Almedalen Week

Engaging India at Almedalen 2021: Future Urbanisms

Date: 5 July, 2021

Venue: Almedalen Week / Almedalsveckan

Theme: Innovation & Sustainability - What India and Sweden Can Learn From Each Other

H.E. Ambassador Tanmaya Lal is a 55-year-old Indian diplomat with nearly three decades of experience. He served as High Commissioner to Mauritius from 2019 to 2020 and as Ambassador/Deputy Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations Permanent Mission of India in New York from 2016 to 2018. As the Head of the UN Economic & Social (UNES) Division at headquarters and earlier in the Indian Missions in Vienna, Nairobi, and Bangkok, he worked extensively on multilateral aspects of India's engagement. Climate Change negotiations at the UNFCCC, Agenda 2030, the Human Rights Council, UN agencies, marine concerns, and the Arctic Council were among his responsibilities at the headquarters.

Opening Address

H.E. Tanmaya Lal

Ambassador of India

to Sweden

Closing Address

H.E. Klas Molin

Ambassador of Sweden

to India

Uday Shankar is president of India's oldest and largest apex business and industry, FICCI. He has three decades of experience in the media and entertainment industry and he has been the President, Asia Pacific of the Walt Disney Company and the Chairman of Star and Disney India.

Keynote Speaker

Uday Shankar

President, FICCI

Welcome to 'Engaging India at Almedalen 2021: Future Urbanisms'  on July 5, 2021.

Over the past 18 months, the world has witnessed an unprecedented situation. The Covid-19 pandemic has compelled us to rethink existing systems and explore collaborations and solutions for a changing world. This year the series of seminars deepen the focus on how collaboration between Swedish and Indian innovation ecosystems can foster approaches, frameworks, and solutions for sustainability that is available for everyone.

Accordingly, our theme for 2021 is Sustainability and Innovation: What India and Sweden Can Learn From Each Other.

Organised within the umbrella of Future Urbanisms – a multidisciplinary research programme of Uppsala University at Campus Gotland, Zerocity and Content People AB, the seminar series connects the urban needs, innovative spirit, and entrepreneurial energy of India with the ideas of sustainability and resilience, and the business models of Sweden and the Nordic world.  This year’s seminar series will also showcase and formally introduce Zerocity, which is a collaborative network-based platform that has emerged from Future Urbanisms to create sustainable solutions for cities and its communities.

The Perspectives

The seminars will focus on fostering cooperation, collaboration and connections between the Swedish and Indian Innovation and Sustainability Ecosystems and the various key stakeholders, particularly those from the research and thought leadership community. The seminars will showcase three perspectives of:

  • Innovations for Sustainable Solutions for Everyone
  • Start-Ups & the New Purpose Economy
  • Urban centres as Circular Economies of Equitable Growth

The Seminar Series

Seminar 1 - Co-thinking Urbanisation, Technology & Sustainability in a changing world

Key Question: 'In a changing post-Covid world, what are the approaches to co-thinking sustainability, urbanisation, and technology?

Owe Ronström is a professor in the Department of Ethnology, Uppsala University. He's written extensively about music, dance, ethnicity, multiculturalism, age, heritage, and islands, among other topics. He's also produced hundreds of radio shows for the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation, featuring music from all around the world. He also performs as a member of the bands Orientexpressen and Gunnfjauns Kapell, as well as serving as the director of Gotlands Balalajkaorkester. He produced BelleSounds, the world's largest concert, in June 2013.

 Owe Ronström

Professor, Department of Ethnology

Uppsala University

Sujith is the CEO & Co-Founder of Beckn Foundation that has created the world's first and Made-in-India open protocol for digital commerce called the Beckn Protocol. Along with Nandan Nilekani and Dr. Pramod Varma, Sujith has set up this not-for-profit foundation to reimagine digital commerce the world over. The idea of Beckn originated from urban mobility, an area where Sujith brings in extensive experience from. Among many firsts, Sujith designed Asia’s first open-loop transit payment model that eventually led to the creation of India’s National Common Mobility Card program. As part of India's Aadhaar program the world's largest ID program, Sujith worked on unbundling the dependence of such a large-scale program on biometric technologies in order to make the program future-flexible. Beckn is another first, that today goes beyond mobility to a diverse set of domains of digital commerce making it a one-of-a-kind universal protocol.

Sujith Nair

Co-Founder & CEO

Beckn

Per-Arne Wikström is a business professor with a Ph.D. (he learned a lot about sustainability, communication, and digitalization based on the studies). The journey into the Land of Science taught him not to accept assertions of truth at face value but to keep a critical mindset and cultivate questions as a means of ongoing progress. Working in Australia, China, Egypt, Ukraine, Italy, and Belgium has piqued his interest in various cultures. Then there's India. This, combined with the fact that he grew up in an environment where variations between people were valued assets for advancement, has made him more accepting of diversity.

