State of the Map (SOTM) Asia is the annual conference of OpenStreetMap communities since 2015. The first conference was organized in Jakarta, Indonesia (2015), followed by Manila, Philippines (2016) and Kathmandu, Nepal (2017). 

The conference brought together participants from around Asia to discuss the challenges, learn, and initiate study / research on mapping. With over 300 participants, the conference received a good press coverage.

The summit provided an opportunity for the Software Product Management Professionals to connect, network and celebrate excellence. The event involved workshops, panel discussions, key notes, student show case etc.

The event was a successful event with international participants with good press coverage.

A wide range of Software Product Management (SPM)  themes through keynote addresses, workshops and panel sessions by industry leaders, professors, venture partners, product and talent heads made the two-day event very exciting. Research / Practice paper presentations, Student Presentations, mentor interactions, interviews and Practitioner conversations were some of the new additions this year. 

The third edition of the SPM Summit in partnership with ISPMA.org with the theme "The Product Management Renaissance: 2021 & Beyond" was held 19th and 20th March 2021.

The Summit consisted of three tracks – Academic / Research, Industry and Workshops with over 250 diverse individuals from academia and industry.

The research track introduced in this edition was a big success with submissions from all over the world, both from academic institutions and industry. This track also included student showcase. Best papers were given awards. As in the past two events, SPM Excellence Awards were announced by the Jury.

The 4th edition of the SPM Summit was held in association with International Association for Software Product Management (ISPMA). The theme of the summit was “Building safe, secure and smart digital products & platforms” and was held on 21 and 22 January 2022.

The Summit consisted of Academic / Research track, Industry track and workshops.

As in the past events, SPM Excellence Awards were announced by the Jury. Prof. Sadagopan (Ex-Director, IIIT Bangalore) and Haragopal Mangipudi (Adjunct Faculty, IIMB) were the co-chairs of the summit. Dr. Laxmi Gunupudi (Adjunct Faculty, IIMB) and Prof. Shankhadeep Banerjee (Faculty, IIMB and Chairperson, CSITM) were the co-chairs of the Academic Track.

Like the event of 2021, this was also held in virtual mode. The summit witnessed over 250 participants from academia and industry and was a highly succssful event.

The two-day on campus workshop was an opportunity for early career and prospective information systems academics to interact, conceptualize, design and develop graduate-level courses.

This was held in IIMB campus on 26 and 27 August 2022

The event was held in partnership with Association for Information Systems – India Chapter (INAIS). The workshop chairs were Prof. Shankhadeep Banerjee, Chairperson, CSITM Indian Institute of Management Bangalore and Prof. Sujeet Kumar Sharma, Secretary, AIS India Chapter, Indian Institute of Management Trichy. Many senior faculty from IITs and IIMs such as Prof. Rahul De', Prof. Raghav H. Rao, Prof. Jang B. Singh, Prof. Priya Seetharaman, Prof. Sujeet K. Sharma and Prof. Sumeet Gupta participated in the workshop as facilitators.

This wa a highly successful event and over 30 young faculty from across India got benefitted.

The 5th edition of the SPM Summit was held in association with International Association for Software Product Management (ISPMA). The theme of the summit was “Bridging New Frontiers and Opportunities – Product Management as a Catalyst” and was held on 02, 03 and 04 March 2023

Further to the 4 successful annual editions starting in 2019, the 5th Software Product Managment Summit India was held on campus, similar to the events prior to 2021.

Prof. Sadagopan (Ex-Director, IIIT Bangalore) was the Summit Chair, Prof. Spurthy Dharanikota, Faculty, IS Area, IIMB was the Program Chair for Academic Track, Mr. Muthu Ranganathan, Senior Director, Product Management, Oracle was the Chair for Industry Track and Mr. Hans-Bernd Kittlaus, Chairman ISPMA was the Jury Chair for Excellence Awards.

Dr. Ajai Chowdhry, Co-Founder of HCL delivered the inaugural Keynote.

