As a lead-up to the Global Entrepreneurship Summit 2017 (GES) which is all set to happen in India, many events are taking place around the world, bringing together the startup ecosystem, business community, innovators and change makers all under one single roof.
See Program DetailsAs a lead-up to the Global Entrepreneurship Summit 2017 (GES) which is all set to happen in India, many events are taking place around the world, bringing together the startup ecosystem, business community, innovators and change makers all under one single roof. One among these is Road to GES: Beyond Boundaries, a unique conference where for the first time ever INK (India’s leading thought-leadership platform), T-Hub (India’s largest startup incubator), NITI Aayog (National Institute for Transforming India, GOI) and Telangana Government are coming together as hosts!
Taking place from 26-27th November, 2017 at the HITEX Exhibition Centre in Hyderabad, Road to GES: Beyond Boundaries will feature an inter-disciplinary lineup of thought leaders and entrepreneurs from emerging technologies like AI, Big Data, Blockchain, Cybersecurity, and IoT, mixed with innovations in social and cultural entrepreneurship. The two days will cover in-depth discussions, practices and policies that will let India leapfrog the legacy systems and move into an innovative future.
T-Hub is one of the largest startup ecosystem builders in India, with over 2000 startups in its database clustered into various stages of growth across sectors of specialization – a model of community development that is unique to Hyderabad. Such a unique model enables investors and corporates to plan programs and capacity building initiatives in a targeted and organized manner. T-Hub is also the only model where the government is working intensely with the investor and the partner to fuel innovation and facilitate enterprise.
Abhijit is CEO and Co-Founder of Ezetap, which was started in 2011 to help merchants leapfrog India’s cash economy by using mobile solutions built on next generation web technology. The Ezetap platform allows merchants to become a banking service point and accept any type of electronic payment through a mobile handset or tablet. Abhijit has over 20 years of experience in building and launching mobile and software products, and Ezetap is the third mobile product he has launched in India. Previous experience includes leadership positions at ngpay (acquired by Flipkart) and Siebel Systems. Abhijit has a BS in Engineering from Cornell University and MBA from Harvard Business School.
Aditi Avasthi is the founder and CEO at Embibe – an edtech platform leveraging deep tech and data science to personalise education delivery across markets. In her quest to maximise learning outcomes for every student, Aditi has spearheaded the company’s evolution into the world’s leading artificial intelligence platform for education with numerous inventions and patents to create tangible impact on student learning. Before Embibe, Aditi has held global positions including heading the mobile banking product for Barclays Africa, leading tech corporate development for Barclays’ mobile commerce launch in the US and leading new business sales for TCS in the UK.
Aditi did her MBA from University of Chicago Booth School of Business. She has received many accolades for her work including recently being featured in the BBC Top 100 Women List, Business Week Disrupt and Fortune ‘40 Under 40’ lists and awarded the Woman Entrepreneur of the Year award by the Indian Education Congress. A passionate advocate of technology in education, she has been invited to speak at numerous forums on Artificial Intelligence and Education, the most recent being the Economist India Summit and TEDx
Advait is the co-founder & Managing Partner at Supari Studios. In late 2012, at the age of 26, Advait quit his job as an investment analyst at a VC firm to join hands with his younger brother Akshat to pursue opportunities in the emerging digital content space and set up Supari Studios. With a strong focus on online video, Supari has developed a body of work that ranges from interactive video content to immersive virtual reality experiences. Advait is currently focussed on growing the company’s capabilities across three primary functions – original content, branded online video and new media technology.
Amit heads the India business for edX – world’s largest open-source free learning platform founded by MIT and Haarvard University. edX is not-for-profit organization with a mission to provide free online access to high quality education for everyone.
Amit has managed various executive roles in building million dollars for Telco and Ed-Tech products across UK, Europe and India. Amit is a firm believer of frugal innovation and his profile includes projects that have disgrupted the markets such as Tab based learning solutions for Test Prep, K12 and Higher-Ed, while heading education solutions business for Samsung India. He is also credited for launching the cheapest Tablet PC of the word ‘Aakash’ with the Govt. of India.
Amit Lodha is a 1998-batch IPS officer of the Bihar cadre. He is presently the Deputy Inspector General of the Border Security Force, posted in Jaisalmer. He has been honoured with the Excellent Contribution Award for successfully initiating a police-public partnership for better policing in Bihar’s Nalanda district during his tenure as the superintendent of police there.
He launched SAMBHAV- an organization under the aegis of the Nalanda district police to tap the power of the youth towards community development. The organization successfully engaged the youth in tackling important social issues. Showcasing exemplary leadership, he has played an instrumental role in a number of successful police operations. He has been the recipient of various awards and commendations, including the acclaimed President’s Police Medal of Gallantry and the Internal Security Medal.
The National Institution for Transforming India (NITI), is a Government of India initiative that aims to catalyze India’s developmental process; creating an enabling environment through partnerships, think tanks and information sharing through cooperative federalism.
Amitabh is a member of the Indian Administrative Service and is the author of “Branding India – An Incredible Story” and has been a key driver of the famous “Make in India”, “Startup India”, “Incredible India” and “God’s Own Country” campaigns that aim to position India as a leading manufacturing and tourism hub. These initiatives have garnered significant interest and acclaim internationally and have produced developments in infrastructure, boosted manufacturing and lead to key public-private partnerships in the country
Andra Keay is the Managing Director of Silicon Valley Robotics, non-profit industry group supporting innovation and commercialization of robotics technologies. Andra is also founder of Robot Launch global startup competition and a mentor, investor and advisor to startups, accelerators, thinktanks, with a strong interest in commercializing socially positive robots and AI.
Andra co-founded Robohub, the global robotics research news site, building on her background in film, television, media production, internet and computing technologies, with degrees in Interaction, Communication and Human/Robot Cultural Studies. She also co-founded Robot Garden, a robotics makerspace and teaches Interaction Design Theory.
Once a prodigy on the violin Dr.Aneesh Vidyashankar is hailed as India’s most melodious infusion violinist. A Qualified architect, he is creative mastermind in designs.
