View all Naren Gupta Legacy Series Programs

1. April 14, 2022 — Asia Game Changer West Awards Gala 2022: The Naren Gupta Legacy Series: Year One, Program 1 of 4
2. June 23, 2022 — Examining U.S.-India Relations: The Naren Gupta Legacy Series: Year One, Program 2 of 4
3. August 24, 2022 — The Past, Present, and Future of U.S.-India Relations: Marking India's 75th Anniversary - The Naren Gupta Legacy Series: Year One, Program 3 of 4
4. September 28, 2022 — Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Investment in India: The Naren Gupta Legacy Series: Year One, Program 4 of 4

Tickets are complimentary for Asia Society Members, and Students. Please reach out to Rahul Devaskar, Director of Partnerships & Memberships, at [email protected] for access codes. Click here to become a Member. 

On Thursday, June 23, 2022 Asia Society Northern California will host a half-day conference in Silicon Valley as part of its Naren Gupta Two-Year Legacy Program Series on the topic Examining U.S.-India Relations.

Our conference agenda will include sessions on the role of the tech industry and the relationship between Silicon Valley and India, as well as the impact of the business community on U.S.-India relations. 

Speakers include members of Indiaspora and TiE Silicon Valley, two local organizations Naren Gupta was an active participant of. Indiaspora was founded by community leaders to unite Indian Americans and to transform their success into meaningful impact in India and on the global stage. TiE Silicon Valley is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to fostering entrepreneurship. They provide technology entrepreneurs with mentoring services, networking opportunities, startup-related education, funding, and incubating.

CONFERENCE AGENDA 

12:30 - 1:00 p.m. - Registration & Networking

1:00  - 1:50 p.m. - Session 1 - Keynote on U.S.-India Relations

• Tanvi Madan, Director of The India Project Brookings Institution

1:50  - 2:00 p.m. - Naren Gupta Tribute

• Barry Taylor, Partner Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati | Advisory Board Member Asia Society

2:00 - 3:00 p.m. - Session 2 - TiE Panel on Cross-Border Investments

Introduction by Anita Manwani, Founder and CEO, Carobar Business Solutions | President-Elect, TiE Silicon Valley

Panel Discussion:

• Priya Rajan (Moderator), Managing Director, Silicon Valley Bank
• Satya Bajpai, Managing Director Technology M&A JMP Securities
• Kumar Ganapathy, CEO, Akridata
• Venktesh Shukla, Founder & Managing Partner Monta Vista Capital

3:00 - 3:30 p.m. - Afternoon Tea Break & Networking

3:30 - 4:30 p.m. - Session 3 - Indiaspora Panel on the Future of U.S.-Silicon Valley Ties

• MR Rangaswami (Moderator), Indiaspora Founder and Chairman of the Board | Co-Founder, Sand Hill Group
• Jishnu Bhattacharjee, Managing Director, Nexus Venture Partners
• Sumir Chadha, Co-Founder and Managing Director, WestBridge Capital
• Priya Rajan, Managing Director, Silicon Valley Bank

4:30 - 5:30 p.m. - Session 4 - The Evolution of Digital Business and Policy in India

• Nikhil Pahwa, Founder and Editor of MediaNama

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This program is part of our Naren Gupta Two-Year Legacy Program Series. Launched in April 2022, this series pays tribute to the legacy of our long-time and beloved Advisory Board Member, Naren Gupta (1948-2021) and will address the topics closest to his heart: business, entrepreneurship, and cultivating the next generation of innovative leaders, especially those hailing from India.  

Series sponsors are invited to join a private VIP dinner hosted by Asia Society in Silicon Valley immediately following the conference. We also have a few additional tickets available for members and non-members on a first come first serve basis.

