Jury Panel 2014

Osama Manzar, | Founder & Director, Digital Empowerment Foundation
Osama Manzar is a convert social entrepreneur spearheading the mission to overcome the information barrier between India’s rural sector, and the so-called developed society, through Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) – the not-for-profit organization founded to accomplish the mission. He is a Member, Working Group, Internet Governance Forum of Ministry of Communication & IT and was a Member, Task Force on Growth of IT, ITES & Electronics HW Manufacturing Industry, Ministry of Comm & IT, India.

Madhu Singh Sirohi, | Country Head – India, Vodafone Foundation
Madhu Singh Sirohi is the Country Head of Vodafone Foundation in India which is committed to empowering women through access and capacity building. She has been associated with the world of education and corporate social responsibility for over 17 years. A strong advocate of women empowerment, she has spoken from many prestigious platforms on barriers that prevent women from maximizing their potential. In Vodafone, she has been working to address some of the nation’s most pressing challenges through the transformative effects of mobile technology with partners like SEWA, Pratham, Cherie Blair Foundation etc.
She was the erstwhile Country Head for Corporate Responsibility and Environment at Uninor, the Indian Business Unit of the Telenor Group. She was a part of the team that lead the GSMA mWomen agenda in India bringing focus to the gender gap in phone ownership. She conceptualized the integration of women in the telecom retailer network through the Uninor-Hand in Hand Citizen Centre initiative, a much awarded programme, setting up credible models in creating shared value.

Prasanto Kumar Roy, | Adviser & Eminent Journalist, CyberMedia
Prasanto Kumar Roy is President and Chief Editor at CyberMedia Publications, publishers of Dataquest, PCQuest, and other leading IT publications magazines in India. He heads the ICT Publishing group of CyberMedia, which includes seven IT and telecom publications, both B2B and consumer. A technology journalist, hands-on user and electronics enthusiast for over 20 years, Roy, 41, is a physics graduate from St Stephen’s College, and attended school at St Xavier’s, Delhi. He joined CyberMedia in 1990, as Dataquest’s assistant editor. In 1993 he moved to PCQuest as editor. Over the next six years, he started the PCQ Online electronic bulletin board, the Computers@Home monthly, CyberMedia Test Labs, and the PC Quest CD-ROMs, the latter two being firsts in Asia. From 1996-99 he was editor and head of the PC magazine’s group, comprising PCQuest, Computers@Home, and PCQ Labs. In 1999, he moved on to head the Dataquest and Voice&Datagroup, which then launched DQ Channels and various DQ Week newspaper editions.

Anirban Mukerji, | Senior Manager – Wireless Reach, QualcommAnirban Mukerji is Senior Manager within Qualcomm’s Government Affairs department. Based in New Delhi, India, he manages Qualcomm’s Wireless Reach™ initiatives in India and South Asia. Qualcomm believes access to 3G and next-generation mobile technologies can improve people’s lives. Qualcomm’s Wireless Reach initiative is a strategic program that brings wireless technology to underserved communities globally. ICT4D professional, have worked on numerous e-Governance Projects like Urban Property Records Project for Karnataka, e-District Project for Government of India

Jonathan Bill, | Founder, PluggedIndia & Angel/Advisor at EatAds.com
Jonathan is founder of PluggedIndia.com and a ‘stealth mode consumer tech startup’. He is an advisor to Reverie Language Technologies, Saavn, On Device Research and several other mobile centric businesses. And is also an active angel investor in India’s tech start-up market. He is a mobile internet expert, having spent a decade leading Vodafone’s mobile internet operations and strategy in developing markets including India, the Middle East, Africa and Eastern Europe. Prior to Vodafone he was Commercial Director at internet ad serving company Real Media and was Business Development Director for Reuters Media.

Hempal Shrestha, | Practitioner: ICT For Education and Social Development
Since past 15 years, Hempal Shrestha has served many national and international organizations from social, educational, private and government sectors in various capacities. His core competencies are in the fields of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) capacity building, knowledge sharing and knowledge management. In the course of his career, had led the Open Development Programme in the Asia region for Bellanet International Secretariat.

