Eminent Jury Panel

Ranga, as he is affectionately called, is a Finance Professional, an Entrepreneur and an Author. He is a published author of three books with raving reviews. He has co – founded many ventures with young talents which are at various stages of growth. Some of his ventures are social enterprises. He is also involved with large foundations that run hundreds of schools all over India as well leading a focused program on supporting economically weak but academically strong students. He was recently awarded ‘Sankara Ratna Award’ in recognition of his immense contributions towards the good work supporting the social missions of The Medical Research Foundation & The Vision Research Foundation that run the famous Eye Hospital Sankara Nethralaya.

Formerly, he was a Senior Partner with E&Y for many years and led several initiatives of the firm including co – founding & steering the Marquee Global Program – The Entrepreneur of the Year Awards, both in India and Monaco.

Ram S. Ramasundar was born on 1st September, 1950. He has about 38 years of work experience in various organizations such as Hindustan Unilever Limited (as CFO), PepsiCo India ( as Director – Operations), Electrolux ( as MD/CEO), Ranbaxy Laboratories Limited ( as President & CFO) , DLF Hotels ( as Senior Executive Director) and Jindal ITF Limited ( as Group Director – Finance & Strategy).

After his super – annuation from Jindal ITF Limited, he has been associated with Blue River Capital (a Mauritius registered Private Equity Firm) as Managing Director for the last four years and involved in managing the operations of the portfolio companies and administration of the private equity fund. Prior to this, he has also worked at Unilever Exports (UK) and PepsiCo ((USA and Greece).

In terms of his academic background, he is a commerce graduate ( Madras University), Chartered Accountant, Company Secretary and a Management Graduate ( Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad), having qualified with distinction and merit rank. He has interests in Music, Sports and Books and has written articles and commentaries. His wife, Geetha is a post graduate and currently a home maker. He has one daughter, Sadhana, who graduated in Economics from Grinnell College, IOWA, USA and is currently working with KFC (Yum! Group) in Dallas, USA.

Chandrasekar (Chandru) Thyagarajan has 27 years of experience in finance and operations in Indian and global companies in the areas of business finance, accounting, costing of products and services, business controls and financial risk management, financial restructuring, sourcing of funds, procurement, real estate and transport operations.

Chandru has been with IBM for over 15 years and is currently the Vice President–Finance and CFO for IBM in India / South Asia. Prior to this role, Chandru has held several finance and operations leadership positions in IBM including that of CFO, IBM India/South Asia Domestic Business, COO for Global Business Services, IBM India/South Asia, CFO for Global Business Services, IBM Growth Markets based in Singapore, CFO for IBM Daksh Business Process Services and finance lead for IBM’s global delivery missions located in India. Prior to joining IBM, Chandru worked for 12 years in several Indian companies in the automobile, financial services and IT industries.