For more information on this series, including sponsorship opportunities, contact Rahul Devaskar, Director of Partnerships & Memberships, at [email protected]

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AGENDA

Date: Thursday, June 23, 2022 from 1:00 p.m. - 5:30 p.m. Pacific

CONFERENCE

• 12:30 - 1:00 p.m. - Registration & Networking
• 1:00  - 1:50 p.m. - Session 1 - Welcome & Keynote on U.S.-India Relations
• 1:50  - 2:00 p.m. - Naren Gupta Tribute
• 2:00 - 3:00 p.m. - Session 2 - TiE Panel on Cross-Border Investments
• 3:00 - 3:30 p.m. - Afternoon Tea Break & Networking
• 3:30 - 4:30 p.m. - Session 3 - Indiaspora Panel on the Future of U.S.-Silicon Valley Ties
• 4:30 - 5:30 p.m. - Session 4 - The Evolution of Digital Business and Policy in India

Venue: Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley

DINNER

• 5:45 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.: VIP Dinner (location near the conference venue will be disclosed to registered participants)

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SPEAKER BIOS

Satya Bajpai is Managing Director, Technology Investment Banking at Citizens Bank, a $20 billion market cap bank with ~$200 billion of assets. Satya focuses on Technology M&A and has completed 40+ M&A and capital raise transaction with cumulative announced transaction value over $100Bn. He has broad Technology experience both domestically and cross-border and significant experience working on transactions for companies in Asia and Europe. He previously was with Credit Suisse for eight years, responsible for Technology M&A. Satya has extensive experience sell side and capital raise processes for technology companies.

His prior experience includes stints at PwC and Deloitte Software Consulting Practice. He is an Adjunct Professor at Rice University Jones School of Business (MBA) and a Charter member at TiE Silicon Valley - Global Entrepreneurship Organization. Satya holds an MBA from NYU (Dean’s List) and a MS/BS from IIT Mumbai in Electrical Engineering.

Jishnu Bhattacharjee is Managing Director at Nexus Venture Partners, a leading U.S.-India venture capital firm, that has been a pioneer of investing in innovative companies building global technology products leveraging India and technology-led businesses for India. Jishnu has invested in technology infrastructure, data, AI, SaaS and developer operations and is interested in a wide variety of start-ups. Jishnu’s current investments include Postman, Druva, H20.ai, Observe.ai, Minio, Kaltura, Blueshift, Jiffy.ai, and other exciting companies. His exited investments include Kaltura (Nasdaq: KLTR), Rancher (acquired by SUSE), Mezi (acquired by American Express), Cloud.com (acquired by Citrix), Gluster (acquired by Red Hat), Arkin (acquired by VMware) and Elastic Box (acquired by Century Link). 

Jishnu holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, MS from Georgia Tech and BTech from IIT Kharagpur in electronics engineering. He is also an inventor on more than twenty US patents. 

Sumir Chadha, a co-founder and Managing Director of WestBridge Capital, is based out of Silicon Valley.  Sumir has been investing in India for over two decades across private and public companies. He serves on many boards including Star Health, Aptus and Innovaccer.  Earlier in his career, Sumir also co-founded and was Managing Director of Sequoia Capital India, and worked at Goldman Sachs and at McKinsey & Co. 

Sumir serves on the Boards of Princeton University, the Harvard Business School Alumni Association, Crystal Springs Uplands School and the American India Foundation. Sumir received an MBA from Harvard Business School with Distinction, and a BSE in Computer Science from Princeton University.  While at Princeton, he served as President of his class.  

Kumar Ganapathy is a serial entrepreneur, angel investor and founder of Enterprise Labs, a startup "foundry" focused on the Enterprise Cloud infrastructure in Silicon Valley. As part of Enterprise Labs, he is currently the CEO of Akridata (Edge Data platform), and on the boards of PrimaryIO, Ampool, and Deepvision. Kumar is an active angel investor especially for impact startups working to drive societal change through entrepreneurship. He is currently a Director and founder of 3iPartners, an early stage impact fund that invests in promising social entrepreneurs in India in areas of Agriculture, Livelihood, Education and Healthcare. Kumar has founded two successful start-ups over the past 20 years across Telecom and Enterprise IT infrastructure : (a) VxTel (acquired by Intel for $550M), and (b) Virident (acquired by Western Digital for $685M). Prior to his entrepreneurial career, Kumar was Principal Engineer and Fellow of Conexant and Rockwell Semiconductor. Kumar has received his Ph.D from University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (UIUC), MS from University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and B.Tech from Indian Institute of Technology at Chennai. He is the recipient of the Distinguished Alumnus Award from IIT Madras, Fellow of Conexant/Rockwell, and Siemens Gold medal winner at IIT. Kumar has over 75 patents and 12 technical publications.

