Kumar Margasahayam is Director, International Business Development – Asia at Earth Networks. He is focused on expanding the company's weather and environmental network in Asia through the establishment of strategic partnerships and also through direct sales to stakeholders in a number of vertical market segments. These segments include government agencies, agriculture, energy and transportation. He is driven by a desire to help support countries in Asia that are impacted by increased severe weather and climate change.

Bjørn Pieper has been with NDS, developer of PADS4 FIDS software , for over 10 years now. Both the extensive global network of PADS4 FIDS resellers as well as hardware and software colleagues in the market, value his hands-on approach and can-do mentality. With his great technical competence and excellent communication skills, he has guided many companies into the world of digital signage and created great digital signage solutions, with the airport industry as his specialty vertical.

Mr. R V Sheshan, is an electrical engineer from Karnataka University , a business leader and alumnus from Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta. Sheshan, has more than 35 years of professional experience and brings in knowledge / skills sets from variety of business areas like:

1. Development and operations of Infrastructure Projects Viz., Power & Energy, Airports & Air crafts Maintenance, Highways, SEZ, etc.,
2. Design, Manufacturing and marketing of Electrical equipment, power systems & electrical projects,
3. Application of Semiconductors into consumer, automotive, computing, telecommunications segments besides Electronics manufacturing services.

In the past, he was associated with Kirloskar electric, C-MAC Centum electronics, Philips Semiconductors (head of South Asia, Sr. Director – APAC at Taiwan)

Since the last 12 years is with GMR group and did lead Group’s head of Corporate strategy, planning, ERM functions, Developed & operated Airframe MRO facility /services as CEO, As Managing Director of GMR Kamalanga Energy limited (1050 MW Thermal power plant), as President & CEO of Hydro energy business and currently as CEO of GMR Goa International Airport Limited.

Jayaraj has over 25 years of experience in the airline and telecommunication sectors, having worked with Singapore Airlines, Qatar Airways, Jet Airways and Maxis Communications. He has extensive knowledge of airline operations and customer experience, commercial strategy, revenue management and pricing, marketing and sales.

Jayaraj started his airline career with Singapore Airlines as an Airport Manager and has worked in multiple countries and managed operations and services in the United States, Russia, India, the Middle East, Europe and countries in the Asia Pacific region. He has also spent three years in the telecommunications industry, overseeing customer experience and operations delivery. Prior to joining BIAL, Jayaraj was the Chief Commercial Officer and Executive Vice-President at Jet Airways.

In his present role, Jayaraj is responsible for the operations at Kempegowda International Airport, Bengaluru.

Mr. Pradeep Panicker is the Chief Executive Officer of GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd. (GHIAL). Prior to taking over as CEO, he was the Dy.CEO of GHIAL since January 2018. Before joining GHIAL, he has held various portfolios at GMR Delhi International Airport including that of Executive Vice-President (EVP) & Chief Commercial Officer for Aeronautical Business. He has been with the GMR group for the last 16 years.

He comes with a vast experience of over 30 years working in leading infrastructure and financial institutions viz. Feedback Ventures (P) Ltd., L&T Group, IDBI, and Price Waterhouse Coopers.

Mr. Panicker has been one of the key members of the successful team that won the bid for modernization of Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA), New Delhi and its takeover.

As the Founder President of Air Cargo Forum India (ACFI), a not for profit association that offers a common platform to the air cargo community, his guidance has been pivotal in Process simplification, Policy formulation, Innovation, Benchmarking, etc.

Mr. Panicker is a Chartered Accountant, Cost & Works Accountant and holds Diploma in Merchant Banking and Financial Services. With his proven expertise as an Industry leader, Mr. Panicker has presented insightful papers and shared his knowledge at various conferences including those of CII, FICCI, ASSOCHAM, Aerodrome India, Business Standard, CRISIL, Indo-US Aviation, Construction India, British Airport Group, Forum Asia-Bangkok, Dubai Future of Borders Conference, PHD Chamber of Commerce, Air Cargo Agents Association of India, Federation of Freight Forwarders Association of India and so on.

A.C.K.Nair was born on 30-05-1962 in Trivandrum, the capital city of Kerala in South India. A Graduate in Electrical Engineering from CET, Trivandrum and he also possess a Masters Degree in Business Administration with specialization in Operations Management.

He is having more than 34 years of experience in Electrical Engineering & Airport Operations including 30 years of experience in Aviation industry. He started his career in Indian Telephone Industries and then joined in Airports Authority of India (AAI) during 1988 and served in various capacities as Asst. Executive Engineer & Executive Engineer. During this period he had executed various Electrical projects at various airports under Chennai Region.

