Dhiren Kanwar

Dhiren brings over 30 years of multi-faceted experience in the food industry. He currently heads the Indian subcontinent and Middle East regions for Griffith Foods and is a member of the Global Executive Team for the $billion company.

Following an initial career as a culinarian with the ITC and Taj group of hotels in India, Dhiren has also been a food industry entrepreneur having founded and successfully exited a food events, restaurants and commissary company. In the venture capital space, Dhiren led the food and beverage practice of the investment advisory group Everstone Capital. His last assignment was as the India and South Asia head of Puratos Food Ingredients.

Dhiren has served as President of the All India Ingredient Manufacturers Association, representing the industry in government relations and providing input on policy making for the food industry. Dhiren also has been on the governing council of the Indo-Belgian Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce.

A life-long learner with degrees in Political Science, Sociology and Hospitality Management, Dhiren is an alumnus of INSEAD, and has completed executive education programs at MIT and Harvard University. Dhiren is passionate about enabling children’s education.

Bhagirath Jalan

Managing director of Jalan’s Retail. He completed his graduation from Cardiff University, UK. Then he did a course on leadership from London
school of Economics. After completion of studies he worked in Future group in the guidance of Mr.Damodar Mall for a year as a Senior Executive. He learnt retailing traits from ‘Retail Guru’ Shri S.C.Mishra Ji. Mr Kishor Biyani is a source of inspiration for him.

After gaining the work experience he joined his family business of wholesaling and retailing of Fabric and Garments. After joining the business he successfully took charge of retail and opened new stores and converted existing specialty stores into department stores by introducing new categories.

In July 2014, he entered into the new segment of Super Market (Complete range of FMCG & Grocery Products), which has obtained a great successful start & became a new feather in the cap of Jalan’s.

In 2016, Jalan’s has also expanded outside Varanasi and opened a store in Prayagraj which is running successfully.

In 2017 Jalan’s opened two hyper markets in Jaunpur & Azamgarh respectively, which are showing positive results from day one and are being loved by the people of these districts.Currently he is successfully heading the retail outlets of the group.

Amit Dutta

Amit is a business leader in Consumer goods and Retail industry of India with experience in large scale business transformations and profitability improvement. His experience ranges across diverse setups – large scale MNC’s both in the product and service industry (Strategy Consulting), medium scale professional Indian companies and large family owned conglomerates. In a career now spanning across 14 years he has had exposure to most of the leading consumer goods and retail companies in the country in various capacities.

For the last 3 years he has been leading Le Marche Retail as its CEO post its acquisition by the DS Group. He has led the transformation of the organization into a best in class grocery retail entity offering the widest variety and a significantly differentiated experience to its discerning customers.

Amit is also an advisor to the board for other consumer goods endeavors of the group, leading multiple cross functional projects.”

Pranav M Rungta

Pranav M Rungta (b. 1982) is an alumnus of Cathedral School, Mumbai and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor where he studied Bachelors in Electronic Engineering

He entered into Hospitality in 2007 in Pune, opening Garden of Eden, spread over 1.5 acres of lush greenery, consisting of a restaurant and Banquets.

Subsequently his company got an opportunity to take over the Iconic Café Royal in Colaba, Mumbai (famous for Bill Clintons visit here during his maiden India trip) which they relaunched in the original avatar and spread their wings

As trends in food & beverage industry started shifting towards deliveries, he set up a chain of cloud kitchens (under the name CURRY ME UP & CHOW ME UP) delivering north Indian & Chinese food.

His latest venture is TAMAK, a unique micro restaurant specializing in authentic North Indian cuisine.

Riyaaz Amlani

Riyaaz Amlani is an entrepreneur and restaurateur based in Mumbai, India. He is the CEO and MD of Impresario Handmade Restaurants and the former President of National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) from 2014 to 2017.

Over the years, Riyaaz has expanded Impresario’s hospitality footprint by establishing 59 restaurants across 15 cities in India. Its umbrella of brands includes SOCIAL, antiSOCIAL, Smoke House Deli, Salt Water Cafe, Flea Bazaar Café, Ishaara, Slink & Bardot, Souffle S’il Vous Plait, Mocha, Prithvi Café, and The Tasting Room.

Starting out as an outsider to the hospitality industry, today Riyaaz is a highly respected leader in the F&B industry in India. He is known for his uncanny ability to provide unusual and novel experiences in all his ventures. Having sold shoes as a teenager, Riyaaz completed his education at UCLA with a Masters in Entertainment Management. On returning to India, he started working as an entertainment consultant for many location-based entertainment centres.

