The 19th Hindustan Times Leadership Summit

On top of India’s internal affairs

A tenacious foot soldier of the party, a consummate politician and an adroit administrator, Amit Shah wears many hats. The politician from Gujarat, who was at once the party’s chief electoral strategist and the youngest party chief, gets credit for driving the Bharatiya Janata Party’s expansion plan.

The 57-year-old Shah sharpened his political skills at the RSS’s student wing and the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad. His political acumen was noticed while he managed the Gandhinagar seat for party patriarch LK Advani, which he won with an impressive margin in 2019.

Having earned the sobriquet of Chanakya for his meticulous election planning, Shah has to his credit the distinction of never having lost an election. He helmed party affairs in the run-up to the 2014 general elections and drafted the strategy for the party’s triumphant win in Uttar Pradesh three years later.

The passage of the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Bill that he piloted in Parliament in 2019, which paved the way for the reading down of Article 370, placed him in the high achievers club.

As the minister in charge of the country’s internal security, Shah is known for taking tough decisions and pushing for innovation in governance. And, as party strategist, he is known for straight talk and an eye for detail when it comes to statecraft.

Unravelling secrets of Sars-CoV-2

If Sars-CoV-2, and how it foxes our immune system, is one of the biggest medical mysteries of today, Yale professor Akiko Iwasaki has been one of the most formidable sleuths by uncovering the pathogen’s secrets. Why does the Sars-CoV-2 affect different people differently? What happens at a cellular level during an infection? How long will immunity last? The most authoritative of these answers have come from Iwasaki’s lab at Yale’s Howard Hughes Medical Institute, where she leads a team of immuno-biologists that has published over a dozen papers on Covid-19 and the virus that causes it.

Prior to being launched into prominence during the pandemic, Iwasaki was regarded as being at the vanguard of research into immunology. She has advocated for the due recognition of the contributions women and immigrants have made to science, a mission that she has said was inspired by her parents. Her father was a physicist, and her mother fought for women’s rights in the workplace. Iwasaki was born and raised in Iga, Japan, and studied in Canada before moving to the US. The Iwasaki lab that she heads recently completed 20 years.

Braving odds to win at biggest stage

Sumit Antil could not have written a better script for his maiden appearance at the biggest stage in Paralympic sports. The 23-year-old rewrote the world record three times en route to a gold medal, with an effort of 68.55m in the F64 final at the Tokyo Games.

Like a lot of children in Sonepat, Antil liked wrestling. He had just one goal: getting into the army. His late father served the nation in the air force, and Antil couldn’t wait to follow in his footsteps. But a road accident in 2015 crushed his left leg. From being a boy full of life and dreams, Antil went into a shell before his mother’s constant support pulled him out of it. Quitting studies, he decided to shift focus to sport.

Seeing his height and build, people in his village advised him to take up javelin throw. Antil had to learn how to do it with a prosthetic leg – a challenge he took some time getting used to. In 2019, Antil won a silver medal at the World Para Athletics Championships, and another medal of the same colour at the World Para Athletics Grand Prix. In March this year, he even competed with able-bodied athletes in a domestic event in a field that also comprised Neeraj Chopra. Months later, Antil joined Chopra as a javelin gold medallist at Tokyo.

A bankable star over decades

Undeniably one of the most bankable movie stars of his times, Anil Kapoor is as relevant in Bollywood today as he was in the 1980s and 1990s. In a career spanning nearly four decades, Kapoor has appeared in over a hundred Indian-language films, besides dabbling in international cinema with Danny Boyle’s Academy Award-winning film Slumdog Millionaire, as well as television with the acclaimed action series 24.

After making his Hindi film debut with Woh Saat Din (1983), Kapoor went on to star in hit films such as Mr India, Tezaab, Lamhe, Beta, Laadla, Judaai, Taal, Nayak, among others. The two-time national award-winning actor (Best Actor for Pukar, and Special Jury Award for Gandhi, My Father) has tried his hand at a variety of genres — comedy, romance, emotional dramas, and negative roles. On the global stage, the 64-year-old was honoured with the IIFA Wall of Fame (2006) award for his contribution to Bollywood, and the IFFA Award for outstanding achievement by an Indian Internationally (2010).