Pre-Conference workshops were held on 02 March 2023. The two-day summit held on 03 and 04 March 2023 witnessed over 300 participants representing academia and industry. Awards were announced for best academic papers and showcase of industry best practices.

With good press coverage and global participation under all tracks, the annual event continues to strengthen the network of SPM professionals and researchers.

The next annual summit has been scheduled for February 2024.

The sixth edition of SPM Summit India was held in association with International Association for Software Product Management (ISPMA). The theme of the summit was “Product AI: Navigating The Future of Product Management” and was held on 15, 16 and 17 February 2024

Prof. Sadagopan (Ex-Director, IIIT Bangalore) was the Conference Chair. Prof. Spurthy Dharanikota, Faculty, IS Area, IIMB was the Program Chair for Academic Track.

The summit witnessed over 350 participants representing academia and industry and was a very successful event. The summit featured panel discussions, presentations, fire-side chat, etc. apart from Academic Paper presentations, Excellence Awards. Following are some highlights that represent major additional activities of this year.

ISPMA University Chapter at IIM Bangalore was unveiled by Prof. Rishikesha T. Krishnan, Director, IIM Bangalore, Prof. S. Sadagopan, Summit Chair, Hans-Bernd Kittlaus, Chairman, ISPMA, Prof. Haragopal Mangipudi, Global Board member of ISPMA, Prof. Shankhadeep Banerjee, Chairperson, CSITM and Prof. Spurthy Dharanikota, Faculty, IS Area at IIM Bangalore.

Student Case Competition, Panel discussions and presentations from Students of UC Berkeley, IIM Sambalpur and IIM Bangalore were held in the Academic Track apart from the Academic / Research Paper Presentations.

With increased number of participants, speakers and activities, good press coverage and global participation under all tracks, the annual event continues to strengthen the network of SPM professionals, students and researchers. CSITM and ISPMA have planned to conduct the summit in the future also.

inSIG 2024 (India School of Internet Governance) was jointly hosted by ISOC India Bengaluru Chapter and CSITM of IIM Bangalore. ISOC is a non-governmental organization that promotes and develops the Internet for everyone. Then Day 0 event on 30 September 2024 was held as Youth Internet Governance Foundation Forum (YIGF).

The seventh edition of SPM Summit India was held in association with International Association for Software Product Management (ISPMA). The theme of the summit was “Software Product Management Excellence at Scale”.

Prof. Sadagopan (Ex-Director, IIIT Bangalore) was the Summit Chair and Mr. Venkatesh Mahadevan, Fellow, British Computer Society was the Summit Co-Chair.

Prof. Merlin Nandy, Faculty, IS Area, IIM Sambalpur was the Program Chair for Academic Track and Ms. Subhashini Dhandapani, alumna of IIMB was the Chair for Industry Track.

With over 350 participants from academia and industry, the three-day summit was a resounding success. It featured keynote talks by distinguished speakers including Dr. Somanath (Former ISRO Chairman), Wg. Cdr. Rakesh Sharma (Astronaut), Dr. A. Velumani (Founder, Thyrocare), and Mr. Sudhanshu Mani (creator of Vande Bharat). The event also included panel discussions, fireside chats, student case competition presentations, and the Excellence Awards ceremony. The annual summit continues to foster a vibrant network of SPM professionals, students, and researchers.

With increased number of participants, speakers and activities, good press coverage and global participation under all tracks, the annual event continues to strengthen the network of SPM professionals, students and researchers. CSITM and ISPMA have planned to conduct the summit in the future also.

Fostering a multi-stakeholder discussion on this topic and carrying it forward to the IEEE ETAP (Experts in Technology and Policy).

The participants were from the Healthcare industry (both established and startups) and was held as a closed door invite with chosen experts.

The outcomes will benefit of policy making.

The event was conducted in similar format. The participants were from varied industries, academia, IT industry, students and lawyers. 

The participants chosen were from Fintech (startups and established), large IT companies, banking industry, academia, students and lawyers. 

