EAI Advisors

Arun Kumar Sharma

Retired Senior Indian Police Services (Ips) Officer He is retired Senior Indian Police Services (IPS) officer from the Batch of 1987, Gujarat Cadre who has served in various positions including Additional Director of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). He has held Several Positions of Distinction and Important Responsibilities and has a Remarkable Record of Services. He has been Honoured with the President’s Police Medal for Distinguished Service and awarded The Indian Police Medal For Meritorious Services.

With over 34 years of Expertise, He has held A Pivotal Role in Investigations of Bank and Security Fraud Cases and also Played An Important Advisory Role In The Stressed Asset Management and has attained Specialisation In Restructuring, Management and Recoveries Of Distressed Assets. He has been Director of Yes Bank and several other Public Sector Undertakings in India. Before being an IPS, he has completed B.Tech from IIT Kanpur.

Dr. Rajiv Kumar

Renowned Indian Economist Dr. Rajiv Kumar is a renowned Indian economist with over four decades of experience across government, industry, and international institutions. He served as the Vice-Chairman of NITI Aayog from 2017 to 2022, where he also led the Atal Innovation Mission. An alumnus of St. Stephen’s, Lucknow University (PhD), and Oxford University (PhD in Economics), he has held key positions at the Finance Ministry, Asian Development Bank, CII, ICRIER, and FICCI, and has served on the boards of the RBI and SBI. Currently, he is the Chairman of Pahle India Foundation.

Mr. Amitabh Verma

Retired IAS Officer Mr. Amitabh Verma, retired IAS officer, has held several senior positions for 37 years both in the Central Government Ministries (15 years) and Bihar Government Departments, apart from heading State and national level organisations like the State Cooperative Bank and Inland Waterways Authority of India. As Secretary, Ministry of Cooperation in Bihar, he has played very crucial role in developing and organizing a system, which has been very successful in procurement of foodgrains from farmers for FCI and State agencies, over the years. As Joint Secretary (Banking), Ministry of Finance, GOI, for 5 years, he has been a Board member on Bank of Baroda, Canara Bank, Bank of India, NABARD, NHB and EXIM Bank. His vast experience of banking, financial management, cooperatives, organizational and capacity building will greatly benefit the team to achieve its mission of composite value generation in rural economies. Mr. Verma is a political science graduate from the University of Delhi and holds a postgraduate degree in Economics from the University of Manchester, UK. Apart from this he also earned a portgraduate degree in political science from the University of Delhi.

Dr. HK Pradhan

Professor of Finance and Economics at XLRI Jamshedpur (India) Dr. HK Pradhan has been Professor of Finance and Economics at XLRI, Xavier School of Management, Jamshedpur, with 35 years of experience in teaching, research and consulting. Dr. Pradhan is presently Director on Boards of Organizations such the Clearing Corporation of India Ltd., the State Bank of India-DFHI Limited and Trustee Board of the YES ASSET Management (India) Limited, Mumbai. He also served as the Chairman, the Indian Commodity Exchange (ICEX), Mumbai, member of the RBI Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) on Financial Markets, Independent Director of the SBI Mutual Fund, member of the Board of Micro Credit Rating International Ltd (MCril), member of the Index & Option Committee of the National Commodity and Derivative Exchange (NCDEX), and also served as member of the Board of XLRI. Dr.Pradhan completed his education at Columbia University in the City of New York. He has specialized skill in Finance, Risk Management, Capital Management.

Kanwal Singh Chauhan

He was awarded India's fourth highest civilian award, Padma Shri, in 2019. Padamshri Kanwal Singh Chauhan was raised in Aterna, a village in Sonipat district of Haryana. He began farming at the age of 15. In 1997, he began farming baby corn at a time when the main source of the vegetable was imports from Thailand at the price of ₹4000 per kg. He introduced baby corn to the region and began selling it at a price of ₹70 per kg. By 2009, he had expanded into the production of canned baby corn as well as exports. His business, which started as a one-man enterprise, grew to employ over 200 employees by 2019. He also established a fair price system for farmers growing Mushroom, Baby Corn, Sweet Corn and Tomato.

Dr. Kamakhya Nr. Singh

IEPF Research Chair, The Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs, Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Government of India Dr. Kamakhya Nr. Singh is currently the IEPF Chair Professor at IICA, Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Government of India. Prior to his current role, Dr. Singh was working as the CEO of National Centre for Financial Education (NCFE). He has gained rich experience of Development Sector and Corporate Finance, while working in Asia, Europe and Africa for about 25 years. He had returned to India to set up a start-up for facilitating development of health, education and sustainable development for the underserved sections of Indian society. In the past, he had served as the Technical Expert with UNDP (AMSCO) and Chief Financial Officer of LAPO Microfinance Bank in Sub-Saharan Africa. Prior to moving to Africa, Dr. Singh had worked as Technical Expert with Asian Development Bank. Within India, Dr Singh has worked with Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) in different roles and in different states for about 14 years. He has done MBA from University of Oxford, UK and holds PhD (Development Economics) degree and CFA charter from India. He is a member of the Indian Institute of Banking and Finance (IIBF) and Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIBN).

