Meet your Speakers
ANSHUL GUPTA
Co-founder of EatClub Brands
BANSI KOTECHA
Co-Founder of Hyperkytchens
MURALI KRISHNAN
CMO & Co-Founder of Wow! Momo
Tarak Bhattacharya
Executive Director and CEO of Mad Over Donuts
GEETIKA ANAND GUPTA
Cofounder & Chief Pilot – MOPP Foods
KARAN TANNA
Founder & CEO of Ghost Kitchens
VISHAL JINDAL
Co-Founder of Biryani by Kilo
GAURAV GITE
Founder of Marrakesh
DHRUV DEWAN
CEO of Thrive
PRAFUL CHANDAWARKAR
Founder & Managaging Director of Chiranjeev Restaurant and Foods Pvt Ltd
Anshul Gupta
Co-founder of EatClub Brands
Anshul Gupta is the Co-founder of EatClub Brands, a technology first, full-stack cloud kitchen company that operates eight brands, including BOX8 and MOJO Pizza. It has one of Asia’s largest cloud kitchen networks, and operates 150+ kitchens.
After completing his graduation from IIT Bombay in 2010, Anshul worked as an investment banker. He gave it up to pursue his love for food and began his entrepreneurial journey.
Bansi Kotecha
Co-Founder of Hyperkytchens
Bansi Co-Founded Kytchens with a mission to democratize access to great F&B brands that customers love. They are building and operating cloud Kytchens with partner F&B brands to scale them sustainably. Prior to starting Kytchens, he spent over 5 years at Uber/ Uber Eats in various leadership roles across India and South Asia. His past experience as an aggregator gives him a unique vantage point on the overall food delivery business while he builds Kytchens to reimagine the F&B landscape.
Murali Krishnan
CMO & Co-Founder of Wow! Momo
Murali Krishnan is the CMO & Co-Founder of one of the leading names in the food industry, the Wow! Momo Foods Pvt. Ltd. and has been setting benchmarks in the business world with his visions. From consumer to consumer – is what he feels marketing today is!
He is a seasoned communication professional with vast experience in advertising; handling national and international brands. He is passionately curious and a believer in storytelling.
Tarak Bhattacharya
Executive Director and CEO of Mad Over Donuts
With over two decades of rich experience in the F&B industry, Tarak Bhattacharya serves as the Executive Director and CEO of Mad Over Donuts. Under his leadership, the acclaimed donut brand has grown from a 12-store set-up in Mumbai to a chain of 150+ stores across 5 cities in India, serving over 10 million delighted patrons.
Over his illustrious career, Tarak has worked with several renowned F&B companies. He headed Operations for Barista, one of India’s first and most successful coffee brands, and was later appointed as the COO for MGH Restaurants Pvt. Ltd. to lead two of their popular brands- Nando’s and Barista for their markets in Bangladesh and Nepal. Having worked across continents with diverse cultures, Tarak has a keen understanding of local sensibilities that he uses to inform business strategies.
In 2011, Tarak was named COO at Himesh Foods Pvt. Ltd. for their Singaporean gourmet brand Mad Over Donuts. He was promoted to Executive Director and CEO in 2019. A multi-faceted leader, Tarak currently manages diverse aspects of operations, planning and human resources at Mad Over Donuts India.
Geetika Anand Gupta
Cofounder & Chief Pilot – MOPP Foods
A Gold medalist MBA and a scholarship holder from prestigious Amity Business School, Geetika is a perfect example of women leadership. She is a dynamic entrepreneur who has partnered with several companies in the F&B industry including some restaurants.
She has mentored and supported various start-ups and companies in their marketing efforts to help them uplift their brand value and company profile. Along with an infectious zeal and a charismatic persona she also has a beautiful heart.
