INKtalks

Pallavi Gupta

Pallavi founded FifthEastate who work in partnership with India’s State Governments to create collaborations between them, innovative social solutions and corporates. She specializes in Open Innovation and Technology for the socio-economic development of emerging economies.

There is a want to help the less fortunate- motivated corporates, the government, the people. But there are limitations to each of these. The sustainability is lacking. To put all the pieces together, she founded FifthEstate and works in partnership with India’s State Governments to create collaborations between them, innovative social solutions and corporates. She specializes in Open Innovation and Technology for the socio-economic development of emerging economies.

Ravi Venkatesan

Ravi Venkatesan is Chairman of the Board at Bank of Baroda. He is also the founder Chairman of Social Venture Partners India, a partner at Unitus Seed Fund and a fund advisor at Kalaari Capital. He spoke about how in this world of constant change and innovation. the machines are bouch to catch up and converse with himans in terms of intelligence. We need to start thinking about science based innovation. He concluded with some Shakespeare
“There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.”

Subodh Kerkar

Fabricate and refabricate the idea of india, and the culture. Food against fanaticism. The food our grandmothers and greatgrand mothers is as foreign as a pair of jeans. Chilies came from the foreign land when Vasco da gama came here.

So, if there is talk about eradication of foreign influence on the Indian culture, start with the chilies, he quipped. Cashew came from Brazil. And now, India is one of the largest producer of cashew. Cashews, chilies were part of an offering to the Gods. Potatoes, tomatoes, and many more all arrived here from the foreign land. What a fun yet insightful talk this was!

Madan Padaki

Madan Padaki went from having minimal touch-points with Government bodies as a child from a lower middle class family to a person who helps facilitate government cooperation for several initiatives.

His work with Government sectors not only helped myth some of the common myths about working with Government, but his little survey experiment with his skill-assessment students’ program bust myths for several of his students.

He urges us to engage with the government and not be indifferent as this is the only way to open up collaborative governance.

Pallavi Gupta

Pallavi Gupta shares her inspiring journey from being a middle-class family girl in Uttar Pradesh where she convinced her principal to use the school premises for adult education classes in the evening.

Along her journey, she realized that India is leading in the field of social innovation, however, all solutions were siloed. Her enterprise, The Fifth Estate, focuses on connecting existing solutions to create larger impact. She took up the challenge of finding the fit for the pieces of the puzzle that already existed.

Her final thought: None of us can create a large-scale impact on our own. We have to connect, tweak, and refit our solutions to share in the responsibility.

Dali and Finn

Nalu is a child-focused clothing company founded by kids helping kids to just be kids.

Nalu means ‘wave’ in ‘Hawaiian’’.

Dali and Fynn found out that many of their friends were missing from school, when their parents worked as chiropractors in dusty schools in Central India. That the only reason was the lack of uniforms to go to school pained them. That’s when they decided to start Nalu.

Nalu is a clothing company that provides one school uniform for every 5 products sold.

The Green School of Bali where they study has been a huge influence in shaping their thoughts and actions towards this initiative.

Nalu also makes clothes from the cleanest, most beautiful organic cotton from India.

Amitabh Kant

Amitabh Kant spread his energy into the auditorium like a contagion.

He was first noticed for disrupting the tourism industry with this “God’s own country” Then came along the “Incredible India” campaign that spiked tourism in India and made it a destination for exotic experiences.

Amitabh believes India is on the brink of a wonderful inflection, and that can be supported by four key things : urbanisation, education, healthcare and nutrition

Anshul Tewari

Anshul Tewari sensitizes us to the severe apathy we are used to as a result of growing up in  a culture of silence, pointing out that this is specifically true for people born between the 1980s and 1990s. However, the onus and challenge of solving all these issues is with this same demographic.

YouthKiAwaaz started as a simple blogging exercise to raise his voice and speak up about things he felt strongly about. However, he only received a lukewarm response to his posts on serious issues. He realized that we were harbouring a culture of not encouraging others to speak up and support others who speak up.

That’s when he decided that this blogging journey should be much more than himself and open up the platform for everyone else.

His platform, YouthKiAwwaz was born and has since been the birthplace for many campaigns against social taboos like inequality, sexist issues, apathy of Governance and many other successes.

One of the open letters on his platform brought more than 16000 people back from Libya, while another was responsible for starting off the campaign called #Happytobleed, a campaign against existing menstrual taboos.

He leaves us with a strong message, “Let’s encourage the act of speaking up.”

Adam Sadowsky

Adam Sadowsky wowed the audience with creation from his agency, Syn labs. His amazing team is made of engineers, scientists, artists, designers, content creators, storytellers that help create amazingly viral campaigns for his clients.

Adam took us through the Rebe Goldberg machine experiments that he deploys in his campaigns- and they took our breath away! When he showed us the complications he comes across while creating those amazing campaigns, we forgot to breathe for a while.

Sameer Seth

In a quest to find his true calling for life amidst frequent and concerned advice about doing an MBA and taking the beaten path.

He took on a journey of how he started The Bombay Canteen when he didnt even know how to cook- just as a result of solving one problem at a time, and overcoming one fear at a time.

Today “The Bombay Canteen” is one of the fastest growing innovative food companies in India.

Sunitha Krishnan

Sunitha starts with a horrific revelation. Some men revel in the act of raping women and flaunting it on social media. Sunitha’s response to it was to start a campaign called #Shametherapist, a campaign that went viral but also brought with it brickbats, threats and abuses to her. Her struggle was further complicated by the rules of social media platforms that would only delete these videos, but not report them. Her campaign made people from all over the country send her more such horrific videos.

She was confounded by the challenge of tracing the rapists- every Police inspector would deny that the crime occurred in his area. She finally took her fight to the home minister which was met with eerie silence. She knocked on the doors of the Chief Justice of India and demanded that a mechanism to systematically refute and weaken such offenders must be put in place, which was being fueled by a weird demand by people for such “rape videos”

She leaves us with a disturbing thought, “What is enabling these offenders?”

The answer is, “Our apathy.”

Swetha Suresh

Swetha is a shining example of turning a deficiency into an opportunity. As a child, she wanted to learn the flute- but when she couldn’t have the instrument, she decided to become the instrument herself!

Her passion for whistling has led her to a world record for whistling for 18 hours continuously. She has so far whistled in 6 films, and 197 different songs. She won the World Whistling Championship in Japan representing India.

Her versatility shone through when she whistled Mozart’s ‘Queen Of The Night’ followed by a film song based on South India Carnatic music!

Kalyani Khona

“We are all one accident from disability.”
Match made in heaven? No. Match made on Inclov. Kalyani Khona with her match making app for people with disabilities is revolutionizing the norms of dating today. What started off as just a match making app became more than helping someone find love. It became about instilling confidence to live, to come out of their houses and meet people.

Sarvesh Shashi

Always a troublemaker since childhood, Sarvesh has built an empire of Yoga studios which inspires and encourages people by making fitness fun! Zorba is a Yoga and wellness fraternity started by Sarvesh in 2013. He also co-founded a marketing communications company offering branding and other marketing services. He is an embodiment of energy, crazy ideas and focus. Always fun to dance with you, Sarvesh!

Christopher Krichhoff 

He told us the story of Ebola and how he worked to help stop pandemic. He says that we are turning the world into a giant petri dish of diseases. Chris was appointed by Secretary of Defense Ash Carter to lead the Pentagon’s Silicon Valley Office, Defense Innovation Unit X, as one of four partners overseeing the Defense Department’s nation-wide investment portfolio harnessing emerging commercial technology.