Transport Payments South Asia 2018

Michael is an entrepreneurial and globally experienced financial services/information technology professional who has specialised in card and payment products and technologies for financial institutions, retailers / wholesalers, telecommunications carriers / MNO's, transport / transit organisations and governments for over 25 years.

Dave Lunt is the Head of Delivery of littlepay, and is responsible for major integrations and adoption of new technologies to the littlepay payments platform. Prior to joining littlepay Dave was Visa’s Technical lead on the Transport of London smart ticketing project, and advised Discover on their global Mass Transit solutions. His current role covers Card Scheme and PCI-DSS compliance, as well as industry requirements. Dave is globally recognized as a leader in payment technologies; combining a deep understanding of the payments industry with innovative technical expertise. Over his career he has advised numerous FinTech startups, product vendors, high street banks, and card payment brands on how to adapt and adopt emerging payment technologies.

Manoj Sugathan is a Senior Director for Chip, Contactless and Transit Programs at Visa Inc., based in Singapore and covers markets in Asia Pacific. In this role, he has overseen the implementation of successful Visa payWave programs across retail and transit segments in over two dozen countries. He has been with Visa since 2002 and prior to his current role he was responsible for EMV Chip migration programs in various Asia Pacific countries. Prior to joining Visa, Sugathan ran the Asia Pacific Application Development Centre at Verifone, based in Singapore.

Matt Blanks is Head of Urban Mobility within Mastercard's Smart Cities team. In his role, Matt is responsible for driving Mastercard's global partnerships with technology companies and transit operators - providing consistent, efficient and globally interoperable transit fare payment solutions that address the challenges cities face and deliver convenience for citizens.

Nalin is a Product & Business Strategy Professional with a rich experience of 17+ years on global assignments covering Technology, Telecom & Payments domain. He has spearheaded the launch of many initiatives in the telecom business and incubated new age payment solutions with organizations like Airtel, MasterCard and NPCI. He has also been an advisor to multiple startups for their go-to-market strategy. Presently he is serving as Vice President at National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). Under his leadership, NPCI was able to swiftly launch the prestigious Bharat Bill Payment System (BBPS) platform for Reserve Bank of India (RBI). He currently heads the RuPay Contactless program and spearheads NPCI’s strategy to spread it across variety of market segments. Nalin is a Communications engineer from University of Pune and holds a Master’s degree in Diploma (Strategy) in Business Management from FORE, Delhi.

Mr. Prashant Rao is the Executive Director for Signal and Telecommunications/Project (I) at the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation Ltd (DMRC). He has over 27 years’ experience in Project Management, Long Distance Railway & Metro Rail Projects, Engineering Design, System Integration, Operations and Contract Management. A qualified professional Engineer (IRSSE), he joined the DMRC in 1998 where he focused on Signaling, Telecommunication & Ticketing Systems, and has been instrumental in conceptualizing & implementing many of these in the DMRC. Mr. Rao has a Bachelors in Engineering & PGDBA (Operations) and is a Member of International Organizations: IEEE(US), IRSE(UK), UITP. 

As a Director for Business Development within the Chip Card and Security Division of Infineon Technologies AG, Ursula Schilling is responsible for payment business development activities within Infineon. Ursula handles the strategic setup and project management with regard to payment applications. She has more than 18 years of experience in the smart card industry including business development activities for prepaid telecom business & marketing activities for various applications. Ursula previously held a marketing position within Wolford AG where she was responsible for key accounts and worked for 4 years for British Airways. Ursula completed her studies at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich with a Masters in Economics.

Mick is the head of Asia Pacific for the Revenue Collection Systems (RCS) business of Thales. Thales’ RCS business implements a full portfolio of solutions covering Automated Fare Collection, Road Tolling, Car Park Revenue Management and Fleet Management. In previous roles Mick has been the head of Thales’ transport business in Australia and New Zealand and was the Global Project Director of the very successful Auckland Integrated Ticketing system known as the HOP card. Mick is very passionate about driving Public Transport uptake and making it more accessible to all, particular as urbanisation continues to increase congestion in our cities. Mick is a technologist at heart and evangelises the adoption of new and innovative technology in the public transport sector including the next generation of automated fare collection systems.

Silvester Prakasam is the Senior Advisor of Fare System at the Land Transport Authority of Singapore. Since 1989, the Fare System team under his leadership has undertaken several ticketing initiatives, providing a common fare infrastructure for public transport in Singapore. In 2002 his team implemented a contactless smart card (CSC) system at a total cost of US$200m. A second generation CSC known as Symphony for ePayment (SeP) was launched in January 2009. His team went on to introduce Distance Fares (DF) in July 2010. Currently his team is involved in new initiatives such as NFC, Account-Based Ticketing and refurbishment of existing assets.

