TEDxKIT Coimbatore

Speakers

Speakers may not be confirmed. Check the event website for the latest lineup.

• Anil Panicker

  Anil Panicker is an accomplished professional with an MBA in Marketing and over 30 years of extensive Corporate Leadership Experience. He wears multiple hats as an Adversity Quotient (AQ) specialist, Leadership & Faculty Development trainer, Certified Career Mentor, and Vedic Numerologist. He is also the author of the book Born to Rise – Reborn to Shine, he also shares his insights as a YouTuber, hosting a channel with over 200 leadership and life quality enhancing videos. Throughout his career, he has successfully empowered more than 4,000 professionals and mentored upwards of 300 students, guiding them to unlock their potential and effectively thrive through adversity.

• Anish Kumar

  Anish Kumar is a technology leader and AI strategist with over two decades of enterprise experience across cloud-native architectures, telecom, BFSI, and healthcare. As Head of AI Practice at Zinier and a PhD researcher in AI, he leads the vision, architecture, and deployment of Generative AI and agentic workflows that transform field operations and enterprise productivity. His work spans model fine-tuning, CPU-accelerated inference, multimodal generative architectures, and responsible AI governance. A co-author of technical literature on AI in advanced networks, he collaborates with global systems integrators and academic institutions to accelerate open-source AI adoption, and speaks regularly at global technology forums on autonomous systems and ethical enterprise AI.

• David Netto

  David is a Talent Acquisition leader with over eleven years of experience in technology hiring across India and the wider APAC region. He specializes in building high-performing teams across Product, AI/ML, Data, and Engineering, partnering closely with business leaders to turn hiring into a genuine competitive advantage. Beyond the day-to-day of recruiting, David is a strong voice on employer branding and the future of work. He is deeply committed to mentoring students and giving back to the student community, helping the next generation of talent navigate their careers with clarity and confidence. On the TEDx stage, he brings a practitioner's perspective on what it really takes to build meaningful careers in a fast-changing world.

• Divyashree Muralidharan

  Divyashree Muralidharan is the Head of Human Resources at Sterling Software, a CAMS subsidiary , where she leads culture-building initiatives and women leadership programs across a diverse workforce spanning operations, product, and technology functions. An engineer by education and an XLRI graduate by choice, her career has been defined by reinvention, from technology to HR, from corporate leader to entrepreneur, fitness studio owner, and back to corporate leadership after a six-year career break. With over 15 years of experience in talent, culture, and leadership development, Divyashree is passionate about helping individuals embrace change, redefine success, and discover the courage to begin again.

• Dr. Krishnan Swaminathan

  Dr Krishnan Swaminathan is a Consultant Endocrinologist at Idhayangal Charitable Trust, Coimbatore. He graduated from Madras Medical College and trained in Diabetes & Endocrinology across leading UK centres. His qualifications include MD (UK), FRCP from the Royal College of Physicians Edinburgh, and a PhD from IIT Madras on agrochemicals and diabetes. As Managing Trustee of Idhayangal Charitable Trust, he supports 2000 poor children with Type 1 diabetes across India with analogue insulins, glucometers, strips, and 24/7 care. Idhayangal runs Asia's largest insulin pump programme for the underprivileged, with nearly 250 pumps. It also supports higher education for underprivileged girls with Type 1 diabetes and runs Project Sakthi to rehabilitate their mothers for sustainable livelihoods. Their vision: no poor child with Type 1 diabetes shall suffer for want of the best treatment.

• Pallavi Narayan

  Pallavi Narayan is a pioneering voice at the intersection of Industrial AI and Energy, with over 25 years of experience transforming how the energy sector thinks, operates, and innovates. As an Energy Industry SME and Innovation Lead at Accenture, she has been at the forefront of designing and deploying GenAI and Agentic AI powered solutions that redefine industrial operations, from asset management and water management platforms to retail operations transformation and AI powered refinery solutions. A cross-functional leader who has driven end to end value creation across Product Strategy, Services Delivery, Pre-Sales, Sales, and Innovation CoE, Pallavi brings a rare combination of instrumentation engineering roots, cloud architecture expertise, and AI leadership that gives her a uniquely grounded perspective on Industrial AI, not just as a technology, but as a business reinvention engine.

