India Forum

Paradigm Shift: From Outsourcing to Innovation

India is perceived as an outsourcing hub but it is fast becoming a center of innovation and entrepreneurial activity. India is innovating across the spectrum from building the cheapest car Tata Nano for the Indian market to building Reva an electric car for the global market. Our panel of experts will share their experiences in India, what has changed over the last couple of years and what it will take for India to become truly innovative.

Sabeer Bhatia, Co-founder and Chairman of SabseBolo and Co-founder of Hotmail

 

Mr. Bhatia is a legendary Silicon Valley entrepreneur with global business and financial influence. He founded Hotmail, one of the first web-based email services. After Hotmail’s acquisition by Microsoft, Mr. Bhatia has remained active in a number of entrepreneurial ventures in the high-tech and telecommunications space.

His awards and honors include recognition in 1997 as “Entrepreneur of the Year” by the venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and the TR100 award presented by MIT to 100 young innovators who are expected to have the greatest impact on technology. In 2002, he was named as one of the “People to Watch in International Business” by TIME magazine.
 

 

Kanwal Rekhi, Managing Director, Inventus Capital and Founder of The Indus Entrepreneurs

 

Kanwal has actively participated in the emergence and growth of Silicon Valley and India. He applies all of his time helping entrepreneurs accomplish great results, and co-founded Inventus to devote his full energy to build a leading Indo-US venture franchise. Since 1994, Kanwal has led the first venture round in numerous early-stage companies, holding 23 board positions and actively guiding entrepreneurs to 19 exits including 6 IPOs.

Prior to his venture career, Kanwal co-founded Excelan in Silicon Valley - the first company to commercialize ethernet and TCP/IP and standardize computer networks. Kanwal took Exelan public in 1987 and became the first Indo-American Founder & CEO to list a venture-backed company on the NASDAQ. He also established Novell's operations in India, making it one of the first cross-border Indo-US technology companies.

Kanwal co-founded The IndUS Entrepreneurs (TiE) in 1992 to promote entrepreneurship among Indians and Indo-Americans around the world. He was TiE President and spear-headed it’s growth into the world's largest entrepreneurial organization with over 12,000 members who have been behind many of Silicon Valley and India's most successful start-ups. Kanwal actively advised India policy makers in the late 1990's resulting in the privatization of telecom and reforms of venture regulations encouraging fund formation in India.

 

Dr. Prabhakant Sinha, Founder and Co-chairman, ZS Associates

 

Prabhakant Sinha most recently launched PK Sinha Center for BioEnergy at Indian Institute of Technology – Kharagpur. He is an investor and advisor to Greenlight Planet, a company dedicated to bringing ultra-affordable solar LED lights to the 1.6 billion people who don’t have electricity.

Dr. Sinha received his Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts (1974) and his B-Tech. from IIT Kharagpur (1970). Over the last 40 years, he has been a consultant, a teacher, and an author.

ZS Associates was co-founded in the US by Dr. Sinha in 1983, and now operates with over 1300 people in North America, Europe and Asia. His role in the success of ZS was recognized by his induction into the Chicago Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame in 2005.

A former Associate Professor of Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, Dr. Sinha continues to teach executives at Kellogg and at the Indian School of Business. He has co-authored several books including Building a Winning Sales Force (2009) and The Complete Guide to Accelerating Sales Force Performance (2001). He is the co-author of the 2004 winning entry in the INFORMS Practice Prize Competition, and received the American Marketing Association’s Excellence in Sales Research award in 2009.

 

Vivek Wadhwa, Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley, Senior Research Associate, Harvard Law School, and Director of Research, Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University

 

Vivek Wadhwa is a senior research associate with the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School and an executive in residence/adjunct professor at the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University. He helps students prepare for the real world, lectures in class and leads groundbreaking research projects.

He is also an advisor to several start-up companies, a columnist for BusinessWeek.com and a contributor to several international publications.

Since joining Duke University in August 2005, he has researched globalization, its impact on the engineering profession and the sources of the U.S. competitive advantage. His research revealed why companies were going offshore and highlighted new trends in the globalization of R&D and innovation. He has been featured in thousands of articles in worldwide publications including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes Magazine, Washington Post, New York Times, U.S. News and World Report and Science Magazine.

 

Moderator: Seth R. Freeman, CEO and Chief Investment Officer, EM Capital Management, LLC

 

Seth R. Freeman is the co-founder and CEO and Chief Investment Officer of EM Capital Management, LLC, a U.S. SEC registered investment adviser and fund manager specializing in emerging and frontier markets. He is the co-portfolio manager of an India-focused mutual fund and several India-focused private investment vehicles. Seth holds an MBA in International Management from Thunderbird. He is a frequent contributor on Bloomberg TV, CNBC and NDTV-Profit and regularly teaches master-classes or serves as a chair or speaker at major investment conferences around the world. He is also a Certified Insolvency & Restructuring Advisor and advises investors, funds, directors and their attorneys on distresses assets and resolving complex cross-border and emerging markets investment problems.