EDITION 1 : Oct 30th, 2010

TEDxGateway has the same passion as TED: Spreading Ideas & Opening a gateway to innovation. Our mission is to reach out and inspire people to learn, share and discuss “Ideas Worth Spreading” that have the power and potential to make a difference in our lives, and our world.

TEDxGateway will make headway into various aspects and industries and talk about how to take innovative ideas forward in a country with such great diversities and a phenomenal potential to be the next super power in the world. The first edition of TEDxGateway will gather some of the best creative and active thinkers from across the globe – from entrepreneurs to artists : inspiring, discovering, generating and sharing ideas worth spreading in diverse areas.

We are a non-profit initiative based on the principles of social entrepreneurship by which we simply mean that we place a good and inspiring cause at the centre of our efforts and activities, and apart from the direct costs associated with the conferences and organizing we use all income to foster that cause and help a community forming around it.

Mumbai
India

Rahul Panicker

Rahul is the Co-founder and President of Rural Products of Embrace, a social enterprise bringing to market a low-cost infant warmer that can work with or without electricity, for use in rural areas of developing countries. Embrace, which Rahul co-founded with Jane Chen, Naganand Murty and Linus Liang, hopes to give a fighting chance to the millions of premature and low-birth-weight babies born every year through this device. Rahul loves people. At Embrace, his mission is to understand the rural user and their aspirations and translate their needs to products. His work has taken him through the many villages and small towns of India, from Bhorugram in Rajasthan, to Bamni in Chattisgarh, to Bhadrachalam in Andhra Pradesh, where he applies his training in design thinking and the entrepreneurial approach he picked up in Silicon Valley. Rahul holds an MS and PhD from Stanford University, and a B.Tech from IIT Madras. He is an alumnus of the d.school at Stanford.

Arvind Talekar

Arvind Gangaram Talekar, represents the Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers Charity Trust of Mumbai, better known as the Dabbawalas of Mumbai. The word “Dabbawala” can be translated as “box-carrier” or “lunchpail-man”. The Dabbawalas of Mumbai, employing 5000 people, deliver and collect 200,000 tiffin boxes across the metopolis. What is phenomenal is their famed accuracy in delivery – with over 400,000 transactions a day (pickup and drop of lunchboxes), they have an error rate of 1 in 16 million transactions, and a six sigma performance with 99.999999 accuracy. All, at an affordable price of Rs. 350-400 (around $8) per month. Arvind, born in 1968, served as a dabbawala for 2 years.

G.J. Siddharth

Being a person with cerebral palsy, life was not easy for Siddharth. He had to encounter a number of hurdles and at last here he is, working for IndusInd Bank Ltd as Associate Manager, Trade Ops. He cleared 10th standard from Boston Matriculation in 1997 with an average of 75% and went on to clear 12th standard with an average of 90% then Bachelor of Commerce from Vivekananda College (Madras University) in 2002 with an average of 74%.and Masters in Economics from Loyola College (Madras University) in 2004 with an average of 77%. Many leading news papers like The Hindu, Business Standard, Economic Times, rediff.com etc, wrote about Siddharth and the challenges he faced but help was not in sight as society could not come to terms with his capabilities. Getting calls from various institutions for jobs and being turned down by when he met them became an order of his life, till he cracked his way into Royal Bank of Scotland Group (Formerly ABN Amro) A turn around moment for him was when he got a call from the former President of India’s office, wherein Dr.APJ Abdul Kalam expressed his desire to meet him and they finally met on 2 December 2005. Thereafter Dr.APJ Abdul Kalam went on to mention Siddharth’s name in many of the occasions and forums including the World Disability day. Felicitations, awards and recognition poured in from all corners thereafter. He was invited by many organisation / colleges to provide inputs on motivation, communication etc. Siddharth has come a long way. He is Certified ‘Documentary Credit Specialist’ (CDCS) from Institute of Financial Services, UK in 2006 (Recertified in 2010) and became India’s first CDCS with Cerebral Palsy. has Certificate in ‘Know Your Customer and Anti-Money Laundering’ from Indian Institute of Banking and Finance in 2008 and Certificate in ‘Trade Finance’ from Indian Institute of Banking and Finance in 2007. A recipient of National award in 2008 by Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment as “best employee with Cerebral palsy” given by the honorable Vice President of India on 3 Dec 2008. Elected into the Board of Trustee of Skill Share International in September 2008, a UK based NGO Received the outstanding student award for year 1998 – 99 from my school and NIIT award for academic proficiency in 1997. Was conferred “Lala Kailashpat Singhania Award” from National Society for Equal Opportunities for Handicapped, Mumbai in December 2007 for my achievements. Elected on the governing body of Vidya Sagar in 2004 Received “Ascendas Excellence Awards’ in academics in August 2009 Received NCPEDP – Shell – Helen Keller awards in December 2009 for being a positive role model

