Speakers for TEDxMumbai

TEDxMumbai features some dynamic and inspiring speakers. Each speaker will give a presentation no longer than 18 minutes long. So the entire event will be exciting and fast paced.

Some of the speakers include:

Anupam Kher

Anupam Kher is a Padma Shri, and a multiple Filmfare award winning actor who has worked in over 100 plays and over 400 films. He has been the Chairman of the Censor Board and the National School of Drama,. Recently, he has founded Actor Prepares, a leading actor training academy in Mumbai, that is rapidly expanding to other cities in India and abroad.

Nisha Yadav

Nisha Yadav joined the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in 2003 and worked on the instrumentation for space based telescopes and related saellite technology for three years. Since 2007, she has been working on the project of “Archaeoastronomy in the Indian context”. Her research aims at understanding the structure of Indus script using various statistical and computational techniques and explores its relation to other aspects of the Indus culture. During the period she has published several papers in leading international and Indian journals and has been invited to present her work at various national and international meetings.

Viren Rasquinha

Viren Rasquinha is the Chief Operating Officer of Olympic Gold Quest, a foundation for the promotion of sports and games, which has a mission to o bridge the gap between the best athletes in India and the best in the world and ultimately help win Olympic Gold medals for the country.Viren is a former India hockey captain and Olympian (Athens 2004), and the Arjuna awarde for Hockey for the year 2005. He represented the Indian Hockey team in 180 International matches in an international career spanning 8 years. After his retirement from international hockey, he did his Management studies from The Indian School of Business, Hyderabad from the batch of 2009.

Dr. V Raghunathan

Dr. V Raghunathan is the CEO of GMR Varalaksmi Foundation, the CSR arm of the GMR Group. Earlier, he was President of ING Vysya Bank and a Professor of Finance & Accounting at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.  He is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Bocconi, Milan. He  writes a monthly column in The Economic Times and has also written nearly 400 academic and popular papers and articles and 7 books, including a best-seller – Games Indians Play (Penguin).  His latest book is Don’t Sprint the Marathon (Harper Collins) which released in January 2010.

Dhanashree Pandit-Rai

Dhanashree Pandit-Rai is one of the leading exponents of  the thumri form of music and  her repertoire, besides khayal, consists of thumri, chaiti, hori, kajri , sawan and jhoola. She is aspiring to give thumri its rightful place on the concert stage today since it faces the risk of extinction with the dominance of khayal. Dhanashree holds a Masters Degree in Hindustani Classical Music from University of Bombay. She has  trained under the stalwart of the Kirana Gharana Pt. Firoz Dastur and the thumri legend Shobha Gurtu, and travels within India and abroad extensively conducting workshops and concerts of Indian classical music. She is a founder member of Sabrang, an institution set up to demystify the classical arts and is at present a visiting lecturer at S.N.D.T. University, and the chief vocal instructor at the Jazz India Vocal Institute which gives training in Indian music to world renowned Jazz Artistes. She is a recipient of the prestigious Sur Mani award from Sur Singar Samsad.

Rahul Srivastava and Matias Echanove

Born in Geneva, Switzerland, Matias Sendoa Echanove studied Economics at the LSE in London and Urban Planning at Columbia University in New York. At present he is researching information technology and participatory urban planning at the University of Tokyo. His research involves street-markets, the informal economy, architectural landscapes, unplanned settlements, participatory politics, and information technology in Bogota, Geneva, New York, Tokyo and Mumbai.

Rahul Srivastava studied social and urban anthropology in Mumbai, Delhi and Cambridge (UK). He taught at Wilson College, Mumbai for seven years and worked as the first Director of the research collective PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action and Research), Mumbai. His publications include an ethnography of urbanized nomads around Mumbai, a novel published by Puffin, Penguin India and essays on urban anthropology, and popular culture.

