Theme: beyond

TEDxSurat shares the same passion as TED. We are here to spread your ideas all across the globe. Our objective is to reach out and inspire people with “Ideas Worth Sharing” which has the potential to help people make a strong difference in their lives.

Who attends TEDxSurat?
TEDxSurat is oriented at developing a community of like minded highly informed and engaged innovators, designers, thinkers, technologists and environmentally and socially concerned individuals in India's fastest developing city - Surat.

Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay Indoor Stadium
Indoor Stadium Ln, Near Ritz Square
Meghdoot Society, Athwalines, Athwa
Surat, Gujarat, 395001
India

Arpit Bhutani

Circular Economy Expert

Arpit is the co-founder of the Circular Innovation Lab, which fosters circular economy innovations globally. He is also associated with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, for the past two years and has represented them in various international and national forums. Furthermore, Arpit has worked with United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Geneva, Untied Nations Forum on Sustainability Standards, International Institute for Sustainable Development, among others. Currently, he is also a partner at a 50 year old food processing company, Hind Agro Sales, and is the third generation, to have taken command of the operations.

Ashish Gupta

Poet

Ashish Gupta has done his graduation as a Fire-officer (BE-Fire) from IPS Academy Indore and is currently working in Dahej at ONGC Petro Additions Limited. He started writing poems when he was in 4th year of his graduation. As most of beginners do, he also started writing about love but then he realised the vastness of the power of pen. He started writing spoken word, narrative style poetry on his various observations regarding issues which are still dominating our society. He has performed in several events of poetry where he is usually with best performer of the day.

Dr Darshan Wadekar

Fetal Medicine Expert (Genetic)

Dr Wadekar is a gynaec surgeon, high-risk pregnancy specialist, and a fetal medicine consultant. He has been practicing for 6 years, and in that time, Dr Wadekar has noticed an absence of data on genetic disorders in Indians, which often get passed down to the next generation.

Dr Vijay Chauthaiwale

Foreign Policy Expert

Dr Vijay Chauthaiwale is In-Charge, Department of Foreign Affairs, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), since November 2014. In this role, he is coordinating with Indian Diaspora worldwide through BJP’s global outreach platform. He has authored peer reviewed scientific papers in international journals and is the holder of several global patents and has delivered talks in international scientific conferences. He is also a regular columnist on various national and international issues. His columns are published in The Asian Age, Indian Express, The Print, The Quint, and vernacular media.

Freddy Daruwala

Actor & Artist

Freddy Daruwala is a model and an actor who has made his name in the entertainment industry by his unconventional choice of performing both positive and negative roles alongside the biggest names of Hindi Film industry. He has been part of major projects like Holiday, Force and Race 3.He has completed his Masters in Business Administration. He hails from our very own town, Surat, where it isn't easy to make the choice of becoming an actor and it is even rare to see someone achieving such a dream. Freddy believes in the power of persistence and conviction to make it big in any field one wants to.

Harshit Agrawal

Artificial Intelligence & New Media Artist

Harshit Agrawal is an artist, HCI researcher, poet and traveler who builds tools to study how technology can help enhance human creative expression. He studies this from a human augmentation, cultural integration and human-machine collaboration aspect. He has been a part of the first AI art exhibition of India. His body of work includes Tandem - a collaborative human-artificial intelligence drawing and description tool, Protopiper - a device using which one can physically sketch room-sized 3D objects with tape, Flying Pantograph- a drone drawing tool that lets you experiment with the interplay of drawing with a drone, Fabcode - a visual programing language for creating 3D models for 3D printing as one explores math and computation constructs among others.

Leena Kejriwal

Anti Human Trafficking Activist

Leena Kejriwal is a photographer and installation artist and has been a torchbearer in leading the anti-human trafficking campaigns by her project - MISSING. MISSING was launched at the India Art Fair and since then she has run a successful crowd funding campaign, to gather support and spread awareness on the plight of young girls lost into the dark holes of sex trafficking. She has received many awards and recognition for her work including the Yes Foundation Changemakers Award for her innovative campaign. The Sandvik India Diversity Award for a very innovative and Impactful campaign to name a few.

Mahesh Raghvan

Music Composer & Digital Artist

Mahesh Raghvan is a Carnatic Music Fusion artist whose artistic goal is to present and create Indian Classical Fusion Music in contemporary ways for modern audiences. He plays new electronic musical instruments and runs a fusion project called FLAIR - Carnatic Music 2.0. He has an MSc. in Digital Composition and Performance from the University of Edinburgh. Besides his specialisation, he is extremely passionate about related fields such as visual arts, mobile application development, digital media, sound design and film. He is the Creative Director of Indian Raga, and also works with major music technology companies to make Indian Classical Music playable on their hardware/software. Besides being a performing musician, He also gives music technology related workshops at various universities and schools.

Neelam Khoba

Rural Economist & Social Activist

Neelam’s journey so far has not been easy. He has decided to devote his life for the welfare of rural society. Neelam Patel, a post-graduate in Rural Economics from Ahmedabad’s Gujarat Vidyapith has travelled a distance of 400 kilometre to a remote village of Valsad district, called Khoba for the sole purpose of staying there and make efforts for its development. It took a lot of time for him to earn the trust and support of the villagers. He feels that only because of his adherence to Gandhian philosophy, he has been able to show this much of perseverance. Now, with the help of the villagers, he runs a primary school in Khoba, where he teaches children every day. His works have been instrumental in developing the area’s agricultural, health and electricity facilities. He has built nurseries, rock-wells in the area as it is difficult to cultivate crops owing to its rugged topography. Neelam has also adopted new methods of rainwater harvesting to cultivate paddy.

Sunil Sridhar

Sculptor

Sunil Sridhar is an artist who is widely recognised for his larger than life size sculptural installations. In his career span of 24 years he has worked in variety of mediums from paintings, murals and ceramics. He graduated from Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda. He has created numerous works for many private and government institutions across Gujarat. Sunil Sridhar believes that a work of art should be able to invoke a response from the viewer without a worded explanation. That is the philosophy that keeps him enthusiastic and passionate about all aspects of art.

Ufra Mir

Peace Psychologist

Ms Ufra Mir is the first and only peace-psychologist from Kashmir, having earned her degree from USA and UK. She has introduced her peace-education, peace-psychology and transformation programs at various schools in Kashmir, in addition to working with youth, orphans, widows, teachers, students, artists and other professionals in Kashmir through the modalities of leadership development, critical and creative thinking, emotional intelligence and well-being, stress management and mental health. She is a founding member of a think tank called Kashmir Institute, and also runs her own NGO, Paigaam: A Message for Peace.

Utkarsh Amitabh

Distributed Leadership Expert

Utkarsh Amitabh works at Microsoft and is the Founder of Network Capital, a global peer mentoring and career navigation community serving over 32000 young leaders in 104 countries. He is a World Economic Forum Global Shapers who represented the community at Davos. Utkarsh graduated as the Andy Burgess Scholar for Social Entrepreneurship from INSEAD. He is a Penn Social Impact House Fellow and a Young India Fellow. Utkarsh's articles have been published by the World Economic Forum, Quartz, Indian Express, and Scroll. Utkarsh is also a trained actor and played “Major Metcalf” in the world's longest running play.

Vardan Kabra

Educator

Vardan is an alumnus of IIT Mumbai & IIM Ahmedabad. He’s responsible for the overall academics and administration of the Fountainhead School, including the teacher training & leadership development program. He believes in holistic education and has set an example by imparting knowledge through unorthodox teaching methods. He believes in human potential and has helped several individuals find the true path and their meaning of life.