She led the Marketing divisions of MNCs like Sony, HTC and worked with an Oil & Gas business to elevate its profile. She has over 20 years of experience encompassing Hospitality Management, Product Marketing Management, Brand Management, Retail Management, PR, Events & Exhibitions and Corporate Communications for B2C and B2B target audience. As an entrepreneurial call she returned to India in 2016 and became a part of several F&B ventures including a beer brand and restaurants. While in India she was on constant lookout for hygienic places serving India’s favourite street foods Parathas and Pakodas. Failing to find any prominent brand catering to this segment, she decided to capitalise on this opportunity and launched her own venture in this product category as “Mad Over Parathas & Pakodas” which is fondly referred by customers as MOPP.
She launched the second brand “Mealy” in Dec’20. It is a “meals only” brand focused around pocket friendly single meals. With its range of comfort food meals made with homely recipes and taste, Mealy is slowly strengthening its position in this segment.
A third brand “Mad Over Curry” was launched in Sept’21 which focuses on authentic, rich & traditional North Indian curries and kababs.
She plans to launch 3 more brands over the next 6 months. With multi-brand online restaurants and cloud kitchens operating in a hub and spoke model, MOPP has moved from a single brand QSR strategy to a multi-brand cloud kitchen strategy and plans to build India’s biggest online restaurants company focused on Indian food. She plans to capitalize on this expanded market opportunity and build a large-scale venture.
She has led the brand from Rs 1 lac monthly sale to Rs 80 lacs monthly sale despite the fact that 2 years of the journey so far were marred by covid.
MOPP Foods is now a QSR/Cloud Kitchen start-up currently delivering from 12 online restaurants operating out of 4 Cloud Kitchens with a portfolio of 3 brands – Mad Over Parathas & Pakodas (MOPP), Mealy and Mad Over Curry. They are currently clocking 35,000+ monthly orders with a GMV ARR of Rs 15 Crore.
Her company was recently aired at the Shark Tank Season 2 where the company raised funding from Shark Amit Jain.
Karan Tanna
Founder & CEO of Ghost Kitchens
Karan Tanna, Founder & CEO at Ghost Kitchens, graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Automobile Engineering and embarked on his professional career as the Assistant Manager at General Motors and later as a Research Analyst at McKinsey and Company.
As entrepreneurship was always on top of his mind he launched a restaurant named Goodies, further he partnered with Kutchi King, a QSR chain and influenced its’ growth to 300 chains in 3 years.
Post this he founded and established Yellow Tie Hospitality as India’s first organized franchise management company which had a portfolio of 10 brands with 100+ stores across Pan India
Karan has been recognized by Forbes 30 under 30. He also made it to the list of GQ’s 50 Most Influential Young Indian as well as the Entrepreneur 35 under 35. A Founding member and First National Head of NRAI Youth Committee, he served at the apex organization to highlight improvements about how restaurant industry runs in India.
Karan wanted to create a larger impact by reducing the unpopular high attrition rate of restaurant industry. He decided to do this by solving the problem of thousands of restaurant owners of not being able to leverage food delivery. Hence, he established Ghost Kitchens which would go on to create 25+ specialized food delivery brands and its proprietary tech platform which could be leveraged by restaurants to become profitable by generating incremental food delivery orders.
Under his leadership & ambition Ghost Kitchens has grown to have expanded to 150 Fulfilment Partners and 30 Brands throughout India in 40 cities with 1100 Internet Restaurants. Karan aims to influence the lives of at least 10,000 food entrepreneurs and support them with incremental profits from their existing
premises.
On the personal front he is a cinema buff and enjoys watching movies of all kinds. Karan also follows a lot of OTT content. Besides that, Karan also enjoys interacting with various start-up ecosystems and entrepreneurs hailing from food industry. He is also a seasoned startup angel investor and has a portfolio of 15 + companies.
Vishal Jindal
Founder & Co-CEO of Biryani by Kilo
Vishal Jindal, the Founder & Co-CEO of SkyGate Hospitality Pvt. Ltd. – the company behind the renowned brand– Biryani by Kilo, oversees Strategy, Growth and Marketing of India’s biggest Cloud Kitchen and Biryani Delivery Chain. Over last 25+ years of entrepreneurial and investment experience across different sectors & countries, he has been one of the most aspired names in the industry. He has been featured in top-tier media and publications such as – Forbes India, Economic Times, Fortune India, CNBC, Inc42, The Indian Express, Money Control, NDTV Food, and many more. Mr. Jindal is a frequent speaker on start-ups and entrepreneurship on various platforms, podcasts, and live Q&A sessions. He has been making significant contributions towards motivating the youth of India to innovate and transform ideas into successful ventures & businesses.
