Transport Payments South Asia 2020

Dr Christopher Querée has over forty years’ consulting experience in transport ticketing, payment and information services. He is an expert consultant, working on a wide range of EMV, smartcard and barcode ticketing projects in Australia, Thailand, Belgium, France, Hungary, Malta and the Philippines as well as in the UK. Types of project include account-based smartcard and contactless payment ticketing schemes, mobile and barcode ticketing including HCE apps, service management, ticketing standards management and European rail legislation. He is a member of the CEN and ISO ITS technical committees dealing with transport ticketing.
He worked at RSP for several years on rail ticketing, new technologies and service management. Prior to that, he was a consultant at Detica, MVA/Systra and TPA. He worked on passenger transport and highway information and payment systems in the UK and worldwide, including two years working in Hong Kong.

Ms. D. Thara has been working as an IAS Officer since 1995. She has been working in the State of Gujarat since 1997 and has a versatile experience in various cities of Gujarat such as Ahmedabad, Kheda, Rajkot, Vadodara and Surendranagar in various Departments. She has worked as a District Development Officer in the cities of Vadodara and Surendranagar for a period of 2 years in Land Revenue Management and District Administration and Development Administration. She also has experience as a Collector in Land Revenue Management & District Administration Departments in the cities of Kheda for a period of 1 year and Ahmedabad for a period of 3 years.

Shri Jaideep is currently OSD (Urban Transport) & Ex-officio Joint Secretary in Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Government of India. Project experience includes Augmentation and increase in frequency of train by mega acquisition planning of EMU/ MEMU stock, which reduced overcrowding of commuter trains; Mumbai Urban Transport Project-I; Mumbai Urban Transport Project-II; Conversion of Mumbai Suburban to 25 kV AC system from 1500 VDC; etc.

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.

Mr. Prashant Rao is the Director (System, Electrical & Rolling Stock) of Gujarat Metro Rail Corporation (GMRC). He has over 27 years’ experience in Project Management, Long Distance Railway & Metro Rail Projects, Engineering Design, System Integration, Operations and Contract Management. Mr. Rao has a Bachelors in Engineering & PGDBA (Operations) and is a Member of International Organizations: IEEE(US), IRSE(UK), UITP.

Nalin has a rich experience of 18+ years on global assignments covering Technology, Telecom & Payments domain. He has spearheaded the launch of many initiatives in the telecom and payments business and incubated new age payment solutions with organizations like Airtel, MasterCard and NPCI. He has also been an advisor to multiple start-ups for their go-to-market strategy.

Angaj Bhandari has over fifteen years’ experience within the secure transactions industry, with a focus on payment processing and financial technology solutions across transport, payments and mobility ecosystems. In his current role, Angaj is responsible for driving FIME’s regional business teams in India and South Asia to support customers through various digital transformation implementation challenges, including integrating open-loop EMV® payment acceptance and account-based ticketing. Prior to joining FIME, Angaj played a central role in business leadership and expansion projects across the payments, banking, transport and telecoms industry including Euronet, Nokia, Paycraft Solutions, Royal Bank of Scotland and Airtel.

Sujith brings 15+ years of management consulting experience with expertise in the areas of urban mobility, digital payments and technology-led transformations in public sector. He was formerly the Chief Business Officer of Mobike India, a subsidiary of one of the largest bike sharing companies in the world. He also designed the technology and business model for Asia’s first open loop payment system for mass transit ticketing at Kochi Metro, that formed the genesis for India’s National Common Mobility Card specifications and the program titled “One Nation, One Card” by the Indian government.

Vivek has more than 23 years of experience in designing smart mobility systems globally including Intelligent Transit Management System, Intelligent Traffic Management, Transport Operations Planning & Management, Revenue management & Transit Business intelligence. Vivek works closely with government institutions and private mobility service providers to formulate policies and design for Smart mobility Systems including focus on AI in Transport. Vivek leads Smart Mobility Practice for PWC in India, he is immediate past chairman of GESIA and is also key member of various industry organizations.

Santhosh is responsible to drive Mastercard’s strategic initiatives including Aadhaar Services, Urban Mobility Solutions, Project Kirana & Mastercard Farmer Network (MFN) in the region. Prior to this, Santosh was the Country Manager, Sri Lanka and Maldives for Mastercard. He has a successful track record of building a strong recall for Mastercard’s franchise in the Island region. He has worked very closely with issuers, acquirers, merchants and government in both these countries and helped grow Mastercard’s market share and revenue. Before moving to Sri Lanka, Santosh managed key accounts for Mastercard in North & East India. He had also executed the Tel-Sell program in India to sign up non-Mastercard customers and drive business for smaller customers. Santosh has won government mandates in tourism, fisheries and recently got Sri Lanka on the Priceless Cities radar. He was also a pioneer in helping launch the Maldives Passport Biometric Debit Card.

Amitabh Khanna is currently, leading Product (core & digital) implementation initiatives as Vice President, Delivery, South Asia – Mastercard. He has worked to revolutionize Business Operations & Delivery with key focus on Channel Development for on-boarding Customers & Merchants, financial operations, customer engagement & support for seamless Service delivery. Amitabh has worked with companies namely Reliance India Limited, NOKIA, ABN AMRO Bank, Convergys India Services and GE Capital International Services, etc. He has spent substantial time leading teams managing projects for startups & large MNC’s.

Puneet is specialised with Market research and business development and has worked with SC SOFT from its inception into Automatic Fare collection system. He is responsible for client and partner management and also looks into the selection of major vendors for the company. He plays a supporting role in operations and project finance and plays a key role in new market development in SC SOFT.

Aude de Vassart is director of the Transport Business Line at IDEMIA, where she is responsible for driving the business strategy worldwide. Prior to this position, Aude held various roles in marketing and management at SuperH, Texas Instruments and Oberthur Technologies. Aude has 19 years’ experience in the telecoms and payment cards industry and has supervised numerous multinational teams and delivered complex leading-edge projects. Aude is also a Board Director of the OSPT Alliance since 2018.

Rakesh has around 12 years of experience in Business Development, Product & Portfolio Management, Business Consultancy and Project Management. He has hands on experience in Transit industry developing new products, devising go to market strategy and managing the business. Currently, he is leading the market development for transit business of PhonePe. In his previous roles, he has driven the launch of various transit payment solutions including Hybrid Debit & Credit Cards, Mobile Ticketing and National Common Mobility Cards with organizations like ICICI Bank, Reliance JioMoney and NPCI.

Ajesh has been an integral part of major global semiconductor companies in India for over 25 years. Ajesh is currently heading the Sales and Marketing of NXP’s Connectivity and Security (Payment and Identification) Business for the South West Asia Region and is based out of India. His career graph spans from R&D, Product Design to Product Marketing, Sales and then to the Management Position in the technology domain. He belongs to New Delhi and did his Engineering and Masters from BITS, Pilani in 1987.

Mahesh has a large experience in contactless smartcard products and services. He has a background in M.sc(Mathematics) and has worked in the smartcard industry for over 15 years. Mahesh is located in Mumbai working for Siepmann’s Card Systems, a Linxens Company.

Mick Spiers has a vision of a world where people can move freely around cities without congestion; without traffic and without stress. He is passionate about the Future of Mobility and about applying advanced technology to get our cities moving again without the need for additional infrastructure. He is the General Manager of Asia for Cubic Transportation Systems and has been in the Transportation industry for more than 15 years with a strong track record of delivering technology projects to cities around the region.