Abilasha Anish heads the brand strategy & marketing at The Hindu Group. Prior to joining The Hindu Group she worked with FCB Ulka as a strategic planner. Abilasha has 10+ years of experience in marketing and spent a significant part of it in the media and advertising industry. She holds a masters in management and has completed an executive program in Managing Business Decisions using quantitative data from Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta. Abilasha has a keen interest in consumer research and the study of behavioural economics. She has been instrumental in setting up the Reader Intelligence Unit at The Hindu Group that tracks reader behaviour and media consumption habits.

Akash Tyagi is the Product Specialist for Adobe's Media and Entertainment solutions and Primetime. He has been instrumental in setting up New Practices, Product Launches and Growth strategies across different companies and has worked extensively with Media companies in India, South East Asia and the US building and executing their digital initiatives, OTT platforms and end user experiences. As a part of the Industry Strategy team for Media & Entertainment at Adobe, Akash's key focus is on leveraging his experience to helping Media companies drive Digital Transformation and help them solve various challenges in their OTT business like User experience, Personalization and Monetization.

Anoop N is the Chief Operating Officer - Digital at Asianet News Media and Entertainment Ltd. [AMEL]. Previously he was heading the Chairman's Office at Jupiter Capital, a leading Investment and Financial services firm. From Jupiter Capital's recent Investments in early stage Consumer Tech startups to the recently announced Investment in Republic TV, Anoop has led multiple transactions. A Management graduate from IIM with 12+ years of experience, Anoop worked at Accenture in their Management Consulting practice, prior to joining Jupiter Capital. He has functional expertise in Business Strategy, Investment Strategy, Deal Structuring, Product Management and Operational Excellence across multiple industries. At AMEL, Anoop is driving the Digital Media business in which AMEL aspires to be South India's fastest growing Multilingual Vernacular Video Content platform. He is also amongst the Board of Directors, at Asianet News Network Pvt Ltd which owns and operates credible brands such as Asianet News, Suvarna News and Kannada Prabha. Outside of work, Anoop is an avid reader, a news junkie and loves binge-watching.

Anurag Gupta, CEO, SVG Media has over 20 years of experience across diverse industries - FMCG, Office Automation, Stock Broking, and Media & Internet. He has been in the Internet space for over 10 years. Currently he is handling business for SVG Media that has leading brands like DGM, SeventyNine, Komli and SVG Mobile. Prior to this he concluded an MBO of DGM India along with SVG Media. Anurag has led the charge in scaling up DGM India to be one of India's largest online performance marketing companies in India. Prior to DGM, Anurag has also been associated with one of India's largest Internet entity - Indiatimes.com for 4 years where he was instrumental in creating and heading the Subscriptions business.

Ashwini has been with afaqs! for over 7 years. She is Executive Editor here. She is the third person - and the second woman - to take this title at afaqs! in 16 years. A trained Clinical Psychologist, Ashwini writes about brands, the marketers who head them, the ads they release, the agencies that make these ads and the people who run these agencies.

An ideas' person, Deepak brings with him two decades of experience across PR, Advertising, Direct Marketing & Digital. Prior to joining LinTeractive, he worked for the digital team at Edelman where he was responsible for creative output across the agency's accounts in Mumbai, Delhi & Bangalore. Some of the notable brands in his portfolio include Jaguar, Land Rover, HP, GE, AMD, PayPal, Ministry of Power, Microsoft, Future Group, Aditya Birla, Castrol, Turner etc. Deepak has also worked at M&C SAATCHI's direct marketing & digital division, RMG Connect, DDB Mudra and Euro RSCG.

Dhruv has graduated from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburg, after which he worked with Deloitte in San Francisco on key E-Commerce accounts. He moved back to India to start his own startup in the payments space, called GetFbPay.in. Looking at local experiences through the lens of ticketing and transactions, his first startup gained significant momentum. However, him and his team decided to integrate with LBB in 2015, and collectively solve the problem of local discoveries.

Diksha Madhok is editor of Quartz India. She oversees content spanning the topics of business, technology, popular culture, and politics. Before coming to Quartz, Diksha worked with Thomson Reuters in New Delhi and studied journalism at Columbia University in New York City.