Vishal’s passionate, high-spirited, and pragmatic approach in life with diehard love for food has made Biryani By Kilo – the biggest & fastest growing Biryani & Kebab delivery chain in India, with around 100+ outlets in 45+ cities. BBK has been in the Cloud kitchens & Biryani category since 2015.
An expert in scaling up businesses across different geographies with empirical experience in Finance, Marketing, and Strategy. Vishal is a serial entrepreneur and a start-up coach who mentors small businesses to nurture creativity, growth, and scalability through his knowledge & experience. He speaks and writes extensively on how to best strategize business plans and expansion in different domains. He is a life-long learner – a voracious reader, foodie, and an avid traveler.
Vishal is an IIT engineer with an MBA from Syracuse University in New York. He also went on to study finance at the London School of Economics. The exceptional mix of technical, finance and managerial background helped Mr. Jindal attain diverse entrepreneurial and marketing expertise. His journey involves raising and building multiple IT companies from scratch in India & Singapore, engaged in value-added reselling and customized solutions to major OEMs, distributors, and multinationals in Asia. He later moved to investing in his career as Co-founder & Director for Akshayam Capital Pte Ltd. (Singapore), long/short hedge fund investing in Asian markets across different sectors. In addition to this, he also spearheaded Carpediem Capital, India based Private Equity Firm operating from Gurgaon, as the Co-Founder & Director.
Besides leading Biryani By Kilo, he is currently serving as a Board Advisor for Ecosystem, Singapore.
In a nutshell, Vishal Jindal is a Strategic Thinker, Analytical Investor, Experimentative Leader, and truly an Inspiration to budding business minds!
Praful Chandawarkar
Founder and Managing Director of Chiranjeev Restaurant and Foods Pvt Ltd (House of Malaka Spice)
Praful Chandawarkar is an Indian Entrepreneur with a wide interest spanning hospitality, horticulture, art, and sports.
He has educational qualifications in Hospitality Management and Business Management. In his career spanning 35 years, he has worked in fields as varied as investment banking and hospitality.
For the last 25 years, he has owned and operated the brand that is Malaka Spice. He has conceptualized and operated successful concepts in hospitality. Today, under Praful’s guidance and vision, the group has expanded into restaurants, cloud kitchen businesses, farming, education and consultation.
The group today has 3 Malaka Spice restaurants (two in Pune and 1 in Nashik at Vallonne Vineyards), 2 One China restaurants in Pune with more in the pipeline. One China serves Street style Hong Kong and Sichuan Style cuisine and also has two delivery kitchens, making it an up-and-coming brand for the group. Not just this, the group also has cloud kitchens in 4 locations of Pune by the name of Drum Roll that serve delicious and saucy Asian wraps. Drum Roll is a favourite with the young crowd and is a hit at all events such as Zomaland. Along with this, the group also has a retail initiative called The Malaka Market that sells an array of organic products, and groceries and partners with local farmers to sell their produce fresh to the Malaka Spice guests.
Praful played a vital role in the group’s expansion into education with Chiranjeev Gurukul, which works on empowering professionals to bring out the leader within! It focuses on growth and development thereby enabling people to seek their place in the world with renewed vigour and has Praful working on the forefront with sessions, talks and mentorship.
Praful is also the co-founder of the Live Life Love Life Charity Foundation. For the last 10 years, LLLLCF has been actively working towards organizing camps and raising funds towards cancer detection and treatment along with the help of the Care India Medical Society. The charity has managed to raise more than Rs. 5 Crores in funds from inception to the present date.
Because of his keen interest in sports, Praful is also involved in grass root development of sports infrastructure and professionals.
In his free time, Praful likes to travel, cook, and garden and is also a keen angler.
