Mr. Sumit Arora is a Non-profit leader with a strong technology background working towards scaling the impact of conservation programs at the Centre for Wildlife Studies using emerging technologies and partnering with like-minded individuals and organizations. He is the Associate Director of Technology & Partnerships of Centre for Wildlife studies , Bangalore.

Mr Sumit is the Co- Founder of project Enviro Aware , a 360 Degree effort to understand the roots of the issue, current nature of the crisis and produce an action plan with tangible short term activities with a long term goal.

Mr. Arora is an avid Learner, problem solver, a firm believer in the power of collaboration and a staunch user of technology for scale and impact. He is very passionate about solving the climate and environmental issues the world is facing by building sustainable solutions for the world.

Dr. Shannon Olsson holds her PhD in Neurobiology & Behaviour from Cornell University. Dr. Olsson has traveled across four countries and three continents to dedicate herself to listening to nature’s chemical conversations across India’s diverse ecosystems. Her science is committed to laying the foundation for a sustainable India, and her recent studies address ecological agriculture in India's coffee plantations, the impact of air pollution on our wild animals and insects, the effect of climate change on our ecosystem services, and the bioremediation of our ocean microplastics by marine sponges.

A Fulbright Scholar, Ramanujan, and INK Fellow, Shannon’s research has been featured by CNN, Inverse, Cosmos, TEDx, Syntalk, Sci-Illustrate, Dublin Science Gallery, V&A London, Chemical and Engineering News, and the DST Science Express train.

Since 2014, Shannon has been a faculty member of the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. Dr. Olsson started the Echo network, an international social innovation partnership with the specific focus of increasing scientific awareness, engagement, and insight for sustaining India's human and environmental ecosystems.

Shannon is, among other pursuits, currently a co-PI in the Biodiversity Collaborative, a founding member of ECOBARI (Ecosystem-based Adaptation for Resilient Incomes) and Global Director of the echo network.

She also serves through the echo network’s international hub as Special Scientific Envoy to India with the Danish Academy of Technical Sciences (ATV) in close collaboration with the Danish Innovation Center in India (under the auspices of the MFA and the MHER).

Dr. Nishant Srinivasaiah holds his PhD in the behavioral ecology of asian elephants in the human dominated landscape of Eastern Ghats from the prestigious National Institute of Advanced studies , Bangalore. Dr. Srinivasiah is passionate about behavioral plasticity of large mammals to their changing environments.

Dr. Nishant also works with some of the top institutes in the country such as IISC , NIAS , FERAL , etc.

Dr.Arshiya Bose is a conservationist, geographer and action-researcher working in coffee landscapes in India. Dr. Bose completed her PhD on the political ecology of market-based incentives for biodiversity conservation from the University of Cambridge, UK. She is also 2019 grantee of History at National Geographic.

Dr. Arshiya is also the founder of Black Baza Coffee, an activist coffee company that works with over 650 smallholder coffee producers in the Western Ghats to strengthen biodiversity-friendly farming practices.

The goal of Black Baza Coffee is to design a 1000 year plan to conserve the people, place and ecologies of coffee landscapes across tropics. The organization works with numerous smallholder producer organizations to resolve various challenges that undermine livelihoods security, financial inclusion and weaken producer autonomy in coffee markets.

Mr. Mahesh is the co-founder and Chairman of the Integra group of companies. He has led Integra's efforts in building award winning products and services in multiple market segments ranging from banking, imaging, mobile technologies, education and financial inclusion.He is currently focused on building technologies to bridge the accessibility gap with several initiatives in financial inclusion and e-Governance. He has also been associated with education, carbon, and green plantation societies for many years and is the co-founder of a few organizations in this space.

Mr. Ajay is a successful serial entrepreneur and has been instrumental in building startups in the high-tech space and world-class products. Mr. Agrawal has Led multiple start-ups from incubation to success while building high-caliber teams, adapting to dynamic market conditions and demonstrating keen understanding of customer and market needs.