He turned producer in 2002 and has backed romantic comedies including Badhaai Ho Badhaai, Aisha, Khoobsurat and Veere Di Wedding under the banner Anil Kapoor Films & Communication Network. Keeping up with the changing times, Kapoor forayed into the OTT space with Vikramaditya Motwane’s dark comedy thriller AK vs AK (2020) where he played himself and garnered critical acclaim. Up next, he will be seen in Raj Mehta’s comedy drama Jug Jugg Jeeyo co-starring Neetu Kapoor, Varun Dhawan and Kiara Advani.

No target beyond her range

Avani Lekhara entered the record books at the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics when she became India’s first woman to win a gold at the highest stage. Lekhara, who idolises 2008 Beijing Games gold medallist Abhinav Bindra, fittingly shot the yellow metal in the 10 metre air rifle standing SH1 event with a score of 249.6 in the final, creating a Paralympic Games record and equalling the existing world record.

A few days after her historic gold, she won bronze in the women’s 50m rifle 3 positions SH1 event with a score of 445.9, becoming the first Indian woman to win two medals at the Paralympics. She received the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award, the country’s highest sporting honour, this year.

Lekhara met with an accident at the age of 12 that paralysed her from the waist down. Her father encouraged her to take up a sport, and Lekhara dabbled in archery before moving to shooting. Still only 20, and a bachelor’s in law student at the University of Rajasthan in Jaipur, Lekhara has a long and promising career ahead of her.

Balancing profits, love for planet

Sonu Shivdasani’s love story is the toast of the luxury travel industry the world over.

In the year Soneva Fushi opened, Sonu and Eva also launched Six Senses Resorts & Spas, followed by the Evason hotels group in 1997. The management contracts for both companies were sold in 2012 as part of Sonu and Eva’s “One Owner, One Operator, One Philosophy” strategy under Soneva. Sonu and Eva’s love for the planet formed the backbone of the values and language of their organisation.

In 2010, he created the Soneva Foundation as a means to reinforce Soneva’s Slowlife core purpose. Sonu believes that companies must play their part in addressing the problems of the 21st century. This, he says, is possible through small changes that do not affect a company’s profitability; in fact, these changes can positively impact a brand’s image while raising considerable capital for good causes.

Steering the country’s foreign policy

When S Jaishankar became the first foreign secretary to be appointed external affairs minister in May 2019, scarcely anyone could have imagined that within a space of two years, he would have to simultaneously deal with two of the biggest foreign policy challenges any Indian foreign minister has had to contend with.

Besides shaping the diplomatic response to the standoff with China on the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the 66-year-old Jaishankar has played a key role in India’s efforts to counter the Covid-19 pandemic. He has also played a big part in New Delhi’s push for reformed multilateralism and rebalancing of power, two trends that have gained momentum amid the widespread changes brought on by the pandemic.

An old China hand, Jaishankar served as India’s envoy to both Beijing and Washington before going on to serve as foreign secretary during 2015-18, when he had a role in efforts to end the face-off with China at Doklam. In recent months, he has been part of the government’s efforts to forge a global consensus on a response to the developments in Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover, and has been working with his counterparts from Australia, Japan and the US in the Quad to address pressing challenges in the Indo-Pacific.

A public health expert for the world

Devi Sridhar is a professor at the University of Edinburgh, where she founded and now chairs the Global Health Governance Programme. Born to an Indian-origin family in Florida, Sridhar was one of the youngest Rhodes scholars and moved to the UK to pursue a career in public health. She has studied malnutrition and infectious diseases in India, and in 2014, co-led an independent evaluation of the Ebola outbreak in Africa.

Sridhar is among the pre-eminent public health experts steering policies and strategies in the UK and Scotland. Among the earliest proponents of the test, trace and isolate strategy, she has urged authorities to focus on living with the virus by ramping up testing. She routinely writes for the Guardian newspaper, advises the Scottish government, and is an independent advisor to UK’s SAGE group of experts.

Her passion for public health stems from her father’s fight with cancer. “Even as a teenager I could see that health was the definition of true wealth,” she said in an interview to the Lancet journal last year.

