Sameer Kochhar, Chairman, Skoch Group

Is the President of Skoch Development Foundation, a leading think tank on digital , social and financial inclusion issues in India. He has been passionately working towards promoting participatory democracy, empowerment, and bringing improvements in delivery systems. He is the CEO, Skoch Consultancy Services, and is an industry veteran with a multifaceted career spanning over two and half decades. He is India Strategy and management consultant to several Fortune 500 as well as large Indian Companies for over a decade. He is also Chief Editor of Inclusion –a quarterly publication focused on development and citizenship issues in India. He is a member of several expert groups and committees and his research opinion and writings have shaped many public policy dialogue. He is also a member of the expert group constituted by the ministry of Panchayati Raj, Government of India advocating a case for strengthening of Panchayati raj institutions (village councils) through use of technology, finance, economics, e-governance, panchayati raj and ICT for development. He has published several widely acclaimed books, namely Infrastructure and Governance (2008); Financial Inclusion (2009); Urban Renewal: Policy and response (2009); speeding financial inclusion (2009); India on the growth Turnpike: Essays in Honor of Vijay L. Kelkar (2010); and Building from the Bottom: Infrastructure and Poverty Allevation (2010).

Deepak B Phatak, Director, Skoch Development Foundation

Deepak B. Phatak, is Subrao M. Nilekani Chair Professor at Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay, India. He graduated in Electrical Engineering from Indore and then completed his M.Tech. and Ph.D. in Computer Science. He is with IIT Bombay since 1971 He served in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering till January 2000 and was the Department head from 1991 to 1994. He also served as the first Dean of Resource Development for IIT Bombay from 1995 to 1998. He was invited to head the Kanwal Rekhi School of Information Technology set up in October 1998 at the Institute. He has been an eminent consultant and advisor to many organisations on various issues related to Information Technology. In the financial sector, he has involved in a major effort by Industrial Development Bank of India, and has been an I.T. advisor to the State Bank of India for several years. He has also been a consultant to several other financial and industrial organisations like Reserve Bank of India, Unit Trust of India, Industrial Credit & Investment Corporation of India, Life Insurance Corporation of India, New India Assurance, Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilisers, L&T, Times of India, etc. He works on several committees advising Government departments on issues related to computerisation. Dr. Phatak is on the boards of IDBI Bank, ISIL, UTIISL, NIBM, IDRBT, Bank of Baroda, and NIA. He has recently published an edited book entitled Infrastructure and Governance.

Gursharan Dhanjal, COO, Skoch Development Foundation

Gursharan Dhanjal, M.Phil. and Ph.D. from Delhi University is an expert in strategic affairs. He has over 17 years of working experience ranging from academics to research and business journalism to consulting. He has taught at Delhi University and has worked for Asia Business News – Dow Jones and CNBC for several years. He has led various research projects in e-governance and ICT for development that included traversing across the country collecting citizen voices for over eight years now. He also leads the video case study projects. His areas of expertise include research, and rich media content. A prolific writer, Dr. Dhanjal has written over 200 columns in various national dailies and several journals of repute in addition to authoring a widely acclaimed book entitled Tarapur: The Politics of Nuclear Age. This, in addition to a recently published edited book entitled Infrastructure and Governance. He is also a Visiting Faculty and Member, Course Preparation Team at Indira Gandhi National Open University and Department of Political Science, University of Delhi.

Manisha Kochhar, Director, Skoch Development Foundation

S S Tarapore, Distinguished Fellow, Skoch Development Foundation

Distinguished Fellow, Skoch Development Foundation, has a BA (Economics) from Sheffield University (1958) and Msc. (Economics) from London University (1960). He was awarded the Doctor of Law (honoris causa) from Sheffield University (1996). He joined RBI in 1961 as Research Officer and retired in 1996 as Deputy Governor. He was on deputation from 1971-1979, first in the IMF Research Department and subsequently under the IMF Central Banking Service with the Bank of Mauritius as Advisors to the Governor. He has chaired a number of official committees including the committee on Capital Account Convertibility (1997), the Unit Trust of India Inquiry (2001), the Committee on Procedures and Performance Audit of Public Services (2004-05) and the Committee on Fuller Capital Account Convertibility (2006). He was a member f the Committee on Banking Sector Reforms (1998) and the Advisory Group on Transparency of Monetary Policy (2000).

N C Saxena, Distinguished Fellow, Skoch Development Foundation

Member, national advisory council is a distinguished fellow, Skoch Development Foundation, New Delhi. A Rockfeller Foundation Fellow, he obtained his Phd. From University of Oxford, U.K. He specializes in rural development, natural resource management, rural livelihoods, poverty alleviation, watershed and drinking water, governance, decentralization and people’s participation. A member of Indian Administrative services (IAS), Dr. Saxena retired as Secretary, Planning Commission, Government of India. He was earlier, Secretary, Rural Development and Director of the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Musoorie. He is a member of the National Advisory Council and was instrumental in shaping Food Security Bill. Author of repute, he has contributed to several research papers to various international journals, and has written several widely acclaimed books. He is currently engaged as Consultant with UNICEF, World Bank, UNDP, European Union, GTZ, ADB, and DFID working on projects ranging from village planning, evaluation of urban poverty programmes, reforms in public distribution system, water and sanitation, land management and so on.

Santanu Paul, Honorary Fellow, Skoch Development Foundation

Santanu is co-founder and CEO of a new venture called TalentSprint, an emerging leader in creating high performance professionals for the global industry through fast-track transformations. The company focuses on employability and economic inclusion.

Between 2003-2008, Santanu served at Virtusa Corporation (NASDAQ: VRTU) in a variety of senior management and operational roles such as General Manager, Hyderabad Advanced Technology Center; Asia Head, High Tech and BFSI Business Units; and Senior Vice President, Global Delivery Operations. He was a key member of the senior leadership committee that drove Virtusa's five-fold growth culminating in its public listing in 2007, and a 4000+ strong global organization.

Prior to Virtusa, Santanu was Chief Technology Officer at Openpages, a US-based market leader in corporate risk management solutions. Santanu was also CTO and co-founder at Viveca, a B2B technology startup that Openpages acquired in 2001. He began his career as a research scientist at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York.

Santanu has a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he was a recipient of the prestigious Rackham pre-doctoral fellowship and the IBM Canada fellowship. He has a B.Tech. in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. Santanu has published more than 20 technical papers and holds 2 United States patents. His articles and speeches have appeared in Java One, Comdex, Economic Times, Financial Express, Business Standard, Business India, and BBC online.

Santanu is a Distinguished Fellow of the Institute for the Development and Research in Banking Technology (IDRBT), Vice President of ITsAP (formerly Hysea), and a Board Director of TiE Hyderabad. He also conducts High Performance Leadership Workshops for senior leaders of the Banking Industry.

Bibek Debroy, Honorary Fellow, Skoch Development Foundation

He is a Honorary Fellow, Skoch Development Foundation, an economist and currently Research professor, Centre for Policy Research, and Contributing Editor, Indian Express group. He has worked in teaching and research institutes, for the government, and an industry chamber. He is author of several popular articles, papers and books. His interests include law reform & indology.