How do you build for the millions the innovation world forgets? Explore at Imperial with India's most consequential journalist.
Tens of millions of Indians get their news from a platform built by a journalist from a village in Uttar Pradesh. How that happened - and what it teaches us about purpose-driven innovation - is one of the most important conversations London hasn't yet had.
Join us for an in-person fireside conversation with Saurabh Dwivedi - Founding Editor of The Lallantop and Senior Editor at The Indian Express - about what it takes to build for the 500 million people the global innovation conversation usually forgets.
In 2016, from within a traditional media conglomerate, Saurabh built something the innovation world has no good name for. Not a startup. Not just a platform. What The Lallantop actually became was the most ambitious inclusive information infrastructure built in India in a generation - taking serious journalism, stripping it of its elite English armour, and handing it to the people who think in Hindi.
The answer was tens of millions of subscribers, and a platform that redefined what serious journalism could look like in a vernacular, digital, democratic form.
That is not a media story. That is an innovation story.
What we'll explore
Building innovation that begins with access, not advantage
What the Indian media landscape taught us about scale, language, and inclusion
Purpose as a business model: can editorial integrity and reach truly coexist?
The role of vernacular in the next frontier of digital innovation
What it costs to build with purpose inside systems that don't always share it
In conversation with
Dr Sankalp Chaturvedi, Associate Dean of EDI and Co-director, Gandhi Centre for Inclusive Innovation, Imperial College London and;
Sanam Arora, Founder & Chair, National Indian Students and Alumni Union
Followed by an open Q&A with the audience. Refreshments will be served.
Why this, why now
The Gandhi Centre for Inclusive Innovation exists precisely to ask the questions mainstream innovation culture avoids. Whose problems get solved? Who gets to be the innovator? What does it mean to build something that serves the last person, not the first mover?
If you work in technology, media, policy, education, social impact — or simply care about what innovation should actually mean in a world of nearly eight billion people — this is for you.
Hosted as part of Imperial's Social Impact Day by the Gandhi Centre for Inclusive Innovation, Imperial Business School, in partnership with NISAU — the National Indian Students and Alumni Union UK.
This event is free, but registration is essential. Seats are limited.
