BOSTON– The Vivek and Vandana Sharma India Initiative at Northeastern University will host former Niti Ayog CEO Amitabh Kant for a public fireside chat on Tursday, April 23, 2024, at the Northeastern University in Boston.
The event will feature a public fireside chat on India’s Growing Role on the World Stage. Sharad Sharma, co-founder of iSprit, a nonprofit which championed India’s digital public infrastructure, including India Stack, will be moderating the fireside Chat.
The public fireside chat is from 6:00-7:15pm at the East Village 17th Flr location at Northeastern.
The Vivek and Vandana Sharma India Initiative at the D’Amore-McKim School of Business’ Center for Emerging Markets (CEM) at the Northeastern supports programming, such as the center’s India Lecture series, enable scholars, students, and practitioners from India to complete visiting terms at the CEM, encourage D’Amore-McKim and CEM faculty to conduct use-inspired research in India, and create a community of business leaders in the U.S. and India with a special interest in American-Indian economic ties. The initiative is a critical first step as the center builds out its expertise in key emerging markets.
Mr. Kant is presently India’s G20 Sherpa. The G20 or the Group of Twenty is a forum where policymakers of industrialized and developing economies meet to discuss key issues in the global economy. The G20 countries account for 85% of global GDP, 75% of world trade and about two-thirds of the world’s population.
Mr. Kant is a governance reformer and a public policy change agent for India, having driven key reforms and initiatives during his tenure as the Chief Executive Officer of the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog) (2016-2022) and the Secretary of the Department for Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) (2014-2016), Government of India. He has been a key driver of flagship national initiatives such as Startup India, Make in India, Incredible India, Kerala: God’s Own Country and the Aspirational Districts Program. These initiatives have repositioned India and Kerala and have widely been recognized as transformational.
NITI Aayog is India’s apex policy-making institution, with the Prime Minister as its Chairman. As CEO of NITI Aayog, Mr. Kant has driven a vast range of national-level developmental and policy initiatives which catalyzed India’s social and economic development and have brought about a paradigm shift in policy-making.
As Secretary, DIPP Kant has driven the Start-up India movement which has led to India emerging as the third-best ecosystem for startups globally, with over 70,000+ start ups and over 101+ Unicorns. His focus has been to facilitate Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) through predictability, consistency of policies and elimination of rules, regulations and procedures. This led to India jumping 79 positions in Ease of Doing Business Indicators. He also initiated competition and ranking amongst Indian states based on their EoDB indicators. The competition and ranking has led to a transformational impact on States.