Shweta Chari

Shweta Chari, an Electronics Engineer and the founder / CEO of Toybank had a vision of reaching out to children through fun and play using toys. The journey began on August 15th, 2004. A small idea that started in a small restaurant in Bombay has over the years gathered momentum with the help and support of friends and volunteers from all corners of Bombay. Within a shortest span of time and very minimal resources, Toybank is bringing smiles on thousands of deprived faces. Toybank acts as a leveler of the society by taking toys from those that can give and distributing them to the ones in need. In a way Toybank attempts to prove the belief of John.F.Kennedy, ‘If the free society cannot help the many that are poor, it can never save the few who are rich.’ Toybank honestly dreams to place a toy in the hands of every poor child of India and the world. The toy shapes the psyche of the children, so utmost care is taken to give only unbiased and morally correct toys to children. Toybank does not take Barbie dolls; toy guns; violent toys or any other toy that discriminates. As through the years, toys were collected, segregated and gift-wrapped and then gifted on a one-on-one basis to the kids from all over Bombay, Shweta soon realized that the beneficiaries of toys were impacted much beyond her expectation. The children began to recognize that play was one of their core rights. They also began expressing themselves better and were more in tune with their lives and circumstances. Shweta felt the need to expand and reach out to many more children in India. With the help of volunteers Toybank also started monitoring the children that were impacted through the Toybank activities. The events became more intense with more focus given to value education to the children while during the toy distributions. Toybank now also runs in Bangalore, Pune and Delhi with the support from core Toybankers Vinay, Bharath, Surendra and Swetha. Shweta is a go-getter. She is a self-driven individual and is passionate about everything she does in her life. She handles Toybank’s core strategies, ideates on new concepts to expand Toybank. She also goes full throttle into raising toys and funds for Toybank.

Ignatius Noronha

Ignatius Orwin Noronha aged 50 years is the Innovator of “ MozziQuit” Mosquito Trap. Graduate in Commerce is a self trained innovator with thorough knowledge of product innovation lifecycle. He has carried out R& D on “ MozziQuit” since 2001 after personally seeing an American Product Mosquito Magnet at Hyderabad priced Rs. 1,10,000/- per unit with operating cost per month Rs. 5,000/- for 3 LPG cylinders and for a hazardous chemical called Octenol. As a outcome the Patented “ MozziQuit” Mosquito Trap without use of any chemicals costs less than Rs. 800 to manufacture in India. The Prototype “ MozziQuit” is been tried, tested and approved by The National Institute of Malaria Research, Bangalore. The Defense Research and Development Establishment of DRDO, Govt. of India, Ministry of Defense has signed Engagement Agreement on 06/09/2010 on the product “ MozziQuit” Mosquito Trap after winning the prestigious Gold Medal Award in DST-Lockheed Martin India Innovation Growth Programme on 20/05/2010 and winning the ISA Best Electronic Product of the year 2010 under Health Care Category. He has completed R& D on a device which cost less than Rs. 100 to attract, trap and kill thousands of mosquitoes every day without use of any power source which could be installed at mosquito breeding locations already identified by him. He had worked in the Middle East for 10 years where hundreds of various construction chemicals and fireproofing products were manufactured. His manufactured products in India have been used as equivalent products of FOSROC India Ltd. to repair the deteriorated structure above the sea at JNPT Port, Mumbai as polymer modified retro-fitting works of container handling jetty in 2001-02. He has manufactured waterproofing chemicals and executed works in and around Mangalore since 1999. He proposed 2” thick modified concrete mix design to IOCL in December 1999 instead of conventional 12” thick concrete mix used for roads and driveways with specific claim on allowing the concreted road/driveway for movement of vehicles after 24 hours of concreting without waiting for 28 days curing period. IOCL tested the sample concrete slab on 06/12/1999 after 24 hours of concreting and awarded the first project of Concreting driveway at Goregaon Petrol Pump in the year 2000. Today it is the testimonial after 10 years of use on its performance & quality and the said technology could be introduced all over India which will save almost 5 times of concrete cost with laying time as India has got huge requirement of road infrastructure. He has applied for patent on 03/06/2010 “ INSTANT SPEED CONTROLLER OF AIRCRAFT TURBINE ENGINE FOR SAFE LANDING AND ON SHORTEST RUNWAYS” after the plane crash on 22/05/2010 at Mangalore killing 158 people.

Ritu Kamal

Ritu Kamal is a 2010 Stanford India Biodesign Fellow. Her background is in Bioengineering, in which she has a Masters from the University of Pennsylvania. She graduated from Princeton University in 2007 with a B.S.E. in Electrical Engineering. Post graduation, she received a fellowship from Princeton-in-Africa and spent a year in South Africa working in health care delivery, specifically in maternal health, and HIV/AIDS prevention from mothers to new-born children. While at Princeton, she co-founded a program that now sends Princeton graduates to India to work with various development-oriented groups. Ritu is committed to engaging with the Indian healthcare system in entrepreneurial ways and leveraging technology to reduce disease burdens in the developing world. Ritu is also the author of two books on Indian philosophy and science. The first book, Panch Kanya, was nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, 2002 and is in its second edition. The second book Prapanch Kanya, a sequel to the first, was published in January 2008.

Santosh Desai

Santosh is the MD & CEO of Futurebrands India Ltd. Prior to this, he was the President of McCann-Erickson, India. He is an IIM Ahmedabad post graduate with 21 years of experience in advertising. He has been the key note speaker at advertising forums in India, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Colombo, Lebanon, Bali, etc. Santosh conducts workshops and seminars on a broad range of subjects in marketing for companies and educational institutions in India and abroad. He has addressed the global management boards of several multinationals including Hershey’s, Microsoft, Philip’s, Unilever, Coke and Reckitt Benckiser. He is also a thought leader in understanding the relationship between culture and brands and the consumer as a product of his or her cultural context. He is the author of ‘City City Bang Bang’, a weekly column in The Times of India

Nandini Vaidyanathan

She’s a traveling teacher who teaches entrepreneurship in several ivy -league business schools around the world. The reason, she says, is narcissism. She wishes she was twenty years younger so she could have started her career now when India is exploding with opportunities but since she can’t, she teaches, so her students can be the architects of a vibrant entrepreneurial India. From being just a word in the dictionary five years ago, it has now consumed her whole being. Her moment of epiphany happened four years ago when she realized that in India not too many people became entrepreneurs simply because they didn’t know how. So she founded her company Startups to mentor entrepreneurs (forstartups.blogspot.com) . Up until July this year, she has mentored over 500 startup entrepreneurs across domains, across geographies, pro bono. Twenty years in the corporate sector, in MNC’s from as diverse domains as security, animation and pharmaceuticals, on all inhabited continents, have given her enough reason to say, “Been there, done that.” Startups has also been involved in mentoring women build micro enterprises in economies as plural as Afghanistan, Ethiopia and India. Six months ago, she co-founded CARMa (Creating Access to Resources & Markets), (www.carmagroup.in) with a lofty ambition : to change the karma of entrepreneurs in India. CARMa mentors startups, mature enterprises and family businesses. The mentoring encompasses getting organizations investment ready, helping them raise capital on a unique, online, proprietory platform, and deploying capital efficiently. CARMa’s business model is extremely entrepreneur friendly. She writes a regular column for the magazine, Entrepreneur, and she’s motivated by the amount of mail she receives in response to it, from smaller towns. Her passion : to make every Indian an entrepreneur.

