The members of the core committee are:

Dr Guruduth Banavar, Director, India Research Laboratory (IRL)

Dr Guruduth Banavar is currently the Director of IBM's India Research Laboratory (IRL), one of the eight world-wide research labs of IBM Research. He has played many roles at IBM Research -- technology researcher, senior line manager and executive, worldwide research strategist, patent portfolio evaluator, program manager of research investment, and relationship manager with senior executives. His broad technical interests and contributions have been in Service Science, Pervasive Computing, Distributed Systems, and Programming Models.

In August 2005, He established the Bangalore arm of the IRL, and has been leading this group to develop innovative technologies and methods for IBM's Service Delivery operations. He has also been actively involved in developing the general principles of service delivery, within the new field of Service Science.

Dr Banavar joined IBM's TJ Watson Research Center in late 1995 after receiving a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Utah. He is professionally active in the Computer Science, and more recently, in the Service Science communities. He has published more than 40 research papers, (co-) invented more than 25 patents, chaired major technical conferences and workshops in the field, served on 3 PhD committees, and sit on the advisory boards of international research and educational organizations.
 

Dr. G Venkatesh, Chief Technology and Strategy Officer, Sasken

Venkatesh started his research career at India's premier research institute TIFR, Bombay, then moved to the Computer Science department of IIT Bombay where he spent 8 years teaching and researching topics in the areas of temporal logic, functional/logic programming, and applications of logic and languages to VLSI design, which resulted in about 50 papers in international conferences and journals in these areas.

He made his transition to the industry when Sasken Communication Technologies Ltd was being formed in 1990, and moved full time to Sasken as Technology head in 1995. He has played various managerial roles at Sasken and is currently a board member and their Chief Technology and Strategy Officer. Sasken's primary technology focus is in the area of wireless and broadband communications.

Venkatesh also participates in teaching and research at IIM Bangalore, where his interests revolve around applying game theory to strategic thinking in the technology industry, specifically in IT outsourcing and in the telecom and semiconductor industries. He is an active public speaker in these areas and has published several papers on these topics in international conferences and journals.

Venkatesh is a graduate in Electronics from IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) Madras, a Ph.D in Computer Science from TIFR, Bombay, and is a Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineers.
 

Mr Sanjeev Aggarwal, Managing Director - Investment Advisor, Helion Venture Partners

Sanjeev Aggarwal is a co-founder of Helion and serves on the Boards of Amba Research, Anantara, Make My Trip, Mindworks Global and United Lex. Prior to Helion, Sanjeev was the Founder and CEO of Daksh, having been with the company from its inception in 2000 to its acquisition by IBM in 2004. Sanjeev ran the company as its CEO till June 2006. Daksh was a pioneer in BPO sector in year 2000 and had over 20,000 employees by June, 2006. During this period, Daksh was rated as the World’s Best Managed BPO company (Black Book of Outsourcing) and was ranked as the #1 employer in Indian BPO market by IDC. Sanjeev was chosen “Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the year” in 2002.

Prior to founding Daksh, he worked for 15 years with leading technology companies serving the domestic Indian market. Sanjeev led the Strategic Initiatives at Motorola India. He worked with Digital Equipment Corporation in delivering technology solutions and was recognized as the “Decathlon Winner”, a recognition given to top 1% managers worldwide. He has also served as the CEO of 3COM India.

Sanjeev has a Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering and an MBA. 

Mr. Sharad Sharma, Former CEO, Yahoo R&D India and EIR, Canaan Partners

Mr. Sharad Sharma has over 21 years of experience in the enterprise software and wireless infrastructure sectors. Prior to joining Yahoo!, he was involved in buyout activities focused on taking mid-sized software product companies private. Previously, he was the India General Manager and corporate Vice President of Product Operations at Symantec (formerly VERITAS) and was responsible for the turnaround of the VERITAS operations in India. He was earlier a co-founder and CEO of Teltier Technologies, a New Jersey based wireless infrastructure start-up that became the leader in the Presence and Availability Management space and is now part of Cisco. Sharad has managed product development teams at Lucent Technologies both in US and in India. He also setup AT&T's, and later Lucent's, R&D operations in India in mid-90s. Sharad examines the transformation challenges facing the industry in his blog Orbit Change Conversations.