Samvād Diwas 2026 — Overview
Roots to Enterprise
How to read this document
This is a consolidated overview of Samvād Diwas 2026 — Patliputra Samvad's flagship gathering for this edition. It brings together the two working rooms running on the day, the people confirmed for each room, and the closing session that brings both rooms together.
Every name listed here has confirmed. This is a record of who is coming, not a full invitation list.
Pravartakप्रवर्तक
The convener of a room. Not a moderator or a neutral chair — the Pravartak holds a point of view, drives the room's conversation toward a real conclusion, and has final say on how the room actually runs.
Sādhakसाधक
A working participant. The substance contributors in the room — the people actually building, researching, or operating in the space the room is discussing.
Sākshiसाक्षी
An observer. Present to witness the room's process without shaping its direction, offering a reflection at the close of the day.
What Patliputra Samvad is
Patliputra Samvad is a community of action-oriented people with a long memory and a longer vision for Bihar. It is not a programme with a fixed output, not a think tank that produces documents, and not an event platform. It is designed for continuity — the same people returning edition over edition, the conversation picking up where it left off.
Samvād Diwas is the yearly gathering where that community meets in person. This edition runs as a single day, structured around two working rooms, each holding one precisely framed question Bihar needs to reckon with seriously.
Agenda
Saturday, 22 August 2026 · Quad AI School of Technology and Management, Patna
Registration & introduction
10:30 – 11:00
Registration & settling
11:00 – 11:30
Opening session (all rooms together)
Room Vaishālī & Room Sonepur (parallel)
11:30 – 12:00
Introductions within the room
12:00 – 13:30
Session 1: Diagnosis
13:30 – 14:10
Working lunch
14:20 – 15:50
Session 2: Solutions & Commitments
16:00 – 16:30
Room's notes brought together for the closing presentation
Closing session
16:30 – 16:40
About Patliputra Samvad + recap of the day
16:40 – 17:20
Presentation from each room
17:20 – 18:10
Panel discussion on the presentations
18:10 – 18:15
Vote of thanks
Space on X, in collaboration with The Bihar Index
21:30
Live X Space, open to a wider audience — everyone from the room is welcome to join and share their view
Room I
Vaishālī: The Talent Layer Question
Pravartak
Shri Kshitiz Anand
Director, School of Design, Rishihood University · Co-Founder & CEO, Karekeba Ventures · CEO, Happy Horizons Trust
How do we build the layer of grounded problem-solvers Bihar needs?
Bihar has thousands of genuine problems and very few people building solutions to them from within. This room's working claim: the missing piece isn't talent, and it isn't people leaving — it's a foundational layer of observation and systems-thinking capacity that was never built, paired with a deeper recognition gap that has to exist before that capacity has anywhere to attach. A startup is one possible expression of this capacity, not the target — the same grounding could surface in research, filmmaking, civic work, or a craft practiced with new clarity. The AI transition sharpens the stakes: Bihar's students are trained predominantly for the job category most exposed to automation, and what survives is exactly the adaptive, systems-level thinking this room exists to build.
Session briefs
Diagnosing the absence. Bihar has thousands of real problems and almost no one building solutions to them from within the state. The room resists the easy answer — "talent left" — and works toward what's actually missing: the capacity to see the problem-surface in front of you as something worth acting on.
Naming the real absence. Underneath the capacity gap may sit a recognition gap — a student who has never really encountered their own district's culture or history cannot feel a claim on it. A place you don't feel claim on doesn't produce problems worth solving.
Locating the root. Where was this — observation and claim — supposed to be built: school, college, family, work? The room names both gaps as one structural failure, not a curriculum fix.
The AI reframe. Before designing anything, the room asks what the AI transition fundamentally changes about how people need to think and learn — and recognises the answer as the same capacity named missing in the earlier milestones, now more urgent.
Building the funnel. The room designs one concrete, executable programme that puts a young person in front of a specific, real problem in a specific district — and asks them to understand and feel it as theirs before being asked to solve it.
