Dr V. Mohan’s name is synonymous with diabetes and diabetology in India. Dr Mohan started working and doing research on diabetes along with his father, Prof. M. Viswanathan, considered the ‘Father of Diabetology’ in India, as a second-year medical student, when he was just eighteen. There has been no looking back since then, and for nearly five decades, Dr Mohan has been consistently contributing to diabetes healthcare, research, education and charity. After working for twenty years with his father along with his late wife, Dr Rema Mohan, Dr Mohan established the well-known Dr Mohan’s Group of Diabetes Institutions. This includes Dr Mohan’s Diabetes Specialities Centre (the hospital wing), the Madras Diabetes Research Foundation (the research wing) and Dr Mohan’s Diabetes Education Academy (the education wing).
Dr Mohan established one of the largest chains of diabetes centres in the world, with over forty-eight branches spread across thirty-two cities and eight states of India and which have treated nearly 500,000 diabetes patients. A prolific writer and researcher right from his undergraduate-medical-student days, Dr Mohan has a prodigious number publications to his name, with over 1350 articles, research papers and chapters in textbooks. He is one of the few medical doctors with an h-index of 135 and over 134,000 citations-considered a stupendous achievement even for a full-time academic researcher. He also contributes extensively to charity and effortlessly combines spirituality with science.
C. SUBRAMANIA BHARATI (1882-1921) is considered the leading writer of the twentieth century in the Tamil language and is known to Tamils as the ‘Mahakavi’ (‘Supreme Poet’). He was a nationalist who fought against British rule in India and a social reformer who advocated passionately for women’s equality and the eradication of caste. His writings were proscribed by the British government and he lived in exile in the French Indian territory of Pondicherry for more than a decade. Bharati’s innovative contributions to Tamil poetry and prose are considered to have sparked a Renaissance in twentieth-century Tamil literature.
MIRA T. SUNDARA RAJAN is a writer, a classical pianist, and a scholar and professor who holds a doctorate in law from Oxford University. A Canadian citizen by birth, she is fluent in English and French and has read both literatures extensively. She is the daughter of Bharati scholar S. Vijaya Bharati, and a great-granddaughter of Mahakavi Bharati.
Sangeet Paul Choudary is the bestselling author of Platform Revolution and the founder of Platformation Labs. He has advised the leadership of more than thirty-five Fortune 500 firms and has been selected as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.
Sangeet’s work on platforms has been ranked by Harvard Business Review as one of its top-ten strategy articles ever, alongside the works of Michael Porter, Clayton Christensen and others, and has featured on four occasions in HBR‘s ‘Top 10 Must-Reads’ compilations.
Sangeet serves on several boards and committees, including the global innovation council of the ING Group; the advisory committee to the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Government of India; the WEF’s Global Future Council on Platforms; and the board of the ASEAN Financial Innovation Network. He has also served as an entrepreneur-in-residence at the INSEAD Business School, and as the co-chair of the MIT Platform Strategy Summit. He is the youngest-ever recipient of the IIMB Distinguished Alumnus Award, as well as a frequent keynote speaker at leading global forums, including the G20 Summit, the World 50 Summit, the United Nations and the World Economic Forum.
For more information on his work, visit www.platformthinkinglabs.com
Shikhandin is the nom de plume of an Indian writer who writes for adults and children. She is an alumnus of The Anam Cara Writing Workshop, Ireland. Her published books, as Shikhandin, include “Immoderate Men” (Speaking Tiger), and “Vibhuti Cat” (Duckbill-Penguin-RHI). Contributor to Magic Stories for Eight Year Olds by Penguin RHI, and Flipped: An Anthology of School and Sports Stories by Harper Collins. Shikhandin’s honours include, pushcart nominee by Aeolian Harp (USA) 2019, winner 2017 Children First Contest curated by Duckbill in association with Parag an initiative of Tata Trust, first prize Brilliant Flash Fiction Contest 2019 (USA), runner up Half and One Short Story Competition (India), Shortlist Erbacce Poetry Prize (UK), 35th Moon Prize (Writing in a Woman’s Voice: USA), first runner up The DNA-OoP Short Story Contest 2016 (India), second Prize India Currents Katha Short Story Contest 2016 (USA), first prize Anam Cara Short Fiction Competition 2012 (Ireland), long list Bridport Poetry Prize 2006 (UK), finalist Aesthetica Poetry Contest 2010 (UK), Pushcart nominee by Cha: An Asian Literary Journal 2011 (Hong Kong). Shikhandin’s poetry and prose have been published worldwide.
Shiv Shivakumar, popularly known as Shiv, has held various leadership positions in Indian and multinational companies. Shiv is currently operating partner at Advent International, a leading $100 billion private equity firm based out of Boston. He worked at Hindustan Unilever for nineteen years in sales, marketing and general management before he joined Philips India as CEO for their consumer electronics division. This was the start of his twenty-year stint as CEO across Nokia, PepsiCo and the Aditya Birla Group, making him one of India Inc’s longest serving CEOs.
Shiv is a management thinker, board chairman, independent director, corporate speaker and business school teacher. He is the author of two bestselling books—The Right Choice and The Art of Management. Shiv is on the boards and advisory boards of Power Grid India, SHRM, The Economist, Vadilal Industries, iD Fresh, Yes Bank and Penguin Random House India. He has also served on various boards of business schools, such as IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Calcutta, IIM Udaipur, XLRI, Xavier University, SPJIMR and Great Lakes.
Shiv is a strong believer in giving back, especially to schools and colleges. Over the years, he has delivered more than forty convocation and commencement speeches across business schools. He graduated from IIT Madras, IIM Calcutta and the Wharton School of Business.
A.S. Panneerselvan
A.S. Panneerselvan is fellow at Roja Muthiah Research Library, Chennai and head of its Centre for Study in Public Sphere. Earlier, he was the Readers’ Editor (an independent internal news ombudsman) of The Hindu, , for nearly a decade. Apart from being a regular columnist, he is also an adjunct faculty member of the prestigious Asian College of Journalism, Chennai.
Panneerselvan is the author of Karunanidhi: A Life, published in 2021 by Penguin Random House. He was conferred the G.U. Pope award by the Government of Tamil Nadu for his literary and journalistic contributions. He was the head of the jury for the 2022 JCB Prize for Literature.
Murali Balaraman has been a lifelong student and practitioner of customer experience and customer centricity. As a consultant and advisor his work has taken him across geographies and industries to meet with key influencers of respective Industries. As a professional his work experience spans across consulting (EY), IT services (IBM and Polaris), financial services (HDFC Bank and Citibank), and professional services (Lovelock & Lewis, now a member firm of PWC and Shaw Wallace).
Trained to be a chartered and cost and works accountant, Murali, quickly drifted away to his first love-customers. His passion for analytical reasoning has never died down though.
Murali currently lives in Bengaluru with his wife and daughter.
Gautam Sen is an Indian journalist, writer and automotive design consultant and expert. He is also the Vice President External Relations at Fédération Internationale de Véhicules Anciens FIVA, the international federation for historic vehicles. Sen founded India’s first newsstand car magazine Indian Auto in 1986.
Vismaya Mohanlal is an artist whose interests lie in the realms of fine art, poetry and performance. She is from the south of India. Grains of Stardust is her first book.
