IIT Alumni Council invites Young Thought Leaders to present at the World Wisdom Connect, New Delhi on 23 August 2026

PNN
New Delhi [India], August 15: The IIT Alumni Council will host the World Wisdom Connect (wwCONNECT) in New Delhi on 23 August 2026. For this event, the Council will select and invite India's top young thought leaders to present their recommended pathways for Viksit Bharat 2047.
Interested speakers may submit a 1,000-word synopsis along with a recommendation from any member of the IIT Alumni Council. There is no minimum age requirement, and presentations may be delivered in Hindi or English. Students above the age of 18 are encouraged to apply.
Entries should be sent to applications@iitac.org with a copy to delhi@wwconnect.org on or before Tuesday, August 18th, 2026. Selected candidates will be intimated on August 19th, 2026, along with their time for recording in Central Delhi.
The presentations would be video-recorded in New Delhi between the 20th and 22nd of August, with the top eleven young thought leaders presenting live on the wwCONNECT stage. The event provides a unique opportunity to interact with a select group of IIT Alumni change leaders at one of the most prestigious closed-door IIT alumni events.
wwCONNECT is being convened under the World Wisdom Forum Initiative of the IIT Alumni Council. It will bring together leaders from government, industry, capital, research, academia, and civil society to explore ideas and initiatives with the potential to accelerate Viksit Bharat. The Council's mission and initiatives are guided by MegaSpheres, a civilisational orientation paradigm. It examines development through the lens of consequence, interconnectedness, and quality of life, and provides the basis for inviting nations to review and recalibrate their development plans. Such recalibration looks beyond a world that is largely organised around Survival of the Fittest, the Quest for Control and the Monetisation of Power. That thinking is reflected in the themes brought to wwCONNECT: recognising each individual as unique; moving beyond broadcast models of education and component-level healthcare; and seeking alternatives to exploitative luxury and environmentally damaging manufacturing.

Each wwCONNECT begins with a lead presentation on its theme, followed by short presentations, moderated dialogues and focused exchanges. Participants will present ideas, research and initiatives, identify potential collaborators and examine how promising work can move from discussion towards implementation. wwCONNECT draws together the people and institutions concerned, brings causes and proposals before those able to act, and engages with government, industry and capital where required.
Where an idea or initiative merits further action, the IIT Alumni Council will help bring the relevant people and institutions together and facilitate the conversations needed to take it forward. The first wwCONNECT will invite IIT Alumni Council change leaders to participate in a closed-door interactive session with the 11 chosen young thought leaders for a breakfast-to-midnight event on the 23rd of August.
NITI Aayog CEO Anurag Jain will open the inaugural session with the lead presentation, "Viksit Bharat - Context, Vision & Pathways".
The young thought leaders will present the approaches and pathways they are working with--across education, healthcare, climate change, rural development, goodness, legal reform, capital markets, venture capital, public policy and transformational technologies.
The Council's Global City Chapters and affiliated entities--such as the Lutyens Club of policymakers, the Bombay Club of corporate leaders and the Bodhi Club of wisdom seekers--will carry these conversations forward and advance the work that emerges from them.
"India's next stage of development will draw on many fields, institutions and forms of capability at once. The IIT Alumni Council sits across an unusually wide range of them. wwCONNECT is an attempt to put that breadth to useful purpose, around questions that no single sector or institution can address on its own," said Ravi Sharma, President & Chief Volunteer, IIT Alumni Council.
"wwCONNECT will bring people and institutions from different fields into conversation and prepare the way for the World Wisdom Forum. The aspiration is to bring people from many countries and many fields to New Delhi for a civilisational inquiry into the questions of our time, and what may be carried forward together. We see in it the beginning of a civilisational renaissance," added Satish Mehta, Convenor of the IIT Alumni Social Fund.
The event is being lead-sponsored by four venture studio accelerators supported by the IIT Alumni Social Fund: FT Morris Ltd, Jodhpur; Gold Berries Technology Pvt Ltd, Mumbai; Ionique Research Ltd, Delhi; and Development Catalyst, Travancore.
About the IIT Alumni Council
Founded in 2019, the IIT Alumni Council is the largest global body of alumni across all twenty-three IITs, with over 50,000 members in 100 city chapters worldwide and over 3,000 patron members. The members are united by a common purpose to use technology for accelerating socio-economic progress in India and mitigating climate change globally. The Council is dedicated to initiatives serving national progress and long-term public purpose. It is not a campus alumni association or an umbrella body of alumni associations. It is an independent and autonomous non-profit, organised by the Indian hometowns of its worldwide members. The Council hosts City Chapters in over one hundred locations globally, including several small-town and remote rural locations in India.
The Council brings considerable experience of organising at scale. During the pandemic, its COVID Task Force organised testing and prevention work across cities and institutions. Its members' efforts since have included energy & transport transition, preventive health & longevity, indigenous smartphone & AI standards, public digital infrastructure leveraging and rapid diffusion of transformational technologies. Behind these efforts stand IIT Alumni Council members - a voluntary force widely considered the most powerful innovation army on the planet, with Brand IIT, one of the world's leading technology brands, as their insignia.
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