Mr Consistent of Indian wrestling

India’s most consistent male wrestler for over half a decade, Bajrang Punia won a bronze medal in his maiden Olympics earlier this year despite battling a knee injury. He defeated Kazakhstan’s Daulet Niyazbekov with an 8-0 margin to seal his podium finish. By virtue of his Tokyo success, he joined the illustrious list of KD Jadhav, Sushil Kumar, Yogeshwar Dutt and Sakshi Malik as the only wrestlers from the country to win a medal at the Olympics.

Punia hails from Khuddan village in Haryana’s Jhajjar district. He took to wrestling after Sushil Kumar’s seminal bronze at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. He spent his initial years at New Delhi’s Chhatrasal Stadium, mostly under the tutelage of London Olympics silver medallist Yogeshwar Dutt. By 2015, he left Chhatrasal to train under Dutt at Madhuban Police Academy in Haryana’s Karnal before becoming a regular at national training camps.

Punia is regarded among the finest grapplers in the 65kg weight class and is the only Indian wrestler to win three medals at the World Championships (silver in 2018, bronze in 2013 and 2019). He is also the reigning Asian Games gold medallist in his weight class, has won medals in seven of the past nine Asian Championships, and has won consecutive golds at the prestigious Rome Ranking Series (2020 and 2021).

Punia is a recipient of Padma Shri (2019), Arjuna Award (2015), and Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award (2019). With a busy calendar lined up – 2022 will feature Asian Games, Commonwealth Games, and a host of international tourneys – India’s wrestling fraternity will be hoping for another good show from their most consistent performer.

Shepherding the Indian economy

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to make Nirmala Sitharaman as India’s first full-time woman finance minister was prophetic. Globally, she turned out to be one of the most effective finance ministers in this time of the pandemic. She not only healed the Indian economy from the devastating impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, but also put it on a higher growth trajectory with a humane touch. On the foundations of a massive welfare package, carefully chosen fiscal incentives, and visionary policy reforms, she brought out the economy from a technical recession and put it in expansion mode.

The rise of Sitharaman is among the most remarkable stories of Indian politics in recent times. A Bharatiya Janata Party spokesperson before the 2014 elections, Sitharaman was first appointed as a minister of state for commerce and industry (independent charge). In 2017, in a sign of the faith that Modi had in her work, she was appointed as India’s first full-time woman defence minister. She shepherded the ministry at a sensitive time and became the government’s key face on national security matters. It was under her leadership in the ministry that India successfully conducted the cross-border surgical strike against Pakistan in Balakot.

Sitharaman is known for her honesty, integrity and commitment to her party’s world view. Her loyalty to the cause and fortitude to achieve it leaves no doubt in Modi’s selection of her as finance minister to make India a $5-trillion economy.

At the helm of tech reinvention

In the eight years and a bit more that the Colombo-born Rajan Anandan steered the ship at Google India, the tech giant’s approach towards India became more localised than it had ever been. Reinventing products for India was the mantra, with the mission to get a billion Indians online, when he started out at Google in 2011.

Anandan has a bachelor’s degree in science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a master’s degree in science from Stanford University. The academic genes have certainly been passed down generations — his daughter started to code by the age of 10.

For someone who works almost 18 hours a day, it does beg the question — when does he sleep? His answer is simple. He doesn’t require much sleep, and that’s what he uses to test the founders of the start-ups he is funding. If they don’t take his calls at 12.30am, they are either sleeping or partying.

Anandan’s love for start-ups now sees him at the helm of affairs at Sequoia Capital in India, a venture capital firm. He has made significant investments in Indian start-ups such as Dunzo, Instamojo and Freshtohome. His impressive resume includes experience at McKinsey, Dell and Microsoft.

A prominent player in fintech

Upasana Taku is a co-founder at fintech firm MobiKwik. Hailing from a Kashmiri family, she was born and grew up in Gujarat. After schooling in Surat, and pursuing a degree in engineering from NIT Jalandhar, she went for an Ivy League education before building a career focussed on payments. In that journey, she has been a senior product manager with PayPal in the Silicon Valley and worked with HSBC in San Diego. Taku returned to India in early 2009 and co-founded MobiKwik, which has gone to script one of India’s successful start-up stories by becoming one of the prominent players in the digital payments landscape. Taku believes the Indian fintech opportunity will be worth at least $1 trillion by 2025 and MobiKwik will be a significant part of it.

