COVID19 2ND WAVE: DEALING WITH ANXIETY

Professor Gangadhar is a Psychiatry expert with over 30 years’ experience in the field of mental health, both clinical and academic. He was the Director of NIMHANS since 2016. He has been a pioneer in research relating to the application of Yoga in psychiatric disorders, electroconvulsive therapy and understanding the neurobiology of schizophrenia. He has been the Honorary Deal at SVYASA Yoga University, Bengaluru and an adjunct faculty at National Institute of Advanced Studies. He is part of the National AYUSH Committee for Integrative Medicine. He was awarded the Padmashri in 2020.

Hari wears different hats. He is an author, angel investor, advisor to VCs and also the CHRO of online grocery service, Bigbasket. After spending 14 years at Tata Steel, he later spearheaded 5 high-growth start-ups. The first four saw successful exits (Daksh was acquired by IBM, Virtusa went public on NASDAQ, Amba Research was acquired by Moody’s and TaxiForSure was acquired by Ola). In each of these startups Hari played a key role in shaping their growth and exit. In the last 5 years, Hari has been an advisor and sounding board to numerous young entrepreneurs. He is a mentor at accelerators like Techstars, Silicon Road, India Accelerator, and NUMA. He is an advisor to VC funds like Arkam Ventures and Fundamentum. He is a prolific author and has authored 7 books so far, the last being "From Pony to Unicorn - Scaling a Startup Sustainably".

Richa comes from an interaction design background with specialisation in User Experience Design from IIT Guwahati. She started YourDOST, an online counselling and emotional wellness platform, after a close friend’s tragic suicide. Prior to YourDOST, she has led the product development for Webfluenz - one of the top social media analytics tools. Richa has previously worked with D.E. Shaw & Co and o9 Solution. Richa is a thinker and a story-lover. To foster her mental wellbeing, she indulges herself in varied interests— reading, a good game of TT, sudoku, listening to music, painting, dancing, and travelling.