Aneesh’s infectious music transcends age, genre, and even nationality. His music is strongly rooted in Indian traditions and classicism and is presentedwith a very contemporary, global sound. From touring 27 countries, playing for over 40000 people in his home country & big music festivals around the world Aneesh has done it all. Former President Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, Bollwood Actors – Karishma Kapoor, Hritik Roshan, Spiritual Gurus -Baba Ramdev, Sri Sri Ravishankar, Corporate Honchos – Narayan Murthy, Former Prime Minister HD Devegowda, Cricketers Virat Kohli, Manish Pandey, Brijesh Patel have all applauded him on various occasions to name a few
At Just 26 years, Aneesh is one of the YOUNGEST recipients of an Honorary doctorate with specialization, the National level award for the best violinist, a youth icon award, and even the prestigious young achiever award for his music on the strings, apart from several others. Aneesh is actively involved in tree planting to save our environment and he recently helped 300 needy patients get operated by conducting a fundraiser.
Anil Nanduri is Vice President in the New Technology Group and General Manager of the UAV segment at Intel Corporation. He is responsible for establishing Intel’s unmanned aviation systems business and pursuing opportunities for growth in this segment. This group provides ingredients and end to end systems for the drone ecosystem. Additionally, this group has been developing innovative new usages such as the Drone 100 aerial light show and providing technology to Volocopter, a person carrying drone copter. He also served on the FAA’s Micro UAS Aviation Rulemaking Committee.
Ankit is the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer at Leap Skills. He is the driving force behind the innovation and technology based approach at Leap. As an impact oriented skill-development organisation, Leap mentors’ train and provide employment opportunities to students, unemployed youth and existing workforce through technology and classroom training. Over the last 4 years, Leap has trained over 6000 learners across 11 states in India through various programs and workshops.
An alumnus of The Doon School and College of Business Studies, Delhi University. He brings with him significant start-up experience at organisations like Zomato, Happily Unmarried and has worked as a part of the Risk Advisory practice at Ernst & Young India. He is also the youth representative for Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award Program, a youth focused recognition program for students from across the world. He has represented India at several award councils both domestically and internationally.
Anuradha Acharya is the founder and CEO of Mapmygenome, a molecular diagnostics company that offers personalized health solutions based on genetic tests. She is currently serving as a governing board member at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and is a governing board member at both the National Institute for Biomedical Genomics and the Association of Biotech Led Enterprises. Anuradha has received numerous accolades such as the “Young Global Leader” award by the World Economic Forum, Biospectrum’s “Entrepreneur of the Year” and Red Herring Magazine’s “25 Tech Titans under 35″, to name a few
After investing in about 75 technology companies as a venture capitalist, Asha is currently a top Silicon Valley angel investor, social entrepreneur, global philanthropist, speaker, a mentor to Stanford entrepreneurs, and mom to her two daughters. She lives in Palo Alto and New York.
Her current mission is to free up learners of all ages to pursue learning that is relevant to their local contexts, their personal hopes, dreams and relationships. She is creating a vibrant network of “Makers” in India and CA through Fablabs and Maker Faire. Both enable students of all ages to transform their ideas and imagination into products using a simple combination of software and digital fabrication tool. Asha and her partners in India are also launching 6 School in the Cloud pilots with help from Prof Sugata Mitra and his team.
Ananda inhabits the worlds of administration, academics, and arts, straddling them with equal ease. Celebrated as one of India’s most eminent classical dancer, choreographer and scholar. Ananda’s artistic body of work, spans mythologies and abstraction, historical chronicles, and women studies, poetry abstraction, philosophy and humour.
Ananda was conferred the “Padma Shri” (India’s 4th highest civilian award) in 2007 and the Sangeet Kala Akademi Puraskar for Bharatanatyam in 2009. Ananda is a sought after motivational speaker. Ananda’s TED talk in 2009, was rated by Huffington Post, as one of five greatest TED talks by Indians. Recent speaking invitations include; the India Conference at Harvard, and an interview for BBC – World Service. Harnessing Technology for Arts, Ananda has conceptualised and launched Natyarambha, a first of its kind digital arts initiative – a Bharatanatyam practice app that connects tradition to technology.
Anthony is an ophthalmologist by passion, an innovator by choice and a maker by evolution. His specific interests include Ocular Trauma, Community Ophthalmology and is pursuing research in the field of Whole Eyeball Transplantation. He is an Associate Director & Consultant Ophthalmologist at LVPEI and Chief Architect of eyeSmart EMR, a revolutionary Electronic Medical Record and Hospital Management System developed in-house at LVPEI and has checked in over 4 Million consultations. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons and Physicians, Glasgow.
He is also the Founder of REPORT (Rural Education and Prevention of Ocular Trauma) addressing rural children in the prevention of Ocular Trauma. He is a Member of the International Task Force for Emerging Technologies for Teaching and Learning at the International Council of Ophthalmology (ICO). He co-directs the Srujana Center for Innovation at LVPEI in collaboration with the Camera Culture Group, MIT Media Lab, USA. He is a TED Senior Fellow and is named among the Top 35 Innovators under 35 years in the world ( TR35 2012) by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. His current work focuses on Machine Learning models in healthcare and Augmented reality applications for education.
Dr. Gopichand Katragadda is the Group CTO and Innovation Head for Tata Sons. In this role, Gopi drives technology and innovation for the Tata Conglomerate leveraging cross-company synergies. He is a director on the boards of Tata Elxsi, Tata Communications, Tata Teleservices, Tata Autocomp Systems and Flisom AG.
Dr. Kalyan Veeramachaneni is a Principal Research Scientist at the Laboratory for Information and Decision System (LIDS) at MIT. He directs a research group called Data to AI in the new MIT Institute for Data Systems and Society(IDSS). Kalyan believes that artifical intelligence and machine learning can have a powerful impact in a variety of societal arenas, from education and public health to transportation and e-commerce. His group aims to solve the foundational issues currently preventing these techniques from reaching their full potential, and their recent work focuses on making human interactions with data seamless and efficient.
Kalyan has published over 60 papers, 3 of which have won best paper awards at international conferences. His work on AI-driven solutions for data science and cybersecurity has been covered by major media outlets, including the Washington Post, CBS News, Wired, Forbes and Newsweek.
Kalyan has also co-founded two startups: Feature Labs and PatternEx. Feature Labs helps organizations transform their raw, noisy data into intelligent representations using data science automation tools. PatternX is a cybersecurity company, focused on developing the first active learning-based solution for identifying new and constantly evolving security threats. He received his Masters in Computer Engineering and Ph.D in Electrical Engineering in 2009, both from Syracuse University. He joined MIT in 2009.
