Global Head of Travel,
Ingenico ePayments

Eric Liebman leads the Travel vertical for Ingenico ePayments and helps travel companies optimize their international payment capabilities. He brings more than 25 years of travel experience gained across several countries and continents.

Eric began his travel career working with Continental Airlines in Florida, then made the jump to the hotel industry as Sales and Marketing Director at Marriott in the Caribbean. Following that, Eric spent the next 20 years in Asia Pacific as a senior travel Industry executive, holding a host of regional and global roles with International hotel groups such as Starwood, Regal Hotels and Millennium Hotels. Later he held a position of Vice President - Asia Pacific at Pegasus, where he helped look after a portfolio of more than 1,500 hotels, 9 call centers and a range of operational offices throughout the region. Eric also worked at IBM’s Business Consulting Group as a Senior Managing Consultant based in Singapore where he helped Airlines and Hotel Groups grow and enhance their customer experiences.

In 2014, Eric joined Elavon as the Vice President, Global Head of Payment Strategy for their Hospitality vertical, responsible for the Strategy and Product Development of Elavon’s Hospitality sector throughout North America, Caribbean and Europe. He joined Ingenico ePayments to head up the Travel vertical in March 2019 and is responsible for the development of a cohesive strategy for their diverse and extensive Travel customer base.

Eric graduated from the prestigious Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and speaks English, French and Mandarin Chinese.

Senior Director of Sales,
Lufthansa Group

Based in New Delhi, he is responsible for overseeing all commercial activities for Lufthansa Group Airlines business in India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. His experience over the last two decades spans airport operations and projects, financial controlling, HR development, aircraft line maintenance business strategy, process orientation, organizational development, change management and global airline B2B sales & distribution. In his current role he is globally responsible for all offers towards B2B customers, such as corporates and travel agencies, as well as the IT infrastructure for all Sale and CRM tools, as well as B2B customer platforms, such the Lufthansa Groups SME Program ‘PartnerPlusBenefit’.

Chief Business Officer - Holidays,
MakeMyTrip

SVP and Head of Corporate Strategy, Cleartrip

As SVP and Head of Corporate Strategy, Aditya Agarwal is responsible for Cleartrip’s Business Strategy, M&A, and Corporate Finance functions, including fundraising and investor relations. In 2018, Aditya led Cleartrip’s acquisition of Flyin, the largest online travel company in Saudi Arabia. Aditya has also led the last 3 funding rounds in the company.

Prior to Cleartrip, Aditya was a private equity investor with experience across asset classes and geographies, including India, Africa, Europe and the Former Soviet Union. Aditya’s most recent role prior to joining Cleartrip was with TPG Capital in Mumbai, and he has earlier worked with Standard Chartered Private Equity in Mumbai and Goldman Sachs in London.

Aditya has done his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and Bachelors in Commerce (Honours) from St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata.

Director,
Amadeus India

Recently honoured with the "Entrepreneur of the year – Travel Technology" award by BIG Brand Research and Brand Academy, Ankur is a prolific and outstanding leader, he has led the group’s strategic thrust to create multiple drivers of growth that made a significant and growing contribution to the company and industry at large. He also shaped and implemented blue ocean strategies that strengthen the overall brand proposition and accelerate a leap in core business value by exploring new growth avenues for building uncontested market leadership.

Articulating a vision for Bird Group and direction to the consortia of companies, Dr. Bhatia is credited with bringing in the Amadeus brand to the Indian subcontinent in 1994, which today is the market leader in providing travel technology for travel agents & airlines. Amadeus celebrates 25 successful years of operations in India in 2019.

Vice President Growth & Conversions, OYO Hotels & Homes

Burhan currently heads growth and marketing for OYO, where he is responsible for driving complete customer life-cycle right from acquisition to retention by use of Data Sciences and Product led growth engines.

Before this role, Burhan was heading South India for OYO, where he was instrumental in launching Bangalore and other key markets. He led the expansion in South India and took it to over 1000+ hotels from its start in Oct 2014 with the 1st hotel in Bangalore. He handled a team of over 300+ spread across Sales, Operations and Customer Experience.

Before OYO, Burhan Co-Founded a Technology-Driven Event distribution Company in 2012. This experience was key in shaping his learning around growing startups and teams fast.

Burhan is a Graduate from IIT Kharagpur and also has 3 years plus Leadership and Operations Management Experience at ITC Limited and Hindustan Unilever Limited through earlier stints.

