Hyderabad : The ‘Annual Conference on Technology & Society’, a confluence of all stakeholders in the tech for social space held by IIIT Hat Gachibowli in Hyderabad. IIIT Hyderabad is a higher-education institute deemed to be a university, founded as a non-profit public-private partnership (N-PPP). It is the first IIIT in India under this model.

Ajit Rangnekar. the keynote speaker said, “It is highly necessary that we work along with the frontline stakeholders (NGOs) on the ground to build solutions. Unless we do that, our solutions can never really benefit them.”

The conference which was organised recently at its campus brought together social scientists, NGOs, technologists, research groups, innovators, policymakers, impact funders and CSR organizations.

The two roundtables deliberated on Net Zero Innovation and Beyond and ESG: Corporates, NGOs, and the CSR Convergence. Some of the panelists are NGOs like – Goonj, Recykal, and Surge Impact; Startups like – Greenovate Solutions; Corporates like – Infosys, HDFC, Tech Mahindra, and RE Sustainability; Policymakers like – 3P Foundation; Impact Funders like – Caspian, and a few others.

Three plenary panels were held. They were held on collaboration as the key to building social innovation, frontlines of LLMs, and funding tech-led social change. The panels included speakers like Nitin Desai (Agastya International Foundation), Dr Venu Gopal J (ZF), Prerna Nayak (Microsoft), Rennis Joseph (Ignis Careers), Sanghishetty Umakanth (ITC WOW), Nymisha Puvvada (Indian Angel Network), Sai Pramodh (Caspian), and few others.