Klaus Orthofer is Senior Sales Executive PAYMENT at FEIG ELECTRONIC and responsible for global projects using cVEND, FEIG´s contactless payment terminal product family. He has been active in the payment markets for more than 18 years and gained diverse experiences in several top level positions in different companies like Verifone / Hypercom / Thales e-Transactions and Deutsche Telecom AG. Working in the fields of Sales- and Product Management or Business Development, Mr. Orthofer has always been focused on integration of Electronic Payment Terminals for Self-Service solutions, especially Public Transport and Parking.

Praveen Sachwani, Director – Engineering at Verifone India Technology, runs the regional development center for Asia Pacific. Praveen has been in payments industry for last 15 years. He has been involved in development of payment acceptance solutions through the evolution of payment technologies from Magnetic stripe through to Contactless and now alternate payments like UPI and Bharat QR. His recent contributions have been the implementation of common mobility specifications on payment acceptance devices for various transit operators across the country - BMTC in Bangalore, Kochi Metro, BRTS and AMTS in Ahmedabad, BRTS and City buses in Surat are the Live instances.

Dr.Surendrakumar Bagde has spent more than 23 years in the Indian Administrative Service. In his extensive career he has promoted domestic & foreign direct investment in various sectors in the State of Maharashtra and was involved in the formulation of State’s policies for Information Technology and Biotechnology sectors during his stint at Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation. While working in the Government of India, Dr. Bagde has dealt with the formulation of national strategy on bilateral economic cooperation with countries like USA, Japan and Canada. He also negotiated financing of development projects with Government of Japan for projects in the infrastructure, water supply and power sectors which included Western Dedicated Freight Corridor project.

Aneesh Chinubhai is Chief Technology Officer at AMNEX Infotechnologies Pvt. Ltd. He has been involved in a number of ITS and AFC projects in cities including Navi Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Indore, etc. He currently oversees the development of AVL and AFC software. He holds a PhD and Master’s degrees from The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (USA) and BITS, Pilani.

Manish Kumar is Head of the IT Department at Delhi Integrated Multi Modal Systems (DIMTS). He has 23 years of global IT experience in designing, developing, implementing and operating many transformational large scale programs in leadership roles across technologies and business domains.  At DIMTS he leads the development, implementation and operations of technology solutions across urban public service vehicle tracking, electronic ticketing & fare collection, parking, tolling, smart common mobility cards, bus fleet management, e-governance, smart phone commuter applications and public transit data analytics & IoT. Prior to joining DIMTS, Manish has worked in various IT leadership roles in Tesco, Accenture and HCL Technologies. Manish is a graduate of Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, India.

Anuj Goel is the Head for Automatic Fare Collection (AFC -General Manager) department in Mumbai Metro One Pvt. Ltd. He has a rich experience of 15+ years into designing, integration and implementation of Hardware & Software of various AFC systems. Mr. Goel is a Computer Science Engineer by passion with an MBA in Operation to excel in his passion. He joined Mumbai Metro One as an Engineer and grew up to be a General Manager. In the last 3 years he has taken various initiatives for opening new payment gateways like PayTm, Ridler etc, Designed and implemented QR Code based mobile Ticketing system for Mumbai Metro One. Apart from payment solutions he also expertise’s in operational cost reduction, AFC equipment planning and passenger flow modeling.

Mr. V Ponnuraj is currently the managing director of Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Corporation. Prior to this appointment he was serving as the secretary to government of Karnataka in the Urban Development department. Mr. Ponnuraj has also served as the Managing Director of Karnataka Urban Infrastructure Development and Finance Corporation Ltd. (KUIDFCL) on Thursday after a brief stint as private secretary to Union Law and Justice Minister D V Sadananda Gowda. He has also served as the Collector of Udipi, Dakshin Kannada District. He is an IAS of 2000 batch.

Ravi Jain is the Director of Paycraft Solutions which he co-founded in 2013 as a payment solutions provider to banks, global consulting companies, transit operators, payment processors, card and device manufacturers. Previously Ravi consulted for financial institutions and other corporates in the areas of cards and payments and worked on innovative solutions in the transit industry, on mergers and acquisitions strategy, integration strategy, rationalization programs and EMV strategy and roadmaps. Prior to this he spent 6 years in retail banking in roles ranging from software development to business analysis. He has a Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics.