Arvind Kumar Singhal, Technopak Advisors (India), is the chairman of Technopak Advisors, a management consulting firm offering strategic advice, start up assistance, performance enhancement impetus, consumer insights and capital advisory to leading Indian and international companies. Set up in 1991 on the principle of 'concept to commissioning', Technopak is a strategic advisor to its clients during the idea phase to implementation. Technopak, with a consulting strength of 300 people, across three offices in India, has had the privilege of working with leading international and Indian companies in their sectors. Arvind is active at various professional associations and industry forums and is a regular contributor to various publications.

Frédéric Rosseneu is currently policy adviser at Freshfel Europe, the European Fresh Produce Association. The association represents the interests of importers, exporters, wholesalers and distributors, and retailers of fresh fruits and vegetables in Europe and beyond.

Frédéric closely follows EU legislation and is particularly involved in European food safety policy. He is also the coordinator of the Freshfel food quality and safety working group, a platform discussing the latest industry and legislative developments concerning food quality and safety.

Frédéric has an engineering degree from the University of Ghent in Belgium, and a masters degree in General Management from the Vlerick Management School. He has worked for the Belgian ministry of agriculture, before joining Freshfel Europe in 2006. Frédéric is also secretary-general of EUROPATAT, the European Potato Trade Association.

Raman Ahuja is vice-president and business head of fresh foods at FieldFresh Foods, a joint venture between Bharti Enterprises and Del Monte Pacific Limited.  

Before joining FieldFresh Foods, Raman worked for 14 years with Hindustan Unilever Ltd, a US$3.5bn subsidiary of Unilever. His experience at Hindustan Unilever spans the three core business verticals in India - foods, exports, home and personal care. He has been in various roles, such as general management, product management, sales, business development and operations/supply chain.

Raman is an alumnus of the INSEAD Business School's Leadership Program. He received an MBA degree from University of South Carolina Moore School of Business and an undergraduate degree in Liberal Arts from, Wabash College, Indiana, USA.

A Srinivasa Ramanujam is the business head of Adani Agrifresh, which has CA storage facilities for 18,000m tonnes of apples in Himachal Pradesh. The company also markets Indian apples under the brand name 'Farm-pik' throughout India. Since 2009, Adani Agrifresh has been importing fruits for the Indian market from various countries.

Srinivasa Ramanujam has over 28 years of professional experience in various Agri-business companies such as the National Dairy Development Board, Mahindra Shubhlabh Services, Triveni Engineering & Industries and Reliance Retail.

Bjoern Witte is the CEO of Desai Fruits & Vegetables and former head of entrepreneurial services at Pal & Partners AG in Switzerland, as well as delegate of the board of Contract Farming India AG.

He joined Pal & Partners in 2007, after seven years with Roland Berger Strategy Consultants. Managing the ramp-up of India's largest banana exporter, he has strong entrepreneurial experience in Indian agriculture and partnership farming.

Rebecca Baerveldt-Lyons is export marketing manager at the Washington Apple Commission, which conducts international marketing efforts on behalf of the 2,300 apple growers in Washington State, USA.  As export marketing manager, Rebecca is involved in the development and funding of promotional activities in over 25 international markets, including the Indian sub-continent.

Gagan Khosla is the CEO of NGK Trading Co, India's leading importer and distributor of fresh fruit. Gagan formed the company in 1999 when import of fruit was liberated in India. With over 20 years experience in the fruit trade he is now helping NGK and sister companies align themselves to India's single largest importer/distributor of fruit, with interests in growing and retail as well.

S. Venkatraman has been with Rabo India for almost eight years and heads the Food & Agribusiness Research and Advisory team. He has sound understanding of the sector dynamics across food and agribusiness sectors and specifically in processed food, fruit and vegetables, sugar, edible oils and biofuels. He has authored publications in all these sectors and spoken at various industry forums. Venkat has also advised various domestic and international corporations on entry strategy, market study and implementation assistance in the Food and Agri sector.

Prior to joining Rabo India, Venkat worked for seven years in consumer marketing.

Venkat has a B.Tech in Metallurgical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, and an MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.

Ponnu Subramanian is senior vice-president of buying (foods) and SCM for Max Hypermarkets, part of Landmark Group of Dubai. Max Hyper runs SPAR Hypermarkets in India. Ponnu had worked in the commodity trading industry for five years prior, covering oilseeds, coffee and fruit and vegetables. Before this he worked for Dairy Farm International (Foodworld) for eight years and has been with Landmark Group for six years.

Ponnu helped establish the best fresh category in Indian retail. Besides buying and merchandising, he also runs supply chain management for Max Hypermarkets, managing more than 100,000 ft² of warehouse space covering dry and fresh product handling.  Max Hyper currently operates six hypers covering four cities and hopes to be 15 hyper and 11 city strong before March 2011.