Having worked on their obsessions in parallel worlds for several years, Matias and Rahul joined forces through their blog airoots/eirut in 2006. They have since written extensively on urban themes and engaged in projects involving planning, pedagogy, technology and activism. They co-operate on participatory systems such as dharavi.organic and URBZ.  Thave also organized workshops, architecture studios, exhibitions and visits for various institutions and personalities including the Urban Design program at Columbia University, the Royal Institute of Arts of Stockholm, the University of Tokyo, architects Stefano Boeri and Yehuda Safran and literature Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk.

Steven Baker

Bollywood gora Steven Baker is a UK actor/writer/academic who divides his time between London, Delhi, and Mumbai. After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Drama, he completed a post graduate degree at the Institute of Education, University of London and is taking an MA in South Asian Area Studies at SOAS, specialising in the field of Indian cinema. He currently lectures in British Culture and Society at Roehampton University, London. Steven spent a number of years in Delhi, coordinating the British Council’s creative writing course and publishing a weekly Sex in the City column for Hindustan Times, with the subversive aim of linking everything back to Hindi film. When he reached Bollywood, he followed in the footsteps of Shah Rukh Khan by training with acting guru Barry John, and then at Anupam Kher’s Actor Prepares. He also studied Bollywood dance at the Shiamak Davar Institute of Performing Arts. In front of the camera Steven has appeared in 15 Bollywood films, where he can be found in the celluloid occident of the Miami Verve magazine office, the New York club or the English stately home. From Salaam-e-Ishq to Dostana via Kismet Konnection and Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna, Steven personifies the Bollywood extra.

Cara Eastcott

Cara Eastcott is writer and performer from Toronto, now residing in Mumbai.

Daniel Carroll

Daniel Carroll is a British national who has been living and working in India since 1996. He has over 11 years of leadership experience in turning around distressed companies. Daniel regularly spends time working with the Indian Cancer Society, and is also the head of Corporate Socal Responsiblity and Deputy Chairman of an Indo British chamber of commerce called the British Business Group.

Zubin Pastakia

Zubin Pastakia is a photographer and urban researcher who lives and works in Mumbai. He is currently pursuing two photographic projects: The Cinemas Project visually traces the lives of Bombay’s cinema halls, while The Built Landscape takes a critical look at the urban built environment. He is also currently pursuing his PhD at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society in Bangalore.

Lakshmi Tripathi

Laxminarayan Tripathi popularly known as Laxmi, is the first transgender to represent the Asia Pacific in the UN General Assembly President’s office as a Civil Society Task Force member. She is a founder member of the Asia Pacific Transgender Network and of Astitva, an organization for the support and development of sexual minorities in India, including the Hijra / transgender population. Laxmi recently organised the first transgender beauty contest in India, called Indian Super Queen, which received widespread media acclaim.

Anju Venkat

Anju Venkat is a nutritionist at the Health Awareness Centre (established by Dr Vijaya Venkat in 1989) for the last 16 years and serves as its Chief of All. All production at the center is managed through her and this includes food, seminars and classes.  She is a professional member of the American Society of Nutritional and Dietary Consultants.  CASA – an NGO that works with HIV +ve people – worked with Anju for over 3 years to understand how to improve their nutritional needs.  CASA incorporated these ideas in their programmes.

Professor Ganesh Devy

G. N. Devy, a literary scholar and a cultural activist, writes in three languages – Marathi, Gujarati and English– and has received prestigious literary awards for his works in all three languages.  He established  and edited  several literary periodicals including Setu ( in English and Gujarati),  Dhol (in eleven different adivasi languages) , Budhan ( an activist journal in English) and Bol ( a children’s magazine in Gujarati).  He was the Series-Editor for  Sahitya Akademy’s  project on Indian Literature in Oral Taditions and Tribal Languages.

Kishore Rithe

Self-taught environmentalist Kishor Rithe is a former professor of computer software engineering. His deep love for tigers led Kishor to give up his job as a Lecturer and join Nature Conservation Society as Executive Director. He then went on to establish Satpuda Foundation in 2001 where he continues to lead the foundation’s wildlife conservation work across the Satpuda Landscape.