Network Capital

Based in Los Angeles and a native of New York City, Kiran Gandhi, aka Madame Gandhi, is a singer, percussionist, activist and music industry thinker known for her electronic-based sound and fourth-wave feminist perspective. She began working under the stage name Madame Gandhi in 2015, while Alexia Riner — a Berklee College of Music graduate in sound design — became a key contributor to the project, providing electronic soundscapes and co-production.

Currently, Gandhi is working on her three-part electrofeminist solo EP series. Her debut EP, and the first in the series, Voices, was released in October 2016, featuring guest appearances from Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs and Alt-J guitarist Joe Newman. The second installment, Visions, is slated for July 2019. The third in the EP series will follow.

Prior to her solo work, Gandhi toured with forward-thinking, politically-minded rapper/electronic artist M.I.A. as the band’s drummer. She has also drummed for acts such as Krewella, Lizzo and Kehlani and is a prolific collaborator in the world of electrofeminist music and art.

Gandhi’s interests span music, politics and activism. She studied Political Science, Mathematics, and Women’s Studies at Georgetown University and received her M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. It was while at Georgetown that Gandhi‘s interests in music and politics fused — she met and began performing with boundary-pushing electronic duo Thievery Corporation, including an appearance at Bonnaroo in 2010, after they organized a protest over the closing of a local homeless shelter. While at Harvard, she juggled playing shows around the world with M.I.A. and taking classes.

Gandhi has been featured on Forbes’ “30 Under 30” list and her 2018 “Own Your Voice” TED Talk has been viewed 200,000+ times. She also previously served as the first digital analyst at Interscope Records in Los Angeles.

India’s maharajahs have traditionally been cast as petty despots, consumed by lust and luxury. Bejewelled parasites, they cared more, we are told, for elephants and palaces than for schools and public works. The British cheerfully circulated the idea that brown royalty needed ‘enlightened’ white hands to guide it, and by the twentieth century many Indians too bought into the stereotype, viewing princely India as packed with imperial stooges. Indeed, even today the princes are either remembered with frothy nostalgia or dismissed as greedy fools, with no role in the making of contemporary India.

In this brilliantly researched book, Manu S. Pillai disputes this view. Tracking the travels of the iconic painter Ravi Varma through five princely states – from the 1860s to the early 1900s – he uncovers a picture far removed from the clichés in which the princes are trapped. The world we discover is not of dancing girls, but of sedition, legal battles, the defiance of imperial dictates, and resistance. We meet maharajahs obsessed with industrialization, and rulers who funded nationalists, these men anything but pushovers for the Raj to manipulate. Outward deference aside, the princes, Pillai shows, forever tested the Raj – from denying white officials the right to wear shoes in durbars to trying to surpass British administrative standards.

Good governance became a spectacularly subversive act, by which maharajahs and the ‘native statesmen’ assisting them refuted claims that Indians could not rule themselves. For decades this made the princes heroes in the eyes of nationalists and anti-colonial thinkers – a facet of history we have forgotten and ignored. By refocusing attention on princely India, False Allies takes us on an unforgettable journey and reminds us that the maharajahs were serious political actors – essential to knowing modern India.

In this pathbreaking work, Shrayana Bhattacharya maps the economic and personal trajectories--the jobs, desires, prayers, love affairs and rivalries--of a diverse group of women. Divided by class but united in fandom, they remain steadfast in their search for intimacy, independence and fun. Embracing Hindi film idol Shah Rukh Khan allows them a small respite from an oppressive culture, a fillip to their fantasies of a friendlier masculinity in Indian men. Most struggle to find the freedom-or income-to follow their favourite actor.

Bobbing along in this stream of multiple lives for more than a decade-from Manju's boredom in 'rurban' Rampur and Gold's anger at having to compete with Western women for male attention in Delhi's nightclubs, to Zahira's break from domestic abuse in Ahmedabad-Bhattacharya gleans the details on what Indian women think about men, money, movies, beauty, helplessness, agency and love. A most unusual and compelling book on the female gaze, this is the story of how women have experienced post-liberalization India.

Niel backs exceptional young entrepreneurs to find, buy & build enduring small to medium businesses globally as co-founder of Ambit Partners, a specialised Search Fund investor.

He is a guest lecturer in Entrepreneurship-via-Acquisition at the University of Cape Town's Graduate School of Business, has worked and studied in South Africa, France, Singapore and the United Kingdom, and is a member of the Global Shapers Community, an initiative of the World Economic Forum.

