IIM Bangalore EPGP hosts flagship business conclave themed ‘Breaking the Mold: Entrepreneurship in the Age of Disruption’

15 February, 2026, Bengaluru: The advent of LLMs and AI heralds a once-in-a-generation inflection point for India’s incumbents. But what does this shift mean for emerging ventures and growth-stage enterprises grappling with unprecedented disruption? Samvay 2026, organized by IIM Bangalore’s one-year full-time MBA for experienced professionals – the Executive Post Graduate Programme (EPGP) – convened leaders to interrogate this question under the theme ‘Breaking the Mold: Entrepreneurship in the Age of Disruption’. The annual flagship business conclave brought together CXOs, strategists, technology evangelists, founders, professionals, students and alumni for a day of ideas, exchange and engagement on 15 February 2026.

The event was formally inaugurated by Prof. Sourav Mukherji, Dean, Faculty, and former Dean, Alumni Relations and Development; Prof. Amar Sapra, Chairperson, EPGP and faculty in the Production & Operations Management (POM) area; Josephine Kiran Raj, Founder and CEO, Knowledge Origin; EPGP ’26 students Amit Sahoo, Ruchi Chaurasiya and Shriram; along with Vanitha Anand and Ankita Maslekar from the Institute’s EPGP and Alumni Relations Offices, respectively.

Big players versus big transformers: The next decade of energy

Delivering the keynote address on ‘Breaking the Mold: Building Businesses in an Age of Continuous Disruption’, Mr. Raj Kumar Dubey, Director – HR, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL), drew from his leadership experience in one of India’s foremost energy enterprises to reflect on how large organisations should cultivate entrepreneurial thinking, agility and future-ready talent architectures.           

“The energy sector has never seen disruption of this kind”, observed Mr. Dubey, situating the conversation within what he described as an inflection moment for India’s energy landscape. As the country approaches its emergence as the world’s third-largest consumer of oil and gas while simultaneously positioning itself as a global refining and energy hub, it must navigate what he termed an “energy paradox” to balance growth ambitions with accelerated transition pathways.

A transformative expansion, he noted, is already underway across hydrogen, renewables, refining, biofuels, and green energy segments. “Never in history would we have imagined India becoming an exporter of hydrogen”, said Mr. Dubey, pointing to the scale of ambition under the National Green Hydrogen Mission. Yet ambition alone is insufficient. “How fast is disruption going to show up and, more importantly, what skills will it take to keep up?” he asked, signaling the need for rigorous scenario planning to remain relevant in a sector defined by long investment cycles and technological volatility.

Among the forces reshaping the sector, he identified four defining factors: margin pressures, capital allocation toward new energy and emerging technologies, cultural inertia marked by cognitive rigidity, and the migration of talent.

On the subject of capital investment in energy, he said that allocation remains complex due to long gestation periods, but growth-stage players in solar and wind have begun demonstrating viable pathways. Large incumbents, said Mr. Dubey, often confront premium valuations and delayed returns, although transformational opportunities frequently lie precisely in those difficult bets. “Big players may not always reap rewards”, he suggested, “but big transformers will”.

Mr. Dubey also flagged the need for greater domestic research and innovation capacity. Despite India’s abundance of solar resources and growing hydrogen ambitions, foundational research ecosystems must deepen. In an era of large-scale disruption, he argued, capital is only one part of an equation that necessitates institutional collaboration, experimentation, and execution capability, which are equally critical.

With a pragmatic view on the role of regulation, he said wealth creation must precede wealth distribution. “First generate wealth, then worry about distributing it”, he opined, adding that the regulator’s role is to channel and steward value once it has been created.

Rethinking disruption: Endurance, ethics, enterprise.. and paranoia?

The Business Conclave also hosted a panel discussion titled ‘Disruptive Mindsets: How Entrepreneurs Are Redefining Business in the 21st Century’, featuring Dharshan Shanthamurthy, Founder & CEO, SISA; Puru Modani, Co-Founder, BM Capital Family Office; and Aswini Bajaj, CEO, Leveraged Growth. The session was moderated by Prof. Sai Chittaranjan Kalubandi of the Strategy area.

Opening the conversation, Prof. Sai reframed disruption, which is often thought of in conjunction with technology, as its enabler. On the willingness to challenge long-held assumptions and interrogate what appears to be “convenient logic”, Prof. Sai asked the panel one belief everyone accepts as true, that might in fact be a comfortable lie?

Opening the discussion, Prof. Sai observed that while disruption is often thought of in conjunction with technology, tech is only the enabler. The real disruption lies in the willingness to question inherited assumptions and interrogate “convenient logic”. He posed a pointed question to the panel, asking which commonly held belief, accepted without scrutiny, may in fact be a comfortable lie?

