Technology events in India have a representation problem on their speaker rosters. The percentage of women who work in tech and software in India is meaningfully higher than the percentage who appear on stage at industry conferences. This list is designed to make the sourcing work easier. The women documented here hold active or recent roles in engineering, product, artificial intelligence research, technology investment, and tech-led company building. The list includes the former president of NASSCOM, a director of IBM Research India, a co-founding general partner of a gaming technology fund, senior leaders at Microsoft and Salesforce India, and multiple founders of technology companies. Their speaking topics span artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, product management, engineering leadership, women in STEM, and the practical dynamics of building and leading technical organisations. Several also speak on inclusion within engineering cultures, drawing on firsthand experience of navigating a field where women remain significantly underrepresented at senior levels. These are practitioners who understand how technical systems are built and what it takes to lead technical teams. Their insights are operational, not inspirational.
1. Debjani Ghosh
Former President, NASSCOM; Distinguished Fellow, NITI Aayog
Debjani Ghosh served as President of NASSCOM from 2018 to 2024, making her the first woman to lead India's premier technology industry association in its three-decade history. She previously served as Managing Director of Intel India. At NASSCOM, she led the industry body through a period of significant transformation, including the emergence of AI-led automation, the COVID-19 disruption, and the global reorientation of tech supply chains. She stepped down as NASSCOM President in November 2024 and now serves as a Distinguished Fellow at NITI Aayog. She speaks on the technology industry in India, artificial intelligence and its implications for employment and society, industry leadership, gender in technology, digital transformation, and the policy environment for technology companies in India. Her perspective is shaped by sustained engagement with both the industry and the government.
Connect with her on LinkedIn.
2. Dr. Rohini Srivathsa
Former CTO, Microsoft India and South Asia; Board Member, Acko
Dr. Rohini Srivathsa served as National Technology Officer and then as Chief Technology Officer for Microsoft India and South Asia, positions that placed her at the interface between Microsoft's technology platforms and the Indian government, enterprise clients, and the broader technology ecosystem. She left Microsoft in 2024 to join Acko's board, bringing her technology leadership experience into the insurance and fintech sector. Her speaking work covers artificial intelligence and its application in the Indian context, digital transformation at scale, cloud computing, the technology policy environment in India, and women in technology leadership. She is one of the most senior women to have served in a CTO role at a global technology company's India operations, and her perspective on enterprise technology, AI deployment, and government-technology collaboration is grounded in sustained high-level engagement with all those stakeholders.
Connect with her on LinkedIn.
3. Dr. Gargi Dasgupta
Director, IBM Research India
Dr. Gargi Dasgupta is Director of IBM Research India, one of IBM's major global research facilities, where she leads teams working on artificial intelligence, quantum computing, hybrid cloud, and foundational computer science research across multiple domains. IBM Research India has been a significant contributor to the global AI research landscape, and leading it places her among the most senior women in technology research in Asia. Her speaking work covers AI and its applications, research leadership, the future of computing and quantum technology, women in science and research careers, and what large-scale technology research looks like from the inside as both an organisational and intellectual exercise. She brings genuine research depth to conversations about artificial intelligence and emerging technologies, which distinguishes her contribution from the broader commentary that tends to dominate technology speaking circuits.
Connect with her on LinkedIn.
4. Salone Sehgal
Founding General Partner, Lumikai Fund
Salone Sehgal is the Founding General Partner of Lumikai, India's first investment fund dedicated exclusively to gaming and interactive media. She co-founded the fund based on a conviction that India's interactive entertainment sector, including gaming, virtual reality, and extended reality, was approaching an inflection point as mobile internet reached more of the country and gaming demographics diversified. Prior to Lumikai, she worked in investment banking and the gaming industry internationally. She speaks on technology investment, the business and economics of gaming, India as an emerging gaming market, building and managing a specialist venture fund, and women in venture capital, a field where women remain significantly underrepresented both as investors and as founders receiving capital. Her technology sector perspective is shaped by an investment lens, giving her visibility into where technology trends are heading.
Connect with her on LinkedIn.
5. Enu Mittal
Director of Technology, Microsoft India
Enu Mittal is Director of Technology at Microsoft India, where she works on enterprise technology solutions and engineering strategy across the organisation. As a senior technical leader at a global technology company, she speaks from within a sector that has struggled systematically with gender representation, particularly at engineering leadership levels. Her speaking topics include women in STEM, building inclusive engineering cultures within large technical organisations, AI ethics and the equity dimensions of algorithmic systems, career development for women in technology roles, and what it takes to retain women in engineering past the mid-career mark where attrition tends to spike. She has spoken at technology industry events and corporate learning programmes, drawing on the specific dynamics of working inside a large technology company, which gives her talks a different texture from those of someone observing the sector from outside.
Connect with her on LinkedIn.
