As the Executive President of Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. (BCCL), Dr. Bhaskar Das is responsible for maximization of the company's volume and value market share by ensuring quality service to business constituents and driving value innovations. Being a Board member of BCCL enables him to leverage his skill sets across the Group’s businesses.

Apart from being integrally involved in the broad strategic direction of the company, Dr. Das is also on the boards of ZOOM Entertainment Network Pvt. Ltd. (a television channel), World Wide Media (a BCCL – BBC joint venture company marketing the Group’s magazines), Times Now, ET Now and Vijayanand Printers Ltd. (a recent acquisition of BCCL).

Shri Ajit Gulabchand is a B.com (Hons.) and an Industrialist and Chairman & Managing Director of Hindustan Construction Company (HCC). He is also the Chairman of Lavasa Corporation Ltd. He has over 28 years of experience in the construction business. He is on the board since 3rd March 1983 and appointed as Managing Director of HCC from 1st April 1983.

Mr. Gulabchand is on the Board of renowned listed companies such as Bajaj Electricals Ltd., the Indian Hume Pipe Co.Ltd., RPG Life Sciences Ltd., Hincon Finance Ltd., Hincon Technoconsult Ltd., Western Securities Ltd., Hincon Holdings Ltd., Lavasa Corporation Ltd., HCC Real Estate Ltd., Charosa Wineries Ltd., HCC Mauritius Enterprises Ltd., HCC Infrastructure Ltd., HCC Construction Ltd., and HCC Singapore Enterprises Pte.Ltd. He is also the Chairman of Board of Governance, National Institute of Construction Management & Research (NICMAR) and the Chairman of Walchand College Engineering, Sangli.

Mr. Jayesh Desai has been the National Director for Ernst & Young's Infrastructure, Real Estate and Government Services Group from 1st July 2008. Before that, he was the head of Ernst & Young's Transaction Advisory Services practice in India and led the growth of the M&A business of the firm in particular to a size of USD28 million, a four-fold growth over a three year period. Mr. Desai has led Ernst & Young’s practice in the Infrastructure and Government Services sector for the last 7 years and has built the entire practice.

His experience in the infrastructure sector, including experience with building a large part of Coca-Cola's bottling infrastructure in the late 90s has helped him develop strong practical development skills and an understanding of the infrastructure sector. Mr. Desai Jayesh has been directly involved in many landmark engagements in the infrastructure sector, including advising the government as well as various private parties on pioneering transactions in the sector over the last three years.

Ms. Swati Ramanathan is the Co-Founder of the Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy, a non-profit organization focused on improving urban governance and citizen participation in India. She is also Chairperson of India Urban Space Foundation, a non-profit organization focused on improving the quality of spatial planning in India’s cities and towns.

Ms. Ramanathan has advised the National Government on planning processes and land title reforms. She was a member of the State Urban Agenda for Rajasthan (SUARAJ), initiated by the Chief Minister (CM), working on initiatives in land reform, GIS, and Spatial Data Centre for the Rajasthan Heritage Conservation. Ms. Ramanathan has been honored by the CM with the Rajyotsava Puraskar, Rajasthan’s highest civilian award for her work on land title and the development of the master plan for Jaipur.

Mr. Scot Wrighton currently serves as the City Manager of Lavasa, the new planned city being developed in the Western Ghats by the Hindustan Construction Corporation (HCC). He is a past member and officer of several state (Illinois, Missouri, Georgia, Kansas) city management associations, and he has been a member of the International City-County Management Association (ICMA) for nearly 30 years. He served on the ICMA’s International Committee for 5 years, as well as its Conference Planning Committee.

Before joining Lavasa, Mr. Wrighton served for over 6 years on the faculty of the University of Georgia's Carl Vinson Institute of Government, where he assisted city, county, nonprofit association, and quasi-governmental boards on a variety of management, organizational, and leadership development topics. Before this, Mr. Wrighton served local governments for 22 years in Illinois, Kansas, and Missouri, spending nearly 20 of those years as a city manager. His special interests include intergovernmental cooperation, local government consolidation, charter revisions, ethics, community strategic planning, international good governance, group decision-making dynamics and processes, the use of parliamentary procedure in public meetings and hearings, and the role of the local government manager.

Mr. Charles Oldham is an asset manager with experience in the creation and management of assets in the public and private sector. For local governments, he has managed the property portfolio for a major county and a district in the UK as MD of their outsourced property departments; the portfolio included municipal building, schools, offices and council housing stock of some 10,000 homes. Serving central government, he was responsible for the facilities management and maintenance of some 230 court buildings throughout the South West of England and Wales. He works with Heathrow Express, the London Heathrow airport rail link, to manage their asset base.

