TEDIndia 2009 receives overwhelming response

The first-ever TED conference in India has received an overwhelming response from attendees, speakers, fellows and sponsors. Speakers expected at TEDIndia include Tony Hsieh, CEO, Zappos.com; Eve Ensler, playwright and activist; Horst Rechelbacher, the founder of Aveda and Intelligent Nutrients; Charles Anderson, marine biologist; and Jib Ellison, sustainability expert -- many of whom will be speaking in India for the first time. Indian thought leaders speaking at the conference include Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor, management guru C.K. Prahalad, director Shekhar Kapur, Yogi Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, film actor Abhay Deol and mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik, among others.

With support from Sherpalo Ventures and Google.org, TEDIndia is also welcoming 99 TEDIndia Fellows to the conference – the largest number of Fellows ever for TED. The fellows are young individuals who have demonstrated remarkable achievement in their fields of endeavor.

Chris Anderson, TED curator and host, says, “I am impressed with the diversity and the incredible stories that the speakers and attendees are bringingnto TEDIndia. The response to TED in India has surpassed our expectations. A major step in trying to make TEDTalks and ideas accessible to a wider audience was our Open Translation Project, which we launched with the help of our partner Nokia in May this year. It has been extremely successful with the Indian audiences. Since TEDTalks are now available in several Indian languages, there has been a great upsurge in viewership from India on www.ted.com.”

Lakshmi Pratury, the co-host of TEDIndia, also believes that the conference will be a great showcase for India. “TEDIndia will be a revelation driven by the sheer diversity of the participants. I am confident that the conference will bring forth exciting and new ideas worth spreading, which is the larger mission of TED. “

TEDIndia will be held Nov. 4-7, 2009, at the high-tech Infosys campus in Mysore. In addition to the talks during the conference, pre-conference TED University will give attendees an opportunity to make their own presentations to a select audience. Besides the fast-paced, three-day stage program featuring TED's famous 18-minute talks, the event will also include musical performances by Anil Srinivasan and Sikkil Gurucharan, Usha Uthup and Mukul Deora, dance performances by Longinus Fernandes and Sidi Goma, as well as comedy from Dan Nainan. You can find the full, up-to-date speaker lineup at http://conferences.ted.com/TEDIndia.