During 1996 he joined Cochin International Airport Limited (CIAL), in the project stage itself and promoted as Airport Director in 2004. Apart from the functions of an Airport Director, he is heading the whole Airport Operations including Cargo, Fire and Safety, Security, IT & Communication and Electrical Engineering. He is responsible for the planning of operational activities including Operations Planning, Scheduling, and Implementation of Safety Management System etc. He has been working in CIAL as a key member of a very high performance Core Group in Planning and Completing of this airport project in a highly cost effective manner. CIAL is the first Green field airport set up in Public Private Participation (PPP) model and acted as the path breaker in Airport infrastructural development in India. Cochin International Airport is the Gateway Airport to the State of Kerala in South India and also the 4th busiest Airport on International traffic in India. CIAL is the first Airport in the world fully powered by Solar Energy, one of the remarkable achievements of Cochin International Airport.

In addition to the post of Airport Director, he is the Managing Director of CIASL, a fully owned subsidiary of CIAL which is formed for the Aircraft Maintenance facility (MRO) and Aviation Academy. He also served as the Accountable Manager of the Line maintenance activities of CIASL and set the Line maintenance functions at Cochin International Airport Limited (CIAL).

Satyaki is the Chief Strategy & Development Officer at BIAL. He comes to BIAL with almost two decades of experience in working with public and private sector investors and operators of transport infrastructure advising on business, finance, strategy, regulatory and project delivery related initiatives. He has extensive experience in transportation and airport system planning across major cities viz. London, Chicago, Dubai, Houston, New Delhi, etc.

In his role at BIAL, Satyaki is responsible for the Strategy and Development BU, focusing on front-end corporate strategy, traffic forecasting and market analyses, master planning and the BIAL Centre of Excellence (CoE) comprising the Innovation Lab, Business Intelligence and Capacity and Operational Planning.

Prior to joining BIAL, Satyaki was with GMR Airports Ltd as Chief Innovation Officer for the airport sector across the group. Before this he held leadership roles at London Stansted Airport, Dubai Airports, where he was Head of Master Planning and at LeighFisher, a specialist global airport advisory firm.

Sandesh Kaup re-joins the Milestone family after four years of leading a successful leadership position at Allied Telesis – a network infrastructure/telecommunications company, involved with secure IP/Ethernet switching solutions. Sandesh Kaup comes with over two decades of experience with an exposure of handling multiple global companies and Milestone has been one of them from his career earlier in 2011- 2016. In addition, he has developed expertise in building businesses for companies like Bosch Security, Ingram Micro, and Anixter. Sandesh comes with a Bachelor of Engineering in Instrumentation from Mumbai University.

Mr Amit Chavda has earned experience of industrial and infrastructure projects while working with private and government organisations. Mr Chavda began his carrier as Trainee Engineer with Chemical Plant and thereafter worked in the area of Project Finance while being with Gujarat Industrial Investment Corporation Ltd, state premier financial Institute. Later he joined Gujarat Infrastructure Development Board, an apex body of the state for development of infrastructure projects through Private Sector Participation. He has worked with projects in various sectors like Tourism, Civil Aviation, Gas, Urban Transport and Railway.

Currently, Mr Amit Chavda is functioning as General Manager Dholera International Airport Company Ltd., a Joint Venture of Airports Authority of India, Government of Gujarat and National Industrial Corridor Development and Investment Trust to develop second airport of Ahmedabad. Mr Chavda is involved in the planning, structuring and implementation of Dholera Greenfield Airport Project.

Utpal Baruah started his aviation career in November 1993 with the Airports Authority of India. He served AAI 14 years out of which the first seven and half years in Aeronautical Communication Service. In the year 2001, he was appointed as Terminal Manager at Goa International Airport. During his Goa tenure (2001-2007), he succeeded to attain the highest Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI) in the country for Goa International Airport for the year 2007.

He joined GMR Group in January, 2008 and served Delhi International Airport, New Delhi, and GMR Aviation Academy in Hyderabad. During the transition of Mactan-Cebu International Airport in the Philippines, he served actively during the transition in 2014. In 2018, Utpal joined in Kannur International Airport, the greenfield airport in Kerala as the Chief Operating Officer. In July, 2019, he joined Adani Group as the Chief Airport Officer to lead the team of Guwahati airport.