Satish Krishnamurthy

Midway through his Engineering degree, Satish developed a passion for communications. This passion took him from engineering into the Indian advertising industry, and then all the way to Madison Avenue, where he worked with world-class agencies, TBWA\Chiat\Day and Naked Communications. That was before FinalMile was born. The idea of FinalMile made Satish move continents. While all his time in advertising, he was perfecting existing theories on branding, here was a consulting firm that was professing a new discipline – Behaviour Architecture™. It was a first-of-its-kind consulting firm in the world to be founded on new sciences like Behavioural Economics and Cognitive Neurosciences. The entire focus being, to understand the non-conscious, irrational nature of human behaviour and design appropriate solutions to influence it desirably. For Satish, this has resulted in a very different approach of researching this nature of human behaviour – that of ethnography. He has mingled with the trespassers on the tracks, he has blended into the crowds and observed them at supermarkets and restaurants; he has gone so far as to ride a train in the motorman’s cabin in interior India. All this has helped him tremendously explain why people do what they do. Satish has been instrumental in creating solutions for diverse problems with this new sciences approach – minimizing deaths due to trespassing, increasing conversion rates for online shopping, and improving emotional experience in restaurants, among others. When he’s not at FinalMile, Satish is an avid photographer, and has several online published pictures to his credit.

Srini Swaminathanam

Srini Swaminathanam is a B.E (Hons) EE from BITS, PIlani Class of 2001 and a Fellow at Teach For India, a movement working relentlessly to give children from low income communities the same education and opportunities that are available for those from privileged backgrounds. Prior to joining Teach For India, Srini was with Schlumberger Oilfield Services as a Service Quality Manager cum Coach. At Schlumberger, He has worked in 8 countries. Traveled to 14 countries. Survived Darfur militants (& Malaria mosquitoes) in Sudan, cyclone in South China Sea, snow storm in Scotland, underwater helicopter trainings in 5 countries, boat-oil-rig collisions, shark infested waters, Abu Gharadig desert, oil well blow outs and most recently the monsoons and local trains of Mumbai He is the Class Teacher for 43 children in the 2nd grade at Dharavi Transit Camp Municipal School. Over the next year and a half, he will try to bring the world to these children and try to bridge the achievement gap that, if left as it is, will cripple them and deny them opportunities when they grow up. He is striving to bring technology and innovation into these low income classrooms to accelerate the learning of these children. Skype video chat with classrooms in UK and US from Dharavi is one such example. Born and brought up in a low income family, he could break the cycle of poverty through the power of Education and this was all possible because of the hard work and determination of his mother who raised them on her own. Over these years, he has given back to my country in many ways but increasingly, he felt the burning desire to roll up his sleeves and get into teaching full time to bring about the change. He hopes to help lay the foundation for these children to break the cycle of poverty through good education. He is also a long distance runner, long distance cyclist, a translator and a photographer.

Anand Gandhi

He is an independent filmmaker, artist, screenwriter and songwriter based in Mumbai. After dropping out from college, he pursued self-education in philosophy. He was initially involved in parallel theatre, where he wrote and directed several award-winning plays. His 30 minutes long directorial debut film Right Here Right Now (2003) deals with the idea of cyclic causality. It won the “Best Short Film” Award in Syracuse International Film Festival and Shnit Film Festival, and was invited to Tribeca. Apart from having been invited to several international festivals, the film remains to be one of the most widely seen short films in the country. This was followed by Continuum (2006), a 40 minuter exploring the continuum of life and death, of love and paranoia, of trade and value, of need and invention, of hunger and enlightenment. The film won the best prize in Hannover. Anand is currently wrapping up his first feature length film Theseus’ Ship, a philosophical drama dealing with questions of death, violence, human rights and beauty. He is also taking online courses in physics and evolutionary biology.

