Vivek and Vandana Sharma India Summit: Can India Become a Global Manufacturing Hub?

Ashish Chugh is Chief Investment Officer of Emerging Market Equities at Frontier Investment Management Partners, an emerging markets investment firm. He leads the firm's emerging market equity investment platform, overseeing strategy, portfolio management, and research, and serves on several of its investment committees. He began his investment career in 2003 and has built more than two decades of experience managing institutional portfolios.

Before joining FIM Partners, Ashish was Head of Global Emerging Market Equities at Loomis, Sayles & Company, leading its long-only and long-short strategies. He previously was a Managing Director at Och-Ziff Capital in Hong Kong, and spent a decade at Wellington Management Company investing in long-short emerging market equities. Earlier in his career, he worked as an engineer at IBM in Toronto and as an analyst at Hitachi in Tokyo. He holds a BASc in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of British Columbia and an MBA from Harvard Business School, and is fluent in Hindi.

Edmund DiSanto (BS '75) is the former Executive Vice President and Senior Advisor to the Chief Executive Officer of American Tower Corporation (ATC), an S&P 500 company with a market capitalization of approximately US$ 100 billion and leading wireless communications infrastructure company that develops, owns, and operates more than 223,000 communications sites in both developed and developing countries. From April 2007 through December 2022, Ed served as EVP, Chief Administrative Officer, and General Counsel, and was responsible for legal and regulatory affairs, human resources, corporate governance, and international business development support.  

Prior to joining ATC, Ed was with Pratt & Whitney(P&W), a unit of United Technologies Corporation (UTC), now Raytheon Technologies. Ed started with UTC in 1989, where he first served as Assistant General Counsel of its Carrier Corporation subsidiary, then Corporate Executive Assistant to the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of UTC, and from 1997, he held various legal and business roles at P&W, including Deputy General Counsel and Vice President, Global Service Partners, Business Development. Prior to UTC, Ed served in various legal and related positions at what is known today as National Grid.

Ed earned his J.D. degree from Boston College Law School in 1978 and a Bachelor of Science from Northeastern University in 1975. He is a member of the bar of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the State of New Hampshire, a member of the Board of Directors of the U.S.-India Business Council and the Business Council for International Understanding. He was Strategic Officer of the World Economic Forum from 2015-22. In 2022, he received the New England Legal Foundation John G.L. Cabot Award for his steadfast commitment to the advancement of free enterprise principles in the community. Ed joined CEM's board in 2023.

Josh Foulger is President of IT Hardware and New Projects at Dixon Technologies, leading the company's expansion into IT hardware and devices from its Chennai hub. He brings more than 30 years of experience in electronics manufacturing across Zetwerk, Bharat FIH, a Foxconn subsidiary, and Nokia, with deep expertise in scaling manufacturing ecosystems and integrating high-growth operations.

Before Dixon, he was CEO of Electronics at Zetwerk, where he led the division's rapid expansion into new manufacturing verticals and integrated several key acquisitions. He earlier spent nearly a decade as Managing Director of Bharat FIH and held long-term international leadership roles at Nokia, where he helped architect its electronics manufacturing ecosystems in India and Vietnam. His leadership approach follows what he calls the Four Es: Envision, Equipping, Empowerment, and Execution. Foulger holds a Master's degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Texas, Arlington, and continues to serve on industry advisory boards and government councils.

Amitabh Kant is a governance reformer with a 45-year career at the highest levels of the Government of India. He served as India's G20 Sherpa in 2023, leading negotiations that produced the Leaders' Declaration and its commitments on AI and climate through the Green Development Pact. As CEO of NITI Aayog, he launched the Production-Linked Incentive Schemes that boosted Indian manufacturing, the Aspirational Districts Program, India's first National AI Strategy, and national missions on electric vehicles, green hydrogen, and battery storage.

Earlier, as Secretary of the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, Kant launched Make in India and Startup India. He also led the Incredible India tourism campaign as Joint Secretary of Tourism. He now advises Fairfax, SMBC, and Warburg Pincus, sits on the boards of L&T, ITC, HCL Tech, and IndiGo, and serves as Chancellor of NIIT University. He is a Chevening Scholar and holds degrees from St. Stephen's College and Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Ganesh Mani S is President and Chief Operating Officer at Ashok Leyland and CEO of Switch Mobility, leading India's transition toward electric and sustainable mobility. His career spans Hyundai Motor India and Maruti Suzuki, moving from shop-floor roles to global leadership positions built on deep expertise in manufacturing systems, product engineering, and large-scale operations. His leadership style is structured and execution-driven, centered on integrating technology and supply chain discipline to build globally competitive systems.