Mr. Ajay is the Executive Vice President of the Happiest Minds Technologies and is a member , board of trustees for Alliance University . He is an adjunct faculty member , Industry Advisory Board for Shri Ramdeobaba Kamla Nehru Engineering College, Nagpur.

Mr. Agrawal also has his Experiences in building successful companies with products and solutions for emerging areas such as connected ecosystem, IoT, Video, Wireless etc and has managed large cross-functional teams for successful delivery and deployment of global award-winning products.

Dr. TV Ramachandra . obtained Ph.D. in Ecology and Energy from Indian Institute of Science. Currently Dr. Ramachandra is a scientific officer at the Centre for Ecological Sciences (CES), Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru. He has worked extensively on several domains including energy, wetlands, urban planning, solid waste management, and geographic information systems, across the Western Ghats and Bengaluru too. He is a recipient of the Parisara Award conferred by the Karnataka government, in 2018.

During the past twenty years Dr. Ramachandra has established an active school of research in the area of energy and environment . He is a member of Karnataka State Wetland Authority (2018..), Karnataka State Audit Advisory Committee. He was a Member of the Karnataka State level Environment Expert Appraisal Committee (2007-2010), appointed by the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India and a member of the Western Ghats task force appointed by the Government of Karnataka. Apart from this Dr.TVR is serving in many committees of NGT (National Green Tribunal) related to wetlands of Bangalore.

Sandhya Vasudevan is the COO and MD of Deutsche Bank Group, and the former Head of Service Centres for DBOI. She is also the Global Head of Business Engineering within the Global Business Services division of Deutsche Bank, and is part of the Asia Management team of Global Services.

Sandhya has over 24 years of rich industry experience in the field of operations, financial services and the IT-enabled services industry; and has worked with organizations such as Guardian Royal Exchange, Thomson Reuters and AXA. During her stint with Thomson Reuters, Sandhya led the organization from 200 employees to about 9,000 at the time of leaving the organisation. Her most recent roles prior to joining Deutsche Bank were in strategic development (capability building and looking at business development in rapidly developing opportunities) and integration of Thomas Reuters.

Sandhya is an active industry leader and, until recently, was an Executive Council Member in NASSCOM. At present, she is part of the advisory committee of NASSCOM Foundation and member of the Regional Counsel in Bangalore. Additionally, she is involved in diversity and inclusion, innovation and R&D programmes.

She is also one of the founding members of the Bangalore Chapter of the Women Leaders’ group in CII apart from being a member of the Advisory Board of IMA and has been on the board of Swiss Re’s Shared Services in India since 2001. Member of the Young President’s Organization, Sandhya has an MBA in Marketing and an MA in History.

Ms. Manisha Kairaly has over a decade of experience in nonprofit management and social entrepreneurship. Ms. Kairaly’s expertise lies in the spheres of agro biodiversity, resilient circular economies and regenerative design (diverse products, vernacular architecture and eco restoration). Over the years Ms. Manisha have worked closely on food cultures and craft practices in rural Rayalaseema, Andhra Pradesh as well as in Rajasthan, Karnataka and England.

Most recently, she has worked as Director – Enterprise Development and Design with TheTimbaktu Collective and was instrumental in establishing Timbaktu Weaves - a rural woman owned producer enterprise of first generation handloom weavers as well as Timbaktu Organic -farmer cooperative which works with over 2,000 small holder farmers members in Southern India.

Ms. Kairaly has served as Regional Director- South India for Slow Food International and is the Founder Trustee of the conservation organization Adavi Trust. Ms. Manisha is also an executive member of the Young Organic Global Network .