At present Burhan is heading growth and conversion for OYO Globally except for China for consumer demand. He manages a team of over 200+ across India, US, UK and South East Asia driving a complete customer demand portfolio. OYOs unique strategies for growth have been key in entering new markets and start getting a solid direct demand very early on. While in-home market India, OYOs realized value run rate grew at 3X YOY in Dec 2018. Recently he bagged the title of Marketing Professional of the year at the National Awards for Marketing Excellence presented by BTVi.

Senior Partner, Genesys Digital Transformation

Paul is Senior Partner of the world’s leading independent travel technology consultancy, Genesys Digital Transformation (www.genesys.net). Paul founded the consultancy over 25 years ago and during that time Genesys has helped many travel companies across the globe select and implement new technology.

Clients range from some of the largest, market leading, global players to smaller niche players. All benefit from Genesys’ unrivalled experience, expertise and in-depth knowledge of the travel industry’s strategies, technology and business processes.

Paul’s consultancy work includes board-level advice on profitable strategies for the digital world, assisting clients with the purchase of new travel systems, due diligence for acquisitions and mergers, project management of technology projects, website and technology audits. Paul chairs the majority of the industry’s digital travel conferences in Europe so he has built up an extensive knowledge of leading edge best practice. His advice propels his travel industry clients to new levels of profitability.

Paul holds an MBA from Cranfield School of Management, is a Fellow of the Institute of Travel & Tourism and Member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing.

VP, Head of Travel, APAC and Greater China, SAP Concur

Carl Jones is the Vice President, Head of Travel for SAP Concur across Asia Pacific and Greater China. In this role, Carl oversees the travel strategy, management, innovation and partnerships for SAP Concur’s travel portfolio suite including Concur Travel, Request, Locate, TripLink and TripIt. Responsible for the commercial development of SAP Concur’s travel business within the region, his charter includes building a travel management and ecosystem strategy that helps customers navigate complexities and optimise travel.

Carl is an industry veteran with extensive experience throughout Asia Pacific, having held regional leadership roles in countries including China, Singapore and Thailand. Carl brings with him over 10 years of experience in Asia within the travel industry. Prior to SAP Concur, Carl was the Vice President, Global Client Management, Global Business Consulting and General Manager of American Express Thailand, Global Business Travel.

Carl holds a Bachelor of Physics from the University of Oxford and a PhD in Applied Physics from the University of Manchester, as well as a Master's Degree in International Relations from the Nanyang Technological University of Singapore.

President and Group Head - Marketing, Thomas Cook

Abraham Alapatt is a Marketing & Brand professional with over 23 years of professional experience at senior strategic levels across the varied domains of Brand building/advertising, corporate communication, PR/media relations, internal communication, customer service & web-technology. During this period, he has worked as part of senior management teams, with 2 leading advertising agencies, an international internet solution provider start-up, a leading asset management company (mutual fund), a bank, a national insurance company (life + general) as part of its original start up team and currently leads the Innovation, Marketing and Service quality efforts of India’s largest integrated travel services Group that operates leading travel brands like Thomas Cook, SOTC, Sita, TCI, TC Travel and others across 25 countries and 4 continents.

Director,
PayPal India

Siddharth is the Director for Enterprise Business segment in India and spear heads growth initiatives for this segment.

Siddharth brings with him over two decades of rich payments experience from both within India and the globe across sectors including payments, ecommerce, telecom, mobile financial services and IT. He also had a very successful stint with Razorpay where he helped them scale from 500 to 50,000+ merchants in a short span of two years.

Siddharth has done is MBA and lives in Bangalore. Besides having a keen interest in innovations in the payments sector he is passionate about Badminton.

Chief Revenue Officer,
RateGain

Apurva Chamaria is the Chief Revenue Officer of RateGain, one of world’s leading SaaS company’s serving over 20,000+ customers in the travel and hospitality industry across 100+ Countries. In his role, he leads sales, marketing, alliances and customer success across the world.

Prior to joining RateGain, Apurva was the Global Head of Corporate Marketing for HCL Technologies, an 8 Bn US$ global IT major. Under his leadership HCL became the fastest growing brand in the Interbrand top Indian brands list for 2 years in a row (No. 17 in 2016) and was ranked at No.378 and valued at 4.4 Bn US$ in the Brand Finance Global 500 2017 league table. Between 2013-2017, HCL campaigns won 110 prestigious global and regional marketing awards. In his 12 years at HCL, he performed various leadership roles including being CEO’s Vineet Nayar's Chief of Staff and Sales Director at HCL America playing an integral role in scaling the company from 700 Mn to 8 Bn US$.