Amongst the foremost surgeons from South Asia, Dr. P. Raghu Ram was conferred the prestigious Padma Shri by Hon’ble President of India in 2015 making him the youngest surgeon ever from South India, and equally, one of the youngest doctors from India to have received one of the highest civilian awards of the land. He also achieved the rare distinction to become the youngest surgeon ever from Telangana & Andhra Pradesh to have been conferred the coveted Dr. B.C Roy National Award by Hon’ble President of India for the year 2016 in recognition of his ‘Outstanding service for Socio medical Relief’.
Dr.P. Raghu Ram is amongst the few in the World to have acquired the FRCS from all four Royal Colleges in British Isles – London, Edinburgh, Glasgow& Ireland & FACS from American College of Surgeons. He conceived, designed & established KIMS-USHALAKSHMI Centre for Breast Diseases, South Asia’s FIRST free standing, purpose built and comprehensive Centre for Breast health in 2007 @ KIMS Hospitals in Hyderabad. He also established Ushalakshmi Breast Cancer Foundation during the same year. To honour Dr.Ushalakshmi’s struggle (Dr Raghu Ram’s mother) in the fight against breast cancer, the Breast Centre & the Foundation bear her name.
He conceived & designed the World’s First Mobile Phone App on Breast health in 12 Languages (2017) that aims to empower the Nation about every aspect of breast cancer (commonest cancer affecting women in India) and benign non-cancer breast health issues explained in simple easy to understand format (English, Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Gujarati, Punjabi, Bengali, Marathi, Oriya & Assamese). In recognition of his outstanding academic achievements, Dr. Raghu Ram has been conferred with International Gold Medal (2013) by the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh – highest Award that the Royal College bestows to Surgeons practicing outside United Kingdom. He is the youngest ever recipient of this impressive Award in 512 years history of the oldest Surgical College in the World.
Dr. Suhas Kshirsagar, B.A.M.S., M.D. (Ayurveda) is a world-renowned Ayurvedic physician and educator from India, the director of the Ayurvedic Healing and Integrative Wellness Clinic in Northern California, and a best selling author of The Hot Belly Diet. He holds a B.A. in Ayurvedic medicine and completed a three-year residency as an M.D. (doctorate in Ayurvedic internal medicine)with a gold medal at the prestigious Pune University. He is an advisor and consultant at the Chopra Center and a faculty member at several Ayurvedic institutions. He is an acclaimed motivational speaker, formulator and researcher. He has been featured on numerous radio and television shows like NBC, Dr. OZ show and many others.
Farid is the Co-Founder of ShareChat, India’s homegrown social network, and also the leading local language platform of India. He has a Bachelor’s degree from the IIT, Kanpur (2014).
ShareChat was born out of an experiement to solve the question of the “Where does the content variety in Whatsapp groups come from?”. The growing demand for digital vernacular content made this demand-supply equation very apparent to him and his team, and kickstarted their journey for serving the social needs of the next billion internet users in India.
Gadhadar has been passionate about space since childhood. He pursued this interest by attending summer schools about Space and also received an Honors Diploma in Space Sciences. In these courses, he learned Quantum Physics to explain stability and evolution of stars. This coupled with a burning desire to build stuff led him to Nanotechnology. The poster child of Nanotechnology for Space Applications being Carbon Nanotubes.
He founded NoPo Nanotechnoligues to pursue this passion. NoPo is developing technology for space by solving problems on the ground such as water filtration and transportation using Carbon Nanotubes. He led his team to win the 4th International Space Power Competition of SGAC in 2015 for a concept on Carbon Nanotube based Space Power. He attended Singularity University’s Global Solutions Program in 2016 as the sole Indian participant. NoPo is ranked among Bangalore’s Top 3 Technology Startups by EO CARES and India’s Top 5 Innovative companies’ in 2017 by Lockheed Martin-DST- Tata Trusts.
“A passionate entrepreneur, thinker-doer, who believes in turning ideas into reality”
Jay Krishnan is a serial entrepreneur and investor with two successful million dollar exits in the US and India. In acareer spanning over two decades, Jay has donned many hats. He has held leadership responsibility in Fortune 100 companies, managed large transformational initiatives, built new product offerings and helped create scale in the startup space. Jay has successfully founded and exited multiple companies in the IoT space across the world.
In the capacity of CEO of T-Hub, Jay is responsible for its overall growth. He is the brain behind several tech innovations that has aided T-Hub to become amongst the most coveted incubators in India. It is due to his foresightedness that T-Hub works on a technology enabled platform for all startups/entrepreneurs across verticals. He has been instrumental in fostering innovation through technology platforms like Sandbox and Playbook to empower entrepreneurs with solutions at every stage of their journey. Jay has a MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Hartford, Connecticut and is an alumnus of IIM, Bangalore where he did his execuive MBA in General Management.
Jayesh Ranjan is the Principal Secretary of the Industries and Commerce (I&C) and Information Technology (IT) Departments of the Telangana Government. His assignment involves developing policy frameworks, attracting new investments, identifying opportunities of utilizing IT in various government processes, and promoting digital empowerment of the citizens. His last few assignments have been in the Industrial Promotion sector as Commissioner and MD of the Industries Department, Secratary in the Tourism Promorion Department, and Vice Chairman of the Hyderabad Urban Development Authority (HUDA) all for 2-3 years each and various rural assignments in different parts of the state for over 12 years, working in diverse sectors like Tribal Development, Natural Resources Management, Poverty Alleviation, and other related Social Development Sectors.
Joi Barua is a musician from Assam, India who fell in love with music at the age of four, after his father gifted him a violin. Growing up, his town had one piano and no music teachers, and his father had to cross the border and get him a keyboard from Bhutan. Since then, Joi has been making waves in the advertising, music, and film circuit in Mumbai with his musical stylings and melodious voice. He is also the lead vocalist of the band Joi and has a mixed musical style incorporating elements of rock, soul, jazz, folk and world music.
Judith is a Ph.D student and Research Assistant in the Fluid Interfaces Group, MIT MediaLab. She graduated from MIT with a Masters in Media Arts and Sciences, she helped run VR/AR at MIT as a co-president. She holds a Multimedia Engineering degree from LaSelle University, Barcelona, Spain and has a Computer Science background, design focused on UX, UI and filming.
She previously interned as a Human Computer Interaction (HCI) researcher at Microsoft Research and at R&D at URL Barcelona developing Augmented and Virtual Reality experiences and at the Google Creative Lab as a creative Technologist. Her grants, awards and publications include over 19 scientific papers, 3 patents, a 2016 Facebook Graduate Fellowship, 2015 Lego Foundation sponsored research, 2016 Finalist Innovation by Design Awards. She also received the 2017 Scent Innovator Award by the Cosmetic Executive Women (CEW) and IFF (International Flavours and Fragrances)
Sri Kalvakuntla Taraka Rama Rao, is the current Industries and IT Minister in the Government of Telangana. Popularly referred to as KTR, K.T. Rama Rao comes from a family of politicians, his father being the founder of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi. KTR holds dual masters degrees in biochemistry and business management from CUNY. He represented his party and directed his efforts in convincing India’s Central Government to pass the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act in 2014. Under his leadership top corporations such as Apple, Google, Amazon and Uber, have set up their largest bases outside the US in Hyderabad.
Karthik Reddy is the co-founder and Managing Partner at Blume Ventures, one of India’s leading early stage Venture funds. Blume focusses on seed to Pre-Series A stages of funding and has made over a 100 investments across its 7 year history.
Karthik’s stints at American Express, Reuters Instinet and Bennett Coleman (Times Group) have given him a breadth of experience across the US and India in Financial Markets, Technology and Media. He is an alumni of IIT (Roorkee), IIM (Bangalore) and The Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania.
At Blume, he has led the majority of the investments, and advises and serves on the boards of some of the leading investments at the firm – Zopper, Belong, Exotel, Grey Orange Robotics, Unacademy, Chillr, Healthify, Mettl, Nowfloats, Railyatri amongst other emerging stars. Blume has had early success through significant exits in companies such as Taxiforsure (to Ola), Promptec (to Havells) and Zipdial (to Twitter).
Lakshmi Pratury brought TED to India in 2009, when the first TEDIndia conference was held in Mysore. In December 2010, she curated and hosted the first INK Conference, in association with TED, which carried forward the momentum created by TEDIndia. Lakshmi Pratury brings with her a varied and rich experience that spans for-profit enterprises, venture capital and nonprofit organizations. Featured in the list of ‘100 Most Powerful Women’ by Forbes Asia in 2010, Lakshmi has traversed an incredible distance professionally.
As a social entrepreneur, Lakshmi was a leading force at the American India Foundation (AIF), where she was part of the management team that raised over $30M in five years to channel towards development activities in India. She was the founder of the Digital Equalizer program, which brought technology education to over 100,000 children and 2,000 teachers in India.
Prior to AIF, Lakshmi was a partner at the venture capital firm Global Catalyst Partners. At Global Catalyst Partners, she established relationships between GCP, the development community in India, and key executives in India.
Before this Lakshmi was with Intel Corporation for 12 years and had various roles in marketing, marketing communication, advertising, and evangelizing the developer community.
Lakshmi holds a Bachelors degree in Mathematics from Nizam College, Hyderabad, India. She attended IIT, Mumbai, and has an MBA from the Bajaj Institute, India, and a second MBA from Portland State University, with a minor in theater arts.
Lakshmi has published articles in San Jose Mercury, San Francisco Chronicle, Mint (leading business daily in India), interviewed celebrities, contributed to radio shows, including National Public Radio, and acted in local (US) theater.
Lakshmi has spoken at high-profile conferences like TED Conference in the US, the DLD Conference in Germany, WIRED conference in UK, and more.
Lux Rao has spent over 25 years in the industry, taking on roles like Sales & Marketing, Branding and Communications, Channel & Product Management, Product Support, Pre-sales, Competency Development and Customer Service. He has contributed extensively in developing new services, value-proposition and transforming programs into business lines.
As a passionate technology evangelist, he has authored several whitepapers on Green IT, Cloud Computing and have been invited at various forums for emerging technologies as chairperson, moderator and speaker. He has also been recognized by various institutions and has been the proud recipient of 7 National and International awards during his current role.
Miki is Director of 01Booster (Zero One Booster), top accelerator of Japan. Miki is passionate about 01Booster’s vision, ‘helping Japan make businesses that may impact the world.
She takes care of Partnership and Program Development for technology driven startup teams while managing an acceleration program. Before 01Booster, Miki was in charge of corporate venture capital and corporate accelerator program at Corporate Strategy Division at Nikon. Also, she was involved in cross border technology transactions including M&A and joint ventures as Legal and IP.
Nishith Desai is the founder of the research-based strategy driven international law firm, Nishith Desai Associates with offices in Mumbai, Silicon Valley, Bangalore, Singapore, Mumbai – BKC, New Delhi, Munich and New York.
Nishith himself is a renowned international tax, corporate, IP lawyer researcher, published author and lecturer in leading academic institutions around the world. He specializes in Financial Services sector and assisted Government of Mauritius and Government of India in establishment of their offshore financial centers. Soon after India opened up its economy to the outside world in 1991, he established the first five India Focused funds and pioneered the roots of asset management industry and the firm has now worked for over 900 funds across all classes of asset.
Nitesh K. Jangir is a co-founder of Coeo Labs, a medical device company solving unmet clinical needs in the field of emergency and critical care. VAPCare is one of the products which he has developed at Coeo. VAPCare is a patented device to reduce chances of contracting ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP), a fatal lung infection which kills more than 250,000 patients in India alone. His work has won many awards including MassChallenge Boston, Millennium Alliance, 3M Young Innovators Award, ASME I-Show, American College of Cardiology, 1776, Tata Social Enterprise Challenge etc.
Nivruti Rai is vice president in the Data Center Group (DCG) and general manager of Intel India at Intel Corporation. Based in Bengaluru, she provides overall engineering and business unit leadership and leads operations for the site, driving innovation, cross-group efficiencies and execution for engineering teams delivering global products and roadmaps. She also leads engagements with national and local governments and policymakers, as well as collaboration with ecosystem players to enable innovation and entrepreneurship.
Nivruti is also responsible for DCG India site engineering and execution, with a focus on delivering platforms aligned with the India team’s charter. In addition, she supports DCG and the Intel Sales and Marketing Group in strengthening customer, ecosystem, academic and research lab relationships in India.
Pooja Dhingra is the founder of Le15 Patisserie and Studio Fifteen Culinary Centre in Mumbai. Pooja has also opened her first cafe at Colaba in 2016 called Le15 Cafe in collaboration with a culinary school friend called Pablito Naranjo. Armed with a degree in hospitality from Cesaz Ritz College, Switzerland and a Patisserie Diploma from Le Cordon Bleu. Pooja returned home with the single goal of creating Parisian styled culinary experiences in India.
She has been featured in national dailies and is a regular in fashion and lifestyle glossies not just for her abilities in the kitchen but also as a dynamic businesswoman and inspiration to women – she was selected by Forbes India for their ’30 Undeer 30′ achievers list for 2014 and the Forbes 30 under 30 Asia list.
Prabhat Labh is an international development expert with over two decades of experience in leading programs and initiatives across Asia, Africa and North America. Prabhat brings deep domain knowledge in financial inclusion, enterprise development and livelihoods sectors.
Prior to his move to Grameen Foundation India, Prabhat designed and led the portfolio of programs focused on access to savings services for low income populations at the MasterCard Foundation, Canada. Combining insights from diverse fields of sociology, behavioural economics and technology into one coherent strategy to address intractable challenges in the financial inclusion space, this portfolio has successfully expanded access to savings services for millions of people across seventeen countries in Africa.
Earlier, Prabhat was the Senior Technical Advisor for CARE USA’s pan- Africa microfinance initiative ‘Access Africa’, and prior to CARE, Prabhat served on the faculty of Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India, where he focused on development of youth-led micro enterprises and rural industries.
Prakash Mallya is responsible for developing new growth areas in the region. He was most recently the Director for Intel Asia’s Data Center Group, and managed the region’s data center strategy for cloud service providers, communications service providers, enterprise and government infrastructure, spanning server, storage, and network solutions. Prior to that, Prakash was the Managing Director of Southeast Asia at Intel where he led all of Intel’s sales, marketing and the enablement of Intel products across Southeast Asia, one of the world’s most dynamic markets for computing technology. Besides achieving strong business results, under his stewardship, Southeast Asia team won the Global ECOC Award for exemplary leadership in Ethics and Compliance.
Prakash is a business focused technology executive with 21 years of international experience. He has built multidisciplinary engineering teams and grown business operations in Fortune 500 companies. He has a strong background in Product engineering, IT & Operational Excellence. Excelled in matrix leadership role, he has steered the organizations for product innovation and strong performance ethics & integrity. He has worked in US for 9+ years and has many International Publications t his name.
Prerna Sharma is a scientist and Assistant Professor of Physics at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore. She is an experimentalist in the area of soft matter and biophysics. She studied at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai for a Ph.D degree and followed that up with a three-year post-doctoral fellowship at Brandeis University, USA.
She has been one of the youngest in the recent history to join IISc as a Professor at the age of 28. Her early research was focused on quantitative understanding of variety of interfacial phenomena such as adhesion, peeling and flow through porous media. She is currently involved in using tools of physics to address problems in membrane biophysics and ciliary beating.
R. Madhavan is an Indian actor, writer and film producer. He has received three Filmfare Awards and an award from the Tamil Nadu State Film Awards along with recognition and nominations from other organisations. He has been described as one of the few actors in India who is able to achieve pan-Indian appeal, having appeared in films from seven different languages.
After appearing in commercials and in small roles, he later gained recognition in the Tamil film industry through Mani Ratnam’s successful romantic film Alaipayuthey (2000). He worked with Mani Ratnam again in the critically acclaimed 2002 film Kannathil Muthamittal playing the father of an adopted girl. His other hits include, Rang De Basanti (2006), Guru (2007), 3 Idiots (2009), Tanu Weds Manu (2011), Vettai (2012), Tanu Weds Manu Returns (2015), Irudhi Suttru and Saala Khadoos (2016), Vikram Vedha (2017).
He has received many awards including Filmfare, IIFA, SIIMA, ITFA, etc., for his outstanding roles as a Best Actor in a lead role as well as supporting roles too. He supports several social initiatives including animal welfare and the Chennai-based Charity, The Banyan. He also has a strong interest in addressing gender issues including women and girl child.
Radha Basu is widely recognized as a leading technology entrepreneur and mentor, and as a pioneer in the Indian software business. Radha grew Hewlett Packard’s electronic software division from ground zero into a $1.2 billion business. She then held the position of Chairman and CEO of Support.com, a Nasdaq-listed company. Radha and her husband subsequently launched Anudip Foundation to generate livelihoods for India’s unemployed and marginalized youth through digital and workplace skills development.
In 2012, Radha founded iMerit, a technology –enabled services company that delivers digital data services for machine learning, content and support while effecting positive social and economic impact by employing marginalized youth and women. Radha has received numerous awards including the Silicon Valley Business Journal Women of Influence Award, the UN Women-ITU Gender-Equality Mainstreaming Technology Award, Top 25 Women of the Web, and CEO of the Year. She serves on the boards of NetHope, Jhumki Basu Foundation, and Santa Clara CSTS.
Raghu is the Executive Director of Emerging Technologies for L.V. Prasad Eye Institute and the newly founded, LVP Eye Innovations Lab. He is the project leader for the pipeline of products and solutions being created in the Center for Technology, Center for Ophthalmic Engineering and Center for Regenerative Medicine.
Prior to joining LVPEI, Raghu was a Quantitative Venture Capitalist & Portfolio Manager, making investments rooted in Deep Science such as Genomics, Extended Intelligence, Agtech, Robotics and the Tactile Internet. Raghu additionally advised many startups and founders.
Rajesh is a pioneer in investing in direct-to-consumer companies in India. His investment interests span consumer categories in retail, education and mobile. Rajesh returned from the US in 2006, drawn by the immense potential that India presents for entrepreneurs in reshaping the country. He has been a part of the startup ecosystem ever since.
In a career spanning over 20 years, Rajesh has had a broad set of experiences in the technology industry across product development, sales, M&A, equity research and private equity. He currently serves on the boards of several companies. Rajesh has an MBA (Hons) from the Booth School of Business, University of Chicago, a Master’s in engineering from Marquette University and Bachelor’s in Engineering from BITS, Pilani.
