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).

Aarifa Bhinderwala

Aarifa Bhinderwala is India’s pioneering and leading pole artiste and teacher. She believes that pole dancing is for everyone, irrespective of age, body type or gender, and teaches the art to an eclectic and fast-growing circle of people. Her students come not just from all over Mumbai but also from other metros and include people of all ages and professions. Her youngest student so far has been an 8-year-old, the oldest are in their fifties. “Sisters, friends, even mother-daughter duos come in to learn,” she says. So what attracts Aarifa to pole? “It reminds me of the joy and innocence of childhood when I’d fling my arms out and spin. It works every muscle in the body and feels like painting a dream mid-air. I see it as an instrument of positive change in society–physically, mentally and spiritually. And seeing the contentment and drive it brings to my students’ lives only deepens my passion to share my craft with others,” says the artiste, who features in the Netflix show The Creative Indians.

Bhumi Pednekar

Bhumi Pednekar embodies the fact that talent and hard work can create a success story. In an industry where influences and connections propel actors, Bhumi stands out for her confidence and range as a young performer. She made a bold debut in the earthy romantic drama Dum Laga Ke Haisha and won audiences over with her portrayal of the overweight but self-assured young Sandhya. The film won a National Award for Best Hindi Film and Bhumi made a clean sweep of Best Female Actor Debut in all mainstream awards. She hasn’t looked back since. Wihin a year, she lost the 20+ kg that she’d gained for her first film, and became a svelte, fit actor. Her next two films were both well off the beaten track. Toilet: Ek Prem Katha saw her as Jaya, a determined and progressive young woman from a small town, while Shubh Mangal Saavdhan had her playing the fiancé of a man with erectile dysfunction.

Unconventional as they were, both became major hits, and turned Bhumi into a role model for young women in non-urban India. The winning streak has held.

The actor has won much praise for her nuanced portrayal of a housemaid in a short film by Zoya Akhtar in Netflix’s Lust Stories.

Deepali Gogate

Deepali Gogate began her journey with the children of nomads in southern Maharashtra. Realizing that only a fragment of knowledge exists within books, co-learning with children became her passion. In 2008, she shifted to the tribal villages of Jawhar and founded an organization called Vayam to strengthen democracy at the roots. At Jawhar, Deepali works with children and adults, and treats them all as citizens. She educates them about the environment, laws and democratic rights.

She gives children a box of things to explore and access to a lab where breaking is allowed. The kids see the box as communal property, frame rules accordingly and conserve the goods. The grown-ups do much the same.

They acquire community rights and conserve the forest. Today, Deepali, the educator for empowerment, is responsible for 200 hectares of community-conserved forests, 40 vibrant Gram Sabhas, 50 school laboratories where breaking is allowed and the Jawhar citizens’ enhanced knowledge about wild edibles and bird species.

Prema Gopalan

Prema Gopalan is the Founder and Executive Director of Swayam Shikshan Prayog (SSP), a learning and development organization that works across six Indian states to promote women’s entrepreneurship and leadership in development and governance. Over the last decade, Prema and SSP have worked to create a robust eco-system that has steered over 145,000 women to set up last-mile social ventures in clean energy, water, sanitation, health, agriculture and nutrition. Since 1993, Prema has been at the centre of designing and planning women-led programmes with the government, the World Bank and UN agencies. She is also a long-time advisor to Huairou Commission, a global coalition on building women’s leadership in climate resilience. “My vision is to create an ecosystem that empowers women entrepreneur networks at the grassroots to create socially-responsible enterprises and to enable them as leaders transforming their communities,” she says.

Rahi Sarnobhat

Rahi Sarnobat was introduced to shooting when she became an NCC cadet in Grade 9. She enjoyed the sport so much that she started shooting every day after school. But she never imagined that a sport she took up because it suited her reticent personality would one day make her India’s most promising hope for an individual Olympic Gold Medal. The Kolhapur girl tasted success early in her career when she won a Gold at the Youth Commonwealth Games in 2008. But after winning the CWG Gold in 2014, she was struck by a career-threatening elbow injury that kept her out of the international circuit for four years. But her skills and luck held her in good stead, and Rahi came back to become the first Indian woman to win an Asian Games Gold in Shooting, in Indonesia recently. The 27-year-old’s sights are now set on a medal at the Tokyo Olympics in 2020.

Rekha Bharadwaj

National Award-winning singer Rekha Bharadwaj hasn’t spent a day without music. As a child in New Delhi, she woke to the sound of the tanpura as her older sister did her riyaz. After learning the basics from her sister at home, she formally trained at Gandharva Mahavidyalaya and, later, under Pandit Amarnath, who trained her in specialised gharana singing. Public performances happened through school and college, and continued after she moved to Mumbai after marrying filmmaker-music director husband Vishal Bhardwaj. Her first song for Hindi cinema was for Chachi 420 in 1997.

That opened the floodgates and Rekha has now song over 70 songs for films. From the ethereal Phir Le Aya in Barfi to the folksy Sasural Genda Phool in Delhi 6 to the sizzling Namak Issk Ka in Omkara, Rekha has sung them all. The launch of the Sufi-inspired album Ishqa Ishqa in collaboration with Gulzar and Vishal in 2002 saw Rekha foraying into the world of Sufism. That has become intrinsic to her spirit now, and the singer begins her stage performances with the whirling, which is a manifestation of the physically-active mediation practiced by Sufis as they get lost in a world of music and abandon themselves to God.

Rekha Mishra

The SSC textbooks in Maharashtra have devoted a chapter to Rekha Mishra, the 32-year-old Railway Protection Force (RPF) sub-inspector posted at Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) for her stellar work of rescuing destitute, missing, kidnapped or runaway children.

Belonging to an Army family from Uttar Pradesh, Rekha joined the RPF in 2014. On being posted at CST, she realized very quickly that the terminus played home to a large number of runaways or kids reported missing and took up the task of identifying such cases and reuniting the children with their families. Despite having no background in child psychology, Rekha developed the knack of spotting such cases, befriending the children and getting them to tell her about their families and hometown.

She also mastered the tedious formalities involved in reuniting the missing children with their parents or sending them to shelter homes and, in the process, sensitized fellow RPF personnel to the important social issue.