In 2016, he was awarded the “Marketer of the Year” by World Leadership Forum, “Digital Marketer of the Year” by IAMAI and “B2B Marketer of the Year” by Paul Writer. He featured in Pluralsight Digi100 List Powered by Paul Writer, the recognition for the top 100 Digital Marketers in India. In 2018, he was feted as 40 under 40 by the Campaign Asia magazine.

Prior to HCL, he was the youngest country manager at Ranbaxy Laboratories (now Sun Pharmaceuticals) leading the business in Australia & NZ. In various parts of his career, he has worked in Asia-Pacific, India, Africa, U.K. and NorthAmerica.

Apurva was recognized by The Economic Times as amongst the top 10 angel investors in India in 2018. His book “You are the key – unlocking doors through Social Selling” (Bloomsbury) hit # 2 in the Amazon India Best-Sellers list* within 20 days of being launched in Jan 2016 and is currently a best-seller on the WH Smith best-seller list as #1. It was also recognized by Prime-minister Narendra Modi for contributing to Digital India. His second book “Master Growth Hacking” (Random House Penguin) features in the trenches stories of top internet companies in India and was released in August 2018.

He is regarded as a thought-leader on “digital transformation” and is regularly quoted in publications. He completed his schooling from the prestigious Mayo College, Ajmer. He holds a double master’s in business management (from IMI) and advertising (from IIMC, JNU). He is an alumnus of the Harvard Business School, Boston and pursuing his PhD. In digital engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.

Director of Strategic Partnerships, Ovation Global DMC & Past President, SITE Global

What I have always considered to be my personal and professional mission is to inspire and engage people. For that, one needs first of all good foundations - like integrity, credibility and being authentic. Understanding the person I have in front of me and asking the question that this person is probably asking herself or himself: what’s in it for me? Above all, I like to tell powerful stories, preferably in a meaningful and memorable narrative manner. Whether I would like that person to like or love me, or a potential client to buy our destination services. That’s what makes me happy.

Connecting people and thoughts has been at the center of my career. From the hotel industry, to the convention bureau and the consulting assignments to the agency and DMC world.

My dream as a child was to travel, see the world and meet people and make it my profession.

I have done this in the corporate world but also in the world of associations with the global presidency of SITE as a major personal achievement. My goal is to keep doing this. In short term, to keep the world meeting, and bring success to those parts of the meetings industry which we cover. In a long term to share success with our company MCI Group and be a pro-active player in the development of Ovation Global DMC as a world leader in this field.

Also I want to keep on speaking at industry events and share knowledge and experiences with professionals of my and of younger generations.

Specialties: Meetings, conferences, incentives and most particular DMC (Destination Services) and destination marketing. Speaking engagements globally. Global networking and business activation.

Chief Digital Transformation Officer, Aroundtown SA

Daniel Wishnia is an advisor, speaker and Entrepreneur in the field of Digital Tech. Digital Transformation director, marketing consultant, eCommerce manager, technical director, head of experimentation and development, project manager, consultant and adviser, programming, supervision, assimilation, development of applications in different systems. Extensive experience in information and communication technology (ICT) and internet technology.

CEO,
QuadLabs

Gaurav is the CEO and Chief Technology Architect at QuadLabs. A successful entrepreneur, Gaurav has 20 years of technology leadership experience and understands the nuances of the travel domain.

In the last 2 decades, he has designed best in class systems for the who's who of the travel business. He started QuadLabs Technologies in year 2006 as a next-gen technology company with a focus on intuitive and engaging products which help businesses do better.

Gaurav was awarded the "Star Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2010" award at the India International Innovation Summit (part of World HRD Congress 2010).

QuadLabs products and services derive from his mantra - "Software for Growth".

Regional Managing Director for India and Sri Lanka, Travelport

Martin is responsible for managing the P&L and growth strategy for the Indian and Sri Lankan territories, Government Affairs strategy for Southeast Asia and leading key commercial projects in the region (for example, acting as commercial lead for the Pakistan Operator).

In his last role, Martin led the Agency Commerce sales team in Asia in expanding Travelport’s commercial presence across the region (excluding Greater China region, India and Japan), while providing expertise and support to Travelport’s travel agency subscribers and distribution partners.