6. Shuchi Singla
Founder and CEO, BaffleSol Technologies
Shuchi Singla is the founder and CEO of BaffleSol Technologies, a Chandigarh-based company providing digital transformation, enterprise software solutions, and technology consulting to clients across industries. She built BaffleSol into a company with a substantial client base, placing her among the small number of women who have independently founded and scaled a technology services firm in India outside the support structures concentrated in major metro startup hubs. Her speaking work covers entrepreneurship in technology services, building a tech company in a tier-two city, women in technology leadership and the barriers they face in both technical and business roles, digital transformation and its real operational requirements inside large organisations, and what founding a technology company requires in terms of both technical and business credibility.
Connect with her on LinkedIn.
7. Neha Singh
Co-founder, Tracxn
Neha Singh co-founded Tracxn, a market intelligence and data platform used by venture capital firms, corporates, and professional investors to research startup ecosystems, track emerging companies, and analyse investment data. Tracxn is listed on Indian stock exchanges, making her one of the few women co-founders of a publicly listed technology company in India. Before founding Tracxn, she worked at Google and Sequoia Capital India, giving her a breadth of perspective across the technology sector that spans a global internet company, a major venture fund, and a company she co-founded and took public. Her speaking work covers startup ecosystem data and analysis, the venture capital and investment research space, building a B2B data product company from scratch, the experience of taking a tech startup through an IPO, and women in technology entrepreneurship and investment roles.
Connect with her on LinkedIn.
8. Lakshmi Pillai Gupta
Founder, Ammara Technologies
Lakshmi Pillai Gupta is the founder of Ammara Technologies, a technology company focused on enterprise solutions and digital services. As a woman founder and CEO in the Indian technology sector, she represents a cohort that remains small: NASSCOM's research consistently shows women founders as a single-digit percentage of technology startups in India, and her experience of building and leading a technology organisation gives her a concrete perspective on what that entails from the inside. Her speaking topics include women in technology and entrepreneurship, what it takes to build a technology company from the ground up in India's current ecosystem, enterprise software and the digital transformation needs of mid-market companies, and the structural and cultural barriers that keep women underrepresented in technical leadership. She is available for technology conferences and professional events across India.
Connect with her on LinkedIn.
9. Ritu Soni
Co-founder and CTO, SkillBrew.AI
Ritu Soni is the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of SkillBrew.AI, an AI-driven platform for skill development and professional learning. As a technical co-founder, she sits at the intersection of AI product development and education technology, which gives her a specific and current perspective on how artificial intelligence is being deployed in learning contexts, what the engineering choices look like from the inside, and what the technology's real limitations and possibilities are at the product level. Her speaking work covers AI in education and skilling, the experience of co-founding and leading a technology company as a technical woman, building AI products from an engineering-first perspective, and representation gaps in AI development teams and how those gaps shape the systems being built. She speaks from direct engineering and product leadership experience.
Connect with her on LinkedIn.
10. Nidhi Shreya
Principal Product Manager, Simpplr
Nidhi Shreya is a Principal Product Manager at Simpplr, an AI-powered employee experience platform serving large enterprise clients globally. Product management at the principal level involves defining product strategy, aligning cross-functional teams across engineering, design, and business, and making the decisions that shape what a software product becomes over a product cycle. Her speaking work covers product management as a discipline and a career path, women in product and technology roles in India, the specific challenges of product leadership in enterprise software environments, building AI-powered product features responsibly and with attention to equity, and career development for women who are navigating technical roles in large technology companies. She brings a practitioner's direct understanding of the software development and product decision-making process to conversations about the technology industry.
Connect with her on LinkedIn.
11. Sobhitha Neelanath
Senior Leader, Salesforce
Sobhitha Neelanath is a Senior Leader at Salesforce, the global CRM and cloud software company, where she holds a leadership position within the company's India operations, contributing to both business development and inclusion initiatives. Salesforce has maintained a public commitment to equality, including regular global pay equity audits and inclusion metrics, and speaking from within that organisation gives her a specific perspective on what institutional commitment to DEI looks like at the implementation level in a large technology company. Her speaking topics include technology leadership and career development for women in the software industry, the dynamics of navigating a senior career in a global technology company from India, building inclusive cultures within large technical organisations, and the specific experiences of women in technical and business roles at enterprise software companies.
Connect with her on LinkedIn.
About Draupadi on the Dais
The representation gap in technology conferences in India is not primarily a pipeline problem. The women exist, the expertise exists, and the willingness to speak exists. What has been missing is a structured way to find them outside of personal networks. Draupadi on the Dais is a response to that. Every speaker on the platform is individually verified; technical credentials and professional standing are confirmed before a profile goes live. The women listed here are practitioners who can speak about real systems, real teams, and real decisions, not technology from the outside looking in. If you are running a technology conference, an engineering summit, an AI-focused event, or a product-led growth discussion, the speakers on this list can raise the quality of your programme.
Browse the full Women Tech and Software Speakers roster on Draupadi on the Dais.