For Dharshan Shanthamurthy, entrepreneurship is first and foremost a test of endurance. “It’s a marathon, not a sprint,” he remarked, cautioning against the commonly held perception of overnight success. In the cybersecurity space, an industry that once equated safety with building ever-taller compliance walls, AI has upended the paradigm. Threats evolve constantly, he opined, even if the product category remains the same. “Agility is important. Innovating at speed is crucial”, he said, noting that cybersecurity today is able to achieve more than static defence through real-time adaptation.

The discussion naturally extended into governance, an area Prof. Sai described as a growing blind spot in the startup ecosystem. Referencing recent high-profile governance failures in India’s new-age firms, he asked how institutionalisation can keep pace with scale.

Puru Modani argued that while technology cycles accelerate, the entrepreneurial journey itself remains constant: ideation, building, scaling, and ultimately institutionalising. Longevity, he suggested, demands governance that evolves alongside growth. In family-owned enterprises, where generational stewardship shapes decisions, transplanting a global managerial playbook wholesale rarely works. “The top-down doesn’t exist for a global playbook,” he observed, emphasising the need to align strategic direction with grassroots realities, particularly in the Indian context.

On building an ethical workplace culture, he said building organisations where employees can say “no” to lucrative but questionable opportunities is a function and result of the “founder's mindset”. Adding to the virtues of trust, integrity and agility, “What worked two years back might not work today”, he said, pointing to rapidly shifting market sentiment, go-to-market strategies, and consumption habits with increased customer awareness.

Aswini Bajaj also approached disruption from the lens of intuition and trust. “You cannot start from the top; you’ve got to build from the bottom”, he opined, emphasizing the primacy of first-principles thinking. In financial education and advisory, he observed, information has multiplied, particularly in the age of AI, but intuition has not necessarily kept pace. “You cannot connect the dots without knowing the dots,” he said, pointing to the rise of misinformation and deepfakes.

Aswini noted that in an ecosystem increasingly influenced by social media and fin-fluencers, trust itself has become measurable economic capital. He also added that in digital markets, credibility compounds – or erodes – at unprecedented speed. For entrepreneurs seeking to remain relevant, the answer lies not in reactive reinvention but in learning agility. “Learning at all phases of your life”, he advised the audience, adding that building mental resilience by not getting carried away was key.

Dharshan added color to the conversation, noting that founders driven solely by five- to seven-year exit horizons may be tempted into seedy compromise, especially when it came to making long-term investments in the cybertech space. “Values are what you tolerate and what you demonstrate”, he further asserted. emphasising that ethical culture must be embedded from inception. He also spoke of Constructive Paranoia – the idea of responding constructively to disruptive change with fear as a motivator. “That sense of paranoia will make you succeed, develop discipline, be ready for change and build iteratively”, he concluded.

Welcome address

During the inaugural address, Prof. Sourav Mukherji engaged with EPGP alumni gathered as part of Sparsh, the programme’s annual alumni meet, alongside the graduating cohort set to complete the programme next month. He reaffirmed that their bond with the Institute extended well beyond the classroom into a lifelong, fruitful and reciprocal engagement. He encouraged students to formally join the IIM Bangalore Alumni Association (IIMBAA), a fraternity of over 30,000 members, and leverage the integrated professional and community support it offers.

Turning to the conclave theme, Prof. Mukherji reflected on social entrepreneurship and the responsibility of founders to align innovation with societal need. He observed that, as markets do not always reward socially relevant ideas, entrepreneurs must design models that make markets work for them, rather than waiting for market forces to tip the scales in their favour. “Let’s find solutions to real problems that challenge society; let’s not create another food delivery app”, he quipped.

He also cautioned against building ventures with the sole impetus of engineering a 5x or 10x exit, noting that the true test of entrepreneurship lies in scaling ideas with conviction and sustaining value creation over time.

Programme Chair Prof. Amar Sapra expressed appreciation to the alumni, branding, seminar, and business conclave committees whose coordinated efforts brought Samvay to life, as well as to the EPGP and Alumni offices for their support.

On AI as the chief disruptor of the current era, Prof. Sapra noted the unprecedented speed of its adoption. He noted that conversations have moved swiftly from frugal reinvention of business processes to measurable consequences that include job displacement and uneven job creation. The resulting outcome of this, he cautioned, was the reduction in the purchasing power of the consumer. “If AI has to succeed, it has to create more jobs rather than take them away”, he said, adding pointedly that technology incumbents must remember one fundamental truth that “AI cannot consume”.

Samvay 2026 also featured a series of dynamic, hands-on engagements designed to translate ideas into action. Maverick – Lab to Market, a Shark Tank–style startup pitch competition; an Operations Simulation Game that tested analytical depth and real-time decision-making; and the Corporate Quiz – Business & Entrepreneurship Edition, which brought working professionals into a spirited contest of business acumen. Alumni engagement activities curated by the EPGP Alumni Committee further strengthened community ties under the banner of Sparsh.

The day concluded with a stand-up comedy performance by artists Gautham Govindan and Biswa Kalyan Rath.

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