Kiran Bettadapur is a practising advocate and patent lawyer. A qualified industrial engineer and company secretary, Kiran is an alumnus of IIT Kharagpur and IISc-Bangalore. He has expertise in the Hitech, EdTech, Green-Tech, Food-Tech, Energy and other verticals, in both B2B and B2C markets. He has co-founded and bootstrapped many ventures. In his corporate career with HCL-Hewlett Packard and Birlasoft, Kiran provided strategic vision; managed operations; and, achieved business goals in international markets. Passionate about market-driven innovation and disruptive entrepreneurship, Kiran invests in, advises and mentors technology startups too. His book, Gita and the Art of Selling was nominated for the “Crosswords Book of the Year” Award.

Prof. Noel Lindsay is Dean of Business, Adelaide Business School and Pro Vice Chancellor (Entrepreneurship), the University of Adelaide where he is Professor of Entrepreneurship & Commercialisation. His responsibilities include providing leadership to the Adelaide Business School and the University's ThincLab Innovation Hubs, and in effecting change toward a more entrepreneurial culture in the University. He has held previous positions as Academic Director Singapore Operations at the University’s Singapore Ngee Ann-Adelaide (NAA) Campus; Head, School of Marketing & Management; and Acting Associate Dean Diversity & Inclusion. Prior to Adelaide, he was involved in establishing/developing an Australian University in South Africa with campuses in Johannesburg, Pretoria, and Cape Town.

Outside the University environment, Noel’s leadership experience includes launching/developing ventures in Australia, South Africa, and Malaysia as well as venture capital fund-raising and investment. As an accountant, Noel has practised in the areas of audit, insolvency, and business advisory.

From an outreach perspective, Noel is interested in how best to engage with communities including using online teaching, blended learning, and MOOCs to reach geographically distant markets and SPOCs to target local market segments.

Noel's research interests include business/social entrepreneurship with particular focus on how entrepreneurship can empower communities and those who are disadvantaged.

Noel holds a BCom (Hons) and PhD, is a Member of the Society of Trust & Estate Practitioners, Member of Chartered Accountants Australia & New Zealand, and Fellow of CPA Australia.

Dr. Jon Thomas (PhD, IIT Delhi) is the Director of the Esposito Family Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship (EFCIE) at the University of the Fraser Valley (UFV). He also holds the BC Regional Innovation Chair in Canada-India Partnership Development at UFV and is an Associate Professor (Innovation & Entrepreneurship) at UFV’s School of Business. In his role as the BC Regional Innovation Chair at UFV, he is engaged in building research partnerships between Canada and the world, with a major focus on India.

Dr. Thomas is the Acting National Academic Lead for Simon Fraser University’s invention to Innovation (i2I) national network which provides science and technology commercialization training to STEM graduates, postdocs, and faculty members across Canada. He has also been appointed as a Visiting Faculty Fellow at IIT Madras. He has mentored students, postdoctoral fellows, scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs across Canada and India for over two decades.

His research has been published in Nature Nanotechnology, Technovation, and the Journal of Engineering & Technology Management, among others. His research has also been selected for recognition by the Academy of Management (TIM Division) and he has been awarded fellowships from IIT Delhi, AICTE, and Mitacs.

Dr. Thomas is regularly invited to speak on innovation and entrepreneurship topics, and he is keenly interested in the pre-formation and early post-formation stages of venture emergence, particularly from university settings.

B. Gopal is a Professor at the Division of Biological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. An alumnus of the Maharashtra Education Society, Pune, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur and Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, he is structural biologist by training. His current research interests include gene expression analysis and synthetic microbiology. In addition to his academic affiliation, he has been associated either as a co-founder, advisor or consultant to start-up and mid-size biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries involved in the production of biosimilars and active pharmaceutical ingredients. He is a fellow of all three science academies in India and a recipient of the Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar prize awarded by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Government of India.

Suresh Chandran has over 20 years of tech commercialization experience - some of it, internationally. He began his career setting up IP & Commercialization operations at the National Institute of Immunology, Delhi. He earned his Masters in Intellectual Property Law from Franklin Pierce in the USA and then interned with NIH’s Technology Transfer Office, Bethesda, evaluating life science and biomedical inventions. Later he moved to an IP Law firm in Virginia and was involved in patent drafting and prosecution matters.

He left USA to join as Patent attorney in a large Singapore-based law-firm and then took over as Tech transfer Manager at the National University of Singapore. He subsequently left NUS to become the Director of one of the leading human embryonic stem cell companies. Besides creating a dominant IP portfolio, he was able to generate licensing revenue worth a few million dollars.

In India, he was invited to create and head the Office of Technology Transfer at C-CAMP, Bengaluru. He brings vast experience of analysing early-stage inventions, strategizing commercialization, drafting and prosecuting applications in multiple jurisdictions. As an invited speaker, Suresh has presented papers at international conferences and many national conferences and workshops. He is a certified Technology Transfer professional (RTTP) and patent practitioner. He is currently the Managing Partner at CSS, a technology and licensing consultancy firm operating from Delhi and Bengaluru.