Raju is the Founder and CEO of Sierra Atlantic, a company that grew to be a best-in-class global services company over a period of 17 years. Under his leadership, Sierra Atlantic grew from a startup to over 2400 employees with operations in several countries and was consistently ranked amongst the best managed companies including the top 75 most admired companies in Silicon Valley, Top 25 great places to work in India and Top 10 best employers in South China.
Sierra Atlantic was acquired by Hitachi Consulting in December 2010 and it is the largest ever acquisition by Hitachi Consulting to date. Prior to founding Sierra Atlantic in 1993, Raju spent 10 years at Intel in software development, marketing, and general management. Raju currently serves on the board of Hitachi Consulting and GharPay, a fast growing consumer internet company based in India.
Raju is active in not-for-profit initiatives and is currently Chairman of BITSAA Intl, the alumni body of BITS Pilani, India’s #1 private university. He enjoys working with young entrepreneurs in a mentorship role and was instrumental in starting the TiE Chapter in Hyderabad. Raju also serves on the Board of India community center in Milpitas, CA. He previously served as a member of the Board of Trustees for Puente, a Wharton School non-profit program which helped under privileged communities worldwide gain access to technology. He also co-founded SIPA (Silicon Valley Indian Professional Association) in 1987.
Raju holds a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical and electronics engineering from BITS Pilani and a Master of Science degree in computer science from Virginia Tech.
Ravi Mantha is one of India’s more prolific Angel Investors, with investments in several startups that he also actively helps with capital raising and business strategy. Ravi also has a very high-end and niche wellness advisory practice based in London and Mumbai. He is highly recommended as one of India’s leading nutritional and wellness experts, and is author of two best-selling books on these topics.
Saad is an engineering prodigy who dropped out from school at age 10 to pursue his own education. He has recently turned 15 and handles technology at Ati where he works across autonomy, power electronics and vehicle design. He has been doing online courses since the age of 10 and completed numerous MOOC’s on edX, Coursera, and Udacity.
His interests vary from Computer Architecture, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning to Aerospace Engineering to name a few. Saad has also worked with Team Indus, and is a Young Member of the New York Academy of Sciences.
He has given talks on technology at various forums like the Cisco Launchpad, Zinnov Confluence 2016, Unisys, Broadridge, NILF 2017, Anthill Inside, and at the NASSCOM Design & Engineering Summit
Samir Sood is founder of Venture Highway. In addition, Samir has helped grow and diversify India Forge, a family run auto parts manufacturing business. Prior to this, Samir was the Head of South Asia, Australia – M&A and Investments for Google Inc., and in that capacity, he has led Google’s investments in several first time seed stage funds in India: Erasmic Venture Fund (Accel India), SONG (Soros, Omydiar, Google Fund), Seedfund, and Ventureast TeNet Fund II. Additionally, Samir was part of the team that coordinated the $750 million acquisition of AdMob.
Earlier, Samir was part of the Corporate Business Development team at Cisco Systems, Inc. where he led wireless acquisitions and investments, which included the $450 million acquisition of Airspace. Samir executed the first venture investment in India (India Games) for Cisco Systems, Inc. among many other acquisitions and investments.
Sanjay Swamy is Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Prime (previously AngelPrime) a seed-stage VC firm based out of Bangalore. Sanjay leads the charge on helping shape companies that have a specific focus on mobile applications, banking, financial services and mobile payments, with a firm philosophy of partnering with banks and financial institutions.
Sanjay has played a dual-role of investor and co-founder in Prime’s first two companies, ZipDial, a mobile marketing platform recently acquired by Twitter, as well as Ezetap, a smart-mobile POS company. Sanjay also is a key investor in happay, KredX and NiYO and is also actively involved in various policy-shaping initiatives that are redefining banking and payments in India including being a volunteer with iSpirit.
Prior to Prime, Sanjay played a key role in Aadhar (Unique ID project) where he worked on the authentication platform and its relationship to payments, banking, insurance and telecommunication services. Earlier he was the CEO of mobile payments startup mChek, a large-scale mobile payments provider that had massive distribution to more than 300M users across the Airtel and DoCoMo networks. You can follow Sanjay on Twitter @theswamy
Sanjay is an Eisenhower Fellow and Managing Director at Accenture Labs India. He is responsible for driving software engineering, R&D and leads the company’s Technology4Good program. Sanjay is passionate about using the combinatorial power of technology for building a more inclusive and sustainable world. He believes that as a software engineering researcher, he can solve some of the greatest challenges facing mankind with data science, digital and design thinking.
Sanjay joined Accenture in 2002. Currently, he leads a team of data scientists and software engineering experts to deliver greater automation and augmentation of software engineering activities, and build disruptive solutions for business and society. In the past, he has led several technology transformation programs across systems integration, application outsourcing, infrastructure outsourcing and business process outsourcing for clients across the United States and Europe. Sanjay is a member of Accenture’s Technology Leadership Council (TLC) and Technology Steering Committee for Corporate Citizenship. He is also a technology mentor for social entrepreneurs and startups including Ashoka Fellows and NASSCOM Foundation. A governing council member of the NASSCOM-Digital India IoT Center of Excellence, Sanjay has built a powerful open innovation ecosystem for joint R&D with leading academics in India and the United States.
The 26-year old Sarvesh founded Zorba along with his Guruji, India’s Happiest Chain of Yoga studios in 2013 when he was just 21 years of age. An ardent cricket fan,he was Vice Captain of the Tamil Nadu cricket junior team and has subsequently had the privilege to travel with the Rajasthan Royals and Kochi Tuskers for 3 years as an official net bowler to the teams. Even though cricket was his first love he had realized that yoga was more than just an hour’s practice, it was a way of life, and thus, the journey of Zorba began.
Zorba thrives on the principle of using yoga, mindfulness and beyond as the tool with which to empower people to lead happier and healthier lives. Despite preconceived notions that yoga is largely for the elderly and is best suited to only improve flexibility, Sarvesh wanted to capture the 500+ million people in India under the age of 30 years, with a mission to make yoga – which is the unification of mind, body, and spirit – appealing and enjoyable to all giving birth to the 25 interesting forms of yoga that forms the core of Zorba’s program. Connecting seven billion breaths is Zorba’s ultimate goal. Currently, zorba is spread across 75+ studios in 38+ cities in India with an extremely exciting global expansion plan.
