A TEDx talk is a constrained format: eighteen minutes maximum, a single developed idea, a live audience that self-selects. Delivering one well requires a speaker to have something specific to say, not just general expertise or professional standing. The women on this list have cleared that bar. Each has delivered a TEDx talk in India or to a predominantly Indian audience, and each has a documented professional record in the area they spoke about. The range is deliberately wide. It includes a Paralympic medallist who spoke about disability and public recognition, a public health entrepreneur who built a company around menstrual hygiene, a banker who created a financial platform exclusively for Indian women, and an author who delivered her first talk at age eleven. What connects them is that their ideas held up in the format and that they are actively available to speak at corporate events, universities, and professional conferences beyond the TEDx stage. Booking a TEDx-verified speaker signals editorial scrutiny to an audience. This list makes finding the right one less dependent on internal shortlists and word-of-mouth networks.
1. Aditi Gupta
Co-founder, Menstrupedia
Aditi Gupta is the co-founder of Menstrupedia, a social enterprise that produces menstrual health education comics distributed across India and internationally in multiple languages. Menstrupedia addresses a specific gap: the absence of clear, accessible, shame-free information about menstruation for adolescent girls and their families, particularly in contexts where formal sex education is absent or inadequate. Her TEDx talk brought her work to global attention, and she has since spoken at education forums, health conferences, and social enterprise events on menstrual health as a public health issue, the role of stigma in determining health outcomes for women and girls, innovation in social communication, and building a product company around a taboo subject. She is a compelling speaker on the systemic factors that shape how menstruation is discussed or not discussed in Indian society, and on what changes when that silence is broken.
Connect with her on LinkedIn.
2. Chetna Gala Sinha
Founder, Mann Deshi Bank
Chetna Gala Sinha founded Mann Deshi Bank in Mhaswad, Maharashtra, recognised as India's first bank established by and for rural women. The bank emerged from her observation that women in the region who needed financial services were structurally excluded from the formal banking system, and that the solution was not to modify them to fit the system but to build a different one. She has since established a cluster of institutions including a business school and a sports academy serving rural women, and was named among TIME magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World. Her TEDx talk and subsequent speaking address financial inclusion as a structural problem with structural solutions, the experience of building institutions in rural India, women's economic empowerment beyond microfinance orthodoxies, and what banking for women outside the formal system actually requires in practice.
Connect with her on LinkedIn.
3. Laxmi Agarwal
Acid Attack Survivor and Activist
Laxmi Agarwal is an acid attack survivor and activist who was attacked at fifteen and became a leading voice for legal reform and survivor support in India. Her advocacy was instrumental in legal changes to acid attack sentencing and the regulation of acid sales, and she has worked with the Chhanv Foundation, which supports acid attack survivors through recovery and reintegration. Her TEDx talk has been widely viewed, and she speaks on survival, resilience, and the advocacy process, on what it means to speak publicly as someone whose body carries visible evidence of violence, and on the policy and social changes needed to protect women from acid attacks and support survivors. She does not speak primarily as a survivor but as someone who has translated personal experience into measurable legal and social change. Find her on Instagram.
Connect with her on Instagram.
4. Kiran Bedi
India's First Woman IPS Officer
Kiran Bedi is India's first woman officer of the Indian Police Service, entering the service in 1972 and going on to serve at its highest levels, including as the UN's Police Advisor, the most senior position available to a police officer in the United Nations system. Her TEDx talk documented her approach to institutional reform and leadership, and her speaking career has since covered gender equality in public institutions, women in law enforcement and government, institutional reform, and what it takes to sustain change within hierarchical systems over the long term. She is available through her own agency and speaks to audiences across corporate, government, and academic contexts. Her talk on leadership draws on a career that is itself a case study in navigating gender in a uniformed service built entirely before women were allowed into it.
Connect with her on LinkedIn.
5. Kiran Mazumdar Shaw
Executive Chairperson, Biocon
Kiran Mazumdar Shaw founded Biocon in Bengaluru in 1978 in a rented garage with a single employee, and has since built it into one of India's largest biopharmaceutical companies, a significant global manufacturer of insulin, and a listed entity on the Bombay Stock Exchange. She began her career as a master brewer and moved into biotechnology when she encountered the emerging industry. She is one of India's most prominent technology entrepreneurs and has spoken extensively on women in science, technology, and entrepreneurship, the history of building a science-led company in India before the ecosystem existed to support it, affordable healthcare as a systemic challenge, and the specific barriers facing women who enter technical and science-based industries. Her talks are grounded in operational reality: she built the company herself, made the decisions, and navigated the failures.
Connect with her on LinkedIn.
6. Srishti Bakshi
Women's Safety Advocate, Founder, CrossBow
Srishti Bakshi is the founder of CrossBow, an initiative built around her solo 3,800-kilometre walk across India from Kanyakumari to Badrinath, which she undertook to document and amplify conversations about women's safety and rights at the ground level. The walk brought her into direct contact with women, activists, community leaders, and policymakers across states, and those conversations became the content of her advocacy work. Her TEDx talk captures the idea behind the walk and what she found along the way. She speaks on women's safety in public spaces, the gap between policy commitments and community-level reality on women's rights in India, grassroots advocacy and what it produces, and the use of physical journeys as acts of social inquiry. She brings a journalist's instinct for specificity to advocacy work, grounding her talks in particular stories rather than generalisations.
Connect with her on LinkedIn.
7. Dr. Deepa Malik
Paralympic Medallist; President, Paralympic Committee of India
Dr. Deepa Malik is India's first woman Paralympic medallist, having won a silver medal in shot put at the 2016 Rio Paralympics. Paralysed from the chest down following spinal surgery, she went on to compete at the international level in multiple sports, including swimming, hand cycling, and athletics. She was awarded the Padma Shri and the Arjuna Award, and she has served as President of the Paralympic Committee of India. Her TEDx talk and subsequent speaking address disability, the systems that enable or prevent people with disabilities from competing and participating in public life, and what it means to challenge the physical and social limits placed on differently abled individuals. She speaks not primarily from the perspective of personal inspiration but as an athlete and administrator who has worked within sports governance to expand access.
Connect with her on LinkedIn.
8. Dr. Jasmin B Gupta
Co-founder and CEO, LXME
Dr. Jasmin B Gupta is the co-founder and CEO of LXME, a financial platform built specifically for women in India, designed to close the persistent gap in financial products, education, and services genuinely shaped around how women earn, save, and invest across different life stages. The platform rests on a specific thesis: that the financial industry's standard products and communication were designed for a male default user, and that building differently for women is both commercially viable and socially necessary. Her TEDx talk addressed women and personal finance in India, drawing on her background in investment banking and financial advisory. Her speaking work covers women's financial literacy, the gender wealth gap, fintech entrepreneurship in India, building a company with an explicit social mission in a regulated sector, and what changes when financial platforms are designed with women as the primary user.
Connect with her on LinkedIn.
9. Sairee Chahal
Founder and CEO, SHEROES
Sairee Chahal founded SHEROES, a women-only community and professional platform that has grown to over 30 million members, and Mahila Money, a lending platform for women entrepreneurs in India. She has been building companies in the women-and-work space for over a decade, and her perspective as a founder is shaped by years of practical experience: building products, raising capital, managing teams, and scaling a business whose existence depends on proving that women-focused platforms are commercially serious. Her TEDx talk addressed the structural barriers women face in professional life. She speaks on the economics of women's participation in the workforce, the specific gaps in how India's digital economy has been designed for women, and what it takes to keep a platform company relevant across a decade of disruption. Her talks are data-informed, operationally grounded, and direct about what has and has not worked.
Connect with her on LinkedIn.
10. Ishita Katyal
Author; Among the Youngest TEDx Speakers in India
Ishita Katyal is an author and speaker who delivered her first TEDx talk at age eleven, making her one of the youngest TEDx speakers in India at the time. She has written multiple books and has spoken on the capacity of young people to think and create seriously, on why childhood should not be treated only as preparation for adulthood, and on the importance of allowing children to pursue ideas rather than just curricula. She now speaks at education forums, leadership events, and corporate gatherings, bringing a perspective that challenges assumptions about who has relevant ideas and what age has to do with credibility. Her experience of building a body of work as a young person in India, and of navigating the scepticism that accompanies that, gives her talks a particular texture for audiences who work with or invest in young people.
Connect with her on LinkedIn.
About Draupadi on the Dais
Draupadi on the Dais exists in part because access to good speakers should not depend on who you know or which agencies dominate the circuit. The TEDx speakers listed here represent a cross-section of the ideas, sectors, and experiences that have earned a place on that particular stage. TEDx has its own curation process; the Dais has its own. Every speaker on this platform is individually verified before their profile goes live. Being a TEDx alumni is not sufficient on its own for inclusion, but it is a meaningful signal that a speaker has developed a specific idea to a point of public presentation. For event organisers looking for speakers who have been tested in front of an audience and who can address a specific subject with clarity and authority, this list is a useful starting point.
Browse the full Women TEDx Speakers in India roster on Draupadi on the Dais.