Theme: Creative Disruption

“The urge to destroy is also a creative urge.”
Pablo Picasso

Change, is but an inevitable outcome of any innovation or discovery. It brings into light some aspects of life and puts in dark some others. Yet, ‘change’ is embraced by one and all in an attempt to evolve and look beyond the future.

At TEDxMDAE, we explore stories that epitomise this change and celebrate the disruption of existing dogmas. We acknowledge ideas that restructure perceptions that catch us unawares, and we dub it ‘ CREATIVE DISRUPTION’.

We invite you to be a part of this conclave and get influenced by people who are shaping our world now, as we’ll see it in the future. Persons of consequence will staircase into a parley, discussing how they went about disrupting their worlds in order to create new ones. They will identify depths of their journeys that will leave you spell-bounded, mesmerized and above all- inspired.

World Trade Centre
Centre 1, Cuffe Parade
Mumbai, Maharashtra, 400005
India

Anirudha Dutta

Anirudha Dutta has been working in the financial services sector for over two decades. He holds a degree in engineering from IIT, Kharagpur and a postgraduate diploma in business management from XLRI, Jamshedpur. “Half a Billion Rising” is Dutta’s first book. He lives in Mumbai with his wife, two children and their pet dog.

Ashok Gulati

Ashok Gulati is currently Infosys Chair Professor for Agriculture at the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), which he joined in March, 2014. During March 2011-February 2014, he was Chairman of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP), a body responsible for recommending Minimum Support Prices (MSPs) of 23 important agri-commodities to Government of India. Prior to this, Dr Gulati was Director at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) for more than 10 years (Jan 2001-Feb 2011). Before joining IFPRI, he also served as NABARD Chair Professor at the Institute of Economic Growth, and Chief Economist at the National Council of Applied Economics Research in India. He has also been a member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council.

Choiti Ghosh

Choiti is an Object Theatre practitioner, actor, puppeteer, singer, writer and the artistic director of Tram Arts Trust. She worked in alternative education with the well-known educationist Prof. A.K. Jalaluddin; besides performing with various theatre companies in India including Dr. Habib Tanvir’s Naya Theatre, Dr. Ashish Ghosh’s ANANT in Delhi, Mr. Sunil Shanbag’s Arpana in Mumbai and various others. Choiti has been an artist & researcher-in-residence at the Deutsches Forum fur Fogurentheatre und Puppenspeilkunst at Bochum, Germany (2012) & at the Institut International de la Marionnette, Charleville Mezieres, France (2015). She was the recipient of the Sahitya Rangabhoomi Vinod Doshi Fellowship for Outstanding Young Artists in 2011. In 2016 she received the prestigious Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar granted by Sangeet Nataka Akademi, for puppetry.

Gaurav Gupta

Gaurav Gupta is the Regional Director for Asia at Dalberg Global Development Advisors. He leads the firm’s energy access practice. His work includes developing social impact strategies for multinational corporations, expanding energy access, developing integrated disease solutions for pharmaceutical companies in frontier markets, and helping formulate strategies to fight human trafficking. Gaurav has also been a founding partner in a string of social ventures including two eco-resorts, a sustainable tourism online platform, an organic tea plantation, and an eco-friendly fair trade fashion label. He founded a leading Indian environmental NGO on climate change and also helped establish a leading public policy think-tank on Australian aboriginal issues. Gaurav holds an undergraduate degree in philosophy, politics and economics from Oxford University and a postgraduate degree in development economics from Yale University.

Indradeep Ghosh

Indradeep is trained as a macroeconomist and has spent half his life living in the United States, where he was teaching in a small liberal arts college just outside Philadelphia. Having satisfied his curiosity about the first world, he is very happy to be back in India, and is still getting used to living in Mumbai. At MDAE, he teaches, conducts research in monetary economics and exchange-rate economics, and also occasionally thinks about questions of an interdisciplinary nature.

Merlin D'Souza

Merlin D'Souza is an Indian Musician and composer. She has performed live across the country including at the Taj Mahal.

Praveen Chakravarty

Praveen Chakravarty is a Visiting Senior Fellow in Political Economy at IDFC Institute. His work focuses on analysing electoral data to glean insights to aid policy making. He is also working on a book that presents Indian society through the prism of voter choices. He is also a member of the Primary Markets committee of the Securities & Exchange Board of India, an independent Director in the TVS Group of companies and BSE Institute. He also co-founded Mumbai Angels, India’s largest angel investing group. He has been an investor and mentor to several successful, innovative startups. He is also the Founding Trustee of IndiaSpend, India’s first non-profit data journalism initiative that heralded the data journalism culture in mainstream media. He is a board member of Centre for Civil Society, a private think-tank.

Raahil Rai

Raahil is based in Dalberg’s Mumbai office, and he has gained a breadth of experience across sectors, clients and countries during his time at the firm. His projects span Financial Inclusion, ICT and Mobile, Education, and Energy Access, working with corporations, government, multilateral agencies, microfinance institutions, donors, and NGOs. His work has taken him across India and to Tanzania, South Africa and the USA. In addition, he has developed foundational design thinking skills, having worked on engagements that combine both strategy and design. While at Dalberg, Raahil has co-authored publications including “The Global Landscape of Innovations in Digital Finance“, “Should Your Friend Be Your Banker? Digital Models Test the Waters“, and the India chapter of “The Landscape for Impact Investing in South Asia.”

Rekha Bharadwaj

Rekha Bhardwaj is a noted Indian playback singer and the recipient of two Filmfare Awards and one National Award. She is known in the Bollywood industry for her distinctive tone, singing style and choice of songs. She has recorded a song "Kabhi Ashna Kabhi Ajnabi" for the Pakistani serial Humnasheen for which she was nominated at Hum Award for Best Original Soundtrack, and also recorded a song "Chan Chariya" for Pakistani film, Bin Roye.

Sameera Iyengar

Sameera Iyengar is co-founder of Junoon, an organisation that aims to make theatre/arts an integral and powerful part of our everyday lives. She is also currently Course Director of SMART (Strategic Management in the Art of Theatre), a unique course designed specifically for theatre groups in India, and offered under the aegis of the India Theatre Forum (ITF). Sameera was also a founding member of the ITF in 2006, and remained a core member till 2014. Previous to Junoon, Sameera was Director Projects at Prithvi Theatre for close to a decade, and has also worked with the Seagull Theatre Quarterly. She has a PhD on theatre from the Department of South Asian Languages & Civilisations at the University of Chicago. She was bitten by the theatre bug however during her undergraduate years at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), from where she received a BSc in Mathematics and a Minor in Theatre.

Tamal Bandyopadhyay

Tamal Bandyopadhyay is one of the most respected business journalists in India. His weekly column, Banker's Trust, in India's second largest read financial daily Mint, is widely read for its deep insights into the world of finance and its unerring ability to anticipate major policy moves. Tamal has kept a close watch on the financial sector for close to two decades and has had a ringside view of the enormous changes in Indian finance over this period. He is a frequent speaker at seminar across India and overseas. A post graduate in English Literature from Calcutta University, Tamal has worked with four national business dailies in India -- Business Standard, Financial Express, Mint and The Economic Times, and authored three books on finance, Bandhan: The Making Of A Bank, Sahara: The Untold Story and A Bank for the Buck. He is also a contributor to The Oxford Companion to Economics. Currently, Tamal is a Consulting Editor of Mint and an Adviser on Strategy for Bandhan Bank.