Speaker Series on the Future of the Indian Economy

About the Panelists:

Nicholas Bloom, Faculty Affiliate at the King Center on Global Development

Nicholas Bloom is the William Eberle Professor of Economics at Stanford University, a senior fellow of SIEPR, and the co-director of the productivity, innovation, and entrepreneurship program at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is a faculty affiliate at the King Center on Global Development. His research focuses on management practices and uncertainty. He previously worked at the UK Treasury and McKinsey & Company.

Bloom is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the recipient of the Alfred Sloan Fellowship, the Bernacer Prize, the European Investment Bank Prize, the Frisch Medal, the Kauffman Medal and a National Science Foundation Career Award. He holds a BA from Cambridge, an MPhil from Oxford, and a PhD from University College London.

Rohini Chakravarthy, Managing Partner at NewBuild Venture Capital

Rohini Chakravarthy is Managing Partner at NewBuild Venture Capital, where she invests in early-stage enterprise and supply chain software companies. AI is an important enabling trend for her thematic firm. Prior to founding NewBuild Venture Capital, Rohini was a venture capitalist at NEA, Intel Capital, and NGP Capital for over 20 years. Over her career, she has invested through several enterprise architectural shifts including wireless networking, big data, cloud computing and AI, and has been on the India investment committees at her firms.

Rohini has served on 15+ boards as an investor board member, and has shepherded many companies through exponential growth, successful acquisitions and IPOs. Outside her day job, she is deeply involved in alumni giving, and actively supports women in technology. She was on the board of the IIT Madras Foundation for six years and is a member of Indiaspora, which is a community platform to shape successful US-India relations.

Naushad Forbes, Co-Chairperson at Forbes Marshall

Naushad Forbes is the Co-Chairperson of Forbes Marshall, India's leading process and energy efficiency company. He is Chair of the Ananta Aspen Centre and the Centre for Technology, Innovation and Economic Research (CTIER). Forbes was an occasional Lecturer and Consulting Professor at Stanford University from 1987 to 2004. He has received his bachelor's, master's and PhD degrees from Stanford. Forbes is on the board of several educational institutions and public companies. Forbes has long been an active member of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and was President of CII from 2016 to 2017.

Forbes’s book, The Struggle and the Promise: Restoring India’s Potential, was released by HarperCollins in January 2022. He also co-authored, From Followers to Leaders: Managing Technology and Innovation in Newly Industrializing Countries, published by Routledge in 2002. Naushad writes a monthly column for Business Standard.

Megha Patnaik, Assistant Professor of Economics and Finance at LUISS Guido Carli

Megha Patnaik is an assistant professor in the Department of Economics & Finance at LUISS Guido Carli University in Rome and a research affiliate at the Centre for Economic Policy Research. Her research interests include management, entrepreneurship, machine learning and open-source big data. Previously, she was faculty at the Indian Statistical Institute and the Lead Economist at the Esya Centre and a data science consultant at Intuit, Britannia, and Ambit Capital.

She holds a PhD from Stanford University, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and a BSc from St. Stephen's College, University of Delhi. She is cofounder of Leap Insights and part of the Network of Women in Data Science & Social Science.