Alexandru Ionut Budisteanu is a young innovator and a computer geek born and raised in Hackerville – the cybercrime capital of the world. Alexandru puts a lot of passion and dedication in creating all kinds of software and devices in order to improve people`s lives. He won the $75,000 Gordon E. Moore award at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, for a low-cost self-driving car that was using Artificial Intelligence. He also received the $10,000 IEEE Presidents’ Scholarship for a device that was trying to help blind people to see with their tongue. TIME magazine listed Alexandru as one of the Most Influential Teens of 2013.
Anand Varma’s photos tell the story behind the science of everything from primate behavior and hummingbird biomechanics to amphibian disease and forest ecology. He started photographing natural history subjects while studying biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He spent several years assisting other photographers before receiving a National Geographic Young Explorer grant to document the wetlands of Patagonia. Varma has since become a regular contributor to National Geographic. His feature stories include “Mindsuckers” about mind-controlling parasites and “Quest for a Superbee” about the science behind honeybee declines
Angad Singh is a cofounder of Lemonade.io, a Silicon Valley startup that is building groundbreaking technology to measure and improve creativity. He believes that creativity is the most important skill for the 21st century workplace, where technology is rapidly eating jobs. Lemonade is supported by some of the world’s most prominent venture capitalists, angels and academics.
Some of Angad’s formative experiences include learning to program at age 10, teaching design at the Stanford d.school, getting invited to meet the Dalai Lama, learning 6 languages and working for startups on 4 continents.
Anshulika brings with her over a decade of experience in the Media and Entertainment industry. She launched her entrepreneurial venture called Wishberry in 2012, which was India’s first crowdfunding platform for creative artists. In 2018, she also forayed into film production, and her Tamil film Mandela was also shortlisted among the 14 films being considered for India’s entry to the Oscars in 2021. She is currently working on Writers INK, a nationwide skill-building initiative in the area of written storytelling.
Aparna received her Ph.D in medicine from University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy. As a senior research scientist in Molecular Engineering Laboratory in Singapore, she is currently heading a stem cell differentiation project to develop in vitro cellular models for neurological conditions.
She is also actively involved in the Stem Cell Society of Singapore and is the chairperson of their biennial Young Investigator’s Symposium
Arshiya Bose is a conservationist and coffee addict who founded the Black Baza Coffee Co, a social/environment enterprise that supports coffee growers in India to follow biodiversity-friendly farming practices by providing incentives and guaranteeing a buy-back of coffee harvested from participating farms. Black Baza Coffee’s vision is to have a world where coffee farms support biodiversity and all producers have secure and stable livelihoods.
She completed her PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2014 on markets for sustainable coffee and continues to do impact-oriented research that can enable sustainable coffee production either through her own enterprise or voluntary policy mechanisms.
Named the ‘youngest headmaster in the world’ by BBC in October 2009, at the age of 16. Babar Ali is an Indian student and teacher from Murshidabad, West Bengal. He started a school, Ananada Siksha Niketan – Home of joyful learning, in his backyard when he was just 9-years-old, now with 300 regular students. It is an outdoor school and counts a total of 10 teaching and non-teaching staff who are providing their voluntary service. There are no tuition fees, thus making it affordable for the poor in this economically deprived area and thereby helping increase literacy rate there.
In 2009, Babar Ali won a prize from the program Real Heroes of the Indian English news channel CNN IBN for his work and was awarded the NDTV ‘Indian of the Year’ award. His story became a part of the syllabus for the CBSE 10th standard English textbook, PUC English textbook for Govt. of Karnataka, and also in a curriculum in Luxembourg, Europe. He was featured on Aamir Khan’s TV show Satyamev Jayate in July 2012
An emerging artist whose skill and imagination is at once striking and impressive, she describes her own art as self-reflexive, introspective and thought-provoking. The conflict and fragility of the mind is a constant theme that pervades her body of work.
Benitha completed her MFA from the Government College of Arts & Crafts, Chennai, in 2002 in painting and printmaking.
Gingger Shankar is a singer, virtuoso violinist, composer, model and songwriter, and was born into one of the world’s most influential musical families. Her accomplishments include working with top producers and film composers, and recently contributing to Katy Perry’s album “Prism” on the single, ‘Legendary Lover’. Gingger is an INK Fellow from the class of 2015. She is also the only female in the world to have mastered the 10-string double violin, an instrument that covers the entire range of the orchestra’s double bass, cello, viola and violin, and of which there are currently only two in existence.
Kaushal is the founder of Teabox, a startup that is disrupting the $40 bn global tea industry. On a mission to build Teabox as India’s first global tea brand, his company uses technology and supply chain innovation to ensure that its global customer base can access the freshest and best teas, within days of production. Teabox has already been noticed for its innovations with Business Today’s coolest startup award (2014) and the Asia Pacific Online Food Retailer of the year (2015). In another first in the tea industry, Teabox launched a patent pending personalised subscription service that uses Artificial Intelligence to help customers select the right type of teas.