Mr. Oldham currently manages Halcrow’s Management Consultancy business and leads our City Management team. He has developed Halcrow’s approach to long-term financial planning of major asset portfolios both for asset owners such as BAA for London Heathrow Airport and for investors such as Goldman Sachs. He was responsible for providing long-term financial projections for new developments in the Middle East planned to accommodate up to 325,000 residents. The projections were used for both internal financial planning and to inform potential IPO transactions.

Ms. Shaili Chopra is the Senior Editor and Primetime Anchor at ET Now, the Economic Times’ Business News Channel. She anchors the 9 p.m. primetime slot and conducts exclusive interviews. One of the most trusted faces in Indian business journalism, Ms. Chopra has won the News Television Award for the Best English Reporter across India in 2007 and later in 2008. Her business-golf show Business on Course, won the Best Show Award.

Ms. Chopra has also been at the forefront of covering key international events like the G-20, India Economic Summit and the World Retail Congress. She previously worked with NDTV 24 x 7 as Markets & Corporate Affairs Editor and at NDTV Profit as the Senior News Editor-Corporate for over 5 years. Her big interviews include Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, Finance Minister P Chidambaram, PepsiCo's Indra Nooyi, Blackrock's Chairman Larry Fink, Deutsche Bank's Anshu Jain, and among policy makers ministers like Kamal Nath, Commerce Minister Anand Sharma, Education Minister Kapil Sibal, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Aviation Minister Praful Patel and the Finance Minister and Trade Ministers of Netherlands, France and Australia.

Mr. Mukund Rathi is the Vice President – Special Initiatives at Lavasa Corporation Ltd.  and deals with special issues regarding development and governance of Lavasa Hill City, such as governance structure, police establishment, connectivity, and other civic facilities/infrastructure essential for a city. He is also a Member of the Special Planning Authority for Lavasa Hill City.

Prior to this, Mr. Rathi was the Deputy Commissioner (Special) at the Pune Municipal Corporation and dealt with subjects such as development plan implementation, BOT projects, and general administration departments. He was also a faculty in the State Institute of Urban Development at YASHADA, Pune and was associated with policy research/ special projects on urban development issues in India. He has also occupied key positions in Government of Maharashtra in various districts, including Sub Divisional Magistrate and has dealt with law and order, disaster management, resettlement, and land administration issues in the sub division.

As the Number-two executive at Cisco, Mr. Wim Elfrink heads two global organizations for Cisco, leading both Cisco's $8-billion Global Services Division and driving the compan's globalization strategy out of Cisco's Globalisation Centre East in Bangalore, India, where he moved in 2007.

Mr. Elfrink was Cisco's first ever Chief Globalisation Officer in 2006, responsible for leading Cisco's efforts to become the world’s most globally relevant company by incubating new business models and partner ecosystems, growing in strategic markets, and transforming global operations. As the head of Cisco global Services organization since May 2002, Mr. Elfrink has grown the division from $3.3 billion to more than $7 billion in 2009. The award-winning Services division includes three businesses: Technical Support Services, Remote Operations Services, and Advanced Services.

Steve Crawhurst is an urban and regional planner with 38 years experience of work in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, the Middle East and Eastern and Western Europe. He has been involved in many large urban development projects involving new towns and cities, urban expansion schemes and specialist studies on industrial areas, infrastructure improvement and housing, and tourism strategies. He has worked directly or as part of a consultancy team for many of the major development agencies including the UN, World Bank and DFID, as well as national, regional, and local government bodies and private corporations.

He is currently leading the multi disciplinary team preparing a series of plans for the development of the Dholera Special Investment Region (DSIR), Gujarat in the Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor. The DSIR is planned as a new industrial city with a population target of 2 million inhabitants over the next 30 years.

Mr. Narinder Nayar, currently the Chairman of Mechanalysis (India) Ltd. and the Managing Director of Concast (India) Limited, has been actively and passionately involved with the Mumbai Transformation Programme, which is spearheaded by the Hon’ble Chief Minister. As Chairman of Bombay First, Mr. Nayar was instrumental in arranging a study together with McKinsey on how Mumbai could be transformed into a world-class City over the next 10 years. Following this study, several initiatives have been taken by the Maharashtra Government, including constituting a Citizens’ Action Group, of which Narinder Nayar is the Vice Chairman. In addition, he is also an active member of the Empowered Committee headed by the Chief Secretary to monitor various ongoing projects in Mumbai.

Mr. Nayar believes in the dictum "think local, act global." He has been decorated by the President of Italy as UFFICIALE of "Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana", the first Indian to have been conferred this honor.