The outcomes will benefit of policy making.

A video of the event with captions was widely disseminated.

The discussions were moderated by Prof. Anil Suraj of IIMB and Mishi Choudhary, Managing Partner, Mishi Choudhary & Associates LLP.

CSITM took up the initiative to coach and upskill professionals in Digital Transformation, Product Management, and Design skills, all of which are extremely relevant to the current technology industry.

As part of this initiative, CSITM conducted a workshop titled “User Experience (UX) Design: Fundamental Principles and Practical Applications” by inviting Mr. Arun Iyer, an industry veteran.

The workshop, conducted on the IIMB campus, was led by Mr. Arun Iyer, an industry veteran in UX and design. It covered core UX principles through interactive sessions involving design thinking, illustrations of real-world examples of poor and effective design, and practical exercises on research methods, evaluation techniques, and best practices.

Participants included entry-level and mid-career professionals from the industry as well as students. The workshop was well-received. CSITM plans to conduct more such workshops in the future.

As part of its initiative to enable young researchers to write high quality empirical papers targeting Top-Tier journals, CSITM, R&P and the Office of the Dean Faculty of IIM Bangalore conducted a workshop on Theory Development and Writing Empirical Papers for Top-Tier Journals by inviting Prof. Viswanath Venkatesh, Eminent Scholar and Verizon Chair at Virginia Tech - Pamplin College of Business.

The two-day workshop was designed to equip young researchers with the skills necessary to develop strong theoretical foundations and write compelling empirical papers targeting top-tier journals in the social and behavioural sciences.

Day 1 focused on lecture-based learning, covering the essential concepts behind theory development and crafting the front-end of research papers.

Day 2 featured hands-on exercises, group discussions, and detailed feedback to reinforce the concepts and techniques. The workshop received excellent feedback from participants and marked a significant step in enhancing the research writing capabilities of early-career scholars.

The event resulted in declarations encompassing Informed consent and onus, creating awareness on “copyleft” and soliciting consent from willing individuals, concept of "Localization of Data”, etc. 

The contributions of Prof. Rahul De’ were considered highly valuable.

CSITM hosted a thought-provoking webinar. The session aimed to deepen understanding of the often-overlooked environmental impacts of digital technologies—both intended and unintended. The distinguished panel included:

Dr. Vivek, alumnus of IIMB and an independent researcher

Dr. Uttam Doraswami, founder and director at Elxion Pvt. Ltd. in India

Prof. Jyoti Bhat, an alumna of IIMB and an Adjunct Professor at IIM Bangalore

Mr. Krish Vijayraghavan from Ramboll an engineering and consultancy, USA

Ms. Keerthi Dsouza from LGS Assurance Pvt. Ltd.

The discussion explored a wide range of issues including CO₂ emissions, resource consumption, e-waste generation, and pollution associated with the rapid proliferation of digital technologies. Panelists reflected on historical shifts, current trends, and emerging patterns in the environmental footprint of information systems and digital infrastructure.

The session offered valuable insights that will help participants make more environmentally responsible decisions in their respective domains. A detailed summary of the webinar is available on the IIM Bangalore website under the link

Discussions on experiences with practicing agile at scale

Distributed Agile project management: A myth? 

adjunct professor at Merritt College and is studying Aadhaar.

The lecture and discussions helped provoke thoughts and research activities around identity and its relationship.

Other panellists included Prof. Sudhir Krishnaswamy of the CLPR, Santhosh, Secretary to the Govt of Tamil Nadu, Emilie Pradichit, Manushya Foundation, Thailand. They spoke about various aspects of law and technology regulation in society.

Prof. Ben Choi shared his experience with his study and test model that explains how eco-driving behaviors can be promoted with post-trip visualized storytelling. This study draws on the human-computer interaction literature and deals with the impact of post-trip visualizations on eco-driving behaviors. As part of the study, the hypotheses have been tested in an experiment involving eye-tracking and driving simulation.

This was a hybrid event and was of interest to academics and professionals.

Digital Citizen Science (DSC) can play a crucial role in understanding environmental health and advancing sustainable development goals. Yet, decision-makers grapple with Information Quality (IQ) tensions in DSC projects, especially when data is sourced from citizens with limited formal expertise.

Prof. Sandeep Mysore explained the design principles for Digital Citizen Science Platforms (DCSP) formulated in collaboration with an environmental non-profit organization using an Action Design Research (ADR).

This was a hybrid event and was well received by Academiscs.

The speaker hypothesized several explanations leading to inferences such as how high performing cardiologists performed differently with telemedicine during the study period.

This was a hybrid event. Many researchers and health care professionals actively participated and got benefited.

This was a hybrid event held at IIMB campus. The research work of Dr. Tathagat Varma was around the thought “The alarmingly high failure rates of GenAI adoption, presenting a unique problem with significant economic repercussions – can we truly leverage GenAI, or will it end up in a third AI winter?” Based on the research findings, Dr. Varma presented the proposed a Grounded Theory of GenAI Adoption or the Theory of Cognitive Chasms

The seminar was very well received.

This was held in virtual mode.

Dr. Vivek Seshadri of Microsoft Research India was the speaker. The Technology and Empowerment (TEM) group at Microsoft Research India focuses on problems that particularly impacts people in low-income communities and if and how technology can help address those problems.

In this seminar, Dr. Vivek Seshadri described “Karya”, a project that aims at making digital work more accessible to people in low-income communities and its journey from a research project to an early-stage startup. He shared key lessons in employing technology in low-resource settings.

This was held as a hybrid event. With over 15 participants in person and 50+ online participants, the talk was very well received.

The primary contribution of the study is to investigate user reviews as a source of ideas for new features and to evaluate their performance impacts relative to those of developer-initiated features. While ‘suggestion mining’ is a growing field in machine learning, the study also adds to this literature with a new deep learning model to accurately extract suggested features from user generated content.

This was a hybrid event and was of great interest to academics and professionals from all walks of industry and was very well received.

Prof. Pathak spoke about his study that recognizes the dual nature of cryptocurrencies, i.e., being a software program and a financial instrument, and discussed the impact of software advancement on the price dynamics of cryptocurrencies.

This was a hybrid event. With nearly 80 students and researchers from within IIMB and outside, this was very well received.

Dr. Jha explained his study that investigates the interplay of user-level factors like political ideologies and personality types combined with platform-level factors on the changes in perceptions while consuming information. The research contributes to the literature by studying the information consumption behavior of social media users from a psychological perspective and bringing together various arguments from the literature and testing them.

This was a hybrid event and was well received by Academics and professionals.

Prof. Maung K. Sein explained his thesis on how academic research must eventually impact practice and societal issues and to do so, academia must produce knowledge that is useful for practice. The discussions were around how proactive research approaches such as Design Science Research (DSR) and the niche Action Design Research (ADR) are appropriate research approaches to do so, especially since partnership with practitioners as co-researchers is an inherent principle of ADR.

This was a hybrid seminar and was well received by all researchers.

Dr. Mayya spoke about the findings of the study by the researchers highlight the need to carefully consider the potential strategic behavior of participants in designing policy implementation. The discussions were around the theoretical and practical implications of the findings.

This was a hybrid seminar and was well received by all researchers.

The Webinar featured

Dr. Abhishek Borah, Associate Professor of Marketing, INSEAD, France

Dr. Josephine (‘Jo’) Lukito, Assistant Professor, School of Journalism and Media, The University of Texas at Austin

Dr. Koustuv Saha, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science, The Grainger College of Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Shivam Srivastava, Research Associate, IIM Bangalore, was the moderator for the discussion.

The panel discussed research on language in the information environment. The panel also delved into the field of computational social science and human-centred machine learning, The session explored how language models are changing human linguistic evolution and shaping influences on businesses, politics and well-being.

The discussions were very interactive and informative.

