Tech Innovations@Museums

Rekha M. Menon is a leading industry voice on advanced technology led innovation and socio-economic progress, and is recognised as one of India’s most powerful women in business by multiple rankings over the years.

As the Chairperson for Accenture in India, Menon has been focused on developing a diverse and highly skilled workforce that uses cutting edge technologies to bring innovation to life for Accenture’s clients, people and communities. Under her stewardship, Accenture in India has strengthened its position as an innovation engine, creating value for Fortune 500 companies across the world. She is also Vice Chairperson of NASSCOM and a member of NASSCOM’s Executive Council, National Council Member of CII, Co-Chair of CII’s India Women Network, and a member of USIBC’s India Advisory Council. She is additionally on the Board of Governors of her alma-mater, the XLRI School of Business, and two not-for-profits—Pratham Books and Akshara Foundation.

Abhishek Poddar is a prominent collector and patron of the arts in India. He has been collecting art since high school and has created a significant collection of South Asian art, craft and antiquities, including modern and contemporary art and photography. He is the force behind the upcoming Museum of Art & Photography (MAP) in Bengaluru, where he serves as a trustee and to which he donated the initial leadership gift and a substantial portion of the family’s art collection.

Besides serving on various boards and committees in India, Poddar also serves on the advisory committees of the India-Europe Foundation for New Dialogues, headquartered in Rome and on the Lincoln Centre Global Advisory Council.

Mayank Manish heads Technology at MAP and is a seasoned IT professional with experience in corporates, startups and consulting. He has worked across the globe with an experience of over 23 years and an exposure to large, medium and startup companies. His latest venture OpEzee brings immersive and interactive 3D Holographic solutions to the forefront. He is driving innovation to deploy new age technologies at MAP as part of the experiences being built for the audience.

Dr. Shubhashish Sengupta is a Technology Labs Fellow and Head of Research at Accenture Technology Lab, Bangalore. He has 21 plus years of experience in industrial research, IP development and consulting. He specialises in technologies such as large scale Distributed Systems, Cloud Computing, Software Engineering, Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing. Apart from leading applied research for Accenture Labs India, he also leads client co-innovation endeavours to bring cutting edge AI and future thinking into clients’ innovation agenda and processes.

Prior to joining Accenture, Sengupta was a Technology Architect with Oracle Corp where he set up a high performance computing lab at Infosys Research. He has over 30+ granted patents, 55+ filed patent applications and over 60 published research papers in international journals and conferences to his credit. He is a senior member of Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). He is also the founding member of Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) India chapter.  

Ravi Gururaj is the Founder & CEO of QikPod.com which builds innovative last mile logistics solutions for the eCommerce industry. He also serves on the Indian Venture Capital Association VC  council, is Chief Mentor at Reliance Industries GenNext startup  program, part of the Startup Vision Group of the Govt. of  Karnataka, the Startup Council of CII, co-chairs the Penn & Wharton Club of Bangalore and the Harvard Business School Alumni Angels India chapter. He further served as President of the Bangalore chapter of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) for four years and served six years on the NASSCOM Executive Council. 

Gururaj holds degrees from Harvard Business School, University of Pennsylvania, and Wharton School. He has angel invested in more than 25 innovative startups and also over his career held senior executive roles at global technology firms Citrix, Trilogy and Intel.