During this period, he contributed to the building of India’s leading family entertainment centres as well as set up a wellness centre. He soon took over the reins of a leading media company, but gave it all up to open a café in partnership with Kiran Salaskar. His vision was a café that offered an experience beyond the ordinary. This gave birth to his maiden venture Mocha – Coffee & Conversations, considered a pioneering venture in the F&B industry back in 2001. Since then, Impresario has become synonymous as the café expert in the country.

Growing rapidly under Riyaaz’s leadership, Impresario is set to expand its signature brand SOCIAL (an all-day café and co-working space that morphs into a high-energy bar post sun down), antiSOCIAL (a state-of-the-art performance space with strong F&B offerings), Smoke House Deli (a European all-day deli and bar), and FLEA Bazaar Café across India. A strong focus remains the growth of the two flagship brands SOCIAL and Smoke House Deli in Tier 1 and 2 cities, and brand Mocha (gourmet coffee shop) in Tier 2 and 3 cities.

There are also plans chalked out for international expansion.

Awards & Recognition: Riyaaz Amlani has been recognized as the Changemaker of the Year by Living Foodz Powerlist Awards 2020, Best CEO by Coca-Cola Golden Spoon Awards, Restaurateur of the Year by Franchise India’s Indian Restaurant Awards 2015, Restaurateur of the Year by Top Chef Awards, Best Restaurateur by Time Out Food Awards, Restaurateur of the Year by the Times Food & Nightlife Awards 2016, 50 Most Influential Young Indians by GQ Magazine, Restaurateur of the Year by Living Foodz Powerlist Awards 2016, the Hall of Fame by Food Food Top 100 Awards 2017, Restaurateur of the Year by EazyDiner Foodie Awards 2017, Game Changer of the Year by Condé Nast Traveller India, and Restaurateur of the Year by the Times Food & Nightlife Awards 2019. All his restaurants have not only won various awards in India, including Best New Restaurant, Best Bar, Best European Restaurant, Best Ambience, Best Noteworthy Newcomer, and Best Coffee Shop, but have also been acknowledged internationally by being nominated for UK’s Restaurant & Bar Design Award as well as shortlisted for Miele’s Top 50 Restaurants in Asia and recognized in Time Out Mumbai’s Top 10 Best Restaurateurs in India.

Mohit Khattar

Mohit Khattar is currently Director and CEO, for Graviss Foods Pvt Ltd, the master license holder for Baskin Robbins in India and South Asia. He is driving its business and helping grow the brand through multiple channels in this geography.

In his previous stint as CEO and MD for Natures Basket (with the Godrej group), he played a key role in establishing and growing the Natures Basket brand and business multifold as a differentiated food retail entity in India.

Mohit has earned his spurs building several successful programs and brands for leading organisations including Titan Watches, Reckitt Benckiser, T.I Cycles of India, Subhiksha and Godrej. A significant part of his experience has been in senior management roles in the food, grocery and retail space.

He has also been actively involved as a beachhead advisor to New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE), wherein he advises new New-Zealand based businesses to enter India and scale their businesses here. He is an active board member for a couple of new food startups in the health and gourmet space. Additionally he mentors new food based start-ups to set up, define their propositions, attain scale and profit.

Mohit is a Mechanical Engineer and a MBA in Marketing and is based out of Mumbai.

Anil Menon

An IT professional with over 16 years’ experience across retail and technology organizations. In his current capacity as GM –IT Innovation, Tata Starbucks Pvt Ltd working extensively on the company’s transformational projects, Cloud & Mobility Platforms, Retail Analytics and Security & Information management systems.
Prior to Tata Starbucks, worked with Trent Hypermarket Pvt Ltd as the Head IT strategizing the transformational projects on future technologies on cloud journey, business intelligence systems. At Cybage Software as a Solution Architect in the retail CoE focusing on digital and e-commerce solutions. I also have a vast techno-functional experience with companies such as Future Group, Wadhwan Retail and Zensar Technologies. I started his career as a technology consultant and is passionate about using the latest in technology to provide business solutions for his organization.

I have Post Graduate degree in Business Management from Pune University

K Radhakrishnan

“Radha” as he is popularly known, has been a corporate citizen for 38 years, with an impressive record of accomplishment, in a variety of industries. Radha was ranked among the top in his graduation and Post Graduation in Economics, Econometrics and Statistics.

