Chayaa Nanjappa is a first generation rural social entrepreneur and the visionary founder and managing director of Nectar Fresh, a unit of the Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) for the last 18 years. Nectar Fresh is credited with being the first to have replaced the monopoly of foreign brands in India’s high-end market.
She is the National President of the Association of Business Women in Commerce and Industry, and the State Vice President of Laghu Udyog Bharati, one of the most prominent organisations in the country for SMEs. Chayaa has founded and managed various foundations and initiatives – including Atma Nirbhar Bharat’s first social venture NAMAN, a platform to promote tribal and rural artisanal handcrafted products across the globe in a franchisee model – serving social causes, empowerment of rural and tribal women, and inclusive growth.
Hema Ravichandar held the position of Global Head of HR at Infosys as it scaled from 250 to about 40,000 Infoscions. She then seamlessly moved into advisory and governance roles, consulting with several organisations and serving on select Boards like Titan, Marico, Trent, Bosch and IHCL. She has spearheaded pioneering work in HRD for over four decades, enabling organisations to manage scale, manage execution, manage risk and embrace inclusivity, as an executive, an advisor, a coach and a Board member.
Her success, she believes, is the success of the leaders, teams and organisations she has led and mentored. She has regularly opined in print, been a featured speaker at several national and international conferences and received recognition and awards for herself and the teams she helmed both in India and globally.
Think ghee-laden, crispy dosas, and the warmth of South Indian hospitality – that’s The Rameshwaram Café. At its helm is Divya Raghavendra Rao, a chartered accountant and IIM Ahmedabad alumna who turned her love for authentic flavours into a culinary phenomenon. As co-founder and the driving force behind The Rameshwaram Café and the new brand Thirtha, Divya blends tradition with modern enterprise.
Her vision, discipline, and deep cultural pride have transformed a humble idea into one of India’s most celebrated food brands. Under her leadership, the café’s franchise model has expanded across cities, known for its consistency, quality, and heartfelt service. A former chairperson of the Bengaluru branch of the Southern India Regional Council of The Institute of Chartered Accountants, Divya brings integrity, structure, and strategic thinking to every venture, while staying rooted in the timeless tastes of the South.
Nooraine Fazal - educationist, sportsperson, entrepreneur and change-maker - champions quality education. She leads Inventure Academy, No. 1 Co-ed Day School in India (2024-25 and 2025-2026) and No. 1 in South India, Karnataka and Bangalore from 2020. With a post graduation from Boston University, her career spans IBM, Reuters and leadership in impactful education reform.
Committed to a cause bigger than oneself, she drives initiatives like the Alliance for #RighttoLearn and Inventure’s Our Voice platform, shaping education policy and student empowerment. She played a key role in a White Paper on Online Learning, influencing post-COVID education. She led Inventure’s adoption of Ramagondanahalli Govt. School, transforming it into a successful PPP model.
Guided by a commitment to raising the tide for all, Nooraine continues to set new benchmarks in education, inspiring students, educators, and the wider community.
Mayura Balasubramanian is the Founder and CEO of Craftizen Foundation, a social enterprise born from her belief that craft has the power to transform lives and preserve India’s cultural heritage. Through Craftizen, she has created dignified livelihoods for over 10,000 individuals, including traditional artisans, underprivileged women, and adults with intellectual disabilities. Jer flagship initiative, the Petalists Livelihood Program, is today India’s largest vocational training program for adults with intellectual disabilities. Implemented across 11 states in collaboration with over 100 partner organisations, it stands as a model of inclusion and partnership — empowering those often left out of mainstream livelihoods to earn with pride and purpose.
Mayura’s approach is deeply rooted in collaboration and creativity. She believes design and innovation form the pillars on which the future of craft must stand — blending heritage with modern relevance. Under her leadership, Craftizen has developed new recycled materials and hundreds of contemporary product designs, while recycling over 1,00,000 kilograms of discarded materials into beautiful, purposeful creations. Craftizen’s other initiatives support craft and tourism linked livelihoods, breathing new life into heritage clusters, and craft revival programs for Channapatna wood and lacquerware in Karnataka and Cheriyal Folk Art in Telangana.
With over 20 years of experience, Mayura’s journey began at the grassroots, working on a UNDP India –Ministry of Tourism project promoting rural tourism across 20 states. Her love for India’s living traditions inspired her to author Explore Rural India, a pioneering coffee table book celebrating rural artisans.