Keith Sunderlal, who has a Masters in Food and Resource Economics, from the University of Florida, USA, heads SCS Agribusiness Consultants Pvt. Ltd., a premier agribusiness consultancy firm in India.  Keith has over 19 years' experience in international agribusiness,  product marketing, trade and investment issues, perishable foods distribution, agri-project management and training. Keith has consulting experience with firms based in the US and presently manages his own consulting practice in New Delhi, India. His firm represents many US cooperator groups in the South Asian market, including the California Table Grape Commission, USA Pears and the Washington Apple Commission.

Neil Barker is managing director of BGP International Pty Ltd based in Melbourne, Australia. Neil is a third generation fruit and vegetable marketing professional.  After working with a major accounting firm for six years, Neil joined the family fruit and vegetable business involved in growing, packing, domestic wholesale, and export.  Neil has developed the business with a strong focus on international marketing of fruit and vegetables.   The company represents leading brands from Australia, California, Egypt, and China and has offices in Australia, China and India.

Thue Barfod, reefer business development manager for Maersk Line in Asia Pacific, South Asia and the Middle East, started his career in 1993 at the A. P. Moller group graduating in 1997 with a master mariner degree from the Danish Merchant Marine Academy in Svendborg. Prior to managing Maersk's Asian operations, Thue worked with the group in Chile and became part of the regional reefer management team for Latin America in Sao Paulo.

K Radhakrishnan, "Radha", joined Reliance Retail as CEO of the hypermarket business in 2006. He began by launching the Reliance Fresh format, in Nov 2006 and was involved in every aspect of the business from SAP configuration, retalix set-ups as well as distribution and logistics. He then launched the first hypermarket for reliance in Ahmedabad. Radha is the current chairman of ECR India and a member of the RAI retailers association of India.

Radha has been vice president of the Unilever-promoted Indo Nissin Foods. In 1998, he joined Foodworld Supermarkets Limited as vice president of operations. In 2000, he became the vice president of merchandising, marketing, and supply chain. He is well known in the retail industry for his practical implementation of category management, suitable to India. He also set up India's first retail consolidation centre for fruit and vegetables. He has lectured in various top universities and industry forums over the years.

Johnathan Sutton, Tesco - Asia and Oceania (Thailand), is category technical manager in Tesco Group Food Sourcing, with the responsibility to source food products within Asia and Oceania. Johnathan graduated in Agriculture from De Montford University in 1987 and joined Unilever as an agronomist. In 1998, he joined Tesco as a technical manager and in 2003 was appointed as category technical manager for fresh vegetables, accountable for the quality, safety and legality of all fresh vegetables sold in Tesco UK. In 2005, he joined Tesco European Group Sourcing team to develop the suppliers and production standards for Tesco in Central Europe. In February 2007, he moved to Bangkok to help improve quality standards for Tesco in Thailand and Malaysia. Johnathan has been influential in the development of successful direct exports of fresh produce from Asia to Tesco businesses around the world, now managing the food sourcing team based across Asia.

Pankaj Wadhwa is managing director of MWV Wadco India Pvt Ltd, a corrugated box manufacturing company based in Pune, India.

He has 25 years experience in the corrugated box industry. Since the signing of a joint venture in October 2008 with MWV Corporation USA, there has been a focus on providing value-based solutions to the fruit and vegetable industry.

Sudarshan Rao is a well credentialed Food & Agribusiness professional, with extensive international exposure, now based in Bangalore.

His 10 years experience includes working with small and medium growers, besides himself being a small grower.

Fresh produce is of special interest in its market entry, investment, sourcing and logistics aspects, both in domestic and overseas markets. He is active in contributing to shaping Food & Agribusiness and SME policies.

He is the sector head for Food & Agribusiness in Vertebrand, a management consulting firm.

Henk van Duijn, is a diplomatic counsellor at the department of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality of the Embassy of the Kingdom of The Netherlands in New Delhi. He is responsible for active trade promotion, business development and bilateral cooperation between government and agribusiness in the field of agriculture and market access in India and Sri Lanka.

Henk established a broad agriculture network in China and Hong Kong and opened two Dutch agricultural business support offices and the Dutch Potato Center in close cooperation with the Dutch agribusiness active in China.

A number of Dutch agribusiness consortia were initiated by Henk under the name 'Orange Initiatives', including Orange Pig, Orange Horse, Orange Poultry, Orange Feed and Orange Agriculture Education.

Dr. Ram Singh is assistant professor at the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, with over 11 years of teaching experience. He specialises in training and research in areas such as export import procedure, trade policy and trade logistics. He has authored a book on International Trade Operations with Excel Publications and his book on Trade Logistics with Prentice Hall of India will be published soon. He has authored 33 research publications and has done content development for trade courses for various universities in India.