Wednesday
18
February 2026
5:00 PM IST
Location
Room 019, School of Engineering and Applied Science
Central Campus
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Why is India's GDP per capita 20% of China's Today when it was the same in 1991?
The Nalanda
Manish Sabharwal
Co-founder
TeamLease Services
Speaker
Pankaj Chandra
Vice Chancellor
Chairman, Board of Management
Ahmedabad University
Moderator
Speaker
Manish Sabharwal
Manish Sabharwal is the co-founder of TeamLease Services, India’s largest staffing and human capital firm. He completed his Masters in Business Administration from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, he is also an alumnus of Shriram College, Delhi, and Mayo College, Ajmer. TeamLease operates across 5,000 cities with over 350,000 employees and is leading initiatives such as India’s first vocational university in Gujarat and the first national Public Private Partnership(PPP) apprenticeship program. Over the past 20 years, the company has facilitated employment for more than 20 lakh individuals. Earlier, he co-founded India Life, an HR services company later acquired by New York Stock Exchange-listed Hewitt Associates, where he served as Chief Executive Officer of Hewitt Outsourcing (Asia) in Singapore. He has contributed to multiple central and state government committees on education, employment, and employability. He has served on the boards of the Reserve Bank of India, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, and the National Skill Mission. He currently serves on the boards of TeamLease, New India Foundation, National Council of Applied Economics Research (NCAER), Neev Academy, Gaja Capital, PhonePe, and Kanpur Education Society. A regular columnist for The Indian Express, he also co-authored Kashmir Under 370: A Personal History by J&K’s Former Director General of Police (2024) with Mahendra Sabharwal.
Moderator
Pankaj Chandra
Professor Pankaj Chandra is the Vice Chancellor and Chairman of the Board of Management at Ahmedabad University. He earned his PhD from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and has taught at institutions including McGill University, the University of Geneva, The Wharton School, the International University of Japan, and Cornell University. He previously served as Director of the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB) and as Professor of Operations and Technology Management there. His research and teaching interests span manufacturing management, supply chain coordination, technological capability building, higher education policy, and high-tech entrepreneurship. He has published extensively in international refereed journals, served on multiple editorial boards, and authored the book Building Universities that Matter: Where Are Indian Institutions Going Wrong? (2017).