Gautam Shelar is currently the business head at moneycontrol.com, India's leading financial platform. Gautam's role as the business head includes building brand strategies, revenue generation through new account development and new business development. At moneycontrol.com he leads a team of experienced professionals to build strong business & strategic relationships with acclaimed ad agencies. Before joining moneycontrol.com, he has always been responsible and played an imperative role for positioning and developing his organization extensively. In the past, Gautam has worked with Times Internet Limited as Head - Agency Relations & News Vertical Sales lead. He was also responsible for leading the programmatic initiatives for TIL. Initially, at People Interactive Ltd, his role involved analyzing consumer goods companies, developing sales channels, and leading the sales team. With over 10 years of digital media experience, he's a blend of creativity & entrepreneurship. At his previous job, he was a part of the core team, and played a pivotal role in scaling the advertising business to cross a whooping amount of Rs. 300cr. Apart from possessing various professional skills, Gautam is an optimistic person in real life and has a fervour for farming. He really enjoys coaching and mentoring people who look up to him.

Gautam is a global executive with 30 years of rich experience including a wealth of startup and industry expertise. He is currently the CEO of Times Internet Ltd., the digital arm of The Times of India Group, where he drives the strategy, vision and execution for all the internet, mobile and telecommunication properties of the group. Prior to Times Internet Ltd., Gautam was the Chief Operating Officer of CashEdge Inc., a company based out of New York and California working in payments and wealth management, where he worked since 2001 building and leading the company from startup to profitability. Prior to CashEdge, he held senior management positions at Sevant, Aspect Communications, at the Neural Applications Corporation, and at the Ministry of Defense in India (DRDO). Gautam is passionate about building high performance teams with a culture where people enjoy what they do. He believes in the Indian startup ecosystem and is an active early stage investor.

He is the Executive Vice President at Isobar India. Additionally Heading Strategy, Media, Data & Analytics verticals. Has over 15 Years of experience in the Advertising and Marketing Communication Industry. Primarily have been Managing & consulting clients locally & regionally on their Digital Transformation Process, Digital Marketing strategies, Brand building & ROI driven marketing outcomes. Have been part of Isobar journey for 8 years.

Gulshan Verma is a mobile and online industry expert with 15 years of rich experience in building successful profitable business channels. As the Chief Revenue Officer of India's largest digital product company - Times Internet Limited, Gulshan is responsible for driving the entire revenue channel for the group. He heads revenues for over 35 digital businesses across web and mobile, with businesses across categories such as news, entertainment, sports, ecommerce, classifieds, and more. He plays a pivotal role at Times Internet in accelerating India's digital transformation with its brands and platforms across languages and age groups. He also leads business development and strategic partnerships for the group. Previously, Gulshan was the General Manager, SEA and India at Outbrain where he launched the industry first content distribution platform in the market. He was also the Chief Revenue Officer at Komli Media; where he expanded the firm to more than 10 countries, helped raise VC funding of nearly ~$100MM and bought both Facebook and Twitter sales to markets across APAC including India, South East Asia and Australia/ New Zealand. He was also the Director of Sales Strategy for Yahoo! India and Director of Product Marketing for Yahoo! Search Marketing in the United States. Prior to that, he was a strategy consultant for McKinsey & Co. working across the Media & Entertainment, Technology and Healthcare sectors. He has also worked in Europe, North America and Asia and for leading companies like Ernst & Young and IMG.

Guru Vaidya is a Senior Solution Consultant for Media And entertainment at Adobe Systems India Pvt Ltd. In his 12 year industry experience Guru has worked across various functions from Computer Graphics to online finishing to technical rollout. His role included providing consultancy to clients and helping them gear up for production. He has also been a part of the VFX team at Pixion Studios and worked on several key national and international projects.

Gyan Gupta is the Chief Executive Officer of DB Digital, the digital arm of Dainik Bhaskar Group. In less than 8 years of its inception, DB digital has become the 2nd Largest Digital Group in the country with more than 80 Million Unique Users and an expanded portfolio from News to Business, Entertainment, Fashion & Lifestyle, Sports, Food and Gadgets. The flagship website DainikBhaksar.com is the World's Largest Hindi News Site and the Second Largest News Site in India, while the other properties by DB Digital like Divya Bhaskar, Money Bhaskar, Bollywood Bhaskar and Divya Marathi are leaders in their respective genres. He comes with 18 years of exhaustive experience in media, digital content and technology; handling multiple profiles including Business Development, Marketing & Pre-Sales, Delivery & Operations. He has been instrumental in conceptualizing multiple unique features and properties and also introducing path breaking initiatives for the brand.

