HBS To Host Weekend Conference on India

One of the world’s fastest growing markets will take center stage this Sunday as Harvard Business School hosts its fifth annual India Conference.

The conference, hosted by the South Asian Business Association at HBS, will feature 10 panel discussions with top Indian business leaders, who will discuss India’s global presence in fields like healthcare, private equity, media and entertainment, and energy.

The two keynote speakers for the conference—whose sponsors include the Tata Group and Goldman Sachs—will be Vivek Paul, a partner at private equity firm Texas Pacific Group, and Alan Rosling, executive director of Tata Sons.

The organizers of the conference said they hope the panels will bring to light available prospects of the Indian private sector, as well as the challenges India will face as it moves forward.

“India has attracted a lot of attention, and a lot of people want to know what has made India successful so far and what is needed to make India successful in the future,” said Abhay Saboo, a first-year MBA student and one of the event’s organizers. “This conference is an opportunity to have some of the most prominent business leaders in the Indian-American community and global leaders that have a vested interest in India come together and educate the Harvard community.”

Mukti V. Khaire, assistant professor of business administration at the Business School, will be moderating a panel on entrepreneurship entitled “Beyond IT: Exploring Opportunities in Indian Entrepreneurship.”

“We want to focus on entrepreneurial opportunities in India that are beyond the more traditional opportunities of IT,” said Khaire. “Each of the panelists is an entrepreneur in a different field, and will hopefully shed light on these different sectors and the vast opportunities present there.”

The entrepreneurship panel will include a venture capitalist, the CEO of a telecommunications firm, the head of an entertainment company, and the CEO of a legal solutions company—all of whom are Indian and have strong business ties to the subcontinent.

Khaire said that personal obstacles would also be addressed by her panel.

“It is important to consider how one should overcome challenges, and the audience will hear about how each of these panelists overcame their own challenges,” said Khaire.

Other panels on Sunday will include business leaders like the chairman of the U.S.-India Business Council, executives from Goldman Sachs, and a Bollywood director.

Chairman of Microsoft India Ravi Venkatesan said he was excited to participate in one of the panels.

“It’s exhilarating to interact with bright and passionate young minds and get them excited about the amazing opportunities unfolding in India,” Venkatesan said in a press release.

—Staff writer Prateek Kumar can be reached at kumar@fas.harvard.edu.