Yugratna Srivastava

Yugratna Srivastava, a 14 year old, holds the position of being the representative of Asia Pacific for United Nations Environmental Programme in the Junior Board. At the age of 13 years, she became the youngest child in the world to address the United Nations General Assembly on global climate change, in September 2009. The audience of over 100 world leaders included US President Barack Obama, China’s President Hu Jintao, India’s external affairs minister S.M. Krishna and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon along with head of states of Japan, Head of state of France, Mr.Al Gore and many other dignitaries. She has represented her nation and voices of children and youth at many conferences and meeting including the UNEP Conference in Japan last week, in South Korea, Norway, UNEP-Strategy meeting in Nairobi, 2009 and has formulated many statements on behalf of Asia Pacific and for UNEP including the Historic Youth Statement at South Korea and Asia pacific Biodiversity statement. A goodwill Ambassador of Tarumitra (‘Friend of Trees’), an NGO active in 1,600 schools and colleges across India, Yugratna was elected to represent the voice of 3 billion child and youth population after she attended the Tunza International Youth Conference (a global youth forum of the United Nations Environment Program), in Norway in 2008. It was there that she was selected through a competitive process from among delegates form 105 countries in the Junior Board. She is extremely concerned about climate change because she does not want our future generations to question us just as she is questioning the need of more concrete action on climate change today. At the Tunza International Children Conference held last year in Korea, she gave a rousing speech which ended with a call “If not now, then when?, If not us then who? Seal The Deal!” In India, she has spoken to thousands of youth and has been felicitated with numerous awards Including Indian Youth Icon by hands of CM of Uttrakhand, Awadh Samman, Young Acheiver’s Award by International Rotary Club, Young Achiever’s by Lucknow Management Association, by Lion’s Club, Tata Motors Corp. Limited and many others. In addition, she holds a record of winning various Inter-school Debates and competitions.

Ralph Simon

Ralph Simon is regarded as one of the founders of the modern mobile entertainment industry. He is the CEO of the London-based Mobilium Advisory Group, providing high level strategic advice and guidance on how to create and grow revenues and impact from the usage and distribution of mobile content, messaging, mobile media technology and applications. Ralph is regarded as one of the founders of the modern mobile entertainment industry. Over the last decade he has been a prominent global mobile trailblazer and innovator, growing the mobile entertainment and content industry, and playing a central role in its impact and presence worldwide. Simon heads the London-based Mobilium International Advisory Group, which provides high-level strategic advice and guidance to mobile operators, handset and technology companies, media companies, movie studio & TV networks, global artists and brands, ad agency groups, and platform providers around the world. Specifically, Simon recommends unique ways to business growth and profitability, growing revenues and maximizing impact from the usage and distribution of mobile entertainment content, mobile music, messaging, mobile media technology and applications. He is the founder of the influential Mobile Entertainment Forum – Americas (MEF), the global voice of the international mobile entertainment industry. As Chairman Emeritus he continues his work on raising industry standards and mobile revenue opportunity. He acts as a high-level adviser to mobile operators, handset makers, and the cross-platform entertainment industry, targeting the nearly 4 billion mobile subscribers worldwide. Prior to his leadership in the mobile entertainment industry, Simon co-founded the independent Zomba Group of music companies (and record label, Jive Records) in London in the 1970s, building it into the music industry’s leading independent music company. In the mid-90s, he came to the US as Executive Vice President of Capitol Records and Blue Note Records in Hollywood and started EMI Music’s global New Media division. Simon correctly predicted in 1998 that mobile phones would become the indispensable voice/social networking-and-music companion for consumers and their increasingly mobile lifestyles. He persuaded US music publishers to embrace this new mobile medium by granting the very first ring tone rights. This spurred a whole new mobile entertainment industry in the US and internationally, and Simon was dubbed as ‘Father of the Ring Tone.’ He started the first ring tone company in the Americas, Europe, UK, Australia and Africa in 1997 called Yourmobile. The company was purchased in 2003 by Vivendi Universal and renamed Moviso, was the leading content aggregator in the USA for many years. Between 2005-2008, Simon produced the mobile portion of the three highest profile concerts in recent global TV history: Live 8; Al Gore’s Live Earth; and the TED Conference organization’s Pangea Day. Working with Sir Bob Geldof, Bono and the Live Aid organization, Simon brought mobile connectivity to the Live 8 concert that occurred simultaneously in 12 countries and delivered a television audience of over 700m viewers. Live 8’s substantial worldwide visibility influenced the G8 world leaders ultimately to commit $50bn in aid for Africa’s poor. He was subsequently recruited as mobile producer for Al Gore’s Live Earth global event in 2007 – the first worldwide green event attracting massive cross-platform participation. Spanning 10 countries, it reached a global TV audience of over 300m viewers. That success led to working as mobile producer for the TED conference’s 2008 Pangea Day, a global telecast featuring short films from film-makers all over the world – it was the 2007 TED Prize-winning project. Simon arranged for Nokia to partner with TED and Pangea Day. The influential trade publication Mobile Entertainment magazine has named him as one of the world’s Top 50 executives in Mobile Entertainment three times since 2005 (2005, 2006, 2008), and in 2007, he received its special award for Outstanding Contribution to the Global Mobile Entertainment Industry. Simon works closely with the GSM Association, the global governing body of the mobile phone industry, providing expert advice on the future of mobile usage and mobile entertainment. He also serves on the Visionary Committee for Midem/MidemNet, the international record industry’s major international convention that helps shape the global record and music industry’s best practices for use of intellectual property and music copyrights. He is an internationally popular speaker on mobile entertainment. Already this year he has participated in Canadian Music Week in Toronto, moderated a high-level session at the Billboard Magazine’s Music & Money Conference (NYC); organized the mobile entertainment programme and interviewed various keynote speakers at the GSM/Mobile World Congress (Barcelona); the important Music Matters conference in Hong Kong, the Canadian Government’s Canada 3.0 conference; the World Copyright Summit in Washington DC and conducted the keynote interview with Jim Balsillie, co CEO of Blackberry at the 2009 MidemNet/Midem, the annual international music convention in Cannes. Other recent speaking engagements have included the GSM/Asia Congress (China); the India Telecoms 2008 conference (New Delhi); and major mobile conferences in the USA; Canada; Finland; France; Germany; Iceland; Israel; Norway; Spain; South Africa; and the UK. Ralph Simon is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in the UK where his “Future of Media” lecture series is very popular. Also a member of the Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences in the USA.

