Abhishek Kant
(Microsoft India)

Abhishek is the MVP Lead for India. He is responsible for identifying and managing community advocates in India. He is passionate about empowering and enabling the communities.

He has done his B.E. in Chemical Engg. and MBA from NMIMS, Mumbai. He is a Microsoft Certified Application Developer (MCAD) Charter Member on the .NET platform. He has worked with BizTalk Server 2004 and the Solution Accelerators team.

He likes to ponder on business issues as much as the technical intricacies.

Anand M
(Microsoft Most Valuable Professional)

Anand M, a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP), works as a Solutions Architect at Polaris' .NET Center of Excellence. He is a regular speaker on .NET and related technologies in the local user group and other technology events. He has been an active member of the .NET community in Chennai and other parts of Tamil Nadu. He writes about .NET and related technologies in his blog at http://www.dotnetindia.com

Ashwani Sharma
(Microsoft India)

My love for computers started in the good ol' days of IBM PC-XT/AT computers. Over the years i've been developing in Basic, Pascal, C, C++ and many more environments/languages right up to the brave new world of C# and .NET

I've had professional experience on both Windows and Unix in the areas of Network Management and Systems Programming. I was on the Windows Services for Unix product team at Microsoft, Hyderabad.

After an MBA from IIM Indore, I'm currently the Academic Developer Evangelist in Microsoft, India - responsible for activities in North India. My current interests lie in finding out how traditional computer science topics can be taught using .NET.

In my free time (which is rare) i like playing drums and badminton.

Akila Manian
(Microsoft Most Valuable Professional)

Akila has an experience of about 8 years in the IT Developer Training Industry. She has imparted training to various companies, like Infosys, Accenture, Satyam, HCL, Mastek and other Microsoft partners. Akila has been working on .NET platform since its beta days and has been a Microsoft MVP in .NET for the last 2 years. She has been an active speaker in various Microsoft events in India like MSDN and Tech Ed. She is also an active INETA Volunteer. You can contact her at ManianAkila@rediffmail.com

Deepak Gulati
(Microsoft India)

Deepak works as a Breadth ISV Developer Evangelist at Microsoft. In his current role he works with Software Vendors in helping them build better products on Microsoft’s platform. He loves programming and is passionate about software localization and globalization issues.

Gaurav Khanna
(Microsoft India)

Gaurav works as a Communities Developer Evangelist at Microsoft. He owns the developer events, like TechED, MSDN, DevDays, that Microsoft executes in India, in addition to working with developer communities across the country to help them understand and use Microsoft technologies better and be more productive. Before joining Microsoft, Gaurav worked with Hewlett Packard as a Software Engineer in the Telecom BU and was a MVP for over 2 years. He speaks at various Microsoft events, runs www.wintoolzone.com and occasionally writes for IT publications in the country.

Govind Kanshi
(Microsoft India)

Govind has a decade of experience in designing and delivering solutions in Travel and Finance industry. His interests lie in helping clients design scalable, available solutions. He is passionate about making technology easy to understand and work on. He used to worked with SQL Server team in the integration team.

Janakiram MSV
(Microsoft India)

Janakiram MSV is a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft India. He started his career with FoxPro development and subsequently moved to Visual Basic and the .NET platforms. He has been a trainer, project leader and consultant. He joined Microsoft India as a Technical Specialist where he worked with the corporate and enterprise customers. In his current capacity, he works closely with the academic communities in India, evangelizing and sharing the vision on next generation technologies from Microsoft. He is a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer (MCSD) and Microsoft Certified Application Developer (MCAD) Charter Member on the .NET platform. Janakiram is passionate about XML Web Services and Mobile Computing. In his free time, he enjoys making wide range of technologies interoperate with each other.

Nauzad Kapadia
(Microsoft Most Valuable Professional)

Nauzad Kapadia started programming when he was 17, and since the last 10 years has progressed from FoxBase to .NET. He runs a company called Quartz Systems which is mostly involved in high-end corporate trainings and consulting for companies like Citibank, Rediff, Boston Scientific, Datamatics, Tata Interactive etc. Although he has done quite a bit of Java and Linux, it's really VB that gets him in the groove. Nauzad also leads the academic initiatives of INETA (International .NET Association) for the Asia Pacific region. He is highly excited by bikes, rock music, programming and pizzas.... not necessarily in that order!

Praveen Srivatsa
(Microsoft Regional Director)

Praveen Srivatsa has over 7 years of experience delivering solutions on Microsoft platforms. A graduate from REC Surathkal, Praveen has worked with clients in Europe, North America and East Asia. He has been working in the fields of Investment Banking and in the Retail segment. He is currently developing a framework solution for software systems. He is also the Regional Director, MSDN, Bangalore.

Rajiv Sodhi
(Microsoft India)

Rajiv is part of the .NET evangelism group at Microsoft focused on driving .NET technologies amongst clients and developers. He has been involved in the software industry for 7 years, designing, developing and implementing web based solutions for various clients. Prior to joining Microsoft, Rajiv was part of the .NET Framework team at Sapient Corporation.

Rajiv has a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science Engineering from Pune University and an MBA diploma in finance from IIPM, Delhi

Sanjay Shetty
(Microsoft Regional Director)

Sanjay Shetty is currently the founder, CEO of Wireless Strategist and also one of the founding directors of Idea Lake Information Technologies Pvt. Ltd. He has earlier been the Chief Executive officer and one of the founding directors of DBS Internet Services. He also had the added responsibility of heading the technical operations of the company.

Mr. Shetty has been a regular speaker at various industry forums across India on topics ranging from Internet enabling of business, to wireless strategies etc. He has been speaking at conferences ranging from India Internet World, at the IIT and various educational institutes, to Microsoft Developer Days, which he incidentally has been hosting for the past 4 years. He is the Microsoft Regional Director (West Zone) since 1997, for his contribution in implementing breakthrough solutions using Microsoft Technologies. He has also been awarded the Regional Director of the month for October 1999 worldwide by Microsoft.

Prior to this Mr. Shetty was Director of Web Solutions in partnership with other professionals of the industry, the company that later merged with the DBS Group to form DBS Internet Services. For two years preceding this Mr. Shetty was proprietor of Nirvana that specialized in database applications. Mr. Shetty is 29 years old. He pursued a degree in Computer engineering at Ramrao Adik Institute of Technology in Mumbai and later lectured at the same institution on RDBMS technologies.

TNC Venkatarangan
(Microsoft Regional Director)

Venkatarangan TNC is the Chairman and Managing Director of Vishwak Solutions which focuses on Portal Management & .NET application development and Migration solutions worldwide. Venkat believes in giving back to the community what he has received. Helping him to achieve this is his nomination to the position of Microsoft Regional Director, Chennai in the year 1999. In his capacity as Regional Director he conducts intensive workshops & seminars for companies on request and for developer community across the country propagating Microsoft technologies. He has been passionately holding this position till date by actively contributing to the community and to enterprises in India.

Venkat is also Passionate about Tamil language development using Unicode & providing Indian language support in Windows & Web Applications. He formalizes the activity by being in the Executive Council of International Forum for Information Technology in Tamil (INFITT).

Vinod Unny
(Microsoft Regional Director)

Vinod Unny is the Managing Director and Technology Consultant for Enterprise InfoTech - a IT company based in New Delhi. He is also the Microsoft Regional Director for the North India. Vinod is also a proficient speaker and writer, whose articles regularly appear in India's leading computer technology magazine - PCQuest (www.pcquest.com).