Tanvi Madan is a senior fellow in the Project on International Order and Strategy in the Foreign Policy program, and director of The India Project at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. Madan’s work explores India’s role in the world and its foreign policy, focusing in particular on India's relations with China and the United States. She also researches the U.S. and India’s approaches in the Indo-Pacific, as well as the development of interest-based coalitions, especially the Australia-India-Japan-U.S. Quad.

Madan is the author of the book “Fateful Triangle: How China Shaped US-India Relations during the Cold War” (Brookings Institution Press, 2020). Her ongoing work includes a book project on the recent past, present, and future of the China-India-US triangle, and a monograph on India’s foreign policy diversification strategy.

Anita Manwani is a highly regarded industry expert with over 20 years of experience in successfully managing various aspects of software businesses and setting up offshore operations in India. Prior to founding Carobar Business Solutions, Anita was Vice President and General Manager, Global Sourcing for Agilent Technologies, where she was responsible for global procurement and Agilent’s operations in India. During her tenure at Agilent, she held a variety of executive positions and was responsible for Agilent’s strategy for building a presence in India. She was instrumental in setting up Agilent’s India operations in her capacity as the Chairman of the wholly owned subsidiary, Agilent Technologies International, Pvt. Ltd. She grew the organization to 1200 professionals providing software and hardware R&D, BPO and IT services to Agilent entities world wide.

Prior to Agilent Technologies, Anita held management positions for over 15 years at Hewlett Packard. She successfully led software technology initiatives for enterprise and telecom markets. As head of HP’s India Software Operations, she defined the business model to the services from India to HP’s external customers. She has extensive experience in M&A, integrating divisions into HP and divesting businesses from Agilent. Prior to HP Anita worked at NASA, leading the development of distributed computing systems.

Anita was one of 80 US women selected as a “Technology All Star” for the National Women of Color Conference for her executive leadership in technology in 2002. She also received the YWCA TWIN award for executive leadership and impact in 2003. She is an active community volunteer and is on the boards of Los Altos Education Foundation, Foothill – DeAnza College Foundation. She is deeply committed to empowering women and serves on the board of Girls for a Change. Anita has published and spoken at various events and panels hosted by Universities and National Associations on Offshoring and Outsourcing.

Anita holds a Bachelors and Masters Degrees in Chemistry, History, Marketing Management.

Priya Rajan is Market Lead for India and MENA in SVB’s international market development team, Global Gateway. She provides market entry advice and insights on cross-border engagement focused on constituents in the innovation ecosystem – founders and investors.  

Priya’s work with Indian entrepreneurs and venture capital funds has yielded tangible value with founders accessing leading programs in the U.S. like Y-Combinator and investors getting visibility of great founders and deals.  

Priya calls on her experience, expertise and connections to champion a more inclusive innovation economy. She works closely with community leaders, including Change Catalyst, Kapor Capital, and YC Female Founders. She sits on the board of directors at non-profits Big Brothers Big Sisters and Women Who Code – an organization dedicated to helping women excel in technology careers. As a venture partner at Xfund, Priya connects VC firms with superior research universities and advisor at Entrepreneurship at Cornell University. 

Priya co-created the Diaspora Community initiative at SVB and is a charter member of TiE, a nonprofit focused on nurturing the next generation of entrepreneurs with Indian ties.  Prior to joining Global Gateway, Priya was a Director in our early stage practice (Startup Banking) where she led university programs and SVB Trek for student entrepreneurs. Leading to partnerships with Dorm Room Fund, The House Fund, Stanford Venture Studio and Rough Draft Ventures. Priya’s career at SVB Financial Group began as a global group financial officer, a pivotal role in the Finance team. Earlier in her career, she held financial management positions at Charles Schwab and Enterprise Rent-A-Car. In addition to a bachelor’s degree from the University of Madras and a master’s degree in international business from Queen’s University, Priya holds an MBA in business administration from Cornell University and a California CPA in accounting and business administration.

Nikhil Pahwa is an entrepreneur, journalist and activist. He is the Founder and Editor of MediaNama, a leading publication chronicling the evolution of digital policy in India. Nikhil is a TED Fellow, an Asia21 Fellow and was named one of India Today Magazine’s “Indians of Tomorrow”. He has been profiled in Forbes, Wired and GQ. He is on the advisory board of the CyberBRICS project. MediaNama was awarded as an Ecosystem Builder by Fortune Magazine in 2016. 

