TEDxFOT

Speakers

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

• Amita Madhvani

  CEO and Co-Founder, Ram Madhvani Films, Equinox Films and Equinox Virtual

  For nearly four decades, Amita Madhvani has worked at the intersection of storytelling, business and innovation. As the co-founder and co-producer of Ram Madhvani Films, she has helped shape acclaimed projects including Neerja, the International Emmy-nominated Aarya franchise, and Dhamaka, while building one of India's most respected content studios alongside filmmaker Ram Madhvani. Beginning her career in production in 1986, Madhvani gained experience across advertising, television, documentaries and live events before moving into entrepreneurship. Over the years, she has launched ventures spanning cultural experiences, wellness and the creative arts, consistently identifying new opportunities where creativity and business intersect. Today, she is leading the next chapter of that journey through Equinox Virtual, a venture focused on reimagining storytelling for the AI era.

• Anju Binani Damani

  Founder & Creative Director, R And A International

  Anju Binani Damani is the Founder & Creative Director of R And A International. It is a multi-brand fashion company with a growing presence across India and international markets. She leads the company’s creative vision, brand development, and understanding of changing consumer preferences. R And A International operates four brands: Blue Kids for boys’ casual wear, Miska for women’s T-shirts and girls’ apparel, B Kids for boys’ semi-casual wear, and Blue Boys for contemporary men’s T-shirts. With a focus on quality, comfort, contemporary design, and market trends, the company supplies products across India and exports to international markets. Anju combines creativity with entrepreneurial vision to build relevant and adaptable fashion brands, demonstrating how understanding people, spotting opportunities, and building strong brands can help a business grow beyond geographical boundaries.

• Arijit Das

  Co-Founder & Technical Managing Director, iAvatars LLC | Co-Founder, Aeonix Research and Innovations LLP

  Arijit Das is an AI and IoT engineer and Co-Founder & Technical Managing Director of iAvatars LLC, the company using artificial intelligence to reconnect people with the ones they have lost. An M.Tech graduate from IIT Patna, he works at the intersection of embedded systems, computer vision and edge AI — taking machine intelligence out of the cloud and into hardware people can hold. At iAvatars he leads the technology behind the company's mission: Connecting the Impossible. He is also Co-Founder of Aeonix Research and Innovations LLP.

• Harpreet Singh

  Entrepreneur | Education & Career Mentor | Founder, 13 Dreams Consultants | Host, Dream Talks

  Harpreet Singh is an entrepreneur, education and career mentor, and the Founder & CEO of 13 Dreams Consultants Pvt. Ltd., an overseas education and career consultancy working to help students make informed decisions about their education, careers, and global opportunities. With over a decade of experience in the education sector, Harpreet has worked closely with students, parents, educators, and institutions, giving him a ground-level understanding of the aspirations, pressures, and challenges young people face while choosing their future. Beyond his core education business, Harpreet founded Dream Talks, an initiative focused on improving access to meaningful educational and career conversations, particularly in Tier-2, Tier-3, and smaller cities. Through conversations with educators, professionals, entrepreneurs, and changemakers, Dream Talks explores the education system, career choices, entrepreneurship, life skills, and the changing opportunities available to the next generation.

• Manisha Patil

  Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and community engagement leader

  Manisha Patil is a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and community engagement leader currently heading welfare initiatives at Amazon India. A Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) alumna, her work champions women’s empowerment, diversity, and empathy-led leadership. She specializes in leveraging corporate scale to build inclusive ecosystems that create sustainable, ground-level change for marginalized communities.

• Mr. Anoop Shanker Madan

  Founder, Kaliyuga Gurukul for Conscious Learning | MD, Simplicity Projects Pvt. Ltd.

  Mr. Anoop Shanker Madan is a third-generation entrepreneur, author, consciousness explorer, and Founder of Kaliyuga Gurukul for Conscious Learning. He is also the Managing Director of Simplicity Projects Pvt. Ltd., a business with a legacy in bulk material handling systems dating back to 1982. With around two decades of experience in engineering and entrepreneurship, his professional journey has involved business leadership, complex engineering challenges, decision-making, and carrying forward a multi-generational entrepreneurial legacy. Over the years, Anoop’s understanding of success expanded beyond professional achievement towards questions of purpose, awareness, human behaviour, responsibility, and conscious living. His exploration of ancient Indian wisdom, spirituality, personal development, and conscious entrepreneurship eventually became the foundation of his writing and educational work.

• Nizamudheen Valliyattu

  CEO, Toolyt & Chairman - Modern Education & Charitable Trust

  Nizamudheen is the Founder & CEO of Toolyt, a mobile-first enterprise SaaS platform trusted by SK Finance, GE Healthcare, The City Bank, IFFCO etc. to power field operations across 20+ countries. He is also Chairman of Modern English School in Wayanad, Kerala, leading an institution of a thousand students. Building software and building a school, he argues, are the same job - a conviction that shapes how he thinks about systems, scale, and human potential.