• Preyeamvadha R

  Dr. Preyeamvadha R is a Consultant Pediatrician at Phoenix Multispecialty Centre, Coimbatore, and Associate Professor, Department of Pediatrics and Neonatology at Palakkad Institute of Medical Sciences. She holds MBBS, MD (Pediatrics), PGPN, and FMAC, with 14 years of rich clinical experience in Pediatrics and Neonatology. An accomplished academic, she serves as an undergraduate medical college teacher, examiner, and DNB postgraduate faculty. She is a certified Basic and Advanced Neonatal Resuscitation Trainer, has co-authored 4 chapters in a textbook of Pediatrics, and has 9 research publications with 3 ongoing projects. She has additional training in pediatric dermatology and cosmetology. Her special interests include Developmental and Rehabilitative Pediatrics, Pediatric Nutrition, Genetics and Metabolic Diseases, and Pediatric Counselling, reflecting her commitment to holistic child healthcare. Beyond medicine, she nurtures her creative side through music, dance, and painting.

• Rajkumar Manokaran

  Rajkumar Manokaran is Senior Campus Recruiter and Lead for Early Career Hiring at Guidewire APAC, covering India and Malaysia, with over a decade of experience in campus recruitment and university relations across leading organisations including Guidewire, DTICI, Informatica, MBRDI, GE Healthcare, and HirePro Consulting. Recognised as a Jombay Future HR Leader 40 Under 40 (2024), he holds an MBA in Human Resources and Systems from Sona School of Management and has led early career hiring strategy, academic collaborations, and workforce planning alongside business leaders. Beyond core recruitment, he is a strong advocate for inclusive hiring, having driven diversity initiatives such as the Women Returnship Program, Women in Mechanical hiring, and recruitment of persons with disabilities, while building deep university partnerships that expand employment opportunities for students.

• Rashmirekha Sarma

  Rashmirekha Sarma is the co-founder of Beyond Gurukul, specializing in career guidance, power skills training, and professional readiness. Since 2021, she has been dedicated to helping students and professionals build successful careers. With over 20 years of experience at AXA, Cisco, and Standard Chartered GBS in Cybersecurity, IT, Leadership, and Learning & Development, Rashmi is a strong advocate of coaching leadership. She is passionate about mentoring and empowering early-career professionals, guiding them toward meaningful career growth.

• Shriram K Vasudevan

  Dr. Shriram K. Vasudevan is a Senior Manager at Accenture, Coimbatore, with 19+ years spanning industry and academia in AI, Deep Learning, and Cybersecurity. A prolific author and inventor, he has co-authored 54 books for Oxford University Press, Wiley, and IET, published 150+ research articles, and holds 14 granted patents. A hackathon champion with 50+ wins at Harvard, Google, AICTE, CII, TDRA Dubai, and the Government of Saudi Arabia, he blends research depth with competitive innovation. His YouTube channel has 55,000 subscribers covering AI, ML, Deep Learning, Cybersecurity, and Embedded Systems, and he holds a Limca Book of Records entry. He is an Intel oneAPI Certified Instructor, Google Certified Educator, Google Cloud Innovator, Microsoft MVP, Microsoft Learn Ambassador, AWS Ambassador, ACM Distinguished Speaker, and NASSCOM Prime Ambassador. A Fellow of IEI and IETE and Senior Member of IEEE, he holds a Doctorate and Master's degree both in Embedded Systems.

• Subashri V

  Subashri is an Assistant Vice President at Bank of America Continuum India, Chennai, with over a decade of experience in software engineering, and enterprise ETL solutions. She has built large-scale data pipeline and integration solutions across banking and financial services, working extensively with Azure Data Factory, Azure Synapse Analytics, SSIS, and SQL Server. A Microsoft Community Champion, Intel Innovator, and Google Women Tech Maker, she combines deep technical expertise with active community leadership. A published author of 20 books spanning Deep Learning, Software Engineering, Digital Electronics, & Computer Networking, published by Taylor & Francis, Wiley, Alpha Science International, and Narosa, she is also a patent holder and hackathon winner with 15+ victories at national and international platforms. She holds the unique distinction of being a World Record holder alongside her sibling, recognized as the only siblings globally to have co-authored 15 books together.