Abhijit Saxena, | Founder and CEO, Mobilox
Abhijit has started his career as a trainee in a Public sector company State Trading Corporation, Delhi. Soon he shifted to Times of India. He pent time working on traditional and upcoming media like ET, Financial Times and Times TV. Getting experience in TV he shifted his focus to the emerging medium of Television and joined Zee TV in Mumbai. Abhijit has also featured in the Impact Top 100 Digital Personalities 2013.Abhijit is possibly the one of the very few professionals in the country who have invaluable experience on Print, TV, Digital, Social and Mobile. Abhijit has started his own venture in October 2011 with the launch of Mobilox.

Ravi Sundararajan, | Chief Operating Officer, Webaroo
As the Chief Operating Officer, Ravi heads Sales, Marketing, Business Development, Business Operations and Support for Webaroo as well as Product Operations for its Unified Messaging business. Under his leadership Webaroo has grown to become the leading Unified Messaging platform that supports over 2.1 billion mobile interactions per month, powering mobile messaging for over 66 million users, 500 brands and 25,000 businesses.
Prior to Webaroo, Ravi was Founder and CEO of a cloud analytics startup, and also held various senior executive roles at Symantec including leading solutions development, product management, sales and marketing for Symantec’s cloud data management and information security solutions. Before that he was General Manager of Enterprise Content Delivery and Cloud Services business at Akamai, Vice President at Palm/Handspring (now HP) and Engagement Manager at McKinsey. He has been awarded US patents for innovative cloud data management inventions and is a frequent speaker at digital industry summits. He started his career at Sun Microsystems where he was a key member of design team that built Sun’s first 64-bit server system Ultra-1 for the Internet data center and cloud computing market.

Mahesh Venkateswaran, | Principal- Innovation & Engagement NSDC
Mahesh leads the engagement and innovation practice at NSDC. In his role, he works closely with training partners and external stakeholders, in contributing to the skilling mission. As part of the innovation piece, his team supports and funds products/practices that add value to the skills ecosystem in the country. For almost four years before his present job, Mahesh was associated with KGVK in Jharkhand, a Corporate Social Enterprise arm of the Usha Martin Group, in leadership roles.

Syed Kazi, | Honorary President, North East Development Foundation
He is a social entrepreneur, researcher, development specialist in area of governance, services delivery, e-governance and ICT for development. Professionally, he has been active since 2002. He is honorary president of North East Development Foundation, a not-for-profit, set up and promoted to work for sustainable development in North East India region since 2006. He has been with Digital Empowerment Foundation as a key resource person on policy, programme and research programmes since 2005. He was associated with key programmes of National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) of the Supreme Court of India, Governance Knowledge Centre of Department of Administrative Reforms and Centre for the Study of Law & Governance, JNU, New Delhi. He has published works in various journal, magazines, and newspapers. He holds an M Phil and a PhD in e-governance and services delivery from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

Lochan Lal Amatya, | Senior Manager of Nepal Telecom, former President of CAN
Currently Lochan Lal is working as Manager in Satellite Service Directorate and Project Manager of Wimax Project, Wimax Project Implementation and O&M Wifi Hotspots installation all over Nepal. He has more than 28 years of experience in IT and communication field. He Served as President, Zone Chairperson, Region Chair Person and District 325B. He is a Life Member of Nepal Engineers Association (NEA) and Computer Association of Nepal (CAN).

Dr. Basheerhamad Shadrach, | Global Consultant, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Dr. Basheerhamad Shadrach consults for organisations in the areas of knowledge systems,education, governance, rural informatics, life-long learning, access to information, anti-corruption, MDGs and the use of information and communication technologies for development. At present, he is associated with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, US and the Asian Development Bank, Manila.
Dr Shadrach also serves the Board of Advisors of a number of non-governmental organisations worldwide such as the Commonwealth Foundation in the UK; the International Network of Emerging Library Innovators in the US; and, the prestigious US$ 1 million Access to Learning Awards Committee of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in the US. For his thesis on measuring the impact of rural information initiatives, Dr Shadrach has been awarded a PhD by Loughborough University in the UK.