Per-Arne Wikström

Head, Office of Science & Innovation

        Embassy of Sweden in India

Satyanarayan Chakravarthy is coordinating the National Centre for Combustion Research and Development (NCCRD) established by the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, in 2011, and also the Centre for Propulsion Technologies being established with the support of the Defense Research and Development Organization, Government of India. He is also an accomplished rocket scientist, combustion expert with over 25 years of experience, and cofounder of 3 IIT Madras startups. He served as a colloquium co-chair on Solid Fuels Combustion at the 37th International Symposium on Combustion in Dublin, Ireland in July 2018.

Satyanarayanan Chakravarthy

Professor, IIT, Madras

Advisor, Avishkar Hyperloop

Neeraj Jain is a partner in the Strategy and Operations practice of Deloitte Consulting. He has more than 17 years of expertise working with clients on market assessment, market entry strategy, organic growth strategy, and program management, among other things. His knowledge of technology transformation and wireless networks is extensive. In addition to assisting clients, he is also the consulting lead for Technology, Media, and Telecommunications in India. Neeraj graduated from INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France, with a Telecom Engineering degree and an MBA.

Neeraj Jain

Chief Innovation Officer,

Start-Up Ecosystem Leader & Partner

Deloitte India

 

Swaminathan Ramanathan is a researcher at Uppsala University and the co-anchor of Future Urbanisms. His study focuses on the future cities' sustainability and resilience. He also works with Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu in India as the Director of Social Impact.

Swaminathan Ramanathan

Researcher, Uppsala University

Curator, Zerocity

Director, Deloitte India

Rupali Mehra is a communications specialist and founder of Content People AB. Her company based in Visby in Gotland, Sweden, connects India and the Nordics through impact storytelling & events. She is also host of the show Firstpost Conversations, which focusses on pressing urban & sustainability issues, and writes on gender and urbanity for several publications including Conde Nast, The Mint and The Local.

Moderator

Rupali Mehra

CEO and Founder

Content People AB

Seminar 2 - New Energy Systems for the People - Lessons, Insights and Models from India & Sweden

Key Question: How can we increase the per-person access to clean and affordable energy, while reducing the world’s carbon footprint?

Seminar live link: https://www.almedalsveckanplay.info/62778

Rama is a geopolitician, business angel, and professor. He entered the capital of Pravaig Dynamics at a very early stage. At that time, Pravaig was a deep tech lab located on the outskirt of Jaipur, specialized in car engineering and batteries. He is currently the CSO of Pravaig. Ram's influence as a CXO is to use his experience in Economic Warfare in Pravaig Dynamics’ battles. In less than a year, Pravaig will start to release the first batch of 2500 premium electric cars, passenger-oriented, with incredible specs, in the streets of Delhi and Bangalore, accessible only via the Pravaig app (just like Uber) Pravaig Dynamics is developing much more than a product - fighting car ownership, planned obsolescence, CO2 emissions, geo-strategic dependency on oil, status quo of the automobile industry, data collection. Pravaig also incarnates the new direction of India. A self-resilient civilization, able to make high-end solutions tailored for the local needs. It’s time to free our minds from Jugaad.

Ram Divedi

CSO

Pravaig Dynamics

Henrik Johansson is the inventor of Spowdi, the world’s first solar-powered, zero emission solution for water distribution for small hold farmers. He has a financial and marketing background within sales, marketing and distribution in several industries for over 25 years, and diverse experience working across cultures.

Henrik Johansson

CEO and Founder

Spowdi AB

Tor Broström research is about indoor climate and energy efficiency in culturally and historically valuable buildings. It is interdisciplinary and applied study aimed at finding a sustainable balance between energy conservation and cultural preservation. His teaching focuses on the same topic as his research: moisture and heat in buildings, as well as interior environment and energy.

Tor Broström

Professor, Cultural Conservation

Uppsala University

Jonas Klevhag is a passionate business developer and entrepreneur for an improved world. His combined backgrounds with a M. Sc. in Mechanical Engineering and a freelance career as a scriptwriter for television, has been instrumental in developing the tools for collaboration, today summarized as The Bridge Method. He is a true believer that sustainability is achieved through collaboration by stakeholders that know their respective skills and incentives and mutually agree on the quantifiable values of a good enough solution.

Jonas Klevhag

Chief Operations Officer

The Bridge by Altitude

Seminar 3 - SDGs & Industry 4.0: Creating a New Purpose Economy

Key Question: How can we design and ‘hard-code’ equity from a perspective of digital democracy, socioeconomic growth, and human development?

Seminar live link: https://www.almedalsveckanplay.info/62805

The Open Invention Network's India representative, Venkatesh Hariharan, works to safeguard the open source community from patent litigation. Before taking on his current post, he established the Data Governance Network, a network of think tanks, as a Senior Fellow of the IDFC Institute. He was previously Director Fintech at the Indian Software Product Industry Round Table (iSPIRT), which developed public digital infrastructure such as IndiaStack (www.indiastack.org). He assisted several of India's top banks in adopting India Stack and its components, such as eKYC and the Unified Payment Interface, in this role. He has worked on important policy issues such as Internet legislation, open standards, software patents, open source in government, and computers in Indian languages. Hariharan is fascinated by the convergence of technology, society, and policy, with a particular interest in democratizing information access.