At Ashok Leyland, he oversees global operations for a workforce of more than 10,000, focused on efficiency and scalability. At Switch Mobility, he is expanding the company's electric bus and light commercial vehicle lines to align growth with clean transport goals. Mani holds a mechanical engineering degree and an MBA with double gold medals in Operations and Finance Management from the Management Development Institute. He chairs the technical committee at the Global Automotive Research Center and co-chairs CII's Southern Region subcommittee on global partnerships.

Michael McCabe currently serves as the Resident Director for North America at Tata Sons, the principal investment holding company and promoter of Tata companies.  In this role he is the senior most representative for Tata Sons in North America and is responsible for Tata Sons' government affairs and strategy development, working with Tata companies on market entry, strengthening their presence and positioning, enhancing the overall Tata brand and commitment in the region.  North America includes twenty Tata companies across multiple industries representing billions of dollars in investments, tens of billions of dollars in revenue and employing tens of thousands. 

McCabe is a veteran of the Tata Group having previously worked at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) since 2005 where his most recent role was Head of Government Relations for North America, responsible for government relations, public policy and public affairs across a region that accounts for more than 50% of TCS' global revenues.  Earlier he was the Director of Communications for North America, leading the company's corporate communications initiatives. 

Prior to joining TCS, McCabe worked at various public affairs and communications firms where he developed and executed campaigns for several leading technology, consulting, education and financial services companies and organizations.

McCabe currently serves as the Chair of the Confederation of Indian Industry India Business Forum, on the Advisory Council of the Canada-India Business Council and is a director on the boards of the Titan Company North America, and the US-India Business Council.  He is an international public policy and corporate communications veteran with experience developing and implementing government affairs, communications and business strategies across various industries targeting internal and external audiences including public policy makers, media, employees, investors, and customers.

McCabe is the son of a US Foreign Service officer, graduating from high school in New Delhi, India.  He holds a B.A. in International Relations from George Mason University.

Bhavani Parameswar is the former President of Indivate Inc., an ITC Group Company, with more than three decades of experience in international business, market development, and global supply chains. She spent 35 years at ITC Limited, one of India's largest diversified enterprises, working across India and North America to connect Indian manufacturing and agricultural value chains with customers in consumer goods, agri-products, paper, apparel, education, and technology.

She built and led ITC's presence in the United States, developing market-entry strategies, building distribution and customer networks, and navigating the regulatory complexities of bringing Indian products into global markets. Her experience gives her a practitioner's view of how supply chains respond to shifts in trade policy and geopolitics. She now serves on the Board Advisory Group of the U.S.-India Strategic Partnership Forum and its Trade and Food and Agriculture Committees, sits on the board of the U.S.-India Friendship Alliance, and advises the American India Foundation's Women's Economic Empowerment Council.

Raghuram S. is India's first Consul General in Boston, having assumed the post in September 2025 to launch consular operations across New England, covering Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Rhode Island. He is an Indian Foreign Service officer who most recently served as Joint Secretary and Head of the Policy Planning and Research Division at the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi, and earlier as Joint Secretary and Director in the ministry's United Nations Political Division.
His earlier headquarters postings include the Americas Division, the East and Southern Africa Division, where he oversaw Indian Ocean Region countries, and the Afghan Cell within the Pakistan-Afghanistan-Iran Division. His overseas assignments have taken him to Kabul as Deputy Chief of Mission, and to Washington, D.C., Islamabad, Rabat, and Paris as Political Officer. He holds a postgraduate degree in Genetics and speaks Kannada, English, Telugu, Hindi, and Tamil.

His Excellency Naveen Srivastava has served as Ambassador of India to Nepal since June 2022. He joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1993 and began his diplomatic career in Hong Kong, later serving in Beijing on bilateral relations between India and China. He went on to serve as Counsellor (Political) at the Embassy of India in Washington, D.C., as Consul General of India in Shanghai, and as Ambassador of India to Cambodia from 2015 to 2017.

From 2017 to 2019, he served on deputation as Director General and Corporate Secretary of the New Development Bank in Shanghai. At the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi, he has held posts in the Disarmament and International Security Affairs Division and the office of the Foreign Secretary, and most recently led the East Asia Division. Srivastava holds a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT Delhi and a Master's degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland.