The Contemporary Indian Podcast Ashif Panakkat

Ashif chats with Dr. Shridhar Narayanan, one of India's foremost pharmaceutical R&D scientists, and director at the Foundation for Neglected Disease Research (FNDR.IN). Shridhar shares his expertise on the COVID outbreak, but also lays out the drug discovery and development process. How the new drug development business model leaves out disease burdens on developing countries. Diseases like TB, dengue, and malaria. Finally, Shridhar gets into his personal journey from leading corporate R&D to a hospital in Mumbai administering drug cocktails to adult TB patients weighing only 35 kilos. And how this motivated him to set up the Foundation for Neglected Disease Research.

Ashif chats with Hari TN, HR leader and author of "Saying no to Jugaad". 
Starting in the 80s at Tata Steel, Hari's career has closely proxied the growth of post liberalization India - through BPO, IT services, and eCommerce domains. He is also vary of the "activity trap" - the assumption that governments and bureaucrats need to be proactive in managing the economy. In Hari's opinion, the best thing they can usually do, is just get out of the way of entrepreneurs. Unlike other high profile folks, he doesn't hesitate to speak his mind.

This episode is part 2 of Ashif's chat with Mekin Maheshwari - one of the architects of Flipkart's explosive success, and founder at Udhyam - an NGO working in the space of grassroots entrepreneurship.

Ashif chats with Mekin Maheshwari - one of the architects of Flipkart's explosive success during its first decade. Beginning 2015, Mekin started growing disillusioned with his role in the corporate world, which led him through a journey of learning. Culminating in his founding Udhyam - an NGO working to make us all grass roots learners and entrepreneurs. This is the first part of Ashif's chat with Mekin.

Ashif talks with Swagata Raha – an Oxford educated lawyer, teacher, and activist representing the most disadvantaged sections of Indian society. We talk about Swagata’s areas of interest in child rights and protection of children from abuse, but also the rights of children who are in conflict with the law.

We also discussed why NGO’s always seem to get into conflict with vast sections of our public when there are very unfortunate new events.

We hope you enjoy the podcast, and that it gets you to reconsider some of your opinions around these issues.

Ashif chats with Ishani Roy - an established mathematician who got her doctorate from Brown university and did her post-doc at Oxford. But for the last five years, Ishani, through her start-up Serein has been using data to preach the gospel of diversity and inclusion at the Indian workplace.

This is a wide ranging talk – from all the ways computational mathematics is applied to solve different problems, to what organizations and citizens can do to foster a more inclusive society.