Kedar Gavane is the Vice President at comScore, Inc., overseeing business operations and expanding the India footprint. Kedar is a founding member of the comScore India office and has been instrumental in making India one of the fastest-growing global markets for comScore. Kedar has more than 13 years of experience and has helped several clients build sustainable online businesses. Kedar has served key positions in companies at Reliance ADAG and Ananda Bazaar Patrika. Kedar is an active member of the digital community and a frequent contributor at various industry conferences including ad:tech Delhi, iMedia Brand Summit,He also serves on the advisory board for ad:tech India. Kedar holds a Bachelor of Engineering Computer Science degree from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science as well as an MBA from the Indian School of Business.

Nikhil Pahwa is the Founder and Editor of MediaNama, a leading publication chronicling the growth of India's digital ecosystem. He is a TED Fellow, and co-founded the Savetheinternet.in campaign for Net Neutrality, which was the largest grassroots campaign in the history of India, with over a million people participating. He is also the co-founder of the Internet Freedom Foundation, which focuses on advocacy for an open Internet in India. Nikhil is one of India today Magazine's "Indians of Tomorrow" under 35. MediaNama was awarded as an Ecosystem Builder by Fortune Magazine in 2016.

Pankaj Pachauri, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, GoNews, is a print and broadcast journalist with more than three decades of editorial and management experience in print and electronic media across three continents. He has worked in Delhi, London, Boston and Hong Kong with leading news organisations such as NDTV, BBC World Service(UK), Public Radio International (US), India Today magazine, The Sunday Observer and The Patriot newspapers. In March 2017 he launched India's first app based TV News Channel, GoNews, and turned into a pioneering entrepreneur. The app, GoNews, integrates the latest global internet and broadcast technologies to provide video news on mobile handsets. His company, Cloudburst Mediaworks Pvt Ltd, is also working on innovations in the field of digital broadcasting for Indian market conditions. His espousal of free, secular and progressive journalism as a reporter, TV anchor and editor based in South-East Asia, Europe, the United States and India has won him several national and international journalism awards. For over two years, he worked as the Communications Adviser to the Prime Minister of India, Dr Manmohan Singh, assisting his office in managing national and international media. During his tenure with the Prime Minister's Office, he has designed and executed media strategy across various platforms for international events like the G20 Summits, NAM, ASEAN Summit, BRICS Summits and United Nations General Assembly. He lives in Delhi and loves travelling.

Porush Jain combined his two passions - sports and entrepreneurship - to produce one of the biggest sports content platforms in India. As the founder and CEO of sportskeeda.com, he has donned many hats - right from content management and coding to product strategy and web marketing. Porush is a graduate in Mechatronics, and he did his MBA from SIBM. He had a short stint working with Infosys before he started his own venture. It is Porush's ardent wish to see India on top of the Olympics medal tally, and also a regular participant in the FIFA World Cup. He believes that to achieve this dream, "India needs to look at sports as a culture rather than a hobby". And Sportskeeda is playing its part in bringing sports closer to the Indian masses. Sportskeeda aims to become the sports platform of choice for India. Porush is confident that the young and dynamic team he has built, together with his new tech and marketing initiatives, will soon ensure the fulfillment of that goal.

Pradeep Dwivedi is CEO of Sakal Media Group, one of the largest independently owned media business in Maharashtra with forays in print, television, digital and events. An accomplished industry leader with an experience of over 24 years of business management cutting across functions and industries. In his previous role, Pradeep was the Chief Corporate Sales and marketing officer at Dainik Bhaskar Group; one of India's Largest newspaper group. He commenced his career with managing sales, distribution and marketing with Eicher Motors Limited in the automotive industry. This was followed by Consumer Banking and Financial Services Industry assignments in prestigious multinational firms like GE Capital Commercial Finance, Standard Chartered Bank and American Express Bank in diverse areas such as business development, sales& risk operations in commercial, unsecured and secured products. Subsequently as Regional COO of Tata Teleservices Ltd, he was managing their Enterprise Business and had held roles in Service operations, marketing leadership, strategic business development and new product innovation. He is an active participant in many industry associations such as IAA (International Advertising Association - India Chapter) as Honorary Secretary & Managing Committee member and The Advertising Club of India as managing committee member.

Prasanna Singh is the Co-Founder, TheMobileIndian, and Revenue Head, WittyFeed. He became a digital convert very early on, almost around the time he decided to return to media rather than stick to his career in financial services. He has put his journalism degree to good use along with his management qualification, spending the last decade and a half successfully selling digital content as well as doing a great job with balancing content integrity with advertising requirements. From thinking up new content monetisation options across print and digital during his stay at afaqs for almost 15 years, he moved on to sell the startup content story at Yourstory, before moving yet again to a co-founder role at guess again, another content led startup, TheMobileIndian. A self confessed revenue guy who will take a profitable p&l any day over a high valuation, he has been working with one other start-up that he describes as the most incredible content success story he has seen, namely, WittyFeed.