Ananda Raj Khanal, | Director & Acting Chief, Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA)
Mr. Ananda Raj Khanal is Director (Technical), Nepal Telecommunications Authority and is Bachelor of Law (Tribhuvan University, Nepal) and Master of Engineering ( Optical Communication, Anna University, India). He has over 5 years of experience in Telecom Policy, Law and Regulation, and more than 14 years of experience in academic field in Engineering Education. He worked as a Lecturer in the Dept. of Electrical & Electronics and has extensively taught courses such as Optical Fibre Communications, Digital Communications, Microwave Systems, High-speed Networks, Microprocessor Based System Design, and Digital System Design for both undergrad and graduate students at various universities in Nepal. He has also developed a number of funding proposals for I/NGOs and also writes reports of the projects.

Anika Gupta, | Founder, Hacks/Hackers
As Product Manager for Citizen Journalist Digital at CNN-IBN, Anika Gupta heads a team that is looking to develop new products and paradigms for citizen storytelling. The goal is to bridge the gap between social media and mainstream media through the innovative use of digital, mobile, local language and social sourced media. She also organizes partnerships with activist organizations and citizen journalism groups in India and around the world. The broad category name for these types of sites is “user-generated content” sites.
She writes about international business, politics, science, technology, literature and travel. Her articles have appeared in India and the United States, including in Fortune magazine, Business Today magazine, the Hindustan Times newspaper and Smithsonian magazine.

Ramakrishna NK, | Co-founder & CEO, Rang De
Ram is the co-founder & Chief Executive Officer of Rang De. He was chosen for the Ashoka Fellowship in 2012 in recognition of Rang De’s game-changing efforts to lower the cost of credit. A firm believer in the social business model, he started Rang De in 2008 as a platform to raise social investments for individuals. His conviction that there is a need to lower the cost of microcredit has been instrumental in shaping Rang De’s values and beliefs. Prior to starting Rang De, Ram worked as Principal Consultant for Vignette Europe Limited and has consulted for some of the world’s best companies.

Rajen Varada, | CEO, Open Knowledge CommunityRajen Varada is an ICT practitioner since 1995 and continues to be actively engaged in designing and implementing proof of concept solutions for rural development using technology and in particular ICT. He has developed solutions for health & early childhood care: (Sisu Samrakshak UNICEF), disaster: (SMS4help – Solution Exchange), district e-governance: (Parishkaram & Samadhan – Govt of AP& West Bengal) and most recently ‘Labnet” a migrant labour tracking and services portal. He is actively involved for the past nine years in study, evaluation and mentoring ICT innovations which impact the social sector. Rajen has been one of the thinkers behind movements like public sector software in India and actively support community ownership of technology – from community radio, community TV to open source applications.

Madanmohan Rao, | Research Director, YourStory Media
He graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology at Bombay and completed his advanced studies from University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He is M.S. in computer science and a Ph.D. in communications. He works as a consultant and author from Bangalore, in knowledge management and new media. He was formerly the Communications Director at the United Nations Inter Press Service bureau in New York, and vice president at India World Communications in Bombay. He is the Research Projects Director of Mobile Monday and co-founder of the Bangalore K-Community.

Amir Ullah Khan, | President of Glocal University
Amir Ullah Khan is a development economist and President of the Glocal University in Saharanpur in India. He studied Electronics Engineering at Osmania University in Hyderabad, Management at the Institute of Rural Management at Anand and got his PhD from the Jamia Millia Central University in Delhi. He is Fellow at the India Development Foundation, Adjunct Professor of Law and Economics at the Edith Cowan University in Western Australia and Policy advisor to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Shalini Kala, | Independent Consultant
Ms. Shalini Kala has an advanced degree in Economics. She worked on issues for Agricultural Policy Reform in India for her M.Phil. dissertation. She has 20 years of professional experience in the field of rural development, particularly in the areas of food and agriculture focusing on knowledge networking, livelihoods and capacity building both in India and the Asia-Pacific region. Most recently, Ms. Kala was at the World Food Programme (WFP) where she worked on design, testing and advocacy of innovative approaches for food aid as a tool of development. She was also associated with National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) and later worked on USAID projects.