Mr. D. Sivanandan currently leads the Mumbai Police as Commissioner of Police, Mumbai.  An M. A. in Economics with 3 years of experience as Asst. Professor of Economics, Mr. Sivanandan joined Indian Police Service - Maharashtra Cadre in 1976. He worked as an A.S.P. and S.P. in Satara, Latur, Aurangabad city, Pune city and Satara, and worked in the State Intelligence for one year as S.P. He worked for 6 years in the I.B. as Assistant Director and Deputy Director.

From 1993 till 2009, Mr. Sivanandan has held various positions, including Additional Commissioner of Police, Crime Branch, Mumbai City, Deputy Inspector General of Police, Nagpur Range, Joint Commissioner of Police, Crime Branch, Mumbai, Joint Director, CBI, Western Zone, Commissioner of Police, Nagpur, Commissioner of Police, Thane, and Commissioner S.I.D., Maharashtra State, Mumbai. His expertise and experience in the areas of city and rural policing, and mafia crime control, counter espionage activities, anti-corruption, and T-Naxal operations earned him the Presidents Meritorious Services Medal in 1993 and the Presidents Distinguished Service Medal in 1999.

Mr. Chaitanya Kalia is a Partner in Risk Advisory Services and leads the Climate Change & Sustainability Services (CCaSS) practice for Western India from Ernst & Young's Mumbai office. Having joined Ernst & Young in 1999, Mr. Kalia has extensive experience in the field of climate change advisory, especially development of projects under the clean development mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol.

Mr. Kalia is an expert in development of new CDM methodologies and Monitoring &Verification (M&V) protocols. He has worked on the registration of several projects at UNFCCC and has been involved in pre-conceptualization and pre feasibility study for the CDM projects for various industries. He has worked on several Environmental Due Diligence studies to evaluate environmental risks of a firm and has developed a methodology for undertaking "carbon due diligence study."

Mr. Rajgopal Nogja heads HCC Real Estate Co., a 100% subsidiary of HCC Ltd. that develops and executes high-value real estate projects. He is also the President of Lavasa and has been in this position since 2007. He has over 15 years of experience in real estate and construction industries. In the current role, he has been spearheading the challenge in transforming HREL and Lavasa vision into reality and has played a pioneering role in building and transforming them into robust and successful business models. Prior to moving in the current role, he was assisting the Chairman and Managing Director of HCC Ltd. for strategic decisions & initiatives for new businesses, financial viability of projects & operations of the HCC Group.

His previous stints were with Mahindra Realty & Infrastructure Developers Ltd. and Gammon India Ltd. In his career he has been instrumental in successfully managing residential, commercial & industrial developments, Project Implementation & Management, Property Management, Relocation negotiation, project finance negotiation, Feasibility studies etc.

As practice director, Mr. Chip Crawford is responsible for the overall leadership of The HOK Planning Group. His focus is on design, developing talent and thought leadership in Planning, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Design. With over 25 years of experience in all aspects of project design and delivery, he has lead the design and delivery of multiple large-scale international projects. He has also led or participated in many of HOK’s significant US projects with extensive master planning experience for corporate, municipal, commercial, healthcare, resort, science and technology, and town planning. He serves on HOK’s Board of Directors and Design Board.

Dr. K. V. Krishna Rao is currently the Dean of Infrastructure Planning and a Professor of Civil Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Mumbai. He has undertaken several sponsored research and consultancy studies in the areas of Travel Demand Modelling and Forecasting, Behavioural Travel Modelling, Urban Land Use Transport Modelling, Traffic Design and Analysis, Pavement Analysis, Design and Management, and GIS, GPS, and Micro-simulation in Urban Transportation Planning.

Dr. Rao has also successfully completed several urban transportation planning studies such as the master plans for metro rail projects in Mumbai, Pune, Thane and Navi Mumbai; and the transport network plans for Hinjwadi and Lavasa townships. He has several publications in refereed international journals and conferences and has guided about seven students for their Ph.D. in urban transportation planning.

A PhD in genetic engineering from National Chemical Laboratory, Pune, Dr. Anjali Parasnis has been the head of The Energy and Resources Institute(TERI) in Mumbai for the past 3 years and successfully implemented projects like the blending of biodiesel in the ferry boats at Gateway of India, Mumbai. This was the first ever attempt in India to demonstrate bio diesel blending in marine environment.

Dr. Parasnis has over 10 years of experience in reputed institutions like the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Nagarjuna energy, and a short experience at Rice University, USA. She has expertise across diverse areas like molecular diagnostics, engineering of Algal cells, genetic manipulation of aerobic and anaerobic organisms for production of hydrogen, ethanol and methane gas using biomass, and applications of renewable energy. She has developed strategies for preservation of 150 fresh water lakes in Navi Mumbai in collaboration with CIDCO. The first of its kind ERC (Environment Resource Centre) dedicated to the research on wetlands is being developed as a part of this project.