• Pallavi Desai

  Founding Member; Head Client Relations, Aikyam Capital Group, Mumbai | BW Finance 40 Under 40

  Pallavi Desai is a capital markets professional with over a decade of experience spanning institutional relationships, investor engagement and India’s financial markets. As Head of Client Relations at Aikyam Capital, she works closely with domestic and international investors, including Foreign Portfolio Investors (FPIs), helping them navigate India’s evolving investment landscape. Her work sits at the intersection of investors, markets and institutions. She oversees client relationships across the investment lifecycle, from onboarding and structuring to ongoing engagement and execution, while working closely with investment, operations, product and compliance teams to ensure that complex requirements translate into clear, well-governed outcomes. Over the years, Pallavi has worked with global investors and institutions exploring opportunities in India, with experience spanning investment structuring, regulatory frameworks, capital markets and cross-border engagements.

• Prashant Shah

  Co-founder & CEO, Definedge Securities

  Prashant Shah, CMT, CFTe, MFTA, MSTA, is an entrepreneur, market analyst, and the Co-founder & CEO of Definedge Securities. With globally recognized credentials, he combines deep market expertise with a strong product-builder’s mindset. He is known for pioneering advancements in noiseless charting, momentum-based research, and original contributions to technical analysis. Prashant has authored five influential books on trading and investing and has worked across institutions, HNIs, retail investors, brokers, and fintech ecosystems—giving him a comprehensive understanding of how modern traders operate. His work has earned international recognition, including being featured in Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities (TASC) magazine.

• Rajesh Reddy Ellenki

  Rajesh Reddy Ellenki is a Senior Staff Software Engineer and AI-driven supply chain specialist focused on intelligent retail systems, inventory optimisation, forecasting, allocation, replenishment, and fulfilment. His expertise lies in turning complex retail data into real-time intelligence and actionable decisions. His perspective brings together software engineering and business operations, exploring how retailers can move beyond traditional, backward-looking supply chains toward systems that can sense demand, optimise decisions, build trust, and increasingly act autonomously.

• Rishi Korde

  Founder & CEO, Core De Industries

  Rishi Korde is a food innovator, entrepreneur, and Founder of Core De Industries, where he works at the intersection of food science, product development, and manufacturing. An IIT Gold Medalist and Imperial College London alumnus, Rishi has built his work around one central challenge: turning promising ideas into products that can survive the realities of taste, cost, regulation, scale, manufacturing, and consumer acceptance. Through Core De Industries, he works with startups, SMEs, HoReCa businesses, and emerging brands to develop and commercialize innovative food and beverage products. His experience spans functional beverages, protein products, plant-based foods, nutrition products, ready-to-eat formats, and private-label manufacturing. Rishi is particularly interested in what he calls the “last mile of innovation”—the often-overlooked journey between having a great idea and successfully putting that idea into the hands of real consumers.

• Shaivi Kothari

  Kathak Dancer, Psychology Researcher, and Speaker on empathy, memory, and human connection

  She is someone who leads with empathy but backs it with discipline — the kind of person who notices what others are feeling before they say it, and then does the quiet, determined work to actually help. That combination didn't come from nowhere. Her own school years gave her a real, lived sense of what it means to struggle, adapt, and keep going when things don't come easily — an experience that now sits underneath everything she speaks about, giving her words the weight of someone who has actually been there, not just studied it from the outside. That same discipline shows up across very different arenas. She has fourteen years of training in Kathak, and has been recognized at multiple interschool competitions — not just in dance, but in photography and debate as well, three very different languages for saying the same thing: pay attention, and say it well. Her empathy finds its clearest expression in hands-on work with children.

• Somya Dawar

  Social impact leader and Business transformation practitioner

  Somya Dawar is a social impact leader, business transformation practitioner, caregiver, and adventurer who believes that our lives are shaped not by the challenges we face, but by how we choose to respond to them. For nearly two decades, she has worked at the intersection of purpose and possibility, helping organizations and communities navigate change and create opportunities for those who need them most. As an Assistant Director at EY Global Delivery Services, she leads large scale impact initiatives focused on education, employability, inclusion, and empowering underserved communities. Beyond her professional work, Somya's journey has been shaped by experiences that rarely appear on a résumé, navigating her disability, embracing the role of caregiver, rebuilding through life's unexpected transitions, and continually redefining success on her own terms.

• Venkateswara Rao Movva

  Venkateswara Rao Movva is an enterprise technology professional specialising in cloud, DevOps, full-stack development, data engineering, and AI-ready enterprise systems across banking, healthcare, and retail. His work focuses on building technology foundations that are resilient, adaptive, observable, and capable of supporting modern AI-driven applications at enterprise scale. He brings together architecture, infrastructure, data, engineering practices, and artificial intelligence to address one of the most important challenges facing organisations today: how to modernise systems without compromising reliability.