Manorama Online Techspectations 2023 to begin at 10 am

Kochi: The fifth edition of Techspectations, Manorama Online’s flagship digital summit, will begin at 10 am today.

The theme of the event is ‘MO@25: Absorb, Evolve & Thrive in New Digital Order’. This year’s Techspectations marks the 25th-anniversary celebrations of Manorama Online.

Union Minister of State for Electronics & Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar will deliver the keynote address. The minister will speak on ‘Define the new digital order from government’s perspective’.

Global tech leaders, investors, domain experts and artists, among others, will take part in the summit which will see deliberations on a wide variety of topics such as startups, artificial intelligence, luxury brands, OTT and cyber security in the finance sector. Jain Online is the presenting partner of the programme.

There are five panel discussions and one fireside chat lined up. The first will be on ‘Startups: Building from Kerala’. Binu Jacob, MD & CEO, Experion Technologies; Jithu Sukumaran Nair, CEO, VAAN Mobility; Jofin Joseph, founder & CEO, Totto Learning; Sreejith Sreekumar, founder & CEO, Giacca & Abito Sartoriale Fashion; and Vishal Chenraj, co-founder, USDC will share their experiences and insights at the session.

A discussion on ‘Artificial Intelligence and Business Intelligence’ is among the most exciting topics to be covered at the event. Gautam Mehra, founder & CEO, ProfitWheel; Praveen Jayakumar, senior manager, Amazon Web Services; Soumitra Dhankar, head of solution consulting, Adobe India; and Subram Natarajan, director of customer engineering, Google Cloud will take part in the session.

The two panel discussions will be followed by a Fireside Chat on ‘Building Luxury Brands from India’. Nirupesh Joshi and Mercy Amalraj, founders of Bangalore Watch Company, will interact with Preetika Mathew, editor-in-charge, WatchTime India at the session.

Then there will be a panel discussion on the intriguing topic – ‘Future of News’. The session will see an insightful exchange of ideas by reputed journalists. Binoy Prabhakar, executive editor, Moneycontrol; Durga Raghunath, head of news partnerships, Google India; Naresh Fernandes, editor, Scroll.in; and L V Navaneeth, CEO, The Hindu, are the panellists.

Veterans in the banking and financial sectors will come together for a discussion on ‘Cyber & Data Security for BFSI’. A Balakrishnan, executive director, Geojit Financial Services; Arvind Ganesan, business head, Akamai Technologies; Babu Thomas, senior vice president & head-IT, Federal Bank; G Venkataraman, chief information security officer, ESAF Small Finance Bank; and Shibu K Thomas, joint general manager & chief information security officer, South Indian Bank will speak at the session.

The final session will see a group of celebrities discussing the ‘Blurring Lines of Regional Entertainment’. Screenwriter and director Shankar Ramakrishnan, cinematographer-director Santosh Sivan, Malayalam director Ratheesh Balakrishnan Poduval, Prithviraj Productions co-founder Supriya Menon, and actress Mamta Mohandas will be joined by Saugata Mukherjee, head of content, Sony LIV for the discussion.

Kiruba Shankar, CEO, Business Blogging Private Limited, will anchor the sessions. Mariam Mammen Mathew, CEO, Manorama Online and Dr Tom Joseph, director-New Initiatives, Jain Deemed-to-be University will also address the gathering.