CSITM and Mizuho India Japan Study Centre (MIJSC) of IIM Bangalore hosted a Panel Discussion by inviting

Dr. Jaideep Srivastava, University of Minnesota

Dr. Vishal Misra, School of Engineering, Columbia University

Dr. Sharath Chandra, University of Pennsylvania

Dr. Nikhil Malik, University of Southern California

Mr. Saideep Ratnam, COO of MIJSC moderated the session.

The discussions were around various topics ranging from explaining the different economic advantages derived from AI to grappling with the moral concerns that have been raised by its widespread use. The discussions further included active strategies and actual scenarios for the benefit of the participants so they can become informed about prejudice reduction, opportunities discovery and pro-equality in the field of Artificial Intelligence.

All the discussions were highly interactive.

CSITM hosted a Panel Discussion by inviting

Dr. Christopher Wlezien, Hogg Professor of Government, University of Texas at Austin

Dr. Ananya Sen, Alfred Blumstein Career Development Associate Professor, Carnegie Mellon University (Heinz College)

Dr. Connor T. Jerzak, Assistant Professor, University of Texas at Austin

Dr. Kokil Jaidka, Assistant Professor, National University of Singapore

Shivam Srivastava, Research Associate was the moderator.

CSITM hosted a Panel Discussion by inviting

Dr. Minkyung Kim, Faculty, Marketing, Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University

Dr. George Zhida Gui, Faculty, Marketing Division, Columbia Business School, Columbia University

Dr. Giovanni Compiani, Faculty, Marketing, Booth School of Business, University of Chicago

Dr. Samuel Goldberg, Faculty, Marketing, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University

The panel was moderated by Shivam Srivastava, Consultant.

CSITM hosted a Panel Discussion by inviting

Dr. Sharmistha Sikdar –Faculty of Business Administration, Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College

Dr. Yi Liu –Faculty of Marketing, Wisconsin School of Business, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Dr. Dante Donati – Faculty of Marketing, Columbia Business School, Columbia University

Dr. Klaus Miller –Faculty of Marketing & Hi! Paris Chairholder (AI in Business & Society), HEC Paris

The panel was moderated by Shivam Srivastava, Consultant.

CSITM hosted a Panel Discussion by inviting

Dr. Sunayana Sitaram, Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research India; Director, MSR India Research Fellow Program.

Dr. Nupoor Ranade, Faculty Member, Rhetoric and Technical Communication, Department of English, Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University.

Dr. Ishita Chakraborty, Faculty Member, Marketing; Thomas and Charlene Landsberg Smith Faculty Fellow, Wisconsin School of Business, University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Dr. Nikhil Singh, Faculty Member, Department of Computer Science, Dartmouth College.

The panel was moderated by Shivam Srivastava, Consultant.

The panellists discussed various aspects of Natural Language Processing (NLP), a subfield of AI that must evolve to interpret language, emotion, culture, and economic context to create a meaningful impact for its users. They emphasized the importance of participatory, multilingual model development to ensure inclusivity and fairness, as well as the need for human-centred design and rhetorical awareness in prompt engineering.

Concerns were raised about the risks of misinterpreting cultural silence in sentiment analysis, with suggestions for deeper semantic models.

The discussion also highlighted how large language models (LLMs) are highly sensitive to nudges, underscoring the need to embed empathy and cultural awareness into AI systems.

Prof. Abhipsa Pal shared her publication journey along with some tips for success with the participants.

Students and faculty from IS and other areas participated actively in the discussions. Emails and chats received from participants acknowledged the benefits of this initiative from CSITM.

Like the first event of the series, Prof. Bhattacharyya shared her publication journey along with some tips for success with the participants.

This event was of immense help to the young IS researchers.

During the webinar, Prof. Neena Pandey discussed her co-authored research paper: “Improving the governance of information technology: Insights from the history of Internet governance”, published in the Journal of Information Technology.

It was very well received by the participants.