Leo Saldanha works with the Bengaluru-based Environment Support Group. While working with urban street children and communities impacted by dams and infrastructure projects with elected representatives and bureaucracies in cities and villages, He began to realize the critical importance of environmental governance to all aspects of public administration. In the process, He worked with local communities, social action networks, key decision makers at multiple levels across India, and in other countries as well. During the 1990s He helped set up CIVIC Bangalore, and by the end of that decade worked with supportive friends and researchers in setting up the Environment Support Group. He continues to engage through ESG in various research, advocacy, campaigning and educative processes, and focus keenly on securing social and environmental justice. In recent years, ESG has assisted in building a robust, responsive and representative Coalition for Environmental Justice in India, through which collective actions are made to find real responses addressing temporal and persistent situations. He specializes in Governance, International Finance, Environmental Decision Making, Public Policy, Public Interest Litigations, Conservation and Social Movements. He helped build CIVIC Bangalore into an active forum to address various issues of urban governance, with special emphasis on progressive planning and development of the Bangalore region.

Anand Gandhi is an Indian filmmaker, entrepreneur, media producer, innovator and systems researcher. He is also the founder/CEO of the Mumbai-based new media studio and systems think tank Memesys Culture Lab. Anand started writing and directing plays in school at the age of 12At 19, he wrote a total of hundred episodes of two television soap operas, which went on to become the most popular shows in the history of Indian Television. The same year his play "Sugandhi" was awarded the prestigious National Award. After dropping out from formal education and finishing a diploma in philosophy (his passion for philosophy has been evident in all his works), he traveled across India, exploring, meeting people, writing, performing and attending a series of workshops on subjects varying from Gandhian economics to Quantum physics. He made Right Here, Right Now in 2003 with borrowed money and believing friends. The film immediately achieved a cult status among Mumbai film enthusiasts, later backed up by its award-winning international acclaim. Anand is a visiting lecturer at a Mass Media college in Mumbai and has facilitated creative workshops for students all over India. His first feature length film is expected to release in 2006. His debut feature film Ship of Theseus (2013), which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival won the National Film Award for Best Picture. Gandhi's film as creative director, executive producer and co-writer, Tumbbad opened the Critics' Week at the 75th Venice Film Festival, released to wide critical acclaim in October 2018. In 2017, he produced An Insignificant Man – a nonfiction thriller directed by Khushboo Ranka and Vinay Shukla on the rise of the Aam Aadmi Party in India. It was released to widespread international and domestic acclaim. The film was picked up by Vice for International distribution. Actor and producer Ajay Devgn bought rights to Gandhi's play Beta Kagdo. It has been made into the feature film Helicopter Eela, starring Bollywood actress Kajol. Gandhi is also the co-creator of ElseVR, India's first virtual reality (VR) platform aiming to bring "extraordinary and urgent stories" to the digital mainstream. Gandhi delivered his INK Talk at the annual INK conference in 2013 where he enumerated his motivations behind making films while expounding on the role of memes in choice-creation. He was a mentor at the Xprize Visioneers 2016 Summit, an annual gathering of the Xprize enterprise, a leading global non-profit dedicated to encouraging "radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity" through incentivized prize competitions. His other popular creation is tumbbad, a c0-creation with Rahi Anil Barve.

Bhargavi S. Rao works at the intersections of community action with law, policy, planning and governance. She has about 30 years of experience across research, advocacy, campaign and teaching in a variety of human rights, governance and people-centered initiatives, and in advancing environmental and social justice. She is an Independent Researcher/Educator and a Senior Fellow & Trustee at Environment Support Group.

She has been a member of the India team of the international Comparative Covid Response (CompCoRe) project, that compares Covid-19 policy responses from an STS perspective led by S. Hilgartner, Cornell Univ, S.Jasanoff, Harvard Kennedy School, & the Governance of Sociotechnical Transformations (GoST) research project.

She has extensive experience in coordinating & teaching a variety of educational programmes. She has coordinated the Knowledge 2 Action Academy, Swissnex India, she was Co-Director of Minnesota Studies in International Development,(India Prog), Univ of Minnesota and Cities in the 21st Century and Health & Community programmes of International Honors Programme (Boston University & SIT). She teaches on faculty led Study Abroad programmes, is guest faculty at universities in India & abroad & also engages in corporate training. She enjoys engaging with student communities, developing and designing research tools, documenting case studies, and working with local governments and communities in co-creating ideas to address environmental and social justice challenges.