Venkatesh Hariharan

India Head Representative

Open Invention Network

Ranjula Bali Swain is a visiting professor and research director at the Stockholm School of Economics' Center for Sustainability Research (CSR). She is an Economics Professor at Södertörn University. She is affiliated with Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management's Center for European Research in Microfinance (CERMi). She has worked at the Geneva headquarters of the International Labour Organization. Her research covers Microfinance, Sustainable Development, Circular Economy.

Ranjula Bali Swain

Visiting Professor & Research Director

Center for Sustainable Research (CSR)

Stockholm School of Economics

Raine Isaksson

Senior lecturer, Quality technology

 Uppsala University

Jojo is a digital innovations professional with experience in leading product development, business model innovation and digital strategy. He is an entrepreneur and a digital native and is passionate about the role that digital technologies and innovation can play in addressing pressing challenges we face as a people and society. He is currently the head of products at eGovernments Foundation who are on a mission to catalyse technology-driven transformations that impact the lives of people, at scale and with speed.

Jojo Mehra

Vice President

eGov Foundation

Seminar 4 - Towards a Zero City - what the world can learn from Swedish 'lagom' and Indian 'sunya'

Key Question: Can zero as an ethos bring about a new circular model and show the way towards a more sustainable world?

Seminar live link: https://www.almedalsveckanplay.info/62841

Gokce Mete is the head of Secretariat, Leadership Group for the Industry Transition hosted by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI). LeadIT explores how policy, finance and business practices in hard-to-abate industry sectors can be aligned to achieve climate neutrality consistent with Paris Agreement and the latest scientific evidence from the IPCC. At SEI, Dr Mete also project leads research and stakeholder engagement on oil and gas transitions in the North Sea, with specific focus on technology relatedness, hydrogen, CCUS and offshore wind. Dr Mete has a decade of regulatory analysis, project development and stakeholder management experience focused on energy and industry transitions. She is also Founding Member of the Women in Green Hydrogen and Co-founder of the Women in Energy, Climate and Sustainability Foundation.

Gökçe Mete

Head of Secretariat,

Leadership Group for

the Industry Transition

Stockholm Environment Institute

Owe Ronström is a professor in the Department of Ethnology, Uppsala University. He's written extensively about music, dance, ethnicity, multiculturalism, age, heritage, and islands, among other topics. He's also produced hundreds of radio shows for the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation, featuring music from all around the world. He also performs as a member of the bands Orientexpressen and Gunnfjauns Kapell, as well as serving as the director of Gotlands Balalajkaorkester. He produced BelleSounds, the world's largest concert, in June 2013.

 Owe Ronström

Professor, Department of Ethnology

Uppsala University

Shalin Tandon works for Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), India's largest publicly traded corporation by market capitalization, as a Vice President in the Chairman's Office. Shalin's responsibilities include real-estate, infrastructure, and corporate affairs initiatives, as well as his pivotal role in the establishment of India's first global scale Convention & Exhibition Centre at the Bandra-Kurla Complex. Previously, Shalin was a key player in Reliance's telecommunications and life sciences companies. Shalin worked as an engineer for Bechtel in London, one of the world's top engineering and construction businesses, prior to joining Reliance Industries. Shalin graduated from Purdue University with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and a master's degree in wireless and satellite systems from the University of Bath in the United Kingdom. He is also an INSEAD graduate. From 2011 to 2019, Shalin served as the Honorary Consul for the Republic of Maldives. He has continued to advocate for increased investment and tourism in the Maldives, as well as increased economic and diplomatic links between India and the Maldives, during his tenure.

Shalin Tandon

Vice President

Reliance Industries Limited

Swaminathan Ramanathan is a researcher at Uppsala University and the co-anchor of Future Urbanisms. His study focuses on the future cities' sustainability and resilience. He also works with Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu in India as the Director of Social Impact.

Swaminathan Ramanathan

Researcher, Uppsala University

Curator, Zerocity

Director, Deloitte, India

Lars Ericsson

 Lecturer & Director of Studies

Uppsala University

Registration Form

Organised by:

Future Urbanisms, Uppsala University

Content People AB

Organising Committee:

Prof. Owe Ronstrom, Professor, Uppsala University 

owe.ronstrom@etnologi.uu.se

Dr. Swaminathan Ramanathan, Researcher, Uppsala University, Director (Social Impact), Deloitte India & Curator, Zerocity Network 

swaminathan.ramanathan@etnologi.uu.se

Rupali Mehra, Founder & CEO, Content People AB 

rupali@contentpeople.se

Coordinating Team:

Hithaishi Dayananda, M.S. Sustainable Development, Uppsala University

Rahul Kishorekumar, M.S. Sustainable Development, Uppsala University

Communications@contentpeople.se