Professional with over two decades in Marketing & Communication. Special emphasis on brand building and product management, marketing communications including advertising, celebrity management, events, sales, DM, CRM, PR, corporate communication, digital, outdoor, market research, retail merchandising, trade engagement, consumer brand experience, alliances, employee brand engagement and online digital sales experience across multiple categories and industries across the globe. Special focus and experience in the services sector - Telecom, Travel & Tourism, Media, Entertainment, Financial services, Consumer goods, Airlines, Hotels and Real Estate.A keen understanding of the youth consumer mindset and the digital e-commerce industry including SEO / SEM and online traffic analysis and measurement. Expertise in growth hacking and new product/brand launches. Specialist in Brand architecture and re-engineering, brand launches and creating positioning across all stakeholders - customers, partners, and employees. Knowledge of working in close proximity with CEOs/ Chairman's Office. Consistent record of exceeding standards and expectations, to achieve organizational goals and work to establish businesses and brands that grow and last. Expertise in building online and digital brands as well as large offline brands. Experience in mobile marketing and new age app marketing, measurement of mobile ROI.

Priyadarshi Banerjee is a cross functional media & marketing strategist with a decade's experience having worked across multiple functions in the publishing industry - including Consumer Marketing, Retail Sales, Digital Brand Solutions, Content and Audience strategy, Circulation Sales & Distribution, CRM & Analytics, E-commerce, Creative Strategy and Campaign Management. He has spent over 10 years working for global publishing brands like Readers Digest and National Geographic in India and Singapore, where he looked after their Direct-to-Consumer, International Licensing and Merchandising Businesses.

Rahul is Head of Large Partnerships at Google in India. In his role, he brings together the best of Google to partners working closely with leading publishers, developers and platforms to help build profitable digital business. Rahul is a seasoned Googler and has worked across functions starting with sales for tech and telecom verticals, to driving Double Click stack adoption with top publishers in the county. Rahul began his career with Hindustan Times and moved to leads sales for National Geographic Channel and History Channel. He made the switch to digital with Yahoo! India leading sales for key verticals. With over 16 years in the Industry, Rahul is an expert in building cross media strategy for brands and is passionate about helping companies go digital.

Rohin has over 15 years of experience in journalism, technology and entrepreneurship. Before starting The Ken, Rohin was the founder of an early-stage mobile startup, Owntastic, targeted at creating and improving 'ownership experiences' for various consumer products and services. Prior to that, he was a senior journalist with Forbes India for over 5 years, doing investigative and deeply-reported features on technology, telecom, e-commerce and startups. Rohin holds an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta and an engineering degree in Computer Sciences from the R.V.C.E., Bangalore.

Sandeep Amar is the CEO of Indian Express Digital, one of India's leading publications with an audience of 75 million unique users per month. Indian Express Digital has been the fastest growing digital publisher in India in last 12 months, moving from number 7th to number 3 position in India - since Sandeep joined as CEO. A former CEO at India.com, a Zee media entity, Sandeep grew their audiences from 25 million unique users to 80 million unique users a month and moved the publication from digital publisher's rank 8 to 2. In addition to this, the revenues generated by India.com grew fivefold from $2 million to $10 million in just three years of his leadership. India.com became a profitable business under his guidance and it is a published fact, under annual report of ZEEL. He was earlier the Head - Marketing, Audience and Sales Strategy at Times Internet, where he moved Times Internet from rank 3 to undisputed number one position in terms of audiences and contributed to significant revenue growth of the company. Sandeep has also worked at Citigroup and The Hindustan Times. He is an MBA from FMS, Delhi and a six sigma black belt.

Sattvik started ScoopWhoop.com as an experiment along with 5 friends in August 2013 with no intention of being an entrepreneur or starting a company. For six months he was doing his day job at an advertising agency and moonlighting as the CEO/content writer for ScoopWhoop. His biggest proof of concept came when one of the ScoopWhoop articles went viral inside the agency and his boss shared it with him without knowing he was behind it. Today, the start-up clocks more than 30 million unique users, 200 million video views and 400 million content engagements per month, making it the largest new media company in India. Fortune India included Sattvik in their prestigious 40 Under 40 list three years in a row, 2015, 2016 and 2017. He was also part of Forbes 2016 '30 Under 30 Asia' list.

