A Tech Pioneer @ the India Economic Summit: Tradition only gets better with change

Elisabet de los Pinos, Founder and CEO of Aura Biosciences, a 2010 Tech Pioneer company, sent us her impressions while attending the India Economic Summit 2011 held in Mumbai on 12-14 November.                          

I am sitting in the back of a taxi in Mumbai going through a shock of contrasts while trying to not be afraid of killing an entire family on a motorbike… or of being killed by a big multicolored truck whose ironic message on the back reads: “Please Horn!”.

India, with its dizzying growth and expansion is a study in contrasts: a society from saris to software engineers, and slums to skyscrapers – all in impossibly close proximity.  Yet, it is not the oxen on the street pulling oil tanks or the curious concept of motorized rickshaws that leave me with the greatest impression, but rather this eclectic mix of 1.2 billion dreamers with sparkling eyes who exude enthusiasm and excitement, and seem to say they have nothing to lose.

I am here attending the India Economic Summit organized by the World Economic Forum. Three intense days of that Davos Aura that makes you feel like all is possible. Where the pace of what’s happening challenges even the best of these thronging journalists to transcribe it to media in time for the next event.  I leave India with the same wide eyes of the millions of Indian kids who read Lisa Heydlauff’s “Going to School” books and the hope that I will have the opportunity to come back again soon.

 

More about the World Economic Forum in India: http://www.weforum.org/events/india-economic-summit-2011