India Beachhead Advisory Board

Vijay Crishna

Chair

Vijay M. Crishna is the Executive Director of Lawkim Motors Group (Godrej & Boyce Mfg. Co. Ltd.).
 
A graduate in economics from St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi, he handled several major brands, before becoming CEO of Lawkim Ltd taken over by M/s. Godrej in 1977. 
 
In 1991, he formed a joint venture company - Statomat Special Machines, India with Statomat of Germany, Francis Klein, and Lawkim, for manufacturing high precision toolings and machines for motor production.
 
In 1993, he was appointed to the Board of Directors of Godrej-GE Appliances. In 2003, having extended Lawkim’s activities to light engineering and IT enabled services he bought out their American partner’s call centre business in the US Travel vertical.
 
Lawkim has become Lawkim Motors Group after being amalgamated into Godrej & Boyce Mfg. Co. Ltd., with effect from 1 October 2008.
 
He serves on the Board of Trustees of the Bombay Scottish Orphanage Society, and is also a member of the Advisory Board of the Institute for Technology Management, Navi Mumbai. He also serves as an advisor on the President’s International Advisory Board of Colorado College, the United States.

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Peter T Hassan

Peter is the CEO of Peter Hassan Associates Private Limited, consultants for Governmental relations and corporate affairs to prestigious multinational and Indian companies.
 
Peter has recently been appointed as Advisor on strategy and planning to Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FICCI). 
 
FICCI is a non-government, not-for-profit organisation which is the largest and oldest apex business organisation in India.
 
It’s members include private as well as public sectors, including SMEs and MNCs and has an indirect membership of over 83,000 companies from regional chamber of commerce.
 
Peter is also the Hon. Consul for the Russian Federation in Hyderabad, the first such position in Andhra Pradesh and for the Russian Federation in India. 
 
Peter has an MA in English and an undergraduate degree in Management, and brings more than 30 years experience in corporate and government affairs to his Beachheads role.

Ashish Hemrajani

Entreprenuer Ashish Hemrajani is the founder and CEO of Bigtree Entertainment and has a Masters in Business Administration from Mumbai University.
 
Ashish started his career in 1997 at advertising agency J Walter Thompson (JWT) where he worked for two years with brands such as Hindustan Petroleum and Ceat Tyres.
 
In 1999, Ashish set up Big Tree Entertainment with a clear focus of providing cutting edge digital solutions to the entertainment industry. Within a decade, Big Tree Entertainment’s online ticketing portal Bookmyshow.com expanded to hold 90 percent market share in India’s online entertainment ticketing space.
 
Bookmyshow.com sells over 750,000 tickets each month and was recently voted India’s most valued brand in the digital commerce space by Brand Equity.
 
Apart from being a young entrepreneur, Ashish is also a competitive sailor.
 
Watch a video of Ashish Hemrajani discussing the common misconceptions between India and New Zealand, and the benefits of joining Beachheads.

Pradip Madhavji

Pradip Madhavji has considerable experience and expertise in travel and tourism, having joined Thomas Cook in 1977. He was the first Indian to lead the company’s operations in India and was the Chairman and Managing Director of the Indian subsidiary for over two decades.
 
Prior to joining Thomas Cook, Pradip worked for Dena Bank where he was in charge of the bank’s entire foreign exchange operations at the time of his departure.
 
Pradip sits on the Boards of a number of leading companies, is a member of the Paris based International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) in their Air Transport Committee and the Council for Transport & Logistics, is a president or past president of several professional travel trade and tourism associations and is the recipient of the Kutcha-Ratna, the highest honour bestowed by the community for his leadership qualities and his contribution to the tourism industry.
 
In 2002, Pradip was appointed the New Zealand Honorary Consul based in Mumbai.
 
Read Q&As with Pradip Madhavji

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Zia Mody

Zia Mody is the Founder and Senior Partner of AZB & Partners and one of India’s foremost corporate attorneys. After passing her law degree at the University of Cambridge in 1978 she enrolled as an advocate with the Bar Council of Maharashtra and Goa in 1978. She did her LLM at Harvard Law School and was admitted to the New York State Bar in 1980.
 
After five years as a corporate associate at Baker & McKenzie, New York, Zia established the Chambers of Zia Mody, 1984 in India. In 2002, she teamed up with Bahram N. Vakil to form CZB & Partners. Ajay Bahl & Co. then merged with CZB & Partners to become AZB & Partners in 2004. The firm has offices throughout India and an integrated team of approximately 225 legal professionals.
 
Zia is a non-executive director of the HSBC, Hong Kong. She is also a vice president and member of the London Court of Arbitration (LCIA) and a member of the CII National Council on Corporate Governance and Regulatory Framework, the CII Committee on Capital Markets, the CII Committee on Financial Services, the CII Committee on Legal Services and the CII Committee on Mutual Funds.
 
The recipient of many awards,  Zia was voted  “Business Woman of the Year, 2010” by the Economic Times,  which also voted her  one of the 15 most powerful Indian women leaders in 2010. Asia Law Profile hailed her as one of ‘The Leading Lawyers - India’ in the fields of Mergers & Acquisitions, General Corporate Practice, Dispute Resolution, Corporate Governance and Capital Markets and Corporate Finance.

R Ramanan

Ramanan is the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of CMC Limited a subsidiary of TCS (Tata Consultancy Services). TCS is one of the world’s leading IT companies and part of the prestigious Tata Group.
 
He has been instrumental in overseeing the transformation of CMC Limited from a public sector government-owned organisation to a global company and has played an important role in spurring computerisation of various business processes in India using indigenous technology.
 
He has led CMC’s focus on large national projects in the areas of education, creating jobs, major e-governance initiatives, the Indian census, government services and defence projects enabling the growth of nationwide infrastructure.
 
Ramanan is the Chairman of CMC Americas Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of CMC in the United States. He is also on the board as Director of E2E Serwiz Solutions Limited, a prestigious BPO (also a Tata Enterprise) based out of Pune, India.
 
He has been responsible for a number of strategic business development initiatives in the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region including Australia, New Zealand and China. He also plays a key role in the Strategy Group of TCS.
He holds a B. Tech in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Mumbai and has received national awards for his outstanding achievements and services to the nation.