Utpal was closely associated with several airport transition like Hyderabad airport in 2008, Delhi’s terminal 1D in 2009, terminal 3 in 2010, Mactan-Cebu International Airport, Philippines in 2014, Kannur International Airport in Kerala, 2018 and the six Adani Airports (2020-21) presently transiting from AAI to Adani Group. Besides several accolades, he has ICAO certification as Training Manager, Training Instructor and Course Developer. He was invited to speak in the World ORAT Summit 2017 at Singapore and 2018 at London.

Ms. Aman Saini, an International Airport Professional (IAP) having qualified Global ACI-ICAO AMPAP (Airport Management Professional Accreditation Programme), took charge as Airport Director of the Surat Airport on 30th October 2019. As Airport Director she was instrumental in operationalizing the cargo terminal at Surat Airport. During COVID pandemic Surat Airport continued working and earned three ISO Certificates. Prior to this assignment, she was working as Joint General Manager (Ops.) in the Regional Headquarters (WR) of AAI in Mumbai and looking after Airport operations of all the airports in western region. Ms. Saini started her career as an Airport Manager Trainee, is having 32 Years of rich experience in Indian aviation industry including 20 years in field at all the busiest international airports of country like IGI Airport-New Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai Airports.

She is an ICAO TrainAir Plus and IATA qualified course instructor and had been associated with trainings in the field of Aviation since 2009 when she was first posted in National Institute of Aviation Management and Research (NIAMAR), New Delhi. Later she headed the Regional Training Centre - Southern Region, Chennai from 2012-2015. She worked at Indian Aviation Academy, New Delhi from 2015-2018 as an ICAO approved instructor & a Member of Course Development Unit of ICAO TrainAir Plus and became an ICAO certified course developer. She developed her first STP on ‘Runway Rubber Removal’ in 2016. Subsequently, she developed three more STPs on ‘Airport Pavement Markings’ and ‘Infrastructure facilities for passengers with reduced mobility (PRMs)’ and ‘Airfield signs’ which are now available in the ICAO STP library for all the member countries of ICAO.

Recently the Surat Airport has been added to the elite list of Silent Airports under her leadership. Her positive attitude and close monitoring has contributed to bring the passenger footfall at Surat Airport to more than 50% of the pre-Covid period.

Manvi is a Senior Manager & Practice Lead at CAPA office in Delhi and has extensive experience in consulting, research and advisory projects involving both strategic qualitative and quantitative aspects, with expertise in industry analysis, preparing business plans, market opportunity/entry assessment studies, strategy development etc.

Manvi holds a Bachelor and Master degree in Business Economics (BBE and MBE) from the University of Delhi and Punjab respectively.

Mr. Ramana has more than 15 years of experience in both the Military and Civil Aviation sectors. Mr. Ramana started as an engineer in the Defence Science and Technology Agency ensuring the reliability of fighter jets for the Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF) in 2001. He then moved to Indeco Engineers in 2006 to lead several turnkey projects for both commercial and military ground operations. He subsequently joined SATS in 2011 as the head of the Engineering Team which developed and won the first patent for the organisation. He has since held several positions in SATS Gateway Division and also headed a fully owned subsidiary, receiving Singapore’s prestigious National Productivity Award in 2016 . Mr. Ramana graduated from the National University of Singapore with a Bachelor of Engineering as well as a Master of Science, majoring in Logistics. Mr. Ramana was subsequently awarded an Executive Master of Business Administration from the Nanyang Technological University and the International Air Transport Association (IATA) under the joint sponsorship of SATS & Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS)

Vivek is a commerce graduate from Kirori Mal College, Delhi University. Started his career as software developer in NIIT Technologies which was followed by Master’s in Computer Science (Distributed Multimedia Systems) from University of Leeds, UK.

He is a ‘Software Pro’ with 5 plus years of software development work experience in ICOMPLY UK. This included development of a ‘state of art’ integrated security platform, designing the complex software architecture, scalable enterprise databases, third party systems interfaces and advanced reporting services.

He has been associated with ICOMPLY for more than 12 years rendering IT related services including project execution for integrated command and control solutions across the globe; especially UK, Middle East, Africa and India.

Vivek is currently heading VERACITY INDIA (formerly called ICOMPLY) and is responsible for management of India P&L as well as complete business cycle.

In last three years, VERACITY INDIA had achieved great success with large scale and high profile ‘Integrated Security Solutions’ deployments in multiple domains such as Banking, Smart Cities, Safe Cities, Power Plants, Oil & Gas, Defence and Enterprise.