Derek O’Brien is an author, television personality, public speaker, politician and quizmaster.
Born in Kolkata, he began his career as a journalist for Sportsworld magazine but soon shifted to advertising. After working for a number of very successful years as creative head of Ogilvy, Derek decided to focus all his energy and talent on his passion-quizzing.
Today, Derek is Asia’s best known quizmaster and the CEO of Derek O’Brien & Associates. He has been the host of the longest-running game show on Indian television, the Bournvita Quiz Contest, for which he was voted Best Anchor of a Game Show at the Indian Television Academy Awards three years in a row. Always innovating, Derek is also credited with having conducted the first quiz on Twitter in 2010.
Derek O’Brien is a twice-serving member of the Rajya Sabha from West Bengal. He is the parliamentary party leader of the All India Trinamool Congress in the Rajya Sabha as well as the chief national spokesperson of the party. He has spoken at, among others, Harvard, Yale and Columbia universities in the US as well as several IIMs, IITs and other premier educational institutions in India. He addressed the United Nations General Assembly as a member of the Indian parliamentary delegation in 2012. He has written over sixty bestselling reference, quiz and school textbooks.
To know more about the author, visit his website www.derek.in. You can also follow him on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook (@derekobrienmp).
RAMA BIJAPURKAR is a business adviser, independent director on boards of blue-chip corporate and academic institutions, researcher, and academic. She describes her work as ‘bringing the “people view” to business strategy and public policy’.
Rama is the author of influential books on Consumer India—We Are Like That Only: Understanding the Logic of Consumer India (2007) and A Never-Before World: Tracking the Evolution of Consumer India (2013). More information can be found at www.ramabijapurkar.com
Palaniappan Chidambaram is a lawyer-politician in the best traditions of Indian politics. He holds degrees in law (Madras) and management (Harvard) and is a senior advocate of the Supreme Court of India. Elected to Parliament first in 1984, he has been returned five more times from his constituency, Sivaganga, in Tamil Nadu. Chidambaram has been a minister in the governments of Rajiv Gandhi, Narasimha Rao, Deve Gowda, I.K. Gujral, and now Dr Manmohan Singh. He has held a variety of portfolios but is best known for his stewardship of the Ministry of Finance from 1996 to 1998 and again from 2004.
TGC Prasad is the bestselling author of several management and fiction books. He is the managing partner of TGC Consulting (www.tgc-consulting.com), which is primarily into executive search, coaching and strategic people advisory. The firm’s clientele includes global MNCs, Indian conglomerates and PE/VC-funded entrepreneurial ventures across various domains such as information technology, e-commerce, health care, pharmaceuticals, retail, manufacturing, BFSI, media and entertainment. He also manages Clearthink Software (www.clearthinksoftware.com), which is into IT staffing, software development, maintenance and testing, enterprise applications and managed services.
He is an avid blogger and you can read his blogs on http://tgcblogs.wordpress.com.
You can connect with him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/TGCPrasadOfficialFanpage.
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Gita Piramal is a bestselling author. She has previously written Business Maharajas and Business Legends.
Navi Radjou is an innovation and leadership strategist based in Silicon Valley. He is also a World Economic Forum faculty member. He advises C-level executives worldwide on breakthrough growth strategies. Navi is also writing a book on new models of leadership.
Simone Ahuja is the founder and principal of Blood Orange, a marketing and strategy consultancy with expertise in innovation and emerging markets. She regularly presents and consults to Fortune 500 companies across sectors, and contributes to a Harvard Business Review blog.
Jaideep Prabhu is professor of marketing and Nehru Professor of Indian Business at Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, where he is also director of the Centre for India and Global Business and vice dean for faculty. A specialist in innovation, strategy and international business, his research on high-tech and frugal innovation spans both emerging and developed economies. He is the co-author of Jugaad Innovation, an international bestseller; Frugal Innovation, winner of the CMI (Chartered Management Institute) Management Book of the Year award; and How Should a Government Be? He is a fellow of the British Academy and has played cricket at Lords.
Born in 1944 into a Brahmin family at Nagpur, Subramaniam Ramadorai is a man steeped in simplicity and discipline. Ramadorai retired as CEO & MD of Tata Consultancy Services in 2009, after serving the company for thirty-nine years; he continues to work with TCS in the capacity of Vice-Chairman, and is actively involved as Chairman/Director of various Tata and non-Tata companies and educational institutions. He took on a public service responsibility when the Indian government appointed him as the Advisor to the Prime Minister in the National Skill Development Council with the rank of a Cabinet minister. Ramadorai was awarded the Padma Bhushan, one of India’s highest civilian honours, in 2006 and the CBE in 2009. Among his many interests, Ramadorai is passionate about photography and Indian classical music. His wife Mala is an accomplished musician and an active educator; his son Tarun is a Reader inFinance at the Saïd Business School while his daughter-in-law Purnima is a filmproducer in the UK, where she runs her own production company. Mala and Ram live in Mumbai.