A charismatic speaker with an entrepreneurial spirit, Sarvesh has shared his story and revelations at conferences like the INK conference, TEDx, UN’s Youth Change Makers Conclave and has been featured by CNBC Young Turks, Bloomberg TV, Forbes, BTVi and various other channels and publications. Sarvesh was named India’s Youngest CEO in the Health and Wellness Sector by Bloomberg and was named by Better Homes & Gardens as one of the Top 10 people in India to watch out for
Sashi is a seasoned entrepreneur and business leader. He founded 4 start-ups over the last 20 years. His last company AppLabs, a software testing firm with 2,500 employees, was acquired by Computer Sciences Corporation (NYSE: CSC).
He is the founding president of TiE Philadelphia and a member of the Wharton Entrepreneurship advisory board. he is also a member of the boards at T-Hub (Hyderabad) and Ben Franklin Technology Partners (Philadelphia) and runs a charitable organization that supports 650 school kids in Hyderabad.
Shayamal Vallabhjee has over 12 years of experience in the sports industry, working with the world’s best creatives, personalities and industrialists. Some include: the South African High Performance Cricket Team, Indian National Cricket Team, Indian Olympic Association, and many others. He has authored 5 books on sports science and motivation. Also, Shayamal is the director of Speed Kids — a program that caters to the bio-mechanical gross motor development of children between the age of 3-8 years.
Sheelika has nearly two decades of experience building and managing high performance human capital organizations both as an executive and an entrepreneur. At Team Indus, India’s only entry to Google Lunar XPRIZE, she enables the people organization and facilitates a culture of collaborative innovation and execution.
Team Indus is on a mission to lead India into the next generation of space exploration, precision engineering and aviation technology. In the process Team Indus will help redraw the boundaries of private initiative possibilities, inspire an entire generation of entrepreneurs and much more.
In January 2015, Team Inuds won a $1M milestone prize from Google Lunar XPRIZE after competing in the landing and imaging categories.
Shekar Naik was born completely blind to an economically weak family in Shimoga, who couldn’t afford even an eye check up. When he was 8, he underwent surgery with the help of a health check-up camp organized in his village, and managed to regain sight in one of his eyes.
During primary school, Shekar started getting interested in cricket. He was told he could not play because of his blindness, which in turn made him more ambitious towards the sport. Seeing this strong interest, his PE teacher in the blind school started guiding him on the rules of Blind Cricket. In 1988, Shekar was selected to play for his school team.
He was then selected for the district and zonal levels, and after that got a chance to represent the State. Due to his performance at the State level, he was asked to attend a camp for Indian Blind Cricket team, becoming a team member and then finally the Captain in 2010. He was presented the prestigious Padmashree award in the year 2017 for his dedication and contribution towards Blind Cricket.
Somdev is a former professional tennis player, who started his career playing tennis in the NCAA, representing the University of Virginia. He made it to three consecutive finals at the NCAA, winning back-to-back finals in junior and senior years. His 44-1 win-loss record in 2008 is tied for the best in NCAA history.
In 2011, he received the Arjuna Award from the Indian Government. In March 2017, he was appointed as the national observer for tennis by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, Government of India.
When Somdev hit stardom in 2009, he had a dream of starting a movement to create a healthier and happier India through sport. Life is a ball, his initiative positively impacts 15000+ kids through sports programs. Among all the accomplishments, providing a sporting platform to underprivileged kids has been the greatest.
“A visionary, mentor and passionate humanist who is driven to make Hyderabad one of the top 10 startup cities in the world”
Srini, as he is fondly called, is the Founder & Chief Operating Officer of T-Hub – India’s fastest growing startup engines catalyzing innovation, scale and deal flow. A thought-leader with in-depth knowledge of the startup ecosystem, he has successfully built a strong community that includes startups, incubators, accelerators, seed funds, angel networks, VCs and other startup ecosystem players. Under his stewarship, T-Hub has emerged as a force to reckon in the startup ecosystem across India. It has garnered attention from domestic as well as global investors, corporates and governments. He has been instrumental in launching several key initiatives that has taken T-Hub and Hyderabad to global map as one of the fastest growing and dynamic startup communities in the world.
Srini is also an angel investor and Hyderabad Director for the Founder Institutre, the world’s largest entrepreneur training and startup launch program. He sits on the Executive Council of the IIIT-H Foundation, the Industry Advisory Board for the Centre for Management Studies, NALSAR University of Law and serves as Mentor and advisor to many organizations and startups.
Sunil Rao joined Lightspeed India Partners Advisors LLP (LSIP) in 2016 as a Partner (Business Services) and is focused on providing a broad range of business development, recruiting and value-add services to the Lightspeed India portfolio companies.
Prior to LSIP, Sunil worked at Google India, where he led Strategic Partner Development, Developer Relations and Outreach Programs for Emerging Markets in India. He was instrumental in rolling out several highly successful mentorship programs, including “Launchpad” for early stage startups and “Google Accelerator” for mid-stage startups. Sunil also set up the Google Sandhill program in India, parntering with leading venture capital firms to work closely with high-potental startups and provide early access to technology, business connects and global insights.
In 2006, Sunil was part of the early team that established Symbian in India and later headed to Nokia Developer ecosystem. For these efforts Sunil was awareded the NASSCOM Product Ecosystem Enabler of the Year in 2009
Sunil Kanoria is a Kolkata-based Indian businessman with over 28 years of experience in infrastructure sector including infrastructure leasing & finance. He is the co-founder and Vice Chairman of Srei Infrastructure Finance Limited and also a trustee of Kanoria Foundation, which has as asset base of USD 10 billion.
His other ventures include Quippo, which was launched in 2002 as an equipment rental business. He also formed a joint venture with Tata Teleservices in 2009 to form Viom Networks, a telecom tower company. In 2016, Srei’s stake in Viom Networks was acquired by American Tower Corporation. Sunil’s career highlights include membership to the group involved in the development of the 10th Five Year Plan (2002–07) of the Planning Commission, Government of India.
Dr Susan Lim is the current Co-chair of the Global Advisory Council of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR). At 35, she broke through the gender glass ceiling in transplantation surgery and became the first in Asia, and the second woman in the world to have performed a successful cadaveric liver transplant. Since then, Susan’s desire to discover that next big thing has kept her actively focused on robotics and stem cell research. She strongly believes that as society increasingly embraces technology, communication and interactions will extend beyond humans to robots and other inanimates.
