Jayant Sinha – Keynote Speaker

Mr. Jayant Sinha is the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Member of India’s National Parliament from Hazaribagh, Jharkhand. He won his seat by a wide margin of about 160,000 votes in May 2014 and represents a constituency of 2.5 million people. He has been nominated by the BJP to serve on key Parliamentary Committees including the Public Accounts Committee, the Standing Committee on Finance, and the Consultative Committee on Communications and Information Technology. He has also been selected by the Speaker of India’s Parliament to represent the Asia-Pacific Group on the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s Sub Committee on Sustainable Development, Finance, and Trade. Additionally, Shri Sinha is one of the spokespersons for the BJP on economic and business topics.

Prior to his career in public service, Mr. Sinha was Partner at Omidyar Network (ON) and the Managing Director of Omidyar Network India Advisors, where he led overall investment strategy and operations in India. He also served on Omidyar Network’s five member global Executive Committee. ON is the world’s leading impact investment firm with about $750 million in deployed capital. With offices in Johannesburg, London, Mumbai, Silicon Valley, and Washington DC, ON has made pioneering investments in organizations such as Wikipedia, Kiva, Donors Choose, FM Publishing, Quikr, Bridge Academies, and d.light. ON was founded by Pam and Pierre Omidyar (Founder and Chairperson, eBay).

Mr. Sinha has more than 25 years of experience in investing and strategy consulting as well as a deep understanding of managing investments and advising businesses around the world. He has served on the boards of iMerit, Aspiring Minds, d.light design, Treehouse (publicly listed), Agni Energy, and STCI Finance. He was selected to serve on the Global Advisory Board of the International Finance Corporation in Washington DC. He was the Founding Chairperson of the India Impact Investors Council.

Mr. Sinha is a well-known expert on India’s IT/BPO and Telecom sectors and authored two influential Nasscom-McKinsey reports in 2000 and 2005. He has advised the Indian government on entrepreneurship and served on Advisory Committees for the Finance and Telecom Ministries and the Planning Commission. Mr. Sinha has been quoted widely in the global media including The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, The New York Times, CNN, Bloomberg, and CNBC. His essays and articles have been published in the Harvard Business Review, McKinsey Quarterly, Financial Times, Times of India, Indian Express, Panchjanya, Prabhat Khabar, and the Economic Times.

Prior to joining Omidyar Network, Mr. Sinha was Managing Director at Courage Capital Management, where he led Global Technology and India-related investing for a billion dollar global special situations hedge fund. Mr. Sinha joined Courage Capital in 2006 after twelve years with McKinsey & Company, where he was a Partner in the Boston and Delhi offices. At McKinsey, Mr. Sinha co-led the global Software & IT Services Practice.

Mr. Sinha has an MBA with Distinction from the Harvard Business School, an MS in Energy Management & Policy from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Bachelor of Technology with Distinction from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.