SonaCollege

Confirmed Speakers

• Rahul Kapoor
  The Founder and Chief Trainer of KWEC, Rahul employs his signature style – a combination of high energy levels, a willingness to reinvent and an enviable presence of mind to impart the most difficult lessons in the most palatable form. His experience of a decade has been enriched by conducting over a thousand sessions covering all ranks and positions of a corporate hierarchy which makes him a preferred choice for various interventions. He specializes in conducting sessions for cross cultural leadership teams and is at home while interacting and involving high profile individuals from across the world.
• Nikita Singh
  Nikita Singh works as an editor at Grapevine India Publishers, India’s first community of authors. She is consistently one of the highest selling authors at the online platform - Flipkart.com. She outstrips the likes of Nicholas Sparks, Amitav Ghosh and Ayn Rand. (Source: Flipkart.com) Apart from these three books, Nikita has also contributed to the immensely successful "The Backbenchers" series. She has written the second book of the series (The Backbenchers: The Missed Call) which is slated to release in March 2012, under a pen name (Sidharth Oberoi), by Grapevine India Publishers. Her another book "Self Destruct In 3 Minutes" is slated to release in August 2012 with Penguin Books, India, one of the biggest publishing houses in the world. One of the youngest and the most prolific authors in the Indian fiction scene, her works are characterized by humour and practicality. She is seen as one of the most unabashed writers in the genre. She maintains a blog at blog.nikitasingh.com which is liked by the young generation and has been appreciated widely. She is currently in the fourth and final year of her college, pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Pharmacy at Acropolis Institute, Indore.
• Preeti Shenoy
  Preeti Shenoy, named among one of the top five authors in India by CNN-IBN, weaves magic with her words and pictures. An extremely talented and versatile individual, her Twitter bio reads: “Best-selling Author, Artist specializing in pencil portraits,Poet,Yoga-Buff,Ex-basketball player, Blogger, Dobe-owner, Nature lover, and a Mother.” Her interests are as multifarious and diverse as her several academic degrees which include an internationally recognised qualification from UK in portraiture. DNA has described her as a ‘Keenly observant mind’ and Times of India describes her writing as ‘Excellent story telling skills’. There is simplicity in her writing that appeals to the inherent good in all and her positivity and ‘Live life to the fullest’ philosophy finds a large number of takers, who follow her very popular blog. Her pencil-portraits are life like which strike you with a realism that take you aback. She is also an avid card-maker and a poet. She has written for publications like Times of India, Readers Digest and many more. She has worked with under-privileged children teaching them English and Math. She has worked with several schools conducting workshops on thinking skills and creative crafts. She is currently working and her fourth book and she says, “Life is short. Follow your heart and chase your dreams. And yes, they will come true.”
• Durjoy Datta
  Durjoy Datta (Born 7th February, 1987) is the author of five bestsellers, Of Course I Love You! (2008), Now That You’re Rich! (2009), She Broke Up, I Didn’t! (2010), Ohh Yes, I Am Single! (2011) and You Were My Crush! (2011). His sixth book is slated to release in January 2012. He has sold of over one million copies of the five books. Durjoy Datta is the second highest selling author in India (Source: AC Nielson Bookscan). He was awarded as young achiever at the 12TH Teachers Achievement Awards and joined the ranks of people like Anushka Sharma, Ranbir Kapoor, Boman Irani, Shashi Tharoor amongst others. One of the youngest and the most prolific authors in the Indian fiction scene, his works are characterized by dark humor and in-your-face realism. He is seen as one of the most unabashed writers in the genre. Durjoy Datta had been recognized as a young achiever by The Times of India in 2009. He is also chosen as one of the two young achievers in the field of Media and Communications by Whistling Woods International in 2011. He had referred to by the Outlook India as the one of the few Indian authors who are responsible for re-shaping the Indian Publishing Industry. He is the Co-founder of Grapevine India Publishers, India’s first community of authors, set up in New Delhi, India in 2011 with a vision of encouraging aspiring writers to explore their fertile imaginations and use the power of words to put across compelling stories to the Indian masses.
• Kaustubh Katdare
  austubh Katdare is the founder & CEO of CrazyEngineers - India's #1 online community of engineering students and professionals. After graduating in 2003, he worked in the IT/Software industry for 3.5 years. He founded CrazyEngineers as a hobby portal in November 2005. CrazyEngineers, since then has grown to over 180 countries and over 1,20,000 engineers from various engineering disciplines, backgrounds and work experiences. CrazyEngineers has been recognized by the biggest names in the world of engineering and entrepreneurship; including Mr. Steve Wozniak (Co-Founder Of Apple), Mr. Martin Cooper (Inventor of Mobile Phone), Dr. Vijay Bhatkar (Creator of India's First Supercomputer), Mr. Paul Buchheit (Creator of Gmail), Dr. Bjarne Stroustrup (Invetntor of C++ programming language) to name a few. Apart from managing his entrepreneurial venture, he finds time to play Guitar and and he is one of the YouTube's top 20 most subscribed musicians at a point. He is regularly invited to judge personality contests, at college events and to talk at conferences/summits. In 2011, he was one of the global top 5 bloggers who were specially invited by the Government Of Israel on a 'Once In A Lifetime' trip; that aimed at changing the world's view towards Israel.
• Pasupathi Nathan
  A graffiti artist who writes inspiring quotes on the walls of the Salem city in Tamilnadu,India "In the midst of our fast-paced lifestyle, people read the quotes and the thoughts that I write on the street walls of Salem as they wait at the 'red' traffic signal, and feel that my quotes inspire them and give a 'green' signal in their paths of life. This makes me feel extremely happy and proud". - Mr.Pasupathy Nathan, Salem MMM Corner The proud owner of the above lines is MMM Corner Pasupathy, who is a graffiti artist. Innovation was in his blood.18 years back he started painting the names of the movies on the walls as images instead of letters. For example, while painting the advertisement for the Tamil movie "Poova? Thalaiya?", he drew the picture of a flower and a head each followed by a question mark, to depict the name. Later, he started to paint motivational thoughts on the street walls of Salem every week. This great work has touched and changed the lives of many. People then started to stop in front of the walls in anticipation, to read the quote which he would write for that week. Though known for his work, he remains unknown to the public.