Webinar Chair
Mr. Ratan Agarwal ~ President – WHEELS Global Foundation

Rajesh Soundararajan has 27 years of experience in leading product, incubation, sales, channels, and business teams and has held leadership positions in Asia-Pacific with IBM, Microsoft, NComputing before founding Futureshift in Singapore. He has managed successful product incubations and transformations with innovative go-to-market models and has wide experience in managing product strategy, partnerships, business development, sales and marketing across geographies.

Currently, he leads the consulting practice at Futureshift focused on product management and marketing, where he helps clients to build successful products, generate demand and go-to-market plans. He takes up advisory / virtual CxO positions with other SME organisations and start-ups to accelerate their transformation journey.

Prior, he was responsible for the success of NComputing product-line in Asia Pacific-Japan, to transform their go-to-market channels and create new customer segments. He is a member of the International IQ society Mensa with a recorded IQ of 156, and a certified Buzan Mindmap Trainer. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering and a Master’s in Business Administration (Rajesh Soundararajan | LinkedIn)

Varun Shrivastava is a social activist from Delhi, who is working for the upliftment of Under Privileged Street children. He is an IIT Kharagpur Alumni, working as a Senior Manager at a power sector company, NTPC Ltd. He is well known for his notable work of bringing street children into the mainstream. He is the Founder of UPAY NGO (Under Privileged advancement by Youth), which has impacted the lives of more than 1.2 lacs of underprivileged beneficiaries through 46 education & skill development centres across the country in the cities like Nagpur, Delhi, Noida, Gurugram, Pune, Bangalore, Kolkata, Garo Hills Meghalay and Gadarwara. He is also the founder of sabkasaman.com, an E-Commerce non-profit portal which provides online market to poor artisans.

He is popularly known as a Man, turning Footpaths into School, who has started a famous street to school campaign in many cities. He has inspired hundreds of youths from different backgrounds like doctors, engineers, college students and teachers to take up the street children cause and given them a motto of Reach & Teach underprivileged children. He is trying to replace begging bowls in the hands of street children by books. (Varun Shrivastava | LinkedIn)

Arvind Thanvi, a graduate of IIT Kharagpur in 1997, has worked in the global IT industry for 15 years before starting his journey in the Social Sector in 2012 with a strong desire to give back to society after realising that there is a severe gap in providing quality education. He then founded his not-for-profit organisation Moinee Foundation, where he works on “Right to Quality Education’ in rural, tribal & underprivileged urban areas primarily through govt schools. He started helping the district collectors and district education departments of different states in reviving existing Information and Communication Technology (ICT) computer labs in government schools. At the same time, he also created and implemented smart classes in these government schools by using a Quiz Based Learning and Monitoring System, QuizAcademy. Arvind has designed many award-winning scalable interventions in education and also has been an innovator of various technologies to effectively serve local language learning without any dependency on the internet and continuous electricity. Two of his tech based initiatives got nominated for the PM Innovation award. His technology solution, School-In-A-Box is an offline e-learning platform made for internet deprived students from Rural, Tribal and underprivileged Urban areas. The solution runs completely without any internet connection and is easy to use. His goal was to make a solution that is simple enough for any teacher and student to use for their day-to-day classroom learnings. (Arvind Thanvi | LinkedIn)

Kapish Saraf is the Founder & CEO of KidEx & masterNAUKRI by KidEx an experiential learning platform for school & college students that partners with IIT, IIM, NSDC, NITI Aayog, etc. KidEx is awarded by Google, MeiTY, and TiE. He is Ex-Board of Director, Rivigo (a tech & AI startup in Logistics); Ex-CEO, Rivigo Freight Pvt. Ltd. (Uber-like marketplace for Trucking Services; Grew to INR 200+ Cr monthly revenue & made breakeven; filed a patent in US for an AI engine as a 1st author); Ex-Project Leader, BCG (a leading Strategy Consulting Company). He also worked in Healthcare & Industrial Goods practice areas across India, US, Europe & Africa.

Kapish is a Young Alumni Achiever 2023, IIT Kharagpur.

He did his MBA from IIM Calcutta (Major in Economics & Finance; Minor in OB) and has a Dual Degree (M.Tech & B.Tech (H) in Biotechnology & Biochemical Engg.), IIT Kharagpur. (Kapish Saraf | LinkedIn)

Dr. Kannan Modgalya is an Each and Meheroo Mehta Advanced Education Technology Chair Professor at IIT Bombay. He has a Ph.D. (in Chemical Engineering) and a Master of Electrical Engineering degree from Rice University. He has a B.Tech in chemical engineering from IIT Madras. Kannan was a visiting professor at the University of Alberta during 2003-04. He has written four textbooks and several papers in international journals and conferences. He works in the areas of control, simulation, and modeling. Kannan is now devoting his time to spreading education on a massive scale, without quality dilution.

He has been focusing on spoken tutorials, open-source software systems, and affordable tablets and laptops. He believes that it is possible to provide high-quality education to all our children through a combination of education, and information and communication technologies, making India a developed country in the process. Kannan has held the posts of Associate Dean (R&D), Head of Application Software Cell and Head of the Centre for Distance Engineering Education Programme, at IIT Bombay. He was a Member of the Standing Committee of the National Mission on Education through ICT (NMEICT), MHRD, Government of India, for five years. Kannan received the Google MOOCs Research Award for developing the offline capability in Spoken Tutorials. He was nominated for the HT for Mumbai 2015 award. The Spoken Tutorial project received the best price in the Reimagine Education Award, instituted by QS and Wharton School, in the Nurturing Employment category. Kannan received the Pt. DeenDayal Upadhyaya Recognition for Reengineering India 2020 (Kannan Moudgalya | LinkedIn)

Nitesh Kumar is the founder of Sukhlahi Capital LLC, an investment advisory firm that manages a hedge fund and a venture fund. Before founding Sukhlahi Capital LLC in 2019, Nitesh spent more than 13 years on wall street working for large banks like J.P. Morgan and BNP Paribas in New York and London trading Commodities.
Nitesh has been an active supporter of many social impact initiatives in education and health for a number of years in several States in India, including Bihar & Jharkhand.

Nitesh holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Bombay and a Master of Financial Mathematics from NC State University (Nitesh Kumar | LinkedIn)

Ratan Agarwal serves on the Wheels’ Board as President, bringing nearly three decades of rich experience in building and scaling multiple new start-ups and executive roles (in strategy, operations, marketing, and business development) at several Fortune 500 companies. Currently, Ratan is a co-founder and managing partner of CARBON Group Global, a global sustainability solutions-holding company, creating rapid replications (‘CARBON Copies”) of proven solutions with market-based models in Education & Learning, Women’s Empowerment, Resources (Food, Energy, Water), Health, and Economic Development.

In addition to the CARBON role, Ratan is dedicating his time in supporting innovation ecosystem in northeast corridor through his investment activities (via Keiretsu Forum and Mid-Atlantic Bo-Angels) and mentoring (at local incubator TechLaunch NJ). Ratan is a Board Advisor to several start-ups in Cloud/SaaS, software, and digital marketing.

While at Cisco, Ratan led the incubation and launch of Cisco’s IoT solutions and Cloud Infrastructure services, in addition to running a multi-billion global services business. Prior to Cisco, Ratan led the marketing & business development of two business units at Telcordia and led several consulting engagements at A.T. Kearney. Ratan received his MBA at Wharton School and Masters in Structural Engineering at IIT Bombay and lives in New Jersey (Ratan Agarwal | LinkedIn)