Insight Tour: India

Rahul Baswani

India Partner, Lumina Learning

Rahul Baswani is an executive coach, facilitator and artist based in New Delhi. He spent twelve years with the Young Presidents' Organization as Regional Director for Asia Pacific and Australia, establishing ten chapters across South Asia and the Middle East, and remains a certified Forum facilitator having run over a hundred peer-coaching sessions. He leads Lumina Learning's South Asia partnership, earlier launching Hogan Assessments in India, and founded the Delhi NCR chapter of the International Coach Federation. He holds PCC accreditation from Erickson College, Canada. An artist with solo shows in India and Korea, he collects contemporary art with his wife Manisha.
 

Suparna Bhasin-Cooper

Philanthropist, MaiTri Foundation

Suparna Bhasin-Cooper is an inspirational speaker, philanthropist and longtime meditator. Her goal is to bring ancient Vedic practices such as meditation, breath-work and yoga, to different communities around the globe. Suparna holds a Master of Arts in Organizational Psychology from Columbia University.

Suparna is co-founder of the MaiTri Foundation along with her husband, Peter Cooper. The MaiTri Foundation is the private family foundation of Peter and Suparna with a focus on helping to solve the mental health crisis as well as spreading the philosophy of individual rights and freedom for an enlightened and sustainable world.

In 2018, Suparna made the decision to dedicate her time and resources to making a meaningful impact and creating lasting change through her charitable activities.  This included taking a board position with the Australian chapter of the International Association for Human Values.

In addition to the significant number of organisations Suparna supports through the MaiTri Foundation, Suparna is committed to funding signature initiatives that address global challenges through culture change strategies.

Peter Cooper

Founder & CIO, Cooper Investors

Peter founded Cooper Investors in 2001. As Chief Investment Officer, Peter created and implemented the firm’s VoF investment philosophy which is applied across the international and domestic strategies. He is responsible for mentoring investment team members and the standardisation and integration of the process across the investment teams.

Peter has over 30 years of investment management experience. In 1987, he joined the NSW State Superannuation Investment and Management Corporation as a specialist industry analyst and progressed to deputy portfolio manager of the $7bn portfolio. In 1993, Peter ran the Australian equities portfolios for BNP and then joined Merrill Lynch Investment Managers (formerly Mercury Asset Management) where he worked for seven years, culminating in his position as Head of Australian Equities and Managing Director where he oversaw a team managing $7.5bn in Australian equities.

Ashutosh Garg

Founder, The Brand Called You & Guardian Pharmacy

Ashutosh Garg is a New Delhi–based entrepreneur, executive coach and broadcaster. Ashutosh Garg is a New Delhi–based entrepreneur, executive coach and broadcaster. He spent seventeen years with ITC, leaving in 1995 as managing director of a group company in Singapore, then eight years running satellite systems across Asia for Lockheed Martin and Hughes. In 2003 he founded Guardian Pharmacy, building it into India's second-largest pharmacy chain before exiting in 2016. He hosts The Brand Called You, an interview podcast with a reported reach of more than 50 million, mentors Indian chief executives on governance and succession, and has written six books. He served eight years on the board of GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance.

Manisha Gera Baswani

Independent Artist

Manisha Gera Baswani is among India's most celebrated contemporary artists. She took her BFA and MFA at Jamia Millia Islamia, studying under A. Ramachandran. One of India's most iconic artists and whose retrospective she later curated. Trained as a miniaturist, she builds work from very fine mark-making. A visual language grown out of drawings of the human heart, brain and spine, now extended into formed paper, found objects and chikankari embroidery on mulmul. She has held solo exhibitions since 1994 across Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Karachi, most recently '…and the dots connect now' at M.F. Hussein's Gallery Espace, which dealt with pain as something that shapes rather than merely damages, with one critically acclaimed work invoking kintsugi, the Japanese practice of repairing breakage in gold.

Adit Jain

Chairman & Editorial Director, IMA India

Adit Jain founded IMA India, an economic and business research firm, in 1994 and remains its Chairman and Editorial Director. Previously Vice President and Head of M&A at Lazard, he advises company boards on India strategy, has served as an expert witness in US commercial litigation, and has given testimony at parliamentary proceedings in both India and Australia. He edits IMA's Quarterly Country Report and is its principal economic commentator, having authored over a thousand articles on economics, politics and international affairs. He sits on several Indian boards. A Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, he supports education initiatives in central India's national parks.

Dan Jeavons

President, Applied Computing

Dan Jeavons is the president of Applied Computing, a start-up with a mission to change the energy industry through the application of physics-inspired AI. Previously he worked for Shell in the digitalisation department. He was a key contributor to Shell’s digitalisation programme and was recognised for his industry leading work in the area of Digital Transformation. In 2020 he was listed in the Constellation Research #BT150 and Truata’s Top 100 Data Visionaries.

He led the multi-award winning Data Science Centre of Excellence since its inception in 2013, growing the team from the ground up to around 180 individuals. The work of the team was recognised as part of Constellation Research’s Supernova Awards in the Data to Insights category amongst other notable awards. He was part of the team which developed the Shell.ai brand which is now externally recognised, and the work of his team and their impact was regularly publicised in mainstream journals like Forbes, the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. He has also developed effective technology partnerships for example with Microsoft, contributing to Shell’s strategic alliance which was announced in 2020.

He began his working life as an Accenture consultant working in their Upstream practice before joining Shell In 2008. Subsequently, he worked in the CIO Office, and then in architecture before joining the Shell technology division in 2013. Dan is passionate about big data, data science and AI (a recurring theme throughout his career) but also has extensive experience in business process redesign, business transformation and change.

Krishna Pujari

Co-Founder, Reality Tours & Travel

Krishna’s journey from Heranjalu, a small village in Karnataka, to co-founding Reality Tours & Travel is inspiring. At 13, he moved to Mumbai, working in restaurants while completing his education at night school. His perseverance enabled him to pass his exams and paved the way for something bigger: launching Reality Tours & Travel with Chris Way.

Krishna’s passion for connecting with people and giving back to society is central to his role. He ensures our tours are responsible and community-focused. His dedication makes him a beloved figure both at Reality Tours and Travel and within the communities it serves. In his free time, Krishna enjoys playing cricket and relishing his mother’s homemade fish curry. Watch Krishna share the inspiring founding story at TEDx Talks.

Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Founder, The Art of Living, Global Humanitarian, Spiritual Leader & Ambassador of Peace

Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar is a spiritual teacher, humanitarian, and peacemaker. Since 1981, he has taught breath-based meditation techniques for total well-being, touching the lives of over 800 million people worldwide. His unique gifts of insight, communication, and inspiration have also helped resolve conflicts and build community on local, national, and international fronts.

Neha Wadhwa

Founder & CEO, 6 Advisors

Neha brings over 15 years of experience at the intersecton of private equity, corporate finance, and entrepreneurship, with a strong specialization in the family office ecosystem. She established Aikya Connect, a homegrown network of family offices, alongside the founder, and served as Vice President, Private Markets at the Dinesh Hinduja Family Office, where she gained direct insights into asset allocation strategies across multiple asset classes in India and globally. Her earlier career spans investments at True North, fundraising and investor relations at Everstone Capital, and M&A advisory at KPMG Corporate Finance. Alongside her financial expertise, she has worked with businesses in consumer, blockchain technology, and AI (gaming), enabling her to bring a forward-looking lens to how family offices can identify growth paWerns, build resilient strategies, and align with emerging global opportunities. Neha is currently focused on building a cross-border network with NextGen leaders of family offices from around the world, creating bridges for collaboration, learning, and global investment opportunities.