Niel earned his MBA with distinction from INSEAD, where he was the Class of '75 Nelson Mandela Scholar, and his B.Com Honours with distinction from North-West University.

He speaks English and Afrikaans.

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This is Sahil - 

"It was 2011, and I was on top of the world. I was a 19-year-old solo founder with millions in the bank. At first, everything was great. We grew the team. We stayed focused on our product. Monthly revenues were climbing. But after four years, there was just one problem: our numbers weren’t doubling fast enough to satisfy the venture capitalists who had backed us in the first place. We tried everything, but eventually I had to lay off three-quarters of the staff - including many good friends.

I couldn’t stay in San Francisco, so I moved to Provo, Utah and kept Gumroad afloat on my own while I figured out what to do next. I went back to writing and painting, and that reminded me why I had built the business in the first place. I loved to create! When our lead investor offered to sell ownership back to Gumroad for $1, the future came into focus. I could start again and grow the kind of meaningful business focused on creators that we always should have been.

In February 2019, I published a Medium essay, “Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company” that struck a chord with millions of entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs who, deep down, would much rather build a sustainable business like Gumroad than chase a VC-backed unicorn. I wrote The Minimalist Entrepreneur and created the course to help anyone design, build, and successfully grow their own right sized business. Now, let’s get to it!"

Pride, Prejudice, and Punditry brings together the very best fiction, non-fiction, and poetry from his published books and journalism—as well as many pieces that have been written specially for this volume.

There are ten sections in the book, each devoted to a particular topic. ‘In the Company of Giants’ looks at some of the most important figures of modern Indian history; ‘Into the Maelstrom of Indian Politics’ contains work on the Indian political scene; ‘Our Unruly World’ covers international relations and diplomacy; ‘The Hindu Way’ examines various aspects of the faith; ‘Musings of a Cricket Tragic’ includes some of his finest writing on the sport; ‘You Cannot Be Serious!’ is a light-hearted take on sundry matters; ‘Fragments of an Autobiography’ has poignant essays about his parents and an evocative look at his Kerala heritage; ‘The Spoken Word’ is a selection of his most famous speeches; ‘The Writerly Life’ comprises ruminations on writing and writers; and ‘Selected Fiction and Poetry’ showcases his masterpieces of fiction and poetry.

This book will give those new to the author’s work a panoramic view of the range and depth of his writing. Long-time fans will find fresh material to delight them as also ageless pieces that continue to enchant. Dazzling, inventive, and exuberant, Pride, Prejudice, and Punditry presents readers with the essential work of a literary genius.

Aditya Ghosh is a seasoned business leader with over 22 years of experience. Aditya currently sits on the Board of Directors of Fabindia - India’s largest retail platform; and OYO, one of the world’s leading hospitality chains with presence across 80 countries. Most recently, he was the CEO at OYO Hotels & Homes- India & South Asia.

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Indra K. Nooyi served as CEO and chairman of PepsiCo from 2006 to 2019. Her prescient strategic thinking, insight into consumer behaviour  and wisdom on managing a vast, global workforce make her one of the world’s most sought-after advisors to entrepreneurs, executives, and governments. She is also revered as a role model for women and immigrants, and celebrated for her empowering messages on inclusivity.

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Ms. Farzana Haque is the Global Head of Large Accounts SBU at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). TCS is a leading global information technology company with over US$12 Billion in revenues. TCS is India’s most valued company with the country’s highest market capitalisation. Forbes magazine  voted TCS as the most admired company in India. Farzana began her career with the TATA Group in Mumbai as a management trainee and has worked there ever since.

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Katy Milkman is the James G. Dinan Professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, host of Charles Schwab’s popular behavioral economics podcast Choiceology, and the former president of the international Society for Judgment and Decision Making. She is the co-founder and co-director of the Behavior Change for Good Initiative, a research center with the mission of advancing the science of lasting behavior change whose work is being chronicled by Freakonomics Radio. Over the course of her career, she has worked with or advised dozens of organizations on how to spur positive change, including Google, the U.S. Department of Defense, the American Red Cross, 24 Hour Fitness, Walmart and Morningstar. An award-winning scholar and teacher, Katy writes frequently about behavioral science for major media outlets such as The Washington Post, The New York Times, USA Today, and Scientific American.