Gaurav heads the digital marketing engagements for HCL’s clients in North America. Prior to this, he was leading HCL’s digital marketing team which has won more than 100 awards, including two prestigious ITSMA awards and the first prize for the best marketing case study published by Ivey Business School in 2015 from Amazon. His first book, co-authored with Apurva, was an Amazon bestseller (marketing category).
He holds a double master’s and is an alumnus of Virginia Tech.
Roopal Kewalya is a screenwriter by profession, who shuttles between Mumbai and Delhi. A film direction alumnus from NID Ahmedabad, she also does storytelling performances for children. As a social-change maker she conducts fun workshops for children, adults, corporates and NGOs in gender sensitization, breaking stereotypes and creative thinking. She is also a happy mother to a feisty four-year-old boy. The Little Rainmaker is her first book.
T.T. Jagannathan (Author)
T.T. Jagannathan is the chairman of the TTK Group. He is a gold medalist from IIT Madras and holds a master’s in operations research from Cornell University, USA. He is a gourmet cook, an avid golfer and bridge player.
Sandhya Mendonca (Author)
A journalist-turned-media entrepreneur, Sandhya has co-authored Reva EV: India’s Green Gift to the World, and her stories have been published in the bestselling Chicken Soup series. Sandhya is the founder, managing director and editor-in-chiefof Raintree Media Pvt. Ltd and the festival director of India’s first multi-arts women’s cultural festival, Under the Raintree.
A journalist-turned-media entrepreneur, Sandhya has co-authored Reva EV: India’s Green Gift to the World, and her stories have been published in the bestselling Chicken Soup series. Sandhya is the founder, managing director and editor-in-chiefof Raintree Media Pvt. Ltd and the festival director of India’s first multi-arts women’s cultural festival, Under the Raintree.
Sudarshan K. Maini is the founder of Maini Group of Industries, manufacturers of India’s first electric car-REVA. Loughborough University, UK honoured him with a degree of Doctorate in Technology for his contribution to Industry in India in 2006.
Vice Chancellor of Banaras Hindu University conferred on Dr S.K. Maini as distinguished Alumnus Award in recognition to his Epoch Making Contribution to the Field of Propagation of Mahamana’s Ideals in 2009. Dr Maini co-authored a book on the founder of Banaras Hindu University titled Visionary of Modern India – Madan Mohan Malaviya.
He is a member on the Advisory Board of ICREATE-an organization for propagating Innovations & Technology. He is a member on the Board of Trustees of Ekal Vidyalaya Movement which runs over 40,000 single Teacher Schools in Remote Villages of India. He started Gramothan Foundation in 2009 with an objective to improve the quality of life by eliminating the poor from rural India in the shortest possible time with systems which are workable, sustainable and scalable to improve.
ORHAN PAMUK won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006. His novel My Name Is Red won the 2003 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His work has been translated into more than sixty languages. He lives in Istanbul.
Meghna Pant is an award-winning author, journalist, feminist and speaker.
Her books-The Terrible, Horrible, Very Bad Good News, How to Get Published in India, Feminist Rani, The Trouble with Women, Happy Birthday and One and a Half Wife-have been published to
commercial and critical acclaim.
Pant has been felicitated with various honours and her works have been shortlisted for distinguished contribution to literature,
gender issues and journalism. She has won the Bharat Nirman Award, Laadli Media Award, FICCI Young Achiever’s Award, The Lifestyle
Journalist Women Achievers’ Award, FON South Asia Short Story Award, Muse India Young Writer Award, Amazon Breakthrough Novel
Award, Frank O’Connor International Award and the Commonwealth Short Story Prize.
Pant has been invited as a speaker for the nation’s biggest literary festivals and conferences, and has appeared as a panellist on primetime news and international channels to discuss gender issues. She has written articles for and been quoted in leading national and international media.
She has worked as a business news anchor for Times Now, NDTV and Bloomberg-UTV in New York and Mumbai.
Pant currently lives in Mumbai with her husband and two daughters.
Shaili Chopra is an award-winning journalist who has specialized in business reporting and is a keen watcher of developments in social media.
She was presented the Ram Nath Goenka Award for the best in business journalism for 2010-11and the News Television Award for Best Reporter in 2007. She is among the most recognized and trusted faces in Indian journalism. She is known for breaking news and her incisive interviewing style with people like Warren Buffett, Steve Ballmer, Amartya Sen, P. Chidambaram, among others. Shaili has spent over a decade in television with organizations like ET NOW, NDTV, and CNBC. Industry chamber FICCI conferred upon her their Young Leader Award. CNN-IBN counted her among the 30 witty, intelligent women to follow on Twitter.
The Big Connect is her second book.
Neil MacGregor was Director of the National Gallery, London from 1987 to 2002 and of the British Museum from 2002 to 2015, and Chair of the Steering Committee of the Humboldt Forum in Berlin from 2015 to 2018. His previous books include A History of the World in 100 Objects, Shakespeare’s Restless World and Germany: Memories of a Nation, all available in Penguin and now between them translated into more than a dozen languages. In 2010, he was made a member of the Order of Merit, the UK’s highest civil honour. In 2015 he was awarded the Goethe Medal and the German National Prize. In 2018 the radio series Living with the Gods received the Sandford Saint Martin Award for Religious Broadcasting.
Mishi Saran is a writer and journalist. She has an undergraduate degree in Chinese Studies from Wellesley College (USA), and her articles have appeared in a variety of international publications, including the Los Angeles Review of Books, Financial Times, International Herald Tribune and the Asian Wall Street Journal. Her first book, Chasing the Monk’s Shadow: A Journey in the Footsteps of Xuanzang, was shortlisted for the 2006 Hutch-Crossword Award for Literary Non-Fiction, and longlisted for the 2006 Lettres Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage. Her first novel, The Other Side of Light, was shortlisted for the 2013 Commonwealth Book Prize. Her short stories have won awards and been broadcast on the BBC.
Saran was born in India, and after spending the first ten years in New Delhi, she has lived in Switzerland, Indonesia, the United States, China, Hong Kong and Korea. She lives in Hong Kong, where she is working on her third book.