Seymour Stein

Seymour Stein is the co-founder & chairman of Sire Records, the label that put Punk & New Wave on the map. Famous for signing artists such as Madonna, The Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads. One of the last old-school “record men” still working in the music business, Stein succeeded by anticipating the next musical wave and signing its brightest lights. In music business legend Seymour Stein’s lifelong adventure with rock and roll, he has been prominently engaged in wave after wave of popular music’s successive cycles of taste, from the Brill Building sound of the 1960s through to his wholesale signing of New York punk luminaries like the Ramones and the Talking Heads in the 1970s, and a little later, Madonna and the Pretenders, right up until today with bands like the Von Bondies. His ability to divine what’s great in each new generation of music has made Stain one of the rare record company men whose appreciation and approbation is sought not only as a means to a career and money, but also as an artistic accolade. His label, Sire, is a crucial example of the evolution of an American indie. As the head of Sire Records, Seymour Stein is best known for signing Madonna. Yet, the seasoned exec has worked with some of the most talented and notorious characters in the business, including Syd Nathan, Phil Spector and Leiber & Stoller. In addition, Stein has also proved himself to have a great ear for talent, signing such influential acts as the Ramones and Fleetwood Mac, among others. Always known for his great ability to see talent, Stein was one of the only major record heads to recognize the validity and significance of punk and new wave music, signing the Ramones, Talking Heads and Richard Hell and the Voidoids. In the early ’80s, Stein made the biggest signing of his career when, recovering from open-heart surgery in a hospital bed, he signed a young Madonna after hearing a rough demo version of “Everybody.” Sire’s big break was to come in 1975, when Stein signed the Ramones, followed by the Talking Heads in 1976. Aware as always of shifting musical trends, Stein immediately sensed the importance of the New York downtown scene, and the punk – soon to be New Wave – music emanating from clubs like CBGB’s and Max’s Kansas City. A year later, Sire concluded a distribution deal with Mo Osstin and Lenny Waronker at Warner Brothers, after which there was just no looking back. Stein’s signings were virtually synonymous with New York’s punk scene, with a roster of downtown luminaries like the Ramones, the Talking Heads, Richard Hell & the Voidoids, and the Dead Boys, among others. The Warners deal ushered in an 18-year period of unrivalled success for the label. From 1976 onwards Stein’s artists represent a dazzling spread of music, featuring both gold, platinum, and multi-platinum acts as well as more subtly influential bands. This important list includes Madonna, the Pretenders, Depeche Mode, Ice-T, the Cure, Soft Cell, Everything But the Girl, Aztec Camera, the Cult, Modern English, Madness, Erasure, kd lang, the Replacements, M, Laid Back, the Smiths, Uncle Tupelo, Wilco, Dinosaur Jr., Seal, Barenaked Ladies, Ofra Haza, the Pink Fairies, the Rezillos, Johnny Thunders, the Undertones, Echo & the Bunnymen, Ride, My Bloody Valentine, Primal Scream, Throwing Muses, Belly, Spacehog, Lou Reed, Pet Shop Boys, Deborah Harry, Aphex Twin, Boy George, Ministry, Flamin’ Groovies, the Saints, Radio Birdman and Plastic Bertrand. In fact, Stein’s stature as a tastemaker became so great that the indie band, Belle and Sebastian, named a song after