She has worked with Centre for Financial Accountability, Public Health Foundation of India, Azim Premji Philanthropic initiatives, United Ways & Indian Institute of Science. She has worked as a consultant with EMPRI, Action Aid, BUDA and other start-ups.

She engages in interdisciplinary and intersectional research on environmental decision-making, governance and following financial decision making. As Trustee of Environment Support Group she contributes to legal and investigative research and represents the organization in PILs tackling Biopiracy, advancing Lake protection and various other environmental and social justice causes.

She writes regularly in leading dailies, online platforms and has contributed research papers in science journals, chapters to book volumes and articles in magazines. Her academic qualifications are an M Phil in Aerobiology, M.Sc. in Botany with specialization in Microbiology and a B.Sc. with triple majors in Chemistry, Environmental Science and Botany. She also holds a PG Diploma in Journalism.

Eshwar Bheemanna Khandre is an Indian politician from Karnataka. He is serving as a cabinet minister in the Government of Karnataka since May 2023. He is also serving as the Working President of the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee, since 4 July 2018. He is a Member of the Karnataka Legislative Assembly from Bhalki constituency since 25 May 2008. Khandre was born on 15 January 1962 to former minister Bheemanna Khandre and Laxmibai in Bhalki. He received a bachelor of engineering degree in 1985 from Poojya Doddappa Appa College of Engineering, Gulbarga, Gulbarga University. He is the third member of the Khandre family to be elected to the Karnataka Legislative Assembly from the district. His brother is Vijaykumar Khandre who also represented the constituency two times. Khandre is the chairman of Shanti Vardhak Education Society. He is an agriculturalist by profession and does social service. He represents the Bhalki constituency. He won from Bhalki constituency in 2008, 2013, 2018 and 2023. Khandre is a member of the Indian National Congress and KPCC working President of Karnataka State. In 2008, Khandre defeated BJP candidate Prakash Khandre by a margin of 20,971 votes. In the 2004 election, he was defeated by the BJP candidate. He was the Minister of Municipal Administration & Public Enterprises of Karnataka from 2016 to 2018 in Siddaramaiah ministry. He was Minister in Charge of Bidar district. He has publicly warned government officials who refuse or willfully failing to stop forest land encroachment and asked them to pursue efficiency.

Meyyanathan Siva V is a Minister of Environment, Climate Change, Youth Welfare and Sports Development in Government of Tamil Nadu. He is a politician from the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. He has been elected twice from the Alangudi assembly constituency. In the current Tamilnadu Ministry, he is the Environment Minister.

He has been part of one of the first initiatives to promote eco-alternatives to banned single use plastics and innovation and startup ecosystem in the country, the National Expo on alternatives to banned single use plastics items and Conference of Startups -2022.

Kuwar Vijay Shah is MLA from Harsood and former Cabinet Minister in BJP government of Madhya Pradesh. Kunwar Vijay Shah became active in student politics and social work at an early age. He worked on various posts of Indore Christian College’s students union. He led youths in various creative works and activities while being associated with Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad for over 10 years. He was elected to 13th Vidhan Sabha for the 5th time from Harsud in 2008 and became a Minister in Shri Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s Council of Ministers. He was elected to 14th Vidhan Sabha from Harsud constituency in December 2013. He took oath as Cabinet Minister on December 21, 2013.

