Agenda
DPW Virtual Sessions
Closed Door Workshop | 10:00 AM – 05:00 PM | Bengaluru
Tech as Public Infrastructure: Building Digital Capacity for India’s Social Sector
This session reframes technology from tools to capacity, exploring how open source, shared infrastructure, and thoughtful budgeting can help organizations build resilient, community owned digital systems. The session will equip nonprofit leaders with clear frameworks, confidence in open ecosystems, and actionable plans to fund and sustain digital systems that grow with their mission and communities.
Co-hosted with Tech4Good Community
Open Door Session | 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM
Child Wellbeing as a Foundation for India’s Development
India’s development story is strongest when it places children at the center. Yet, a significant number continue to fall through systemic gaps, with risks going unidentified and interventions remaining largely reactive. This session brings together thought leaders, policymakers, funders, and civil society actors to reflect on where children are being missed, why risks go unidentified, and how systems can be strengthened. Drawing from policy, practice, and lived realities, the conversation will explore how early identification and cross-sector coordination can enable stronger and more timely child protection responses. It will examine how preventive, family and community based approaches when embedded within government systems can shift the focus from crisis response to sustained child safety and well-being.
Session partner UNICEF
- Nicole Menezes, Co-Founder, Leher
- Milen Kidane, Chief Child Protection, UNICEF India
- Dr. Delia Pop, Director, Tanya’s Dream Fund
- Dr. C K Mathew, IAS (Retd), Former Chief Secretary, Govt. of Rajasthan
- Kajal Shinde, Case Manager, Prerana
- Rishad Surti, Manager, Dasra (MODERATOR)
Open Door Session | 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM
Designing Capital for Youth Leadership: What Must Change for Philanthropy in South Asia
Across South Asia, young people are leading transformative change across climate action, gender justice, livelihoods, and civic participation. Yet, despite widespread recognition of their role, funding for youth-led work remains limited, risk-averse, and structurally misaligned with what youth leadership needs to sustain and scale. This session invites funders, practitioners, and youth leaders to rethink how capital is designed and what it truly takes for philanthropy to enable youth-led leadership to thrive, endure, and scale across diverse contexts.
- Nura Basnet, Executive Director, All In Foundation
- Korvi Rakshand, Founder, Jaago Foundation
- Prakshi Saha, Founder, FRIDA – Women’s Health Advocacy Lab
- Anand Sinha, Sr. Regional Advisor – South Asia, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation
- Anagha Kamath, Director of Innovation, Mann Deshi Foundation (MODERATOR)
Open Door Session | 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Understanding India Labour Codes in Practice
As businesses face the need to absorb the new labor codes into their daily systems, interesting workarounds are beginning to circulate. This session addresses the grey areas, myths, and risky assumptions organisations are making and explains how to interpret the codes in a way that creates a sustainable win-win for business and workers alike.
- Arjun Paleri, Partner, BTG Advaya
- Mohammed Arshath Parvez, Team Lead, Dasra (MODERATOR)
Open Door Session | 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM
No Magic Pill: Report Launch of "Under the Weather: India’s Climate-Health Intersections and Pathways to Resilience"
This session brings forth key insights from Dasra’s report, Under the Weather: India’s Climate-Health Intersections and Pathways to Resilience, making the case for integrating a climate lens into health system responses to build both short- and long-term community resilience. The session explores how this evidence can be translated to guide investments, inform programmatic decisions, and strengthen health system preparedness.
- Dr. Karan Thakur, Group Vice President, Corporate Affairs & Sustainability, Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Limited New Delhi
- Aman Bhaiya, Vice President & Head (Strategy & Growth), SBI Foundation
- Nymisha Herrera Nimmagadda, Program Lead, Climate x Health, Khushi Baby
- Kasturi Gandhi, Manager, Dasra (MODERATOR)
Open Door Session | 4:30 PM – 5:30 PM
Rethinking Financial Instruments for Inclusive Development
Across India’s development ecosystem, credit-based finance has long dominated support for low-income communities. This session examines the need for a broader toolkit, from unconditional cash and returnable grants to hybrid and blended finance, and explores how funding instruments shape risk, accountability, and outcomes. The conversation invites funders and practitioners to rethink moving beyond a default credit-first approach.
- Pankhuri Shah, Co-founder, Project DEEP
- Samir Shah, Executive Vice-Chair and Co-Founder of Dvara Holdings
- Anushree Parekh, Associate Director, Social Finance, British Asian Trust
- Ajay Kumar Sharma, CEO, Shram Sarathi
- Sujana Krishnamoorthy, Executive Director, Under The Mango Tree Society (MODERATOR)
Closed Door Session | 6:30 PM – 8:00 PM
Going Closer to the Ground: Lessons from Funding Grassroots
This session brings together funders and changemakers from different parts of the world for an honest conversation on what funding grassroots actually looks like in practice. Through personal journeys, real dilemmas, and hard-earned lessons, speakers reflect on why they chose to move closer to communities, what has worked, and what challenged their assumptions along the way. The discussion aims to highlight how trust-based, flexible support at the ground level can unlock deep, durable impact and why, for many funders, it has become the most meaningful way to give.
- Adam Khorakiwala, CFO, Switz Group
- Rajiv Khanna, Vice President, Thousand Currents (MODERATOR)
- Rati Forbes, Director, Forbes Marshall
- Anuradha Rajan, PhD, Executive Director of Women’s Fund India (South Asia Women Foundation India)
There’s a lot
happening at DPW 2026.
Exciting programming, speakers, thought-provoking panels and workshops, curated networking, and more.