Tech4Eva Roadshow - The Connection to India

Ira is the founder of Asan, a menstrual health venture with a mission to eradicate period poverty.

Ira designed and patented a new menstrual cup at the Harvard Innovation Lab that is reusable for 10 years. For every cup Asan sells, they donate one to a woman or girl in rural India who cannot access safe period care. Asan has bootstrapped to over 30,000 users and has averted more than 100,000 tonnes of landfill waste from disposable pads and tampons.

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Smita Malipatil is the CEO of Appsecco, a specialist application and cloud security company. With over 20 years of experience in technology and management spread across enterprises and start-ups in global roles, she has a deep understanding of what it takes to run successful companies in this hyper-digital world.

A successful entrepreneur in her own right, Smita was the Founder of one of the UK's leading digital production and transformation agencies operating in the UK, US and India, now acquired by a leading UK PLC in the communications sector. She is also an alumnus of Harvard Business School and a self-proclaimed geek and expert in the offshoring and outsourcing sectors.

In this era of digital innovation and remote work, Smita aspires to provide leadership to enterprises and top-quality start-ups with global ambitions on how to win in emerging economies and with global workforces. She is also passionate about mentoring start-ups with big ambitions and social entrepreneurs who are enabling real impact.

A self-made serial entrepreneur and a die-hard advocate of organizations like The Young Presidents and Entrepreneurs Organisation. I am a relentless campaigner for sustainable energy. To me, the idea of sustainable energy is more than just an eco-friendly concept. It's something that can positively impact our planet and serve humanity by using what nature gives us.

I've led The Young Presidents Organization as a Past Chapter Chair while counseling kids wanting to pursue their MBAs. Furthermore, I helped build the Duke and Fuqua School of Business brand in India and served as a member of their Regional Advisory Board.

Women's health is my latest passion, and I am dedicated to empowering women. From menstrual health all the way up to menopausal and mental health, I am working with leading practitioners in this space to ensure women's access to quality healthcare.

An avid sportsman, I today serve as the President of Rugby Karnataka with the aim of improving the health, nutrition, and life skills of my players. I have been featured by Reuters, WSJ, Times of India, Indian Express, Bloomberg, and others for my role at Soham Energy.

If you catch me outside of work, I'm a city-dweller who loves to travel and find new adventures along the way. I have found that nothing satisfies me more than meeting new people, developing new relationships, solving problems, and contributing to the growth of businesses.

Successful track record of 20 years in bringing new to the world consumer centric innovation in several categories in Philips from the most innovative OptimalTemp technology in steam irons , new platform of fully automatic coffee machines to the world of premium electrical shaving.

Mr. Tamilselvan leads the Women’s health program in India - an exciting space to work with partners and market to bring innovative solutions End2End to address the current challenges in women's health. He combines technical expertise (5 patents in his name), keen business acumen in customer need identification (Consumer marketing Director) with dynamic innovation in the consumer health segment (NBX venture leader, consumer Health) at Philips. A global Citizen with work experience across diverse geographies, Mr. Tamilsevan now leads consumer-centric innovation for the healthtech segment.

Simone has 25+ years of event management, strategy, marketing, relationship building experience. She joined the EPFL Innovation Park team in 2020 and she currently manages the Tech4Eva accelerator operations, events and community marketing and the Tech4Growth initiative.

For 16 years she built the brand/network of Tech Tour as their Managing Director leading the events team to implement 25+ tech events per year. She has a proven ability to set up well-oiled processes and leverage networks to open partnership opportunities to build a strong ecosystem by maximizing objectives and engaging all stakeholders (corporates, investors, academia, tech start-ups in all digital sectors).

Previously she worked for the University of NC in Chapel Hill, USA, implementing the new graduate student program. She also worked at SCIP as their global operations & marketing manager both in Alexandria, VA & in London, UK, where she opened and managed their branch office to establish their European presence, as well as overseeing all aspects of international conferences & tradeshows.

She holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, NC, USA. She is fluent in English, French & German.