Vishwajit Pratapsingh Rane is an Indian politician and a cabinet Minister in the Government of Goa headed by Pramod Sawant. He is the son of Pratapsingh Raoji Rane who is a former Chief Minister of Goa and an incumbent Indian National Congress party MLA in the Goa Legislative Assembly. Vishwajit Rane was the Minister of Health, Agriculture & Craftsmen Training in the Government of Goa led by Digambar Kamat from June 2007 to March 2012. Rane resigned as the MLA of the Valpoi Constituency and also from the Indian National Congress on 16 March 2017. He later joined the Bharatiya Janata Party on 7 April 2017 and was sworn in as a Cabinet Minister on 12 April 2017 in the cabinet led by Manohar Parrikar. He was allotted the Health portfolio on 18 April 2017. In 2022, Rane won the assembly election on a BJP ticket from Poriem. He made national headlines during his alleged involvement in the Rafale Aircraft controversy.

Vishal Dhupar has served as NVIDIA's managing director in South Asia since 2010, leading business operations for the company in the region. In this role, Vishal is responsible for the development and execution of NVIDIA's strategic plans in the subcontinent. He is also focused on fostering key partnerships with the ecosystem to accelerate the growth and adoption of GPU technology.

With more than 25 years in the Information Technology industry, Vishal brings extensive leadership and industry experience. Vishal joined NVIDIA from Symantec, where he held the position of Managing Director SAARC. Previously, Vishal was Managing Director at Autodesk, prior to which, he was Director Sales at Sun Microsystems India. Vishal began his career at DCM Data Products, and followed it up with Sales positions in Digital Corporation and Silicon Graphics. Over the past two decades, Vishal has been the recipient of several performance awards all through his working career in various organizations.

Bala Malladi is an archetype inspirational leader with more than three decades of industry experience and a leading voice in the Indian broadband industry.Over the last 13+ years, Bala has been spearheading ACT as its Chief Executive Officer. Bala has successfully steered the digital transformation of the company from cable operations into an integrated broadband and consumer technology brand. Under his leadership, ACT attained multiple milestones and emerged to be India's largest non - telco fiber broadband Internet Service Provider. Today, the company boasts to serve over 3 million subscribers (broadband + Cable) spread across 19 cities in India. Bala's vision for the company and compassion for its people led ACT to be recognized in Top 50 'Best Places to Work' in India for 5 consecutive years. ACT has also been recognised globally as Gallup Global Top 40 Best places to work for 3 years. In 2021, with investor activity ACT reached the Unicorn milestone, making the company one of the first in the sector and amongst few highly profitable ones.

Bala spearheaded the organisation during pandemic, ensuring seamless connectivity to homes and offices, taking care of employees and family and contributing as an organisation extensively to local community. All efforts manifested into ACT being recognised among India's Best Workplaces in Health and Wellness 2021 by GPTW. Great Place to Work® India has also recognized Mr. Bala Malladi, as one of India's Best Leaders in Times of Crisis 2021.

Before joining ACT, Bala held various positions at Unilever and Hindustan Unilever for over 17 years in multiple regions. He successfully led a wide range of projects in India and Europe in finance, strategy, supply chain, and new business developments. He also headed the commercial function of Kimberly Clark Lever and represented HUL (Hindustan Unilever) in this joint venture.

Bala is deeply passionate about innovation, customer centricity, and is constantly on the look to develop newer technologies for the future. He envisions creating a socially responsible organization that truly benefits society and the community at large. Beyond leading his successful business ventures, he is a travel enthusiast and a voracious reader.

Rainmatter Foundation
Sameer heads the Rainmatter foundation developing projects, and building funding and investments programs, among many other things. He left his long career in the tech industry a decade ago and partly moved to Coorg to experiment with sustainable farming, farm collectives, and his personal passion, rejuvenating soil and forests. He runs Linger as a hobby, and shares his thoughts regularly on his blog. He also co-founded The Farming Collective, as well as Beforest. He is a strong believer in natural farming as a major way to fix our ecology and live sustainably

Angarai Ganesan Ramakrishnan is a Professor of the Electrical Engineering Department at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. He obtained his Ph. D. (Biomedical Engineering) and M Tech (Electrical Engineering) from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras and completed his undergraduate studies at PSG College of Technology. Currently, he heads the Medical Intelligence and Language Engineering Lab at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He is a Fellow of Institution of Engineers (India) and the Institution of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineers and a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, USA. He received the Manthan Award 2014 and Manthan Award 2015, for his projects 'Gift of New Abilities' and 'Madhura - The Gift of Voice' respectively. He is also one of the Founder Directors of RaGaVeRa indic Technologies Pvt Ltd, a deep tech startup incubated by IISc and a mentor of the startup, "Bhashini AI Services Pvt. Ltd."

