Jury for the Contest “SME Stories-A Chronicle of Success”

We have on board a team of eminent industry personalities who have come forward to help SME Story in their initiative . Since they are very experienced in their own industries and bring along a deep understanding of business and SMEs we call them our “SME Coach“

They would also be the jury to select top stories to be featured in our upcoming book

“SME Stories – A Chronicle of Success”

Padmaja Ruparel

Padmaja Ruparel is the President of Indian Angel Network (IAN), India’s first and now the largest group of business angels, comprising the who’s who of successful entrepreneurs and dynamic CEOs from India and overseas. She built this organization from inception, which in 5 years has over 170 investors in the network with a portfolio of 25 companies across multiple sectors and geographies; with one of the recent exits providing 5x returns over 15 months. She has also operationalised under the IAN Banner, a unique model of virtual Incubator which within a short time of 8 months has 20 Incubatees. With 25 years of experience, Padmaja has been deeply involved in starting and growing organizations in the IT and investing space, through the operationalising the award winning TiE Delhi chapter and reviving the Indian Venture Capital Association, India’s oldest and largest association of VC and PE firms

Yogesh Dixit

Yogesh Dixit leads the SME Ratings business at CRISIL Ltd. CRISIL is a global analytical company providing ratings, research, and risk and policy advisory services. CRISIL is a subsidiary of Standard & Poor’s.

In his professional career spanning more than 23 years, Yogesh has worked with SBI Capital Markets Limited, Credit Guarantee Fund, SIDBI and NABARD, in the past. His areas of expertise include credit delivery, project financing, promotion & development and policy formulation for MSMEs. He played a key role in setting and scaling up the operations of Credit Guarantee Fund with a corpus of Rs 2,500 crore. The fund is based on an innovative approach of helping micro and small enterprises access collateral free credit from commercial banks in India.

Yogesh has worked closely with Ministries of Government of India, Reserve Bank of India, commercial banks, financial institutions, industry federations like CII, FICCI, ASSOCHAM, IMC, PHDCCI etc., various multilateral agencies and promotional agencies of the Government to promote innovative financing practices in the MSME sector.

Yogesh is a post graduate in engineering and management, and an Associate of Indian Institute of Bankers.

Gaurav Mehra

Gaurav Mehra is a co-founder of Saba Software Inc. (NASDAQ: SABA), the leading provider of Human Capital Management solutions. He currently is the Managing Director for Saba’s Indian operations. Mr. Mehra also serves a VP of Engineering for the Global Product Development function, and is a member of the company’s Executive Council and a key member of Saba’s Product Strategy and Architecture teams.

Mr. Mehra began his career at Oracle Corp. in California where he worked on Oracle’s Office Automation suite of products, before moving to Washington DC area, as Director of Software Development at HTR Inc. He returned to India in 1995 where he founded, and was Managing Director of, FRMware, a software services company, which was acquired by Saba in 1999.

Mr. Mehra holds BS and MS degrees in Computer Science from Stanford University. He also holds patents for a number of technologies developed at Saba.

Mr.Mehra is also the President of Software Exporters’ Association of Pune (SEAP) for the current year.

Rajen Kumar

Rajen Kumar is one of the most experienced talents in the print and visual media. A veteran journalist and a prolific writer, he has had a checkered career spanning over three decades with various national and international newspapers and agencies. He carved out a niche for himself in the realm of socio-economic journalism.

SME WORLD springs from his passion and concern for the growth of small and medium enterprises. He is the Publisher and Editor-In-Charge of SME WORLD, India’s only monthly dedicated to the growth of SMEs and the emerging entrepreneurs.

A commerce graduate (Delhi University) with Post-Graduate degree in Journalism, he started his career as Campus Reporter (Delhi University). His sharp vision and a nose for news made him popular amongst the students and teaching fraternity. His regular features on the budding talents of the university won him great plaudits.

He founded and edited ‘BRINK’, India’s first community newspaper in the seventies and edited ‘Childship’, a popular informative and educative magazine for the growing mind. As a feature writer, he regularly wrote for The Hindustan Times and the Evening News. He meticulously touched subjects of human interest in his writings.

He diversified to enter the visual media scene on a promising note and his very first documentary ‘The Longest Night’ won him an international ‘Best Director’ award.

He wrote scripts for numerous documentaries, which he also directed, for a host of national and international agencies like UNICEF, NORAD (Norwegian development Agency), OXFAM, CRS, WWF (I), various central ministries and state governments including Ministry of HRD, Health, Home, and Tribal Affairs.

Yogesh Bansal

The young entrepreneur and the intellect behind India’s rewarding online professional network, Mr. Yogesh Bansal, is the visionary who envisaged the requirement of an online local network for professionals in India. The network that could comprehensively evolve the niche of social networking culture for professionals in the country. This gave birth to ApnaCircle.com, the most indigenous, lucrative, and Glocal (Global-Local) professional networking platform.

An MBA from the University of North Carolina, Mr. Bansal spent significant time in understanding the market through market research. As a professional he has played a critical role with different organizations across the globe and has been part of many founding teams of various businesses. He founded several start ups in USA as well as India. Before becoming an entrepreneur; he worked with McKesson Inc, USA. With hands on experience in the field of market research he moved back to India in the year 2006 and started ApnaCircle.com.

He is an analyst of the youth and the career. A frequent commentator for national media, he has spoken extensively on Social networking, Hiring trends, and other industry trends and so on. He gives frequent speeches at the top management institutes IIMs, IMT, SRCC etc. He’s also an industry speaker at international events and conferences like, HR Congress, Convergence India, MSME Summits, TIE summit etc. He is also a charter member of TIE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) and IAN (India Angel Network)

Prof.M.M.Pant

A Ph.D in Computational Physics along with a Professional Law Degree, has been a practitioner in the field of Law, IT enabled education and IT implementation.

Prof. Pant, has been the Pro-Vice Chancellor at Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) and on the faculty at IIT – Kanpur (the premier Engineering institution in India), MLNR Engineering College and on the Faculty & Visiting Professor at University of Western Ontario-Canada.

He has been a Visiting Scientist to research centers in Italy, England, Germany & Sweden and has delivered international lectures with about 80 published papers to his credit  .Some of Prof. Pant’s key works include :

1. Introduction of Keller Plan at I.I.T., Kanpur

2.Development of Computer-supported Learning Systems & its implementation at IGNOU

3.Computerization activities for the Indian Representative of ETS, USA for conduct of their TOEFL & GRE examination in India, Sikkim Nepal

4.Design and implementation of Student Registration and Evaluation methods as well as Evaluation Systems and Procedures for Testing and Examinations at the IGNOU

5. Associated with the Project Development as Member, committee for I I I T, Allahabad

With his mission to create and implement new business opportunities in the area of e-learning & learning facilitation, Prof. Pant has promoted Planet EDU Pvt. Ltd., as its Founder & Chairman, along with a team of highly experienced and skilled professionals from Education & Training, Operations, IT and Finance.