Travis co-founded LumiereVR with the determination to bring empathetic cinema to life through Virtual Reality. He uses his background in computer science to build tools and and softwares that empower and challenge filmmakers to explore new depths with this new medium. Now LumiereVR not only employs a suite of productions tools and workflow, but are also partnering with artists and corporations, setting up VR theatres across the United States to make VR content available to the general public.
Trisha is a social activist, lawyer and UN Young leader for Sustainable Development Goals. Her work focuses on working with and for the youth towards the advancement of the UN’s SDGs by bringing a gender specific approach to multiple disciplinary areas.
SheSays is a youth-led NGO that stresses on civil society engagement to promote gender equality. SheSays functions are in the domains of sexual violence, education, healthcare and sanitation, security and public policy. The organisation has been leading the movement to eliminate sanitary napkin tax, under the viral campaign #LahuKaLagaan that got bipartisan political support.
So far, SheSays has successfully engaged more than 150,000 people. She has also mentored youth in the Arab region and Singapore in response to the SDGs. For her work, Trisha was recently recognised by President Obama as a civic leader and is a Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia, Class of 2017 listee under the Social Entrepreneurs and Pioneer Women categories.
For over 44 years now, Usha Uthup has spread a message of love and unity, peace and harmony, tolerance and integrity, and happiness – through music. From discotheques to concerts, across India and the World, she has addressed the youth about the values of music that makes us human. She lives as she believes, presenting even the most contemporary songs dressed in traditional attire projecting the fact that India is a true melting pot of cultures, with its own distinctive cultural identity.
Born in 1947, or Didi as she is fondly called, comes from a traditional middle class South Indian family and her career began in 1969 at a Chennai nightclub called Nine Gems and she has recorded more than a hundred albums in sixteen Indian languages, sung un several thousand concerts, performed in all major countries and has been on television since its inception in India. Usha has served as a role model for generations of young Indians and has been an unwavering ambassador for traditional Indian values.
Usha Uthup’s music has charmed generations of Indians, young and old. People smile, tap their feet, clap their hands, and forget their worries when she performs. Usha’s melody speaks a universal language and transcends religion, race, nationality and caste. She has given people in far-flung cultures an unexpected image of an Indian woman: strong, independent, humorous, intelligent and loaded with talent.
“All that matter is honesty, integrity, and courage to face your conviction.”
Vanitha Narayanan is the Chairman of IBM India Private Limited. She was appointed to this leadership position in January 2017, to leverage her IBM experience and extensive market knowledge. Vanitha works with government, clients and the ecosystem to build strategic plans & the intersection of industry and technology. She spearheads transformational initiatives and plays a critical role in enhancing IBM’s significant footprint in India to serve Indian and global clients
In her earlier role as Managing Director of IBM India Private Limited, and Regional General Manager of IBM India/ South Asia, Vanitha was responsible for all of IBM’s sales, marketing, services and global delivery operations in the India/South Asia region, including Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka. She was named one of the ‘Most Powerful Women’ in Business in India (2014- 2017) by Business Today for 3 consecutive years, one of the 12 Global Indian Super Women of 2016 by CXOToday and conferred with the Degree of Doctor of Letters by the LNM Institute of Information Technology.
While most kids were grappling with the realities of growing up, Vishal took a head start and started his first company – FACT, soon after finishing school at the ripe young age of 16.
In 1999, he founded Indiagames, then a five member team and today a global operation with over 300 employees and offices in Mumbai, Beijing, London and Los Angeles making Indiagames one of the leading mobile game companies globally. He is recognized as being instrumental in starting and growing the Gaming Industry in India. He sold Indiagames to Disney and headed the Digital business for Walt Disney in India before starting his new venture GOQii Inc. that integrates wearable technology with personalized coaching.
A go-getter with tremendous passion and enegy, Vita Dani resembles the new age woman of today, who is keen to make a substantial difference in the world through sports and philanthropic activities.
Vita is the co-owner of ‘Chennaiyin FC’ team along with Abhishek Bachhan and MS Dhoni. She is also the President of MCDTTA (Mumbai City District Table Tennis Association). 11Even Sports conducts activities in table Tennis in 29 states in India under her guidance. She believes that Indian kids have tremendous potential in sports and is involved in popularizing football and table tennis.
Yash Dongre heads the American side of the business at House of Anita Dongre. Having completed his post-graduation in International Marketing from Hult Business School, USA, he is currently spearheading the company’s expansion strategy in the US and recently launched the company’s first store in New York.
Yash has a keen interest in social enterprise and entrepreneurship projects, and has invested in a social impact driven start-up X Billion Labs. The company claims a business-driven approach giving ROI and works in the domain of water, digitization, social cause, marketing, renewable energy, skill development, education, rural development, agriculture and e-commerce.
He is a core member of the Anita Dongre Foundation, undertaking its CSR activities as part of his profile. He led the Charoti Project launched by the foundation, in a small village about 2 hours from the city of Mumbai. They trained completely unskilled women from the village, equipping them with technical skills and employment opportunities, making them economically independent. The Anita Dongre Foundation is focused on turning villages into self-sustainable units. Recently, Yash Dongre addressed over 2000 students at the annual United Nations Young Change Makers Conclave on Anita Dongre Grassroot’s journey of adapting an enterprise approach towards sustainability.
Venugopal has extensive experience of over 35 years mainly in the real estate industry, in project development of commercial, residential, hospitality and mixed use projects in India.
Before taking over as the President of RMZ Foundation he was the Managing Director- development management at RMZ Corp and member of the Executive Committee responsible for enhancing the shareholders’ value in the real estate development. Currently, Venugopal spearheads Sustainability, Skill Development, Social Welfare, Urban Development and the Art initiatives at RMZ Foundation. A passionate leader, he also serves on the boards of various NGOs in India and is a member of the World Economic Forum- Steering Committee- Future of Urban Development & Services in India
Dia Mehta Bhupal originally from Mumbai, now works and practices in Hyderabad, India. Educated at The Parsons School of Design in New York, she holds a BFA in Photography. Prior to enrolling at Parsons, Dia completed her foundation studies at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London. During her time at both Parsons and St. Martins, Dia has focused extensively on photography, with a particular emphasis on redefining everyday images as commonly interpreted by society. Dia creates fine art photography, primarily working with the constructed image.
