Lakshmi Pratury is a storyteller who encourages others to tell stories and to dream big. Then she helps them transform their dreams into reality. Founder of Innovation and Knowledge (INK) talks in 2010, Lakshmi has put India’s best and boldest under the limelight by giving them a platform to tell their stories to a worldwide audience. While doing that Lakshmi realised that the real work in India is not only about telling stories but in creating paths to turn those stories into reality.
“That is because we don’t have the infrastructure to translate ideas into action easily since we are a young economy. So, we spent the last eight years organising eight conferences in India, two in Singapore and two more with Singularity University, 500 talks, many of which went viral, and got 50 million views on different channels,” she explains.
Dressed in a white kurta and black salwar, teamed with a grey stole, Lakshmi is busy interacting with INK fellows, bureaucrats, technocrats and her staff. After a hectic round of presentations and interactions at KTDC Samudra in Kovalam, Lakshmi sits down to talk about the latest INK projects and how a senior employee of Intel became a dream merchant and storyteller herself.
“I was convinced about the power of storytelling. I felt that the narrative of Indian stories has been told by others. Whether it be our history, geography or technology, on a global space, the stories about India are not told by Indians. There are so many amazing stories of Indian innovation that are not being told on a global scale. And I wanted those people to tell the stories themselves, in their own voices, their own accents and spaces and make an impact on a global space.”
Conviction of courage
Since Lakshmi had been going to Ted Talks since 1993 and had also seen had seen the impact of the talks, she wondered if she could bring that to India. “Why not put 30 to 40 stories on India on Ted talks? The stories we did had so much of depth that they became viral, whether it be Sunitha Krishnan talking about her work of rescuing women being trafficked or Devdutt Patnaik talking about mythology or Pranab Mistry talking about sixth sense. The variety of India, technology, social changes, innovations, business… started getting noticed on a very different level.”
Now, Lakshmi is getting set to launch the INK talks in regional languages such as Hindi, Bengali, Telugu and Malayalam. The first INK talk in Malayalam by naval architect Sandith Thandasherry was recorded on the sidelines of the INK conference in Thiruvananthapuram.
“Initially, when we told people to tell their stories, they were hesitant because not all were comfortable in English. But we polished their story-telling skills and told them to talk in their own style. That did the trick. They have to own the story and tell it in their style,” she says, during a whirlwind visit to Thiruvananthapuram for an INK Salon in association with SunTec, held as part of Trailblazers 2018, Next Billion Online.
She says the most important result of the talks is that “we have given the Indian youth role models to look up to and people who come from the same background as they do and been through similar situations.”
She adds: “It is not about running the largest company. Have you had the largest leap in your journey? Or we look for behind the scenes insights. How did you make this happen? What were your low points? It is about celebrating the journey and not blowing your trumpet.”
Every year, 20 speakers are selected from about 1,000 applications for a fellow programme. The selectors ensure that there is a balance of disciplines, of gender and geography. “They need not be Indians. But all the solutions must be applicable to India. For instance, look at Sabriye Tenberken [founder of Kanthari in Kerala]. She is German but what she is doing is very relevant to India.”
The talks, according to her, are a catalyst to get youngsters interested. “I wanted to help people from different disciplines interact with other and create projects. And also explain the kind of assistance they are seeking, the kind of expertise that they would need to go to the next level…”
Every year, there is an INK retreat where all the INK fellows join in for brainstorming sessions. “Some of them have made it and don’t need our help any more. But many of them still come to listen, help or interact. They feel at home,” she adds.
Lakshmi admits with a smile that she is an ambitious woman “but I want to see if I can grow by helping others evolve and grow even bigger. It is about the power of celebrating the success of others and learning from that.”
