
The Start-Up Coach
Jasper Mutsaerts is Chairman of the World Tourism Forum Lucerne Startup Innovation Camps. As The Startup Coach © he has coached around 200 founders and CEO’s of startups. He is lead trainer at ImpactHub Amsterdam, an incubator for social entrepreneurs; and Booking Booster, Booking.com’s €2 million grant fund and accelerator programme to support scale-ups in sustainable tourism. He has a background in entrepreneurship (Founder Dutch travel agency Bohemian Birds Group and co-working space ScaleHub) and consulting (McKinsey) and writes about entrepreneurship for Emerce (The Dutch Wired).

Head – Tourism, Tata Trusts
MMridula leads Tata Trusts’ Tourism vertical. She is ’97 batch TAS officer, a graduate from IIM Lucknow and an architect by training. She shifted to the development sector 2 years back after spending 19 years with the Taj Group, her last stint being as head of the Taj Safaris business vertical that went on to win numerous national and international awards. This experience of working with a predominantly tribal workforce that consistently won top honours in guest delight, motivated her to explore tourism’s role as a transformational force in the remote parts of the country. The Tata Trusts Tourism portfolio is currently incubating models focused around responsible and sustainable practices, distributed benefits within the communities with balancing of socio-ecological imperatives in a nurturing eco-system.

CEO & Founder, Aptamind Partners
Aradhana Khowala is CEO & Founder and of Aptamind Partners a strategic hospitality and tourism consulting company advising tourism leaders. She is a passionate advocate for women in leadership and has over 17 years of experience across over 60 countries. In 2014, she was chosen and featured as one of the 50 most influential next generation leaders who will likely define the future of the hospitality industry by Swiss Economic magazine Bilan. She is a regular speaker, moderator and presenter at Tourism Summits and has interviewed heads of state, tourism ministers and CEO’s globally. Aradhana has an MBA from Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne and also read at the Cornell University in New York. She guest-lectures on Tourism and Entrepreneurship at different Universities.

Associate, Martix Partners India
Ankush was born and brought up in Hisar- a small city in Haryana. While pursuing his B.Tech. and M.Tech. in Electrical Engineering from IIT Delhi, he interned with Ernst & Young, DMI Finance and Ecole Centrale Paris. He started his career with Deutsche Bank as an analyst where he developed risk reporting tools for the UK interest rates market. Inspired by Alibaba’s IPO and the ‘Make in India’ campaign in 2014, he founded EximBook, a startup aimed at helping small manufacturers of India sell their goods in international markets. Later, he founded DayBox, a startup focused on streamlining the fruits and vegetable supply chain from farms to restaurants and retailers. He is now looking to help founders by leveraging his network and sharing the experiences he gained, having been a founder himself.

Founder, Global Himalayan Expedition
Paras Loomba is the founder of GHE and has lead over 35 expeditions to provide clean energy and education access to remote off-grid communities. Paras is inspired by innovative technologies, which he applies to drive sustainable tourism businesses. He is working on creating tourism based local entrepreneurial models in these areas that would eventually providing stimulus to local economy, reducing local emigration and preserving age old cultural Himalayan heritage. His work was featured by National Geographic as one of the breakthrough technologies and he has also been highlighted by World Economic Forum. Paras is also the WTFL Start-Up Innovation Camp 2017 winner and current finalist for World Travel and Tourism awards 2018 and Indian Responsible Awards 2018.