Mr. Venkatesh Girgune

Dynamic Agribusiness professional with a passion for agriculture & food, human resources, innovation, and digital transformation. Skilled in business, talent acquisition, and management consulting, he focuses on important domains like human resources, capacity building, and agribusiness consulting. Proficient in people management and achieving corporate goals. He worked for 2 years in the Department of Agriculture, GoM, Maharashtra. He also worked as a special education consultant with NIIT Limited.

Currently associated with Maharashtra Cooperative Development Corporation, Govt. of MH and Ministry of Food Processing Industries, GOI for the flagship programme of PMFME (MOFPI).

Area of Expertise: HRM | Project Management | Livelihoods | Capacity Building

Mr. Pradeep Kadu

He has a total of 28 years of key professional experience in VAT, GST Tax assessments, tax evasion investigations, recovery, administration, supervision, and control of subordinates, liaising with various government departments. Ministry, business and industry associations, data analysis, fraud and scam investigation, analytical and policy inputs, and training. Also he has a M.Sc. in Agriculture.

Area of Expertise: GST | VAT | TAX | TAX Policy and Advocacy

Ms. Vaidehi Patil

Her specialization lies in biomaterials and tissue engineering. Ms. Vaidehi is working on the project of gender equality and women's empowerment in the United States and India. Her research interests are tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, especially the use of biomaterials in these areas. She is currently a part of the Masters Lab at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She is currently studying how biological sex and other risk factors influence calcific aortic valve disease progression. Ms.Vaidehi is pursuing her PhD in biomedical engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. She has also worked on volunteer projects in the past focused on promoting STEM subjects to children, especially girls. Also, she was Vice President at the Global Health Innovation Club at UW Madison (2020–2022), USA.

Area of Expertise: Gender, Women Empowerment, Biomedical Engineering, Biomaterials, CAVD, Social Enterprise, Innovation

Mr. Dharam Karkotak

Dharam has over five years of experience in the hotel and beverage industries. He is a dynamic leader with loaded knowledge in finance; he has an M.Com. in Finance. He is a Chairman at Pyasa Wines Group, Aurangabad, and DHARAM-VEER Properties LLP.

Area of Expertise: Finance | Execution Strategy | Business Plan | Business Alliances

Dr. Vrinda Sikri

Dr. Vrinda has more than 25 years of wide-ranging experience in the agriculture field.

Her excellence lies in training and fellowship in the agricultural and allied sectors, she has penned and edited various national and international reports, books, and journals. She has worked at the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) for 15 years at various positions.

She has a Ph.D. in Animal Products Technology.

She is currently a member of the following respected organizations:

Area of Expertise: Training | Scholarships and Fellowships | Editing | Academics: Agri. and Allied

Ms. Bhagyashri Bhakad

She has more than four years of experience working in Indirect Taxes at Grant Thornton Bharat LLP. She has completed her Bachelor's in Commerce.

Ms. Bhagyashri has expertise in finance, viz., capital budgeting, sources, use of funds, decisions, and tax, e.g., Income tax, GST, and customs, as a CA. She has the required knowledge of CSR, Carbon Credits, management accounting, cost reduction techniques, and many more, which is essential in running a company. She also knows about company law and other laws like PF. Apart from this, she is well versed in HR functions, payroll, and accounting.

Area of Expertise: HRM | CSR | PF | TAX | GST | Payroll

Mr. Subhash Lode

Mr. Subhash has 20 + years of cumulative experience in the Startup Ecosystem. Technology,Agri & Food Tech, Data Science, AI, ML and Enterprise Blockchain. Currently he is working as VP of Investment Operations & Business Development with Pegasus India Evolving Opportunities Fund. Where Subhash helps investee companies to achieve growth, plan overall strategy and exits, fund point of view. Subhash has helped the fund to invest in 6 companies that have given good returns to the Fund.

Erstwhile Subhash led BVG Group’s Agri & Food Ecosystem and was responsible for managing BVG Groups Agtech platform, Satara Mega Food Park (Contract manufacturing for Weikfield and TATA Fabsta brands) and BVG Agrotech. Subhash worked on Agrowbook.com, which was an profitability oriented initiative for the farming community where he conceptualized farmers balance sheet as a tool to record and monitor the farm based profit and loss statements.

During his corporate career Subhash was leading the Centre of excellence for Global Supply Chain for Harsco, where He was guiding the team on supply chain strategies, spend analysis and strategic sourcing, procurement & Sales intelligence, cost models and data management.

While with Harsco and Unisys Subhash has worked on complex IT Architectures and worked in USA, UK, Netherlands on work assignments of ERP implementations

Mr. Om Deshmukh

Mr. Om's areas of competency are Agile Software Development and Testing. He has three years of excellent experience as a seasoned IT professional. Additionally, he worked with Credit Suisse's investment banking and capital markets departments on a number of projects involving takeover defense tactics, acquisition divestitures, and other issues.

Area of Expertise: Software Development | Software Testing | E-Commerce | E-Banking

Mr. Yugal Manwani

Mr. Yugal is a Data Scientist by profession and has been an employee at Capgemini, a reputable IT company, for over 3 years. Machine learning and AI are his areas of expertise, and he is a skilled IoT developer with a focus on Python, C, and C++. He uses these skills to contribute to cutting-edge projects that push the limits of technology. He is dedicated to staying current with the most recent developments in the area as a passionate coder and persistent learner, continually developing his abilities to deliver creative solutions.

Area of Expertise: Data Science | AI & ML | JDBC | DBMS | SQL | Python | IoT