Talks on “Beyond Cybersecurity - Behavioural Approaches to Information Assurance”

and

“Preparing for Publishing in Top Journals - Some Thoughts focussed on young researchers”

18 July 2022

While many people know about aspects of cybersecurity such as hackers and viruses, there is much more beyond these under the umbrella of Information Assurance (IA). In his talk titled “Beyond Cybersecurity - Behavioural Approaches to Information Assurance”, Prof. Raghav Rao discussed various behavioral aspects of Information Assurance through anecdotes.

19 July 2022

Publishing in top journals has a lot to do with the research stream that is chosen. Candidates aspire to choose a stream that has not been over saturated or one that is a great fit for the researcher’s natural skills and talents. In his talk on July 19 titled, ‘Preparing for Publishing in Top Journals - Some Thoughts’ Prof. Raghav Rao articulated his views on what to look out for in choosing an interesting research problem followed by some examples from his own past and current research.

Both the sessions were of great interest to academics, especially young researchers and professionals.

Prof. H. Rao talked about how Institutional pressure and security systems allow us to overcome the limitations of Dunbar numbers by allowing people to trust systems instead of people. He explained with examples how trust is the fundamental pillar of behavioral infosec research and how the area that is a predominant weakness in properly securing information assets is the individual user.

This was held in hybrid mode and was well received by researchers and professionals from the industry who participated in the event.

• Social Media Communication by Emergency Management Authorities During Three Natural Disasters: Did It Matter to The Public?
• Academic Writing and Research Impact

Event # 1

Dr. Sumit Chowdhury, Global thought leader and CXO in the field of Asset Performance Management

Event # 2

Dr. Pramod Varma, Chief Architect of Aadhaar and for various India Stack layers such as eSign, Digital Locker, and UPI

Over the last decade, India has been building a set of digital building blocks from identity to payment to credentialing data across domains. Known as India Stack, this has allowed India to leapfrog in the areas of social welfare and financial inclusion.

Dr. Pramod Varma, who has been the Chief Architect for most of these digital building blocks, spoke about the big picture, learnings, and the impact.

Event # 3

Mr. R. Chandrashekhar, Chairman of the Centre for The Digital Future.

Formerly, Chairman of the Telecom Commission of India.

Event # 4

Mr. Sharad Sharma, Co-founder, iSPIRT Foundation and Former member of Executive Council for NASSCOM and Member of National Startup Advisory Council and SEBI's Financial and Regulatory Technology Committee

Mr. Sharad Sharma who is a passionate evangelist of the software product ecosystem in India explained the basics of Open Networks, impact on Innovation in society and How do Companies play in this new emerging world.

He also spoke about how the India Stack changes the way the ecosystem operates in India, Digital Public Infrastructure, and how it is regarded as the 3rd Wave of Public Infrastructure and went on to educate the audience on how to embrace the Jugalbandi between public-tech and private innovation.

Event # 5

Mr. Nandan Nilekani, Co-Founder and Chairman of Infosys, Ekstep and Co-Chair of G20 Task Force on Digital Public Infrastructure

Mr. Nilekani talked about various aspecs related to doing transformational projects in government encompassing defining the vision, putting in place a team, articulating and getting approval for the strategy, execution approach, building consensus and a positive coalition, dealing with detractors, staying the course and dealing with political changes.

Government officers, academics and other professionals gained valuable insights into the world of Gen AI and its practical applications in governance.

Event # 6

Mr. Rajeev Chawla, Strategic Advisor and Chief Knowledge Officer, Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, Government of India and Additional Chief Secretary e-Govervance, Government of Karnataka and recipient of various awards.

Mr. Chawla talked about the learnings from some of the key projects such as Bhoomi / Kutumba – The most comprehensive dynamic self-updating registry of 1.75 crore families and about 5.5 crore citizens of Karnataka.

The registry is being used for suo moto delivery of services and benefits to citizens. Government of India is planning to create similar registries for all states.

Government officers, academics and other professionals gained valuable from the session.

