Oct 21 2026 to Oct 21 2026 6:30 p.m.

EVENT HAS ENDED

Where

Bangalore International Centre

7 4th Main Rd, Stage 2, Domlur 560071

Event Description

There is an India hiding in plain sight, asking us to pull the chariot.

Mindtree co-founder Subroto Bagchi returns to BIC, where he spoke in 2006 at one of the earliest programmes, to chart how his idea of the entrepreneur has changed across twenty years. What does “entrepreneur” mean once you meet the people who truly keep the world moving?

After four decades in the corporate sector, he answered Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s call to work with the Government of Odisha, spending eight years there largely on skill development. In this talk, he will explore a new version of the economy, one built at the grassroots rather than in boardrooms. He will introduce the nano unicorns: ordinary people in small towns, given training and a small grant to build what they see as necessary. He will make the case that skill development is not merely a route to employability but an instrument of human transformation.

His talk will be followed by a short discussion with Mekin Maheshwari, Founder and CEO of Udhyam Learning Foundation. A Q&A with the audience will follow.

This talk is part of a series marking twenty years of BIC, in which speakers and artists from the institution’s early years return to revisit the topics they first addressed. Each session traces what has changed, what has endured, and what to make of the same topics two decades on.

Venue: Auditorium
Speaker

Subroto Bagchi
Entrepreneur, Author & Public Servant
Subroto Bagchi sees himself as an entrepreneur, author and public servant. He is a co-founder of Mindtree, where he rose to be Executive Chairman. As an author, he is one of the most-read non-fiction writers on business and leadership in India. As a public servant, he made lasting change, working with the Government of Odisha as Chairman of the Odisha Skill Development Authority. He is presently a trustee at the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation and Chairman of the Skill Vision Group, Government of Karnataka.

Mekin Maheshwari
Founder & CEO, Udhyam Learning Foundation
A Senior Ashoka Fellow, Mekin Maheshwari is the Founder and CEO of Udhyam Learning Foundation, a non-profit organisation that he established in 2017. On a mission to make India entrepreneurial by building mindsets and 21st-century skills, Mekin also co-founded G.A.M.E. (Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship), serves on the boards of TeamLease and Khan Academy India, and has invested in more than seventy start-ups and social enterprises as an angel investor. He is widely recognised for advancing entrepreneurship as a mindset that creates dignity, expands opportunity, and enables livelihoods at scale.