Shivendra Gaur is the founder of Rocket Post Live, a two-year old media company which disseminates news only through Whatsapp. Rocket Post Live is a WhatsApp-based News broadcast service with over 11,400 paid subscribers. The company is based in the rural district of Pilibhit in Uttar Pradesh and the news is centered on the district and is in Hindi.

Siddharth Varadarajan is a Founding Editor of The Wire. He was earlier the Editor of The Hindu and is a recipient of the Ramnath Goenka Award for Journalist of the Year. He has taught Economics at New York University and Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, besides working at the Times of India and the Centre for Public Affairs and Critical Theory, Shiv Nadar University.

Touching 14 years of experience in the digital marketing space, having learnt through hands on experience across all disciplines (Digital & Brand Planning, Social Media, Media, Search, Mobile Marketing, UI & UX, ORM) . Roles have varied from sales & marketing to account management and client servicing. Set up and then served as the National Head for Digital & Digital Strategy at MRM / McCann for close to 4 years, additionally responsible for leading and driving P&L across a portfolio of priority accounts and spearheading projects in the space of CRM, Direct Marketing and B2B marketing. Prior to joining Ogilvy , he served as the national head for digital strategy and social for Samsung at Cheil. Additionally he was mandated with driving integration , new business acquisition, agency leadership & reputation and driving technology and creative. During his tenure there he won and led brands such as Adidas, HCL, Bata, UC News & Browser.

Suchita has graduated from Delhi University with a degree in Economics, after which she worked with Wizcraft and the BBC. Her forte and domain interest lies in Marketing, Social Media, Brand Building and Sales. She started Little Black Book as a platform for young, urban audiences to access the best local discoveries- across categories. She has been featured on the Forbes India 30 Under 30 list, Forbes Asia 30 Under 30 list, and has been a guest speaker at various domestic and international platforms.

Tara Bartley is an accomplished marketer with more than two decades in the global technology industry, excelling in field and product marketing, brand building, lead generation and new product launches. She started her career at technology powerhouse SAP, where she spent countless hours in the field interacting with prospects. Subsequently, Tara dove into the start-up and early-stage technology sector with Demantra (Oracle acquired), followed by Director roles at Maven (Yahoo! acquired), Signiant and Verivue (Akamai acquired), where she was responsible for everything from event planning to website optimization and PR/Analyst relations. Since 2012, she's held both CDN product marketing and Media & Entertainment and Gaming field marketing roles at Akamai Technologies - the 6,000+ employee company that's been trading on the NASDAQ for more than 15 years, and is currently valued at more than $9 billion.

Vanita Kohli-Khandekar is an India-based media specialist and writer. She has been tracking the Indian media and entertainment business for over a decade. Currently she is a columnist and writer for India-based financial daily Business Standard. She is also a regular contributor to Singapore-based ContentAsia. Her earlier stints include one at Businessworld magazine and Ernst & Young. A Cambridge University press fellow (2000), Vanita has taught at some of the top media schools in India. The fourth edition of her book, The Indian Media Business (Sage), was released in September 2013.

Vinay Singhal is the co-founder & CEO of WittyFeed. Hailing from Nunsar, a small village in Haryana, Vinay's hunger for excellence made him the very firstpersonfrom his family to pursue engineering. Entrepreneurial bug bit him early in 2010 while he was still pursuing his B.Tech, Computer Science from Chennai. A few failures and a score of learnings later WittyFeed.com took shape in September 2014 under the aegis of Vatsana Technologies. Not even completed the tenure of three years, WittyFeed.com is already valued at $30 million. Vinay, only 27, holds 7+ years of successful experience providing fiscal, strategic and financial leadership in uniquely challenging situations. Internet media industry has always been his work field. He is an innovative and result-driven leader, focused on achieving exceptional results in highly competitive environments. He is highly motivated and has all important core values in place. Vinay believes in affecting positive change in others and the community as a whole. He derives his strength from the people and his team around him. He says. "My journey from 2010 to 2014 was nothing short of a rollercoaster ride. What kept me going was - My Team. It still is my propelling force." Vinay believes that Success and Failure, both are integral parts in the life of a serious entrepreneur. He himself has gone through his share of failures before tasting success with WittyFeed. From his experience Vinay advises entrepreneurs to be serial entrepreneurs rather than parallel entrepreneurs. A social activist at heart he dreams of an ideal India and believes in being the change agent. Despite his tight work schedule, he manages to find time to enjoy music and read stuff online.