From speed dating to listening to thought provoking talks by professor Tarun Khanna of the Harvard Business School, over 800 members of the Network of Indian Professionals recently spent three days in Boston.
The 2008 Conference theme, 'Explore, Dream, Discover,' was aimed at inspiring and encouraging professionals to think and act beyond their perceived boundaries, conference leaders said. The conference sought to highlight the greater issues within the Indian Diaspora and in India, including the plight of malnourished children and the efforts of Akshay Patra to feed and empower them by ensuring that they stay in the schools.
The participants also heard a raft of entrepreneurs including Gururaj 'Desh' Deshpande who in recent years has passionately committed himself to social entrepreneurship even while continuing to start new businesses year after year.
They marveled at 29-year-old Abhi Shah who spurned the traditional Harvard MBA route to Wall Street and runs a legal outsourcing company that he founded two years ago and which today has over 300 attorneys, legal aids and other workers in America and India.
And they admired Vikram Akula, who despite the opposition of traditional moneylenders and political forces, apart from Naxalites, runs across India a for-profit micro-financing organisation that makes out small loans of about $100 to thousands of women each month.