His primary research interests include Neuroscience of Pranayama and altered states of consciousness, Decoding of Imagined Words, Machine Learning with particular reference to Handwriting Recognition, Scene Text Recognition, Speech Recognition and Synthesis.

Besides research and teaching, he enjoys applying academic research to solve real world problems.

Jonathan Ledgard is a Scottish born technologist, novelist, and foreign correspondent. He heads up the Interspecies Money Group which seeks to make nonhuman life forms known computationally. As a director of future Africa at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) he helped invent drone delivery for blood and medicine and led the idea of droneports and electric charging stations across Africa and other emerging economies. Previously, for two decades, he was an award-winning foreign and war correspondent for The Economist, reporting lead stories from 60 countries and many wars. Separately, as J.M. Ledgard, he is a bestselling novelist. His last novel, Submergence, was adapted for Hollywood by Wim Wenders. In addition to EPFL, he is a visiting professor in an AI group in the Czech Technical University in Prague. He lives in Kenya.

TANUJ BHOJWANI is a storyteller who codes. He holds a chemical engineering degree from IIT Bombay. He also attended Ashoka University and studied liberal arts at the Young India Fellowship. His training in the sciences and humanities allows him to craft narratives about technology that are accessible without sacrificing technical depth. As a Fellow at iSPIRT Foundation, Tanuj works on policy issues related to digital identity, payments, data protection and drones. Prior to iSPIRT, Tanuj has been a VC and an entrepreneur. When not reading or writing, Tanuj spends his time obsessing over board games, digital productivity systems and magic.

Known for his inspiring & insightful leadership qualities, he is one of the most promising policy makers in the country. He has been influential in conceptualizing & implementing out of the box policies & schemes that have had great impact on the lives of thousands of people.

An animator by profession, he is a rare breed that understands the nuances of technology & policy making. He has a perfect understanding of rural & urban demands & has always been championing activities that have social & economic impact.

His constituency, Chittapur has seen great progress since he was first elected as MLA in 2013 making him one of the youngest in the assembly. His constituency, Chittapur has seen tremendous growth with his initiatives & is being nurtured as a model constituency for rural infrastructure.

Priyank has been the torch bearer for innovations & inventions in Karnataka & is credited with providing opportunities to hundreds of startups during his tenure as an IT Minister. His programs & policies like i4 policy, AVGC policy, Elevate, Startup Cell, GAFX amongst others ensured that startups, SMEs & MSMEs had a great platform to get to the next level.

He is a firm believer that education is the greatest empowerment tool & is credited with bringing in the Prabuddha scheme that helps students study abroad in renowned institutions. He has been instrumental in setting up of various Centres of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, Animation, Aerospace, IoT, Cyber Security & BioTech to ensure the youth are empowered with skills in emerging technologies so that they are more employable. The Bengaluru School of Economics that has been operational since 2017 too is his brainchild.

Even in his tenure as the Social Welfare Minister he brought in great wave of reforms to ensure that the socially & economically dis-empowered people are brought into the main stream of society. His interventions with schemes like Airavatha & Samruddhi ensured that the beneficiary is provided with employable skill sets & nudged into entrepreneurship.

Not many are aware of the fact that Priyank conceptualised Bengaluru’s brand identity & logo to position the city has a global city destination, the first city in India to do so. This has had a great impact on the city making it one fastest growing destinations in Asia

This brings us to the end of the Interspecies Conclave. I would like to invite Shri Priyank Kharge to