Indian cinema's rising star

Janhvi Kapoor has been the one to watch out for ever since she acted in her first film, Dhadak, in 2018. Daughter of legendary actor Sridevi and filmmaker Boney Kapoor, Janhvi was acclaimed for breaking the stereotype in choosing her second project, Ghost Stories (2020), a web anthology, thus making it clear that she won’t conform to conventional norms about the medium she chooses as a newcomer.

Next came the film, Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl (2020), based on the life of one of the first women Indian Air Force combat pilots. Carrying the film on her shoulders, the 24-year-old managed to impress critics and the audience. This was her second project to be released directly on an OTT platform, and managed to grab eyeballs and garner rave reviews. She explored uncharted territory yet again with Roohi (2021), a horror-comedy which again got her appreciation from movie watchers.

Apart from her fashion sense that sets goals for fans, she has been in the news for her upcoming films, Dostana 2, Mr and Mrs Mahi with national award winner Rajkummar Rao, and Good Luck Jerry, a dark crime comedy.

New chapter for sport, etched in gold

Neeraj Chopra will go down in sporting history as the floppy-haired champion who delivered India’s first track & field medal at the Olympics. And, delivered it in some style. Hurling the javelin to a distance of 87.58m under the dazzling lights of Tokyo’s Olympic Stadium, the 23-year-old from Khandra village in Panipat became only the second individual gold medallist in India’s Olympic history after Abhinav Bindra in 2008.

Growing up in a large joint family, Neeraj was an overweight kid who got attracted to the javelin while watching a senior state thrower go about his business in the local sports facility. He tried his hand, and found he liked it; it set him up on the path to fitness, and consequently, excellence.

After tasting success at the domestic level, the big breakthrough came at the 2016 World Junior Championships, where Neeraj clinched gold with a junior world record throw of 86.48m. He then won another gold at the Asian Championships the following year, and went on to make the 2018 season his own. At the Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, Chopra threw 86.47m to be crowned champion, and bettered the distance to 88.06m at the Jakarta Asian Games months later for another historic gold.

Though an elbow injury seemed to derail Chopra’s march, a surgery sidelined him for the 2019 season, and the Covid pandemic kept him out of action for most of 2020, nothing was an obstacle too high. Chopra had written a new script for Indian sport, and his steely determination went on to ensure that it was etched in gold.

Building back the economy

Lawrence H. Summers, one of America’s leading economists, has played a key role in shaping the US government’s response to various episodes of global economic stress in recent history, including as the Treasury Secretary from 1999 to 2001 in the Clinton administration. He has also served as Director of the White House National Economic Council in the Obama administration and as the Chief Economist of the World Bank. As one of President Obama’s chief economic advisers, Summers helped shape the US government response to the 2008-09 global financial crisis as well as to the pressures on the European monetary system. Currently, he is the President Emeritus and the Charles W. Eliot University Professor at Harvard University. He obtained his bachelor of science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1975 and in 1982, was awarded a PhD from Harvard. Summers became the first social scientist ever to receive the annual Alan T. Waterman Award of the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 1987 and in 1993, he was bestowed the John Bates Clark Medal, given every two years to an outstanding American economist under the age of 40. He is also an adviser to businesses and investors and is a contributor of columns to some leading publications.

Fortifying right to equality, dignity

Justice Uday U Lalit is a sitting judge of the Supreme Court of India. He is second in seniority among the top court judges, and in line to become the Chief Justice of India (CJI) in August 2022. Justice Lalit was only the sixth lawyer directly appointed to the top court as a judge in August 2014. Designated as a senior advocate by the Supreme Court in 2004, he specialised in criminal cases, and was CBI’s special public prosecutor in the 2G spectrum cases under the top court’s order in 2011.

Justice Lalit has been associated with several landmark judgments that have fortified individual liberty and gender justice. On the anvil of right to equality and dignity, he was one of the judges who, by 3-2 majority, declared instant triple talaq to be an unconstitutional and invalid form of divorce in 2017. In the same year, justice Lalit was part of the Supreme Court bench that shed years of reluctance and allowed cameras to enter courtrooms. This order directed for the installation of CCTV cameras — without audio recording — in at least two districts in all states and Union territories.