Sādhaks
Shri Amritansh Bharti
Founder, G-VAYU Robotics & AirLeap
Shri Rahul Raj
Co-Founder & COO, EduGaon
Shri Krishna Kumar
District Coordinator, National Children's Science Congress, Madhepura; B.L. Inter School, Murliganj
Shri Sumit Singh
Founder/Director, Samarthya Classes / Saamarthya Eduhub
Shri Pramod K. Karn
AIC-BVF, Bihar Vidyapith Patna
Shri Pramod Kumar
PanIIT Alumni Foundation
Shri Mitesh Mallick
Strategy Senior Manager, Strive Insurance Brokers (OKBima), Patna
Dr. Mousumi Saha
AIIMS Patna (APIIC)
Sākshi
Shri Neelabh Sharma
Assistant Director, Centre for Human Sciences, Rishihood University
Room II
Sonepur: The Startup Question
Pravartak
Shri Arvind Jha
Founder, Mithila Angel Network & Mithila Stack
Is Bihar building the right kind of ecosystem — or someone else's, optimised for the wrong conditions?
The ventures actually working in Bihar share a pattern — specific local problem, revenue before capital, indifference to ecosystem validation. None emerged from pitch competitions or idea festivals. The matching-loan provision in Bihar's 2022 startup policy — the most intelligently designed instrument in it — is inert because of an administrative interpretation a single Government Order could fix. The room's task: establish what kind of enterprise Bihar actually needs, identify sectors where conditions already favour it — including where the AI transition is about to hand Bihar's existing base a timing advantage nobody is using yet — and produce specific asks to government that named people in the room will carry forward.
Session briefs
Questioning the premise. What is a startup actually for — wealth generation alone, or also the solving of original, specific problems that existing markets aren't solving? The room agrees on a working definition before any sector question is raised.
The honest reckoning. Against that definition, the room looks at what Bihar's ecosystem currently celebrates, funds, and produces, and where the real mismatches are — whether that's a capacity problem or a signal problem, and who's driving the signal. Any comparison to Bengaluru is a conclusion the room reaches, not an assumption it starts from.
The AI advantage window. The sectors Bihar's ecosystem treats as legacy — agriculture, artisanal craft, hard-skill trades — are exactly what the post-AI economy is about to revalue: work requiring human judgment, dexterity, and presence automation hasn't reached. The room identifies which one or two sectors carry this timing advantage, and what acting on it now actually means.
Sector and reform. Given Bihar's actual conditions and the AI-era advantage identified above, the room shortlists five to seven sectors with real ground conditions, plus two or three achievable reforms — including the matching-loan Government Order — and an operational roadmap for each.
Sādhaks
Shri Abhinav Jha
Founder, Tirhutwala.com
Shri Nilesh Dixit
Founder, JustGoFix, Chhapra
Shri Amar Nath Singh Chouhan
NRIIC, Jamshedpur
Sushri Khushboo Singh
Founder, AdiRa Bio Cycles
Shri Siddhartha Shankar
Founder, Humantics
Dr. Sadhana Jha
Founder, Ankuram Robo Pvt. Ltd.
Shri Anurag Singh
Tier Two Capital
Shri Hemant Kumar Das
Founder & CEO, Naturals Dairy Pvt Ltd / Aishra Group
Shri Anjesh Sandilya
Founder, Cafe Hideout, Patna
Shri Rishi Ranjan Kumar
Founder & CEO, Ladyfair
Shri Sudarshan Kashyap
Founder, Broomerce
Shri Akash Kumar
Founder, TheBookFlight
Shri Rohit Prasad
Founder & Strategic Director, Jiffit Technology Pvt Ltd
Shri Alok Kumar
Co-Founder, Coworking Studio
Shri Saurav Singh
Co-founder, Agrix
Sākshi
Sushri Priyanka Priyadarshi
Aaramya Global
Shri Aditya K
Research Associate, Infiniti Research
Sushri Ambika Deo
Founder, Ink.Company Fashion Apparels Pvt. Ltd.
Shri Nishant Kumar
Founder, Startup Talk
Closing session — guests
Following the two working rooms, a closing ceremony brings both rooms together — each Pravartak sharing a review of their room's conversation, followed by a panel discussion. The following guests join for this closing session.
Dr. Ajay Kumar
Chairman, Bhuwaneshwar Educational and Social Trust; co-leading Pravaha University
Dr. Satyajit Kumar Singh
Managing Director (Urology) & Founder, Ruban Memorial Hospital, Patna
Shri Manish Kumar
Senior Correspondent & Bureau Chief, NDTV Patna
Our research
Patliputra Intelligence, Patliputra Samvad's research and policy arm, has published two research briefs that inform this year's working questions.
On the talent layer
What Bihar's Government-Job Economy Is Actually Costing It
On the startup question
10 Manufacturing Opportunities Bihar Has Not Taken
These briefs are offered as background reading, not as required preparation — each room's conversation is designed to be reached through the room itself, not pre-loaded from outside it.