Martin joined Travelport in 2009 to develop key relationships with airlines in Africa, based in Dubai. He then relocated to Nairobi, Kenya in 2011 as Regional Director. Martin was instrumental in establishing a Travelport Regional Office, and the successful acquisition of Travelport’s Kenya operation and entry into several key countries.

Martin started his career as a software developer working on projects for Thomas Cook and Lastminute.com. He has previously worked for Worldspan, Galileo and Expedia.

Strategic Partnerships,
WhatsApp

Chetan Kumar manages Strategic Partnerships at WhatsApp and is based in India. He has over 16 years of diverse and global experience in digital and financial services. He was previously a Vice-President at Saavn, the leading music service in Asia and a Director at Flipkart, the foremost e-commerce company in India. Before that, he was at Citigroup, American Express and Ernst & Young, where he worked in several roles globally in Singapore, Hong Kong, and the US. He earned a Masters in Business Administration from the Kellogg School of Management (Northwestern) and is also a Chartered Accountant (ICAI). Chetan is keenly interested in the start-up eco-system and serves as a mentor on start-up accelerators.

VP - Digital,
Indigo

Nitin brings deep experience in product design and digital customer experience, which he has acquired over the last 19 years across leading internet companies in India. He is currently leading IndiGo as VP Digital to help the group undergo Digital Transformation. He previously built Quikr.com, Yatra.com, Naukri.com, Indiatimes, Rediff and Bharti Airtel. He is an expert in crafting loveable experience for the consumers through simple and usable products. Nitin mentors many startups and has invested in a few of them, as well. He also likes to speak on Design Thinking on many public forums.

Nitin has won the 'Design-led Entrepreneurship Awards' 2017 at TiE 2017. Nitin has been awarded with Karnataka Brand Leadership Award 2017. He got recognised as top digital influencer and made it to Adobe Content 100 list for 2017. Nitin has recently also made it to Adobe Digi100 list for 2018.

General Manager,
Trip.com Japan

Country Manager - India, Sri Lanka & Maldives, Booking.com

Managing Director,
Travel Boutique Online

CEO,
Thrillophilia

Manager- Business Solutions and Quality Assurance, Copa Air

Antonio Saad is a business solutions and quality assurance manager for Copa Airlines. In this position, Antonio was appointed to lead the Hub of the Future Strategy, a program that seeks to improve the competitiveness of the hub, by modernizing the passenger experience. Prior to this, Antonio was the information and communication technologies (ICT) director for the National Assembly of Panama and a consultant for the Global Center for ICT in Parliaments, a joint initiative of the Inter Parliamentary Union (IPU) and the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. He earned his bachelor’s degree in computer science engineering from the Latin University of Panama and a master´s degree in business administration (MBA) from Eada Business School, Barcelona, where he was elected President representing the class of 2012. He attended programs on strategy at Linköping University, Sweden, on leadership at the University of Bradford, UK, on disruptive innovation at New York University, United States and infrastructure in a market economy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, United States. Antonio is a Fellow of the fourteenth class of the Central America Leadership Initiative and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.

Director,
Taiwan Tourism Bureau

Founder,
Elevated Consultancy Singapore

Nisha is a tourism practitioner, consultant, lecturer and corporate trainer with more than 20 years of extensive management experience in the Tourism and Hospitality industry. She is currently involved in regional consultancy work in the area of tourism and hospitality development in Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Vietnam and Malaysia. She has provided marketing and management consul to destination marketing teams to develop long term strategic plans in light of the global changes and challenges.

CEO,
HappyEasyGo

Boris ZHA, the founder and CEO of HappyEasyGo. Through continuous innovation in technology and service, the company promotes the reform of the travel industry, so that everyone can enjoy the lowest prices and most thoughtful services.

HappyEasyGo.com, one of India’s leading OTAs providing professional services for leisure and business travel, was founded in the year 2017 by Boris. Ever since the launch of its air ticket business in 2017, the performance has been growing by leaps and bounds, having obtained hundreds of thousands of page views per day, which ranked to the top 2 of peer industry in India. And just right behind that, Hotel business launched in September 2018 provides full service to travellers in the mode of “Air ticket + Hotel”.

Before entering the travel industry, Mr Boris devoted himself to the education industry for quite a long time. In the year 2006, Boris Joined NEWORLD Education Group as a founding member of Sakura International Japanese. During that time, he contributed the core code for the company, leading the team to establish the industry leadership. Later, Boris served as CIO of NEWORLD Education Group, which employs more than 10,000 employees.