him. When Sire was purchased by Warners in 1980, Stein stayed on as President and continued to focus on artist development and run the company in much the same style and manner as when it was independent. In 1995, Stein became President of Elektra Records. Then, in 1997, Sire was reborn as the Sire Records Group, later to merge with London Records. During this period, Stein signed and developed acts including Spacehog, Aphex Twin, Morcheeba, Paul Oakenfold, Guster, Everything, and Mojave 3, and helped restart the American careers of Boy George and Pet Shop Boys. In 2002 Warner Bros. welcomed Seymour back to the fold and Sire was re-launched. Stein is currently Chairman of Sire and works closely with Craig Aaronson who is President and whom he regards as one of the very best A&R men he has ever worked with. Among the artists currently on the Sire roster; Avenged Sevenfold, Regina Spektor, The Veronicas, Tegan and Sara, HIM, Against Me, and more recently signed Never Shout Never, Foxy Shazam, The Ready Set and Surfer Blood. In 2005 Seymour Stein was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, one of only a small group of music industry professionals and A&R men who have been awarded this honor. In 2011 Stein will also be named MUSEXPO’s Man of The Year at an awards ceremony during the first week of May. 2011 also marks the 45th Anniversary of Sire Records. Stein and Gottehrer have recently reunited with the re-launch of the Blue Horizon label. First act signed, The Black Angels album Phosphene Dreams soared into the Billboard Top 200 Album chart at # 50 several weeks back. Blue Horizon’s goal is to find artists early on in their careers and help bring their music talent to a wide and global audience. Today Stein remains one of the most offbeat and fastest-moving corporate execs in the Warner communications empire and is widely regarded as having the best ears in the business.

Richard Gottehrer

A musician, song writer & an artist at heart. Over the past decade, his influence has helped transform The Orchard from a digital distribution company he co-founded to a full-fledged global music & film organization with a comprehensive suite of marketing, distribution & media services, simultaneously developing and shaping the way content is distributed & sold globally. Richard Gottehrer is Co-Founder & Chief Creative Officer of The Orchard. He began his career in the music industry as a songwriter, penning classics such as “My Boyfriend’s Back” and “I Want Candy,” and was an artist in the 1960s pop group, The Strangeloves. In 1996, he co-founded leading independent record label Sire Records with fellow luminary Seymour Stein. Sire was later sold to the Time Warner Corporation, and Mr. Gottehrer went on to make a name as a multi-platinum producer for well-known music acts, including Blondie, The Go-Go’s, The Raveonettes and Joan Armatrading before co-founding The Orchard in 1997. Gottehrer came to prominence as a songwriter in the 1960s with his most notable songs being “My Boyfriend’s Back” and “I Want Candy”. As Feldman-Goldstein-Gottehrer (FGG Productions), he wrote various songs including “Sorrow” with Jerry Goldstein and Bob Feldman. The three were also known as The Strangeloves. By the 1970s he had progressed to record production, and was responsible for the debut albums by Blondie and Go-Gos. Among the other artists produced by Gottehrer were Joan Armatrading, The Fleshtones, The Bongos, Richard Barone, Mental As Anything and Nuclear Valdez. With Seymour Stein, Gottehrer founded Sire Records, and in 1997 he founded The Orchard a digital music distribution company.