Mr. Jay Mavani is the Executive Director, Tax & Regulatory at KPMG India Pvt. Ltd. and the Head of the Infrastructure, Government, and Healthcare Practice. A Chartered Accountant with more than 15 years of work experience with international consulting firms both in India and Singapore, he has been with the India firm for over 8 years and specializes in M&A, tax, and inbound advisory with a focus on the real estate, infrastructure, and retail sectors. He is currently actively involved in several infrastructure and realty transactions.

Some of Mr. Mavani’s experiences in the infrastructure and realty sectors include being
Advisor to Bangalore International Airport Ltd on tax and regulatory aspects of structuring the investments as well as various contracts such as O&M, EPC, Concession Agreement etc. He has also advised a large Indian Group on the structuring aspects relating to bidding for Delhi and Mumbai Airports. He also has extensive experience in advising foreign companies on entry strategy, M&A,  regulatory approvals and devising tax-efficient ownership and operating structures.

Mr. Ajit Khatri is a renowned architect who has been practicing since 1978. Currently the President of PEATA, he has worked on projects for the Mumbai Port Trust—6 buildings for modernization of ship repair facilities in the Mumbai Docks--staff quarters FSD Complex for Food Corporation of India; has designed a railway station with a multi storey / multi purpose building at Navi Mumbai and has also designed residential complexes for the staff at the Solid Waste Management dept. of MCGM. He has also handled projects such as shopping malls, multiplexes, commercial buildings, schools, bungalow schemes, independent bungalows, and residential buildings.

As the Chairman & Country Head of Jones Lang LaSalle Meghraj, Mr. Anuj Puri is responsible for the overall direction, strategy, and growth of the largest premier real estate services company in India. He is among the most respected leaders in the Indian real estate industry, and an acknowledged expert on Indian real estate opportunities both within India and across the globe.

Mr. Puri has over 19 years of experience in multi-disciplinary consulting, ranging from real estate to social development projects. He has expertise in planning, undertaking demand assessment studies and transactional services, including marketing strategies based on technical real estate market analysis. In his previously role as head of Trammell Crow Meghraj (TCM), Anuj handled projects in IT, tourism, office, retail, leisure and entertainment, and housing.

Mr. Suresh Pendharkar, a B. Arch. and Master of Engineering (Civil) in Town Planning, has been the Chief Planner Lavasa Corporation, Ltd, Mumbai for over 4 years. He is also the CEO of Lavasa Special Planning Authority (SPA), a regulatory body for planning and development of Lavasa, and is responsible for Town Planning, Lands, Approvals, and Special Initiatives.

Mr. Pendharkar is an Associate Member of the Institute of Town Planners, India since 1972, and a former Chairman of the its Maharashtra Regional Chapter. He was formerly the Chief, Planning Division of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA). Prior to that, for 7 years, he worked for the City and Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra Ltd. (CIDCO) on the planning of Navi Mumbai. While in MMRDA, he was also the Director of the MMR-Heritage Conservation Society, and the MMR-Environment Improvement Society. Currently, he is on the Board of Governors of the MMR-Environment Improvement Society.

Mr. Mayank Gandhi is an activist and currently the Secretary of Remaking of Mumbai Federation (ROMF). He seeks transformational changes in major development projects across the country. He can conceptualize, initiate and assimilate visionary ideas into an implementable, ground level project and has the ability to add value to concepts using data, research, and global knowledge, while marrying it with local understanding of grass root reality.

Mr. Gandhi has been instrumental in the adoption of the concept, policy, strategy and tactics by the government of Maharashtra for the paradigm shift in the inner city redevelopment of Mumbai using the cluster approach. He has worked with several NGOs, including Loksatta and AGNI and contributed to the formation of some of the finest laws including The Right to Information Bill of Maharashtra and The Nagara Raj Bill, (an urban parallel of the Panchayati Raj).

Ms. Prathima Manohar is the Founder of the urbanism think tank "The Urban Vision," which was instituted to inspire next generation urbanization. The Urban Vision focuses on solutions driven research, advocates best practices in policy and design, and facilitates public dialogue on policy choices.

Ms. Manohar is an architect, critic, writer, and a TV Journalist who has been a contributing columnist on architecture, urban development and design with India’s leading news daily, The Times of India. She has also worked in the Television media and has been a correspondent with France24, a 24 hour global TV news channel and TF1 where she did news reports and several documentaries on the Indian economy, developmental, and cultural issues. Ms. Manohar has also written for the opinion pages of the International Herald Tribune and has reviewed for the Architecture Record.