Dr. Piyush Kr. Sinha

Director at CRI Advisory and Research and Professor at IIMA Dr. Piyush Kumar Sinha is the Director of CRI Advisory and Research, Ahmedabad. Prior to this he was professor at IIMA. He has more than three decades of academic and industry experience. He has been the Chairperson of the Centre for Retailing at IIMA. He has taught at leading management schools of India and specialization in the areas of marketing and retailing. Before joining IIMA, he was the Dean at MICA. He has more than 60 publications to his credit, including a book on Managing Retailing. Dr. Sinha has also conducted training programs for senior managers in the areas of Retailing, Marketing and Sales. During his corporate tenure, Dr. Sinha has headed the marketing function of some of the leading companies. As the Marketing Manager of an FMCG company, he was involved in new product launches, media planning and buying, communication planning and production and packaging.He completed his Ph.D. at Sardar Patel University.

Dr. Ratneshwar Lal

Professor of Bioengineering, Mechanical Engineering, Material Science & Engineering Ratneshwar Lal is a professor in the Engineering department at University of California San Diego. Professor Ratneshwar Lal received his MS and Masters of Philosophy in Physics and Biophysics from JNU in New Delhi and his Ph.D. in Neurobiology from the University of Alabama. After postdoctoral training at Caltech, he was a faculty member at the University of Chicago and the University of California at Santa Barbara. Before assuming his current position at UCSD, he was a Professor and the Director of the newly established Center of Nano-medicine at the University of Chicago. His current working Institution is University of California, San Diego in the department of Engineering

Smita Purushottam

Founder of Science, Indigenous Technology & Advanced Research Accelerator Smita Purushottam is the founder of the non-profit Do Tank “SITARA”, a Science, Indigenous Technology and Advanced Research Accelerator, to bring increased vigour to the indigenisation of high-tech production and building a Science Nation in India.An Ex- Ambassador to Switzerland, she loves Bihar and guide BEA in Skill Development, Environment and Clean technology. She has been an expert in Defence Technology. She is a Fellow from Harvard University and part of Global. Think Tank on Innovation and New Products.

Prof. Kamaljit Anand

Chief Scientist & Managing Partner | KIE Square Consulting Kamaljit Anand is a professor of IIM Ahmedabad. Hehas done PhD from IIM Ahmedabad, he is a Leader of Data Science in a Growing Organization with interest in Globalizing the Data Analytics footprint. About 15 years of experience in Data Analytics and Consulting across verticals for Fortune 500 Clients as well as in Revenue Linked Classified Areas for Worldwide Governments. He worked as Advisor to several ministries in Govt. of India and abroad and serves as Chief Scientist of KIE Square Consulting mainly based in New York and Gurgaon.He has specialties in Advanced Data Based Marketing and CRM interventions in CPG/Retail, Telecom and BFSI, Marketing Mix Optimization, Risk Management across BFSI and Strategic Government Enforcement Bodies, Macro Economic Estimations across core government areas like Revenue receipts, Gross Domestic Product, Oil & Gas.

Rakesh Ranjan

Director of Engineering, Instana Observability & Watson AIOps @ IBM Automation Rakesh Ranjan is leading a worldwide product engineering team of Instana (an enterprise observability platform) and Watson AIOps (a domain agnostic platform for Automated problem detection and Resolution). In the era of Hybrid and Multi-cloud IT application infrastructure, Instana is uniquely positioned to take your enterprise observability to the next level. With Watson AIOps, we are bringing top-notch AI-powered automation to detect anomalies, prioritize alerts and help SRE and ITOps remediate problems quickly. He is leading a talented team of engineers, architects, and data scientists across many geographies who solve clients' pressing problems in this space. He is a practitioner and have successfully infused AI-powered automation into IBM products since 2016.Rakesh is leading US Bay area chapter of BEA and setting up a center of excellence for AI in Patna.

Sara Gross

Founder & Lead, Harvesting Lives/Cosechando Vidas/Jeevan Samposhan: Regenerative Agriculture and Livelihoods Initiative Sara R. Gross is the Founder of Harvesting Lives: Regenerative Agriculture and Livelihoods Initiative, Bihar, India & Guanajuato, Mexico dedicated to building dignified, fulfilling & prosperous livelihoods. She is a policy-oriented political economist, researcher & social impact entrepreneur with three decades of experience in Europe, Mexico & the US. She has expertise in the developmental implications of neoliberal reform, trade liberalization, economic integration, technology/telecoms, regenerative agricultural practices to advance developing countries, specifically Mexico & India.She have held advisory roles, such as, to the President of Mexico’s Federal Competition Commission.