Work Profile: a Career in Online and Offline Food Retailing, FMCG, and Distribution and Logistics & Retail Ecommerce Start Up, Management Consulting.

Presently….

Founder of the Tata Starquik.com the Omni Channel online grocery business for Tata aligned to the StarBazaar store.

2014 to 2017, Radha was Founder of www.Grocermax.com and online grocery store, based in Gurgaon.

Radha was the CEO of KBFB- Kb FairPrice, Future group’s neighborhood chain of stores upto 2014 March and was also President of Future Freshfoods Limited(FFL), entrusted with setting up a national wide business in Fruits and Vegetables. FFL is a Joint Venture with the Future Group. It runs 6 distribution centres and 25 farmer collection centers. The company is involved in setting up the F&V category in Future Group.

Past landmarks…

2006-2010, Reliance Retail as CEO of the Value Format Retail. He started off by launching the Reliance Fresh format, in Nov 2006 in Hyderabad.

He started his career as a tea taster Carritt Moran and Company in Kochi, and Kolkata.

He moved on to head the tea division of Parry Agro Limited, controlled tea distribution from the tea estates and launched a brand of tea nationally. He worked here from 1984 to 1987.

Radha then worked as the Vice president of the Unilever promoted Indo Nissin Foods, noodles company that launched two national brands Top Ramen and Cup Noodle. From building the collaboration with the Japanese Nissin Foods, to setting up the factory in Jigany Bangalore, Radha almost was primarily responsible for bringing launching oriental Noodles in India.

In 1994, Radha’s entrepreneurial spirit took him to Amalgam Foods, where Higashimaru Feeds an aquaculture venture which had feed plants, hatcheries and Shrimp farms. He acquired a variety of business skills in running the geographically spread business into a profitable venture during the difficult times of the industry.

1997 Radha joined Foodworld Supermarkets Limited and Vice president Operations. He was part of the original start-up team that launched the retail revolution in India. He set up operations SOPs and processes. In 2000 he became the VP Merchandising, Marketing, and Supply Chain.

Radha is widely traveled, and loves sports. He is trained in SAP Retail IS1.6.

Radha was the Government Nominee from the National Skill Development Council on the Board of the Retail Skill Development Sector.

He is also an avid sports person, played competitive field hockey and martial arts. Is a qualified naturopath.

Radha is a Trustee of Sankalp School for Autistic and Dyslexic Children. He is currently has set up a Vocational school for children with Special Needs. (www.snakalpnet.org)

Radha is married with 2 sons. His wife is a Special Educator in Sankalp

Kirit Maganlal

He Pioneered Goa’s first Supermarket in 1989-90, Magsons Supercentre, having spread out to 12 Stores across Goa over 30,000 sq ft of retail space and growing. Recently introduced Goa’s premium and only on-line delivery grocery portal covering over 140 Pin codes in the State.

He held several important Positions. To name some :

Chairman, Goa Council of the CONFEDERATION OF INDIA INDUSTRY (CII) for the term 2014-15.

President of the TRAVEL & TOURISM ASSOCIATION OF GOA in the year 2000.

Hon Secretary of the GOA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE & INDUSTRY, Goa

Some of his Achievements include :

Awarded the “Businessman of the Year” title in 2012 by Business Goa Media.

Awarded “Innovative Retail Concept of the Year” at the Lokmat “Corporate Excellence Awards” in 2015 at Mumbai.

Awarded the “Trendsetters Honours” Award for Retail by the Indian Express Group at the “Food & Hospitality Fair” in 2017

Awarded the Goa State BRAND LEADERSHIP Award in 2018

Featured as one of the “200 Famous Goans” in the 2019 Publication of the same name supported by the Govt of Goa

Hobbies Include :

Ardent Cyclist, Chess, Badminton and Sailing.

Reading (typically non-fiction) and Country/ Retro music.

Mayank Shah

A competent professional with over 20 years of rich and qualitative experience in Brand Management, Strategic Planning, Marketing Research & Data Analysis, Advertising, Communication & Media and Consumer Behaviour. Proficient in managing Brands and New product launches to meet the Corporate objective of Top line and Bottom line. Conceiving as well as directing creative development to improve Corporate and Brand image through Advertising & Communication using Marketing Research and Data Analysis. Skilled in strategizing media plans as well as evolving dissemination techniques for effective Communication. Resourceful in image and brand building; growing & managing Associates as well as agency/partner relationships. Implementing plans for product lines, corporate image, etc. to build consumer preference. Solid professional standards with a track record of dependability and effective problem solving.