Presenting Partner

Yes Bank
YES BANK is India’s fourth-largest private sector bank with a presence across all the 29 states and seven Union Territories of India. Headquartered in the Lower Parel Innovation District (LPID) of Mumbai, it is the outcome of the professional & entrepreneurial commitment of its founder Rana Kapoor and its top management team, to establish a high quality, state-of-the-art private Indian bank with a vision of ‘Building India’s Finest Quality Large Bank’.

YES BANK has adopted international best practices, the highest standards of service quality and operational excellence, and offers comprehensive banking and financial solutions to all its valued customers. It has steadily evolved as the Professionals’ Bank of India, with exemplary business and financial outcomes since inception, with highest profitability and the best asset quality amongst India’s leading public and private banks.

The bank is committed to digital transformation by embracing technology and innovation to create a ‘Digital First’ bank and aid the ongoing transition to a ‘less-cash’ economy. YES BANK has pioneered new paradigms in Digital Banking through an ‘Alliances, Relationships & Technologies (ART)’ approach to foster collaboration & entrepreneurship through initiatives such as the YES FINTECH Accelerator, the YES Head-Startup program and the Bank’s focus on Design & Innovation-led Creative Entrepreneurship (DICE).

Associate Partner

IIFL
IIFL Investment Managers is one of India’s leading investment management companies and part of the IIFL Group, which is among the leaders in the Indian financial services space. The company has catapulted itself to become one of the largest private wealth management firms in India in under a decade. Today, it is the investment and financial advisor to more than 12,900 influential families in the High Net Worth Individuals (HNI) and Ultra HNI segments in India and abroad, with aggregate assets of more than $21 billion under management, advice and distribution. Leading global growth equity firm General Atlantic is invested in the company and holds a 21 per cent stake.

Associate Partner

BPCL
Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) is one of India’s Maharatnas. The oil and gas corporation is headquartered in Mumbai and operates the Mumbai Refinery, which has a capacity of 12 MMTA; Kochi Refineries, with a capacity of 15.5 MMTA; Numaligarh Refinery in Assam, with 3 MMTA capacity; and Bina Refinery, with 6 MMTA capacity. The last is operated by Bharat Oman Refineries Ltd, which is a joint venture between Bharat Petroleum and Oman Oil Company. BPCL is India’s 2nd largest downstream oil company. The business has six SBUs—Retail, Lubricants, Aviation, Refinery, I&C and LPG. The Group has five Indian subsidiaries, six foreign subsidiaries and 23 JVs.

Associate Partner

Petronet

Celebration Partner

Diageo

Beauty Partner

VLCC

Lifestyle Partner

Ahujasons

Anju Mangla

Anju Mangla is the first female superintendent at the prison for young male offenders at New Delhi’s Tihar Jail. Anju likes to think of the inmates as “children in her gurukul” and prefers using the carrot over the stick. In line with that thinking, she has developed reformatory programmes that are designed to reshape the thinking of her young prisoners and to help with their intellectual and spiritual development. She believes most young offenders end up on the wrong side of the law because of a lack of guidance and emotional bonding, and therefore makes a point of regularly interacting with the prisoners to get to the cause of their problems. Her “gurukul system of education” includes literacy classes, daily sessions of sports, PT and yoga, skill development programmes and recreational activities. In order to make the young men economically independent post-release, Anju also encourages all of them to learn vocational skills. “I want them to re-enter society empowered and not battered, embittered and cynical in life,” she says.

Bilquis Mir

The first water sports coach of Kashmir Valley and the sole Indian water sports judge in the Asian Games 2018, Bilquis Mir couldn’t be prouder of what she does. The journey hasn’t been easy, whether kayaking in Srinagar’s Dal Lake or canoeing through white waters in Europe. “At every step, I had to over-perform to bust the myth that girls can’t play sports. As one of three sisters, I was determined to prove everyone wrong. Not only did most people in Kashmir not understand water sports, they looked down on me for being a coach. It didn’t help that I was the only girl to take up this sport in the Valley,” she says. But Bilquis, who started kayaking and canoeing in 1996, loved what she did and got herself a coaching diploma from Budapest, Hungary. Today she’s training 300 students, half of them girls from Kashmir Valley. “I started from Dal Lake, and love working here. We have natural water resources and our kids have innate talent. Our team has already got 56 medals in national tournaments,” she says. Her dream is to see maximum representation of paddlers from the Valley in international tournaments.

Kiran Nadar

A patron, collector and gallerist, Kiran Nadar has shaped and inspired the Indian art world and become a pivotal force in the country’s cultural landscape. Her journey into the world of art has been the result of a combination of circumstances and factors, which include her intuitive judgment, adventurous experiments and experiential learning of the art ecosystem. Over the years, Kiran has evolved from a passionate collector to an astute art lover, determined to enrich, enhance and inspire young artists and build a museum for people to cherish the work of contemporary Indian artists. As a collector, she has brought back to India long-gone paintings by master artists like Tagore, Raja Ravi Verma and Amrita Sher-Gil. She has also re-defined cultural patronage, underlining the importance of patrons in today’s cultural context, and made significant contributions to our cultural infrastructure.

With the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA)—which has a display space of approximately 50,000 sq ft—she has created India’s first private art museum that exemplifies the dynamic relationship between the arts and culture, creates a platform for India’s most talented artists, and bridges the gap between art and the public through exhibitions, publications, workshops, and educational and public programmes. Working on a non-commercial model, KNMA is a free museum that does not charge visitors any fee for entrance or participation in any activity.

Shilpi Marwaha

Losing her mother at an early age owing to medical negligence had a deep impact on Shilpi Marwaha. She took up socio-political theatre as a career as she wanted to dedicate her life to raising a voice against the injustices and inequalities prevalent in society. Today, Shilpi is a renowned name in theatre and a leading voice on issues related to women’s empowerment. Her popular stage plays include A Woman Alone, Kasturba vs Gandhi, Seven Steps Around the Fire and Kabira Khada Bazar. One of Shilpi’s great contributions to theatre has been the revival of street plays which she uses to raise awareness on social ills. Recipient of many awards, Shilpi is also an actor-trainer who works with students in India’s leading educational institutions as well as street children. After working with Asmita Theatre Group for over a decade, she started Sukhmanch Theatre in 2017 to create a platform for theatre enthusiasts to learn the craft and, in the process, become socially-responsible individuals.

Suchita Salwan

Channeling her inner curiosity, Suchita Salwan started blogging about her favourite finds in and around Delhi when she was 22, thinking it could help outsiders see the city in a different light. She wrote about places and products she found interesting; about brands and services that she thought were useful. She called her blog the ‘Little Black Book’. Though she’d set out only to share what she loved about her city, she soon realized that her pet project had turned into the city’s favourite online directory, with people consulting it for restaurant and shopping recommendations, holiday destinations et al. The extent of LBB’s influence drove Suchita to consider turning it into a business proposition. And so she did. Today, six years after it started, LBB is a web and app-based recommendations platform that reaches over 18 million users a year. It is available in eight cities and has raised `16 crore from investors.

Tsering Chondol

The 60-year-old eco-activist and president of the Women’s Alliance Ladakh, Tsering Chondol has been at the task of cleaning up Ladakh and conserving its natural resources since the inception of the Alliance in 1991. In 1998, along with her fellow-members, Tsering helped make Ladakh plastic-free, by getting the locals to switch to cloth bags. Today, she is out on the hills again, trying to help farmers of the cold desert cope with the water scarcity that’s been triggered by low snowfall and shrinking glaciers. It’s not just climate change that’s affecting the water cycle; groundwater is also shrinking with more borewells being drilled to cater to the needs of burgeoning tourists. “Farm lands are going without crops as there’s no water for irrigation,” says a distraught Chondol as she teaches farmers how to harvest water in the off-season (winter) for use in spring when water is not available and shows them how to use organic manure instead of chemical fertilizers, as it needs less watering.

Vijaya Jadhav

A zero-tolerance of corruption and a transparent administration mark the working style of the Maharashtra-born Vijaya Narayanrao Jadhav, who is posted as Deputy Development Commissioner at Hazaribagh, Jharkhand. Currently focused on the successful implementation of schemes such as Pradhan Mantri Awas Yogana, MGNREGA and Ayushman Bharat, this 2015 batch IAS officer doesn’t shy away from getting her hands dirty or taking on unsavoury sections of society. During her stint as SDM, Giridih, on the Bihar-Jharkhand border, Vijaya had to battle all sorts of criminals. Those included the sand mafia involved in cross-border smuggling, people running illegal wood mills, stocking illegal crackers and liquor, selling cattle and prohibited bovine meat, as well as land mafia goons. Her next stint at the Giridih Municipal Council saw her making a record recovery of tax arrears, turning the town plastic-free, stopping encroachments and pollution by iron and steel manufacturing units. “Through fair and transparent dealings with the public, I want to restore the people’s faith in public institutions,” she says.