Nikhil led the Savetheinternet.in campaign for Net Neutrality in India, and co-founded the Internet Freedom Foundation, which focuses on advocacy for digital rights in India. He has deposed before India's Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technically, on issues including Net Neutrality and Regulating Facebook, apart from participating in several technology policy and telecom consultations at the Ministry of Electronics and IT, the Department of telecommunications, Ministry of Commerce and the telecom regulator TRAI. He was also an independent member on the Delhi Government's committee for rolling out WiFi in Delhi. He was among the set of expert witnesses summoned by the Delhi Government's committee on Peace and Harmony on Facebook's alleged role in the Delhi Riots. This was the first ever government committee meeting to be livestreamed in India.

He has published widely in several international publications on issues related to the governance of the Internet. He regularly appears on national and international TV channels.

MR Rangaswami is an entrepreneur, investor, corporate eco-strategy expert, community builder and philanthropist. Recognized as a software business expert, he participated in the rapid expansion of the Silicon Valley software industry during his tenure as an executive at both large and small software companies. In 1997, he co-founded Sand Hill Group, one of the earliest “angel” investment firms, and was profiled on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. He was named to the Forbes “Midas” list of investors and also recognized by CRN as one of the Top 25 Technology Executives. He also hosts the Enterprise Retreat for the top 100 leaders in technology.

In 2012, he founded Indiaspora, a nonprofit community of powerful global Indian leaders from diverse backgrounds and professions who are committed to inspiring the diaspora to be a force for good by providing a platform to collaborate, engage, and catalyze social change. Indiaspora hosts an annual Leadership Forum, Philanthropy Summit and the Global Connect initiative for the Indian diaspora worldwide. Indiaspora also engages in community issues, including an initiative that led to a USPS postal stamp in 2016. 

Venktesh Shukla has an impressive track record as a seed stage investor first as the Founding Chair of TiE Angels and, since 2014, as the Founder and General Partner of Monta Vista Capital. Prior to his career as a seed stage investor, Venk had a proven track record of leading companies through rapid growth in his roles in sales, marketing and general management. He has worked with over 50 startups as an executive, investor, or a board member. As former President of TiE Silicon Valley and ex Chair of TiE Global, he has had transformational impact on the organization in Silicon Valley as well as at TiE Global. As the founding President of Foundation for Excellence for the first 17 years of its existence, he set the stage for its current success in providing scholarship to thousands of talented but poor students pursuing engineering and medical education in India. Interested in promising technology start ups as an investor, advisor, board member.

Barry Taylor is an Advisory Board Member of Asia Society Northern California, and a partner in the Palo Alto office of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati with 35 years of experience as a corporate and securities attorney and investment professional. From 2000 to 2010, Barry was a managing director in the technology, media, and telecom group of Warburg Pincus, a global private equity firm. He served as the head of the firm's Silicon Valley office from 2000 to 2008. While at Warburg, Barry worked on investments in the United States, India, and China, and represented the firm on the boards of six portfolio companies. Prior to joining Warburg Pincus, Barry was a senior corporate and securities partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati for more than 16 years. During this time, he worked on numerous public financings as both issuers' and underwriters' counsel, and served as public securities counsel on disclosure, reporting, and proxy matters.

Margaret Conley, a Bay Area native, is the Executive Director of Asia Society Northern California. Her non-profit experience includes the Berggruen Institute, where she launched a Philosophy + Culture Institute with a focus on the US and China. Margaret was based in Asia for several years as a television news correspondent with ABC News in Jakarta and Tokyo, and with Bloomberg Television in Shanghai. She was part of the global ABC team that won a News and Documentary Emmy Award for presidential inauguration coverage. Her interviews include Howard Schultz, Richard Branson, Ban Ki-Moon, LeBron James and Beyoncé. She has a bachelor’s degree from Columbia University and a master’s in journalism from the University of Hong Kong, which specializes in coverage of Asia. Margaret was selected as one of the Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business by the San Francisco Business Times in 2019. She is a member of the International Women's Forum.

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SPONSORS

Thank you to our event sponsors: Westbridge Capital, Sumir Chadha, Nexus Venture Partners, Jishnu Bhattacharjee, Sandeep Singhal, Melissa Ma, Jack Wadsworth, Asia Alternatives, Rob Cox, SVB, Bill Draper.