In the year of 2012, Mr Boris made an important decision to change his career direction with great ambition and courage. He founded Lvbanx.com, now become one of the top B2B OTAs in China. Through innovations of technology and operating model, Lvbanx.com achieved a turnover of 1.2 billion RMB and an operating income of more than 10 million RMB in 2015.

President and Country Head,
Leisure, SOTC Travel

An MBA (Tourism, General Management & Marketing) from the Pondicherry University and an Executive General Management Program from Indian Institute Of Management, Bangalore (IIM-B).

Daniel has been associated with SOTC since 1998 and has worked his way up through various positions from a Frontline Sales Executive to Heading the Groups Tours Business at SOTC.

His forte lies in strategizing towards Business Growth and Building Scale thereby increasing market share and revenue. He has been responsible for building a Strong Sales organization and capitalizing & broadening the franchisee network & streamlining processes at SOTC, thus enabling the Organization to grow faster than the Market.

Managing Director,
Cineyug Entertainment

Mohomed Morani is a successful and dedicated doyen in the business of showbiz and entertainment for the last three decades. Starting his career in the family business and then introducing modern technical innovations; Mohomed has carved a veritable niche for himself.

He founded a film production company called Cineyug Entertainment. From 1989 till date, Cineyug has completed over 3000 stage shows and events across the world. His continual desire to innovate and raise the bar with each production has made Mohomed Morani a stalwart in the Entertainment industry. High on creative content and versatility, each of Cineyug’s productions have delivered on the creative and commercial front.

Mohomed has managed to raise Cineyug into a 360 degree event management firm with multiple verticals that continues to venture down diverse avenues in a rapidly expanding dynamic industry. Over the past many decades, Cineyug has gone from strength to strength charting a course all of its own setting the benchmark in whatever avenue they have ventured into. From film and TV content production to large scale domestic and international event management, from pyrotechnics to public relations, Cineyug continues to be a trailblazer in the entertainment sector. Keeping in line with their perennial emphasis on "non-conformance and proclivity to embrace a variety of diverse ventures discarding traditional straitjacketed approaches, Cineyug has recently launched its Sports Management/Marketing vertical - Cineyug Sports. Mohomed Morani’s expanded vision and great exposure took him on the path to create Bollyland, India’s first and only Bollywood dance music festival, in conjunction with MTV.

Cineyug is known for the creative take on its weddings, that are held across the globe, keeping in respect the different cultures and themes; along with uncountable number of Award functions, World tours, international concerts shows for which Mohomed Morani has won an abundance of awards.

Founder & CEO,
Wovoyage

Rashmi built the foundation of wovoyage, a women centric travel startup. Rashmi’s vision is to build an accessible & safe platform for women wanderlust across the world. With her entrepreneur prowess along with business acumen, she carved the niche for wovoyage in the travel and tour industry. This TEDx speaker has won many accolades lately for the leadership role across the industry including Women on mission award at Women on a mission summit 2019, an initiative by YourStory, Indian Women Excellence Leadership Award 2019-WIEF award. From planning to strategizing the core business, Rashmi has in cooperated tech-enabled ecosystem at wovoyage to have tech driven journey onboard.

Prior to wovoyage, she had her stint with ITC Category Champion & worked with NGOs. With the sports & communication background, she aims to promote, women in Tourism incredible India, women empowerment & women employability.

Head,
Costa Cruises India

She is the driving force behind the brand Costa Cruise. With over 2 decades of varied exposure in the travel industry, Nalini Gupta set up Lotus Destinations, the GSA of Costa Cruise in India, in December 2009. Mrs. Gupta is a firm believer in making things happen and walking the path, not too many people have treaded. This belief led to the company becoming the GSA for the European Cruise Leader, Costa Cruise in 2012.

VP-Sales,
Genting Cruise Lines

He is a hardcore travel professional with extensive Sales and Marketing experience in the industry. He specialises in strategy building, P&L's, people management, new business acquisition, media buying and PR.

Head - Travel,
Cipla

President,
Procurigence

He is a veteran strategic global sourcing consultant with proven achievement, who has created and executed comprehensive indirect sourcing plans, negotiated hundreds of supplier contracts resulting in cost savings and cost avoidance of many millions of dollars. He is well established in the travel industry and trade associations as a Subject Matter Expert in travel systems integration, presenting at conferences and corporate events on more than 30 occasions in the last five years.

Mr. Caplan is passionate about food & wine and traveling the world with his family. He speaks English and French and conducts business in both languages.