Neel Popat is the CEO and co-founder of Popcorn, a software-first 'next-gen telco' that sells one global eSIM phone plan with unlimited talk, text, and data across 180+ countries and no roaming fees. A British-Indian former finance professional turned serial founder, he coded a viral message board at 13, studied mathematics at LSE, spent a decade inside investment funds, then built the crypto-investing app Donut through Entrepreneur First. When Donut's custody partner Genesis went bankrupt, Popat fought through the wind-down and returned 100% of user funds before channeling the lessons into Popcorn.
Lydia Smyers is Vice President of Customer and Partner Solutions for U.S. Telco, Media, and Gaming at Microsoft, leading a team of more than 400 professionals serving the top 200 enterprises in those sectors. Based in Massachusetts, she has spent over a decade at Microsoft in roles spanning U.S. Education, Americas Northeast, and now the converging industries of telco, media, and gaming. Before Microsoft she held senior executive roles at Oracle, Red Hat, and Ernst & Young, building a career defined by large-scale partnerships, channel strategy, and technology-driven transformation. She was named to CRN's Top 100 Women of the Channel five consecutive years and spoke at MWC Barcelona 2026 on AI and its societal implications.
Sath Nelakonda is the CEO and CTO of Cinarra Systems, a SoftBank company that turns mobile network signals into privacy-safe advertising and venue analytics. A co-founder of the company since 2013, he came out of the deep plumbing of the internet - IP/MPLS routing at TiMetra, then Alcatel-Lucent, then Juniper - and now runs an ad-tech outfit built on telco-grade data.