In a 2020 judgment, justice Lalit underlined the legislative intent behind the law on right to be let out on bail when an investigating agency fails to complete investigation within a fixed time. He is also the executive chairman of the National Legal Aid Services Authority (NALSA), which has been pushed a strong reform platform under his leadership. New records were made in disposal of cases in Lok Adalats as the Supreme Court judge infused the use of technology to facilitate settlement of cases without overstretched trials. Under justice Lalit’s guidance, NALSA teams have connected with 637,000 villages in the country, being able to reach at least 700 million people through the latest outreach campaign.

Proactive CM who rose up the ranks

Bhupesh Baghel is the Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh, and a growing OBC voice within the Congress party. From a village called Patan in Durg district, a constituency from where he has been MLA five times, Baghel was state minister in undivided Madhya Pradesh in the late 1990s.

A few months before the 2013 assembly elections, a Maoist attack in Darbha left 26 Congress leaders dead, including a galaxy of Chhattisgarh heavyweights such as Vidya Charan Shukla, Nand Kumar Patel, and Mahendra Karma. Baghel took over the role as the state Congress president in the aftermath of the massacre, and while the 2013 assembly elections came too soon, he fought an aggressive battle against the Raman Singh government over the next five years to lead the Congress to a dominant win in the 2018 elections.

A canny political survivor, Baghel, 60, has staved off many challenges to his authority from within and outside the party. In his state, Baghel has cultivated a strong son-of-the-soil image, playing up regional pride. Outside it, he has stood apart from the anglicised Congress leadership core, seizing political moments, such as sitting on a dharna at the airport in full public view when he was stopped from going to Lakhimpur Kheri.

Popular and proactive, Baghel is very much part of the present and future of Indian politics.

India's 1st 'Golden Boy' at Olympics

KD Jadhav did it, Leander Paes did it, and so did Karnam Malleswari and Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore. But until Abhinav Bindra pulled the trigger on his last competition shot in the 10m air rifle final at the Beijing Olympics in 2008, India was yet to know what an individual Olympic gold medal felt like. On that unforgettable August day, Bindra allowed a nation to exhale, and liberated it from the yoke of Olympic-sized mediocrity. Then only 25, the nerdy, unassuming champion from Chandigarh beat a world class field with a near-perfect final shot, a memorable 10.8 (the maximum one can score is 10.9), to trail a blaze and spark a movement that has since been giving India relatively richer dividends across global non-cricket sport.

The Olympic gold is not Bindra’s only achievement. He won the ISSF World Championships in 2006, four golds, two silvers, and a bronze at the Commonwealth Games, and a silver and two bronze medals at the Asian Games in the two editions he participated in (2010, 2014), and finished a creditable fourth at the Rio Olympics in 2016.

Post his retirement from active sport, Bindra has lent his expertise as the chairperson of government’s Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS), and has set up Abhinav Bindra Targeting Performance (ABTP) centres that provide advanced physiotherapy and rehabilitation services. He is also a member of IOC’s Athlete’s Commission.

With a legacy that dates back to 1857, Aditya Birla Group is a $45 billion global conglomerate in the League of Fortune 500. Anchored by an extraordinary force of over 140,000 employees belonging to 100 nationalities, the Group is built on a strong foundation of stakeholder value creation. Over the years, Aditya Birla Group has grown into global powerhouses in various sectors – Metals, Cement, Pulp & Fiber, Chemicals, Financial Services, Fashion Retail, Textiles & Carbon black.

Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh Mr. Bhupesh Baghel comes from a farmer family. He pursued his higher education while working in his farms tirelessly. He has actively participated in the campaigns with a vision of grassroots-level activism and has made consistent efforts to address and resolve the plight of farmers across the state. He was socially and politically active, even as a student. His vision has always been about the upliftment of the voiceless, downtrodden and marginalized communities and the weaker sections of the society. He has dedicatedly worked towards the development of Schedule Caste and Schedule Tribes, women and unemployed youth.