In less than three years, the company has shipped over 30mn cups of tea to customers in over 80 countries. Started in 2012, Kaushal has successfully raised over $7mn from global marquee investors to build Teabox, which now has sourcing and fulfilment centres in multiple countries including India’s first state-of-the-art cold storage facility, a pioneering step for the Indian tea industry
Mainak is the co-founder and Co-CEO of GPS Renewables (Green Power Systems). GPS is one of Asia’s most promising cleantech firms, having received awards from various international and national platforms. He was listed as one of the top Indian innovators under the age of 35 by MIT Technology Review. Fortuna Media recently named him as “The Bioenergy person of the year, 2015”. He is also a Global Shaper, World Economic Forum, as a part of which, he works towards making Bangalore a better place for its citizens
Manvendra is a visionary in the climate change/sustainable development space and also has a fascination for distant lands, their heritage, and extraordinary stories led him to establish boutique hotels – Suryagarh-Jaisalmer, Narendra Bhawan-Bikaner, and Mary Budden Estate- Binsar.He started restoring old forts and palaces to make them into culture hubs and incubation labs and for the past decade, he has immersed his efforts in the Dhun project. Dhun is envisioned as an intentional community and sustainable habitat for 8,500 individuals.
Nina Tandon is CEO and co-founder of EpiBone, the world’s first company growing living human bones for skeletal reconstruction. She is the co-author of Super Cells: Building with Biology, a book that explores the new frontier of biotech. She has a Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering from the Cooper Union, a Master’s in Bioelectrical Engineering from MIT, a PhD in Biomedical Engineering, and an MBA from Columbia University. Her PhD research focused on studying electrical signaling in the context of tissue engineering, and has worked with cardiac, skin, bone, and neural tissue.
Tandon spent her early career in telecom at Avaya Labs and transitioned into biomedical engineering via her Fulbright Scholarship in Italy, where she worked on an electronic nose used to “smell” lung cancer. She was named one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business by Fast Company, a Crain’s 40 under 40 people who have achieved success in business before turning 40, and a World Economic Forum Tech Pioneer.
Nishikant’s research work lies at the intersection of Medical Imaging, Computer Vision, Parallel Programming, and Computer Graphics. He primarily works on accelerating an ultrasound-based technique called elastography that enables surgeons to perform cancer tumor detection during a surgery.
Combining 3D B-mode and 3D elastography visualized over time gives a 5D ultrasound system. Nishikant has developed the world’s first 5D ultrasound system. The 5D ultrasound system work has been published in the International Journal for computer assisted radiology and systems. Nishikant has developed these systems as a real-time system capable of acquiring data from an ultrasound machine to elastography processing.
Pavitra Mohan started MASALA CHAI, a blog that showcases South Asian or ‘desi’ art and design from around the world. The idea was to scour the web for sub-continental art that was innovative and broke the ‘brown’ mold. She refers to this new breed of art and design as ‘desihip’, and has showcased over 450 artists and designers.
She has also worked with retail giant Harvey Nichols on an Indian themed exhibition, where she curated the up and coming designers under fashion and interiors.
Priyanka Kohli–a 2015 INK Fellow–leads People Operations at GreyOrange, a pioneering Indian startup that designs, manufactures and deploys advanced robotics systems for automation at distribution and fulfillment centres. The company’s two key products are The Sorter, a high-speed sortation system for order consolidation and routing and The Butler, a bi-directionally scalable material handling system for goods-to-man
Alarmed by the rising rates of suicides and stress levels in India and the concurrent social stigma attached to seeing a psychologist, Richa Singh co-founded Your D.O.S.T — an emotional support network for people to anonymously discuss their problems with qualified and experienced individuals. Since its launch in December 2014, over 50,000 people have sought support on the portal and the numbers continue to grow
Listed by Forbes as one of Asia’s most influential under 30 year olds, Samyak leads X Billion Labs – an eco system of impact enterprises. Through his unique ability to align different stake holders such as governments, private sector & grassroot organizations – he is building future relevant businesses in areas such as employability, agriculture, population control, healthcare and rural development. He is currently developing a skilling model to enable India’s youth to remain professionally relevant in a digital economy (Skill Lab), an information access platform for rural Indian youth (Netpar – Tech Lab) and a behavior change model to positively influence people’s choices (Action Lab). In the past, he has founded some of the country’s pioneering youth platforms such as Operation Black Dot, The Indian International Model U.N, The Green Batti Project, Youthportal.in, UN Young Changemakers Conclave & Nimaya Foundation which have collectively engaged a million + young citizens.
Through all his work, Samyak’s core aim is to enhance the quality of life & raise the standard of living for India’s next billion
Sharath M. Gayakwad is an Indian Paralympic swimmer who has over 30 international and 40 national medals to his credit, one of them being a bronze medal at the 2010 Asian Para Games. Sharath is also the first Indian swimmer to qualify for the Paralympics and competed in the 2012 Summer Paralympics in London. At the 2014 Asian Games, he broke P.T. Usha’s record for most number of medals by an Indian at any multi-discipline event by winning 6 medals.
Srikanth Bolla was the first visually challenged student in India permitted to study science beyond grade 10. Since then, he has blazed new trails with Bollant Industries, an organization that employs uneducated and disabled employees to manufacture eco-friendly disposable consumer products and packaging solutions. They also offer adhesives, printing inks, printing products and intermediate products for disposable product manufacturers. Bollant Industries now operates five manufacturing units and has sales crossing USD 70 million each year
Stuart is a futurist whose work enables collective foresight and imagination through design. For the past decade he has developed experiential futures (transmedia interactions and immersive situations embodying future scenarios) to support strategy, changemaking, storytelling and education. Stuart is currently the Director of the Situation Lab and Assistant Professor of Strategic Foresight and Innovation in the Faculty of Design at OCAD University, Toronto.
As a consultant and facilitator Stuart has worked with diverse organisations including the United Nations Development Programme, Arup, IDEO, General Electric, the University of Oxford, the Sydney Opera House, the government of Singapore, Wired magazine, and the National Film Board of Canada. He recently co-created the award-winning imagination game The Thing From The Future, and is currently helping to design the Museum of Future Government Services in Dubai.
