Name: Prof. Pradeep Pendse
Designation: Dean, Welingkar Institute of Management, Mumbai

Professor Pradeep Pendse has been associated with the Welingkar Institute of Management for more than 13 years. This institute is among the top 20 in the list of over 1,700 B-schools in India. As Dean, Prof. Pendse defines the formal process for launching new programs. He also nurtures the internal innovation process within Welingkar. He has designed MBA level and other post graduate programs. He is now drafting the first MMS (Systems) curriculum for the University of Mumbai.

Prof. Pendse has had a long innings spanning 25 years, of which he served 20 years in the industry. During this time he also devoted 15 years to academics. While serving the industry he assumed various roles like Systems/Business Analyst and CIO/IT Consultant for numerous companies. He was also the Founder/CEO of a 100-employee IT solutions company that served nearly 50 corporates for 15 years.

Many remember Prof. Pendse for his two workshops on Project Leadership and Business Analysis wherein he trained over 3,000 participants drawn from leading IT companies in India. He has also spoken on these topics at industry forums and community gatherings such as SPIN, PMI, CSI, ISACA Mumbai, TCS, Mastek Solutions Community, Marcus Evans, and CIO club.

Prof. Pendse is a visiting faculty to many leading B-schools in Mumbai such as S P Jain Institute of Management, Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies, Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, TISS, and VJTI, to name a few. He has served on the Board of Studies, and as paper setter/examiner for the University of Mumbai. He also served on the Board of Studies of the Pune HSC/SSC Board, where he helped design suitable IT curriculum under the IT Policy.

Prof. Pendse is a Trained Lead Assessor for ISO 9000, BS7799. He is also the recipient of awards such as the Dewang Mehta Award for Best IT Teacher in Business School, CSI Chapter Patron Award for outstanding contribution, and Distinguished Alumnus Award by the Narsee Monjee Institute of Management.

Academically, Prof. Pendse holds B.E. and M.M.S. degrees. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. from the University of Mumbai.

Name: Dr. Nandlal L. Sarda
Designation: Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Bombay

Dr. Nandlal L. Sarda is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Bombay. After receiving his M.Tech. and Ph.D. degrees from IIT Bombay, he joined as faculty in 1972, where he has been teaching ever since. He was also a Visiting Associate Professor at the University of New Brunswick, Canada, between 1986 and 1988. Between 1994 and 1997 he was Head of the Computer Science and Engineering Department at IIT Bombay. In 2006 he was appointed Head of the Shailesh J. Mehta School of Management.

As Dean of Academic Programmes, IIT Bombay, Prof. Sarda coordinated with the IIT Senate and its various academic departments for creating, revising, implementing and supervising the institution’s academic programmes. He served as Professor-in-Charge of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, from October 2004 to February 2006. In this role he coordinated with the Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE) hosted by IIT Bombay, to encourage and actively facilitate IIT Bombay's faculty and students to convert intellectual property developed by them into business ventures.

Prof. Sarda’s main research interests are in the areas of Database Systems and Software Engineering. Recent research areas include temporal databases, data warehousing, and ontology-based schema integration. His research has been widely published in international journals and at conferences.

He has also participated in many conferences. For instance, he was Programme Co-chair of VLDB'96, a premier international database conference, held in Mumbai. He was Programme Chair for the annual event of the Computer Society of India in December 2004. He was honored as Fellow of Computer Society of India at its convention in November 2006.

Prof. Sarda is closely associated with many companies and government institutions as consultant, offering advice on planning, selection, implementation and evaluation of information technology solutions. He is a Director on the Board of Directors of Union Bank of India. He is on the Board of Directors of Clearing Corporation of India. He is also on the editorial board of some international journals.

Name: Sushanto Mitra
Designation: Chief Executive Officer, Society for Innovation & Entrepreneurship (SINE), IIT Bombay

Sushanto Mitra is the CEO of the Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE). SINE is the technology business incubator at IIT Bombay, which promotes early stage technology ventures.

Mitra is a management graduate with over 20 years experience in technology and finance verticals. Before SINE, Mitra worked with Techcap India, a human resources and financial consulting services firm, which he founded in 1999. He has also held senior leadership positions at firms like PriceWaterhouseCoopers and HCL Infosystems.

Mitra is a regular contributor to technology and business magazines. He is also a frequent speaker at industry events such as CSI, TIE and PANIIT.

Name: Ravi Raman
Designation: Proprietor, Samadhan Information Technology Services

With almost three decades in the IT industry, Ravi Raman has all-round experience on all aspects of software development and operations. With an extensive background in Software Engineering, Project Management, Process Management and Banking Software, Raman set up Samadhan Information Technology Services in October 2005, to provide IT Consulting and Training services for the Financial Services industry. His company offers consulting services in Basel II implementation for banks, and he is currently engaged in the implementation of Basel II for Citigroup in ASPAC and USA. Earlier, Raman helped Citigroup in implementing Basel II (standardized) in nine countries in ASPAC and in Advanced method in USA and Korea.

Raman forayed into IT in 1980, joining the second largest software company in India, Tata Burroughs (Unisys). He later moved to International Data Management where his team developed a Financial Management System for a group of 17 companies in Dubai.

Raman joined Citibank, India in 1984 and was instrumental in transitioning the bank from manual operations to automation. A year later he was chosen as the first employee of its software subsidiary in India, Citicorp Overseas Software Limited (COSL). Raman was instrumental in making COSL the third largest software company in India.

He later became CEO of Duncans Software and launched a new product in the Indian market, then negotiated a joint venture in the USA for exports.

As CEO of Hexaware, he tripled the business turnover and managed tie-ups with international corporations like Oracle and Powersoft. He played a pivotal role in defining and implementing the Quality Management System that earned the company the coveted ISO 9000 certificate.

Graduating with a degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT Madras, Raman went on to obtain a Post Graduate Diploma in Management from IIM Calcutta in 1980. In 1994, Ravi added the quality dimension to his qualifications by becoming a Certified Quality Analyst (CQA) from Quality Assurance Institute, USA. In 1996, he also became a Registered Tick IT Auditor for ISO 9000 certifications.