Within 36 months of taking charge as the Chief Minister of the state, he has brought relief to the farmers by waiving off their agriculture loans worth Rs. 9000 crores and the long-pending irrigation tax of Rs.207 crores. Farmers of the state are now receiving fair price for their paddy, highest value against the paddy procurement in the nation. His schemes have greatly benefitted the farmers, economically weaker sections of society, tribal forest dwellers and labourers in the state. The remuneration rate for Tendupatta Collectors was raised to INR 4000 per standard bag, again the highest amount paid for this forest produce in the nation.

With his special emphasis on the health sector, Mr Baghel launched “Mukhyamantri Vishesh Swasthya Sahayta Yojana” providing medical coverage of ₹20 lakh, the highest in India. He has launched various schemes to combat malnutrition in the state and ensure easy access to health care to every person of the state.

The New Industrial Policy 2019-24 is a blueprint for the establishment and development of core sector industries along with agro-based industries and global-technology based industries.

Under Shaheed Mahendra Karma Tendupatta Collector’s Social Security Scheme, so far a social security amount of ₹12 crore 55 lakh has been provided to 820 tendu patta collector beneficiaries.

As the State Government has increased the support price for 17 minor forest produce, forest dwellers of the state are earning an additional income of ₹502 crore every year. State government has increased the number of minor forest produce procured at the minimum support price from 07 to 52.

A crucial initiative, namely Dhanwantri Yojana has been launched with the aim of providing medicines at half the price/ affordable rates to common people. Under the said scheme 188 medical stores are proposed to be opened in 168 cities. At present medicines are available in 84 medical stores at a price 50 to 71% lesser than the MRP.

Under the competent leadership and guidance of Chief Minister Mr. Bhupesh Baghel, Chhattisgarh has been awarded as the ‘Cleanest State of India’ by the President of India, at the 'Swachh Amrit Mahotsav' organized at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi. Chhattisgarh has won this national award for cleanliness for three times in a row in year 2019, 2020 and 2021 respectively.

Despite the slowdown causing a stir in the global economy, Chhattisgarh has witnessed the highest collection of GST in the nation. Despite the COVID crisis, the state has produced 27 lakh tons of steel, the highest steel production in the nation. A significant reduction has been recorded in the power rates and tariffs for industries with a special focus on Sponge Iron and Steel related industries. More than 445 new startups have received recognition. The state ranks second in MSME promotion and development in the country.

​​Hyundai Motor India Limited (HMIL) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Hyundai Motor Company (HMC). Hyundai Motor India Limited (HMIL) is the country's first smart mobility solutions provider, connecting people with quality time and is the largest exporter since inception in India. It currently has 12 car models across segments SANTRO, GRAND i10 NIOS, The all-new i20, i20 N Line, AURA, VENUE, Spirited New VERNA, All-new CRETA, ALCAZAR, ELANTRA, New TUCSON & KONA Electric. HMIL’s fully integrated state-of-the-art manufacturing plant near Chennai boasts of advanced production, quality, and testing capabilities.

HMIL forms a critical part of HMC’s global export hub. It currently exports to around 88 countries across Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, Australia, and Asia Pacific. To support its growth and expansion plans, HMIL currently has 544 dealers and more than 1 355 service points across India. In its commitment to provide customers with cutting-edge global technology, Hyundai has a modern multi-million-dollar R&D facility in Hyderabad. The R&D centre endeavours to be a centre of excellence in automobile engineering.

“Yogakshemam Vahamyaham - Thy Welfare is Our Responsibility”

One of the largest insurance companies in the world in terms of customer base, LIC is the most trusted brand in the Indian Insurance Market. Being the single largest investor in Government securities, LIC forms the backbone of Indian Economy. A premier financial institution, its propagation of the message of life insurance is unparalleled.

LIC serves its customers through 8 Zonal Offices, 113 Divisional Offices, 2048 Branches, 1546 Satellite Offices, about 1.08 lakh employees and 13.53 lakh agents.

LIC’s bouquet of 32 plans meet the changing needs of customers under Individual Business catering to various segments of the society viz. Endowment, Term Assurance, Children, Pension, Micro Insurance, Health Insurance and Unit Linked products.

LIC is a dominant life insurer in the competitive Indian insurance scenario. LIC holds a composite Market Share of 74.58% in No. of Policies, 66.18% share in First Year premiums as at 31stMarch 2021. Over 229.15 lakh Claims amounting to over INR 1,47,754.63 Crores were settled during FY 2020-21, an enviable track record.