Event # 7

Mr. Eshwar Belani, Partner, SAI Group (Symphony AI) Advisor to companies associated with Singularity University and Alchemist Accelerator

Mr. Belani talked about Generative Artificial Intelligence including ChatGPT. With hundreds of innovative applications being developed weekly, he shared his understanding and views on how Gen AI can help in creating new designs and prototypes and run repetitive tasks enabling personnel to focus on more strategic and creative work.

Government officers, academics and other professionals gained valuable insights into the world of Gen AI and its practical applications in governance.

Event # 8

Prof. S. Sadagopan, Chairman BoG, IIITDM-Kancheepuram Formerly, Director of IIITB, Faculty at IIT Kanpur, IIM Bangalore, AIT Bangkok, etc.

Event # 9

Dr. Gulshan Rai, Distinguished Fellow at Observer Research Foundation (ORF) Formerly, Chief Information Security Officer, Prime Minister’s Office, Govt. of India.

Event # 10

Mr. Saurabh Kumar Karn, Lead Scientist at OpenNyAI working on advancing the field of AI for Law and Justice.

Saurabh Kumar Karn is the Co-creator of Jugalbandi.ai which got a lot of attention both nationally and internationally and who has worked across Education, Policy, Financial Technology and AI/ML applications in Law and Justice.

He explained the wide scope for application of Language Models and AI in Government mentioning how Chatbot interface and Large Language Models are just the beginning.

He also shared his thoughts around how “Neural Networks are inspired by brain but do not work like brain” similar to how airplane is inspired by birds but don’t fly like birds.

Event # 11

Mr. T. Koshy, Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC).

T. Koshy is the MD and CEO of Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), a first-of-its-kind initiative globally aiming to democratize e-commerce in India. An IIM Bangalore alumnus, he was part of the founding team of National Security Depository Limited (NSDL) and served as an Executive Director. He has been a pioneer in Digital ID and social protection initiatives and has played a leadership role in many implementations and consulting projects globally, including the UID project of India, the largest ID program in the world, along with many other Digital ID initiatives globally.

He talked about the democratizing Digital Commerce explaining the effects of market concentration. He also explained how India unlocked radical innovation through digital public infrastructure, the techniques for leapfrogging growth with technology, reimagining digital commercem etc. For the benefit of the audience, he also shared the link for social sector handbook in different languages that would benefit a wide range of participants.

Event # 12

Mr. J. Satyanarayana, Chief Advisor, Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (C4IR), World Economic Forum.

Mr. J. Satyanarayana was a member of the Indian Administrative Service for 37 years. Held several positions in the IT and related areas, including Secretary, Govt of India, Department of Electronics & IT and Chairman (part-time), Unique Identification Authority of India (Aadhaar).

He talked about the Global landscape of healthcare, the Transformative potential of Digital Health and the related challenges. Further he detailed the National Digital Health Blueprint.

He also shared his thoughts on the potential and future trends of Emerging Technologies in Healthcare and specifically Cancer Care.

Event # 13

Mr. Shankar Maruwada, CEO and Co-Founder of EkStep.

Shankar Maruwada is the CEO and Co-founder of EkStep Foundation. EkStep Foundation is a non-profit organization that leverages technology, big data, and mobile platforms to drive forward education at scale in India. He is an entrepreneur and marketing professional with a wide range of experience working on large scale projects such as the AADHAAR.

He explained the barriers and boundaries that are relevant to innovation. He also shared his perspectives on to what extent AI and innovations can influence people of different backgrounds and also explained how the human capital can be effectively transformed with people-centric use cases in innovation.

Event # 14

Prof. Soumitra Dutta, Peter Moores Dean, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford

Prof. Soumitra Dutta has been Dean of Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford since June 2022. Professor Dutta is an authority on innovation in the global knowledge economy.

He talked about how important it is to recognize the impacts, both good and bad that AI can have on humans and on life in society in general. He also talked about the additional challenges that arise when one considers the use of AI in emerging countries with large populations such as India.