught a part-time course in PSG College on Data Structures using 'C'. Aravind serves on the Board of Trustees of CLT India, an educational trust bringing technology to rural India. Apart from ongoing activities, this trust has built a state-of-the-art school with contribution from Intel Foundation for tsunami victims in Nagappatinam District in Tamil Nadu.




Rajeev Mehtani,
Managing Director, NXP Semiconductor,India

Rajeev Mehtani, the Managing Director of NXP Semiconductors, India, started his career with Philips Research, the Netherlands, in 1986, as a research scientist, where he worked for 9 years in the area of Integrated Circuit Design for VLSI circuit testing.


In 1994 Rajeev moved to Philips Semiconductors in California, the USA, where he was responsible for bringing new technology to market. In 1997, as a marketing manager, he started a center for the design of highly complex integrated circuits. Then, in 1999, Rajeev took over as the head of the Wired Connectivity Group in Singapore, where he led the group to a top-3 position in the market for USB controllers. In June 2004 he assumed office as the Director of Philips Semiconductors, Bangalore, taking charge of the research and development activities of the company in India.

Rajeev holds a Masters Degree in Microelectronics from Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.
Rajeev Mehtani was born in 1963 in New Delhi, India. He is married with two children. In his spare time, he likes to travel and listen to music.




Ravi Shankar GV,
Associate, Sequoia Capital India

Ravi Shankar is an Associate with Sequoia Capital India. Prior to joining Sequoia Capital, Ravi Shankar worked at McKinsey & Company in Mumbai, where he advised senior management of top Indian companies on a variety of issues including business building, channel management and leadership development. Prior to McKinsey, Ravi Shankar worked at Wipro Technologies in their Embedded and Internet Access division. At Wipro, Ravi Shankar helped several venture-backed networking start-up clients design and build customer premise equipment for next generation applications like VoDSL and Internet over Cable. Ravi Shankar received an MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad where he was awarded the President's Gold Medal. He also holds a BE in Computer Science and Engineering from REC Trichy.




Prof. S Sadagopan,
Director, IIIT Bangalore

Professor Sadagopan is an outstanding teacher – having taught for a full term at Rutgers University New Jersey, USA, IIT, Madras, India and AIT Bangkok, Thailand, in addition to short term visits to several premier Universities around the world (including Stanford & MIT). He had taught courses in the Enterprise Area (ERP, E-Business, E-Commerce, Enterprise Systems), Computing & Communications Area (Programming Languages, Database, Networking, Systems Programming, Algorithms and Data Structures, Software Architecture), Information Systems (MIS, DSS, ES) and Operations Research (Optimization, Simulation, Quantitative Methods, Statistics, Probability, Stochastic Processes). He has authored two textbooks - Management Information Systems (Prentice Hall 1995) and ERP - A Managerial Perspective (Tata McGraw Hill 1999), in addition to several book chapters.

Professor Sadagopan’s research work has appeared in several national and international journals including IEEE Transactions, European J of Operational Research, J of Optimization Theory & Applications, Naval Research Logistics, Simulation, Decision Support Systems, ACM Ubiquity etc., He is a referee for several journals and serves on the editorial boards of many journals.

Professor consults extensively to some of the largest private & public sector corporations in India, in Computing, Communications, Software, Automotive, Oil and Power industries as well as social sector. He is a member of the Board of Directors of several private and public sector corporations; he is also a member of the Board of Studies of several Universities.

Professor Sadagopan is a featured Columnist for Times of India (the world’s largest English Newspaper) and several magazines.

He was a Fulbright Scholar and his name is listed in Marquis’s Who's Who in the World since 1997.




Vinod Deshmukh,
Executive Vice President,MindTree Consulting


Vinod Deshmukh is Executive vice president of MindTree's Product Realization Services. He brings 20 years of engineering and system design experience. He is responsible for all customer engagements, technology building blocks developments and technology direction at MindTree Consulting.

Prior to joining MindTree, Deshmukh was a key architect for building hardware at Wipro's Global Research and Development Division. He led a 625-person business unit focused on developing technology solutions for the network equipment vendors. Lending his ASIC design expertise, Deshmukh architected the concept of a valley-based design center for strategic customers.

Among the early proponents of distributed development, Deshmukh has successfully led projects for StrataCom/CISCO, NCR, UB Networks etc. with team members dispersed in Silicon Valley and Bangalore, India.

Deshmukh holds a Bachelor's degree in engineering from Nagpur University, and a Master's degree in technology from the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur, India.