LIC’s strong online presence and digital platforms ensure new business, servicing operations [internal and external customers], and channel platforms like Banks and other agencies.

SpeEdLabs, founded by IIT and IIM Alumni, is a Personalised Practice Platform that uses a combination of Artificial Intelligence & Adaptive Learning to ensure streamlined learning for each student. The platform cross references the efforts/ performance of each student with graded conceptual building blocks and suggests Personalised Improvement Plans helping better performance at school & competitive levels. The platform also allows for peer group benchmarking nationally and is already the chosen learning partner for more than 100,000 students across India with CBSE/ICSE/IGCSE/IB affiliation, spanning 200+ cities across India. At the very core of this framework is deep pedagogical expertise of hundreds of years of collective teaching experience and knowledge of IITian/NITian teachers.

The Ministry of Tourism, Government of India is the nodal agency for the formulation of national policies and programmes and for the coordination of activities of various central Government Agency, State Government/UTs and the private sector for the development and promotion of tourism in the country. The endeavor of the Ministry is also to promote development of tourism infrastructure in the country and to meet this end; financial assistance is provided to various State Governments. The ministry of tourism also promotes its atithi devo bhava and special campaigns for the North Eastern region and Jammu and Kashmir.

CNN-News18 is India's leading English News Channel and is one of the most respected and trusted sources for news and information in the country today. Association with CNN, an international news brand, brings credibility and depth to the coverage and provides unparalleled access to international content. The channel uses cutting edge broadcast technology and world class production qualities to bring to its viewers news that is unmatched in quality.

With the philosophy of On Your Side, the channel aims to ensure that the viewer moves from the side-lines into the middle of the main discourse which will influence their today and give shape to their future. Dedicated to becoming an engine of responsible journalism by treating news as sacred and giving the viewer a voice, the channel reaches out to millions of viewers every month.

The single-minded aim at CNN-News18 is programming which offers something for everyone. The channel has also created seminal IPs such as Indian of the Year that have become landmark events in themselves.

Over the last 16 years, the channel has won various awards and accolades at the prestigious Asian Television Awards, Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Awards, Indian Television Academy Awards, News Television Awards and Indian Telly Awards, making CNN-News18 India’s most awarded English News Channel.

Punjab Chief Minister Mr. Charanjit Singh Channi known as the votary of the rights of farmers, poor and middle class, was born in 1963 at village Bhajauli in Kharar Tehsil of Mohali District. Afterwards, he shifted to Kharar where he received education up to Higher Secondary level at Khalsa School and did his Graduation from Khalsa College, Sector-26, Chandigarh. He completed his Bachelors in Law (LLB) from Panjab University, Chandigarh and Post Graduation in Political Science in 2016 from the same institution.

Having a penchant for education, Mr. Channi pursued Masters in Business Administration (MBA) from I.K. Gujral Punjab Technical University, Jalandhar in September 2011 and Masters in Law (LLM) in 2014. Currently, he is pursuing doctorate from the Panjab University, Chandigarh.

A keen sportsperson, Mr. Channi was part of Panjab University Handball team during 1984-85. Entering into wedlock in 1991, Mr. Channi has two sons.

Armed with the missionary zeal to serve the common people selflessly, Mr. Channi ventured into public life in 1992 when he was elected as Municipal Councillor and went onto serve as the President of Municipal Council, Kharar. The immense dedication with which he served every section of the society saw Mr. Channi being elected MLA as an Independent candidate in 2007 and twice representing the Congress Party in 2012 and 2017 and as CLP leader of the Congress party in State Assembly in 2016.

Petronet LNG Limited (PLL), one of the fastest growing world-class company in the energy sector in India, has set up the India's first LNG receiving and regasification terminal at Dahej, Gujarat, and another terminal at Kochi, Kerala in India.

PLL was formed as a Joint Venture company in 1998, by Government of India to import LNG and set up LNG terminals in the country. The promoters of the company are GAIL (India) Limited, Oil &Natural Gas Corporation Limited, Indian Oil Corporation Limited and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited.

PLL Dahej terminal present capacity is 17.5 MMTPA and is running at full capacity. Kochi terminal has a capacity of 5 MMTPA.