Rajnish Kumar is the co-founder and group co CEO of ixigo, India’s leading AI-based travel platform. Since co-founding the company in 2007, he has played a pivotal role in shaping its vision across new product development, technological innovation, growth marketing, research, AI initiatives and the building of global talent.
An alumnus of IIT Kanpur, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in computer science and engineering, Rajnish began his career as a software development engineer at Amadeus before returning to India to build ixigo. Under his leadership, ixigo went on to develop category defining travel products, including the ixigo Trains app, which ranked among the most downloaded travel and navigation apps globally in 2022, according to data.ai.
He was honoured with the 2023 Distinguished Alumnus Award by IIT Kanpur. Today, he continues to build and scale AI-driven innovations at ixigo, which has grown into a leading OTA for the next billion users, serving over 540 million annual active users in FY25.
Srimoyi Bhattacharya is the Founder of Peepul Consulting, a leading pan-India communications advisory firm in the luxury and lifestyle space. With about 25 years of expertise in public relations and communications across three continents, she is passionate about helping brands build their image and support their growth, with the right mix of creativity and strategy. Born and raised in Paris, where she started her career in corporate and new media PR, Srimoyi also worked in New York for several years. She founded Peepul in 2006 and chose to move to India to grow it. Srimoyi lives with her family in Goa. Follow her on @sripeepul
Venkataraghavan Subha Srinivasan is a writer, actor and strategy consultant from Bengaluru, India. This is his first non-fiction book.
Abdus Samad is an award-winning Urdu writer and poet. He started writing at the age of fifteen and received numerous awards for his works, which includes eleven novels as well as five collections of short stories. He has won the Sahitya Akademi award, the Bhartiya Basha Parishad, the Ghalib Award and the Life Achievement Award from the Urdu Academy, Bihar. He has also served on the board of the prestigious Jnanpith award.
Narendra Chirmule, PhD, is the founder-director of SymphonyTech Biologics, a company focused on statistical, technical and quality aspects in drug development. Most recently, he was head of R&D at Biocon Research Labs, Bangalore, one of India’s largest biotechnology companies. Under his leadership, the company received the first ever approvals of biologics by FDA and EMA in India.
Sonal Ved is the content director at India Food Network, Tastemade India and the food editor at Vogue India. Her second cookbook Tiffin was listed in the New York Times as one of the must-have cookbooks for Fall 2018. Apart from writing about food, she also hosts cooking shows for Tastemade. Her words have appeared in food publications such as Food52 and Thrillist.
Sanjay Dattatri is a software engineer. Over the last seven years, however, he has been working on various initiatives to make the lives of the elderly in India better. He was a full-time director of India’s first store exclusively for senior citizens called the ‘Old Is Gold Store’, based in Chennai, for over five years.
He lives in Chennai with his wonderful and supportive wife, son and his mother-in-law. He can be reached at sanjay.dattatri@gmail.com.
Prabhakar Aloka has formerly worked with the Intelligence Bureau, the country’s premier intelligence agency, with over 125 years of history. In nearly three decades of service in the bureau, where he was rigorously trained in covert operations while in pursuit of hostile elements, Aloka served in counterterror, counterinsurgency and anti-Naxalite theatres.
Francis Scott Fitzgerald was born in 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and educated at Princeton. Stationed in Alabama, he met and later married Zelda Sayre. His first novel, This Side of Paradise published in 1920, was a tremendous critical and commercial success. Fitzgerald followed with The Beautiful and the Damned in 1922, The Great Gatsby in 1925 and Tender is the Night in 1934. He was working on The Last Tycoon (1941) when he died, in Hollywood, in 1940.
Emily Brontë (1818-48). Best known for her only novel, Wuthering Heights, and a collection of surviving poems, she remains one of the most intensely original and passionate voices in English literature.