With the ‘girl next door’ image, Shraddha Srinath is an actor who predominantly appears in Kannada, Tamil and Telugu films. Hailing from an Army background, she began her career in 2015 with her debut in the Malayalam film Kohinoor and has successfully completed a decade in the entertainment industry. Her breakthrough came with the release of the Kannada thriller film U-Turn, in which her performance earned wide acclaim and several awards, including the Filmfare Award for Best Actress – Kannada. Most recently, she made her web series debut with yet another thriller, The Game: You Never Play Alone. After completing her schooling, Shraddha pursued law at the Bangalore Institute of Legal Studies and even practised before making the career shift to acting. Today, she is the recipient of two Filmfare Awards (South), the SIIMA (South Indian International Movie Award), and several other accolades.
Hailing from a small town in Chikkamagaluru, 18-year-old Veda Krishnamurthy made the world sit up and take note when she burst on to the international arena in 2011, scoring a half century in an ODI match against England. Over the course of her career, she has played 124 matches across formats and featured in the finals of the 2017 ODI and 2020 T20 World Cups. The right-handed batter was also part of the Indian team that won the Asia Cup in 2016. Domestically, Veda Krishnamurthy has captained Karnataka and played in top franchise leagues like the Women’s Premier League (WPL) in India and the Women’s Big Bash League (WBBL) in Australia.
Her voice and expertise now accompanies women’s cricket matches as official commentary, including the recent ICC Women’s World Cup. Krishnamurthy retired from all formats of the game in July in this year with these heartfelt words about cricket: “I never imagined it would take me this far from narrow streets to the biggest stadiums, from quiet hopes to proudly wearing the India jersey. Cricket gave me more than just a career. It gave me a sense of who I am. It taught me how to fight, how to fall, and how to keep showing up.”
She calls herself an “accidental entrepreneur,” though she comes from a family of serial entrepreneurs. Growing up in Bangalore, her love for nature was nurtured through weekends in Cubbon Park with her dad and sisters, climbing trees, and taking road trips filled with beaches, waterfalls, and sunsets. Waste has always been an environmental and health issue for her, seen through her Cambridge and WHO lenses. In 2015, while working at SELCO Foundation, she spent time with a waste picker community from West Bengal and was struck by the social justice issues in our waste crisis. How often do we think about the journey of our trash—the broken glass and discarded needles – and the hands that touch them? She wanted to stop being part of the problem and live a lifestyle that reflected her values.
In her zero-waste journey, she realised we live in a world of landfill-destined products – 4.7 billion toothbrushes end up in landfills every year, taking centuries to decompose. To be part of the solution, she founded Bare Necessities – a certified B CORP company that embodies zero waste living, ethical consumption, and sustainability. Her goal is to make mindful consumption easy and accessible, and to inspire others to produce less waste.
Pragati Mathur is one of Bangalore’s most well-known weavers, textile designers and experimental weaving artists. With a degree in Textile Design and Technology from the Sophia Polytechnic, Mumbai, she has over 20 years of experience. A degree, a gold medal and a loom were the beginning of her romance with handlooms. With a passion for natural fibres and diverse yarns and materials, she worked with various products like tapestries, rugs, scarves, stoles, hand-crafted textiles, sarees and metal installations.
She has created individual-style fabrics as yardages for leading designers, successfully showcased at various prominent hotels and art complexes in Bengaluru, Kolkata, Mumbai, and Goa, and has created installations for Vinita Chaitanya, Shernawaz Barucha, Gitu Hinduja for The Fine Art Company, ‘The Ancient Star Map’ for Gitanjali Maini for Gallery G, NAURASPUR for The Bangalore International Airport Terminal 2, Sone Ki Chidiya and Colour me India for Sutr Santati National Museum in New Delhi, NGMA in Mumbai and Melbourne Museum in Australia.
One of the country’s most beloved storytellers, Anita Nair writes with a rare magic that transforms even the mundane into something timeless and beautiful. Her words glide across genres with ease, from noir to poetry, essays to children’s tales, carrying the quiet confidence of someone who knows the rhythm of the human heart. With translations in 33 languages, Nair’s stories have travelled as far as her imagination.
Through Anita’s Attic, a creative writing mentorship programme that she founded, she has mentored over 150 writers, helping them find their true voice. Winner of the Central Sahitya Akademi and Crossword Awards, the writer has been supporting UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, since December 2020, and is a literary curator for the Wild Trust of India’s initiative Gajotsavam. Her next book, Why I Killed My Husband & Other Stories, releases in December.
Deepthi Bopaiah is former CEO of GoSports Foundation, a non-profit organization, founded in 2008, which supports junior, emerging and elite athletes in Olympic and Paralympic disciplines. She is currently a board member of the Foundation. Formerly a wealth advisor and trainer during her six-year tenure at HSBC, Deepthi’s passion for sports remained unwavering. Joining GoSports Foundation in 2012 to pursue her passion for sports through administrative leadership.
This athlete-turned-banker-turned-administrator has spent over a decade driving systemic change in India while supporting junior, emerging, and elite athletes across Olympic and Paralympic disciplines. She has also represented Karnataka in basketball and tennis.
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