Theme: Connecting The Dots

TEDx BITS Hyderabad presents its 4th edition of a TEDx conference on 12th November, 2017. The theme of this year’s event is ‘Connecting the dots’ and we will have 9 speakers from all facets of life would share their experiences within the span of 18 minutes. The event would be set with the purpose of building a community with other attendees and networking with the speakers.

TEDx has been to us what Biryani is to Hyderabad. With every exotic assortment of speaker and stirring of ideas, mixing of people and catering to the atendees, we have created an aroma that is savoury and appealing.

BITS-Pilani Hyderabad Campus
BITS-Pilani, Hyderabad Campus
Shamirpet Mandal
Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, 500078
India

Eshan Hilal

Belly Dancer

India's first male belly dancer, Eshan Hilal is the icon for smashing gender stereotypes today. Striving hard to establish dancing is an art devoid of any reservations like gender, he has made his impact through nationwide reality show like Dance+. Being a fashion graduate, he takes pride in gender fluid dressing supporting the fact that 'Clothing doesn't define an individual's gender'. Acquiring his confidence over the years through societal pressure and orthodox family, he finds nothing capable of shaking it now.

Manvendra Singh Gohil

Manvendra Singh Gohil (born 23 September 1965) is an Indian prince who is the son and probable heir of the Maharaja of Rajpipla in Gujarat. He is the first openly gay prince in the world. He runs a charity, The Lakshya Trust, which works with the LGBT community.

Ramana Polavarapu

Ramana Povalarapu is a Machine Learning Scientist and Vice President at Goldman Sachs. Blind by birth, he has always learnt by unconventional methods and taught himself to be highly proficient in the field of science and tech. He secured his PhD in Economics from The University of California, Davis and almost completed his masters in computer sciences. He worked as a faculty member in the University of Colorado for roughly seven after which he moved to India. To date, he actively takes interest in the fields of economics, statistics and machine learning.

Shashaa Tirupati

Shashaa Tirupati is the new singing sensation with an innate love for languages which can be seen from her fluency in over 6 languages. Her story is straight out of one of the Bollywood movies where she dropped out of a college, where she was receiving full scholarship to a pre-medical degree, after having heard AR Rahman’s song track to pursue music. Then, as she was singing alongside 5 other singers for Coke Studio in 2013, she was picked out by the man himself who said she sounded like a musical instrument. She has now sung over 30 songs for him. Earlier this year, she received the national award for best playback singer.

Shikha Tandon

Shikha Tandon is an Olympian, Arjuna awardee, India's fastest ever woman swimmer and the only Indian woman swimmer to win a medal at the Asian Open level. She has won 37 International and 146 National medals, and created 75 National Records. Holding a Bachelor of Science degree in Biotechnology, Genetics, and Biochemistry, and two Master of Science degrees in Biotechnology and Biology, she is a stellar academic too. She is involved in multiple capacities in sport and health technology, and is also on the Board of Advisors (Olympic Council) of an India-based organization, spirited about developing education and sport in India.

Takbir Fatima

Takbir Fatima is a full-time architect, educator and entrepreneur and a part-time thinker, traveler and tinkerer. She has studied architecture from CSIIT School of Architecture and Planning, Secunderabad and done her Master’s in Architecture and Urbanism from the Design Research Lab at the Architectural Association in London. Takbir is the Director of award-winning experimental design and architecture studio, DesignAware. She is passionate about design research and prototyping, figuring out how things work. Takbir was recognized as Emerging Architect of the Year 2016 by NDTV Design and Archiecture Awards, and was awarded Telangana Young Architect by the Indian Institute of Architects. Her studio, DesignAware was born of a desire to create awareness through liveable, wearable, accessible and usable design. It is based in Hyderabad, and Dubai, and has worked on projects of many different scales and typologies. One of their aims is to be involved in socially-relevant projects that can raise design awareness and benefit communities. One such project is a school for children from disadvantaged backgrounds in Golconda, Hyderabad. In a non-profit endeavor, DesignAware helps raised funds for the context-sensitive school through the social media campaign, #MakeProgressPossible. The school won the Platinum Award for Public Architecture in the Architecture Ideas 3.0 competition at the Festival of Architecture and Interior Design (FOAID) 2017 as well as the international A’Design Award 2018.

Vrushali Prasade

Entrepreneur

Vrushali Prasade is the epitome of an independent, confident, successful woman. At the age of 10, she started playing table tennis. She soon found success in the sport as she represented her district, and then her state and finally, made it to the Under-17 Junior Girls India team for 2009. In 2012, she made it into BITS Goa for her undergraduate degree in Electronics and Electrical Engineering. Here, she met Harikrishna Valiyath and Shubham Mishra. Together, in their third year, they invented the VR headset Tesseract under the banner of Absentia. As the company grew, they took the decision to drop out and give their 100% to the company. Today, absentia is considered as a competitor to Oculus and has recently rolled out the first version of an AI called Norah AI which is AI Driven workflow for generative game content development.

Yogendra Singh Yadav

Soldier

Subedar Yogendra Singh Yadav is the Braveheart we all hear about in tales. He was from an army background and followed his father’s footsteps at the young age of 16 and joined the Indian army. In 1999, during the Kargil war, he volunteered to lead a team to capture Tiger Hill at the elevation of 16,500 feet He is one of the only 3 active members of the Indian Army who have received the highest Military decoration award, Param Vir Chakra which has only been awarded to 21 army men in the history of Independent India. His citation read, "Unmindful of his injuries and in the hail of enemy bullets, Grenadier Yogender Singh Yadav continued climbing towards the enemy positions, lobbed grenades, continued firing from his weapons and killed four enemy soldiers in close combat and silenced the automatic fire. Despite multiple bullet injuries, he refused to be evacuated and continued the charge. Inspired by his gallant act, the platoon charged on the other positions and captured Tiger Hill Top.