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Nikhil Pahwa is an entrepreneur, investor, journalist and activist. He is the Founder and Editor of MediaNama, a leading publication chronicling the evolution of digital policy in India. 

Nikhil is a TED Fellow, an Asia21 Fellow and was named one of India Today Magazine’s “Indians of Tomorrow”. He has been profiled in Forbes, Wired and GQ. He is on the advisory board of the CyberBRICS project. MediaNama was awarded as an Ecosystem Builder by Fortune Magazine in 2016. 

He gave a TED Talk in 2016, and spoke at the EU’s Cyber Direct forum in 2019. He conducted two TED Discovery sessions on “How to build a movement” at the TED Summit 2019. Nikhil led the SaveTheInternet.in Campaign for Net Neutrality in 2015, which led to which led to the shut-down of Facebook’s Free Basics. He also co-founded the Internet Freedom Foundation, which focuses on advocacy for digital rights in India.

Nikhil writes TechNik, a monthly column for the Economic Times

Regulatory Engagement

Nikhil has deposed before India’s Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technically, on issues including Net Neutrality, Regulating Social Media, and Paid News, apart from participating in several technology policy and telecom consultations at the Ministry of Electronics and IT, the Department of Telecommunications, Ministry of Commerce and the telecom regulator TRAI. He was also an independent member on the Delhi Government’s committee for rolling out WiFi in Delhi. He was among the set of expert witnesses summoned by the Delhi Government’s committee on Peace and Harmony on Facebook’s alleged role in the Delhi Riots. This was the first ever government committee meeting to be livestreamed in India.

Talks, Publications, TV and more

• Talks/Panels at: Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, Columbia University, CUNY, NIPFP, ISB, NLS (Bangalore), IIT Kanpur, IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore; RightsCon, EU CyberDirect, WEF, WAN-IFRA, MozFest, TED, TEDxMICA & more
• TV channel appearances: in BBC, CNN, CNBC, DW, Al Jazeera, Channel News Asia, NDTV, CNN-IBN, India Today, Mirror Now, Times Now, CNBC-TV18, CNBC-Awaaz, NewsX & more 
• Columns / Opeds in:
  • Columns in: Foreign Policy, TED Ideas, Rest of World, Wired, Quartz, Times of India, Economic Times, Mint, Hindustan Times, Huffington Post, Scroll.in, The Hindu, The Wire, Outlook Magazine, Pragati, The Quint, FirstPost & more.
  • TechNik, a monthly column in the Economic Times
• Journalism: Over 4000 articles across MediaNama.com and ContentSutra.com (now defunct)
• Work cited in publications including: New York Times, Wired, Forbes, Quartz, ABC, The Guardian, The Economist, Washington Post, LA Times, Al Jazeera, Techcrunch, Buzzfeed, The Verge, Motherboard, Straits Times, & every major Indian publication.
• Podcasts: The Seen and the Unseen, Reddit’s Upvoted, Planet Money, Asia Inside Out, Outliers, The Filter Koffee, Around Startups, The Nullcon Podcast and Use Case; also on Radio, including NPR, Voice of America, Radio Mirchi and BIG FM.
• Research Publication: India: Trailblazer in Tech Emancipation from China for the Friedrich Naumann Foundation (2023)
• Jury work:
  • Forbes India’s 30 under 30 award (till 2017)
  • Outlook Magazines OSM awards
  • Mozilla’s Equal Rating Challenge (2016)
  • Several editions of the Mbillionth Awards for mobile innovation in South Asia
  • Manthan Awards (2012)
• Books: Nikhil authored a chapter on digital issues in the book “How Liberal is India”.
• Book citations:
  • India Connected by Ravi Agrawal
  • The Art of Conjuring Alternate Realities by Anand Venkatanarayanan and Shivam Shankar Singh
  • India Social by Ankit Lal

Investments

• PowerGummies
• VanityWagon
• (Stealth Startup)

Some videos

SOME VIDEOS

Talks

1. My TEDx Talk: [link] 
2. Talks at Google (San Francisco): “#NetNeutrality and Connecting the 4 Billion to the Internet” [link]
3. At Columbia University (New York) http://www.totalwebcasting.com/view/?func=VOFF&id=columbia&date=2016-02-10&seq=1
4. NIPFP (Delhi): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8ofUM8u0m4

Panels

1. Harvard (Cambridge): India Conference https://youtu.be/5ELFor2LYHc
2. Hero Mindmine Summit (Delhi): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZQLVRT0nck
3. CyFy (Delhi): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b2kGEF3KPU
4. Asia21: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVzL9FLhG0k 

TV / Web panels

1. India Today: https://twitter.com/IndiaToday/status/1277999388560744448 
2. CNBC-TV18 (Delhi), Net Neutrality Debate https://youtu.be/mEypH8h_Fv8
3. Times Now: https://youtu.be/ElwMABurX_w?t=776
4. CNBC-TV18: https://youtu.be/_y9QmN8ZgNs?t=532 / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cym8gqLfm5I 
5. India Today: https://twitter.com/rahulkanwal/status/1257555347994226689 
6. Boom Live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dV3O6kjws0I

Interviews

1. The Wire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlnoWyWdW8g
2. The Quint: https://www.thequint.com/tech-and-auto/why-boycott-chinese-apps-trend-will-have-no-impact-on-indo-china-ladakh-lac-standoff 
3. FirstPost: https://www.firstpost.com/news%20&%20analysis/tech2-talks-digital-rights-activist-nikhil-pahwa-explains-whats-wrong-with-aadhaar-and-how-to-fix-it-4382863.html 
4. ET Telecom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gd2GxrLO3Q 
5. Applico: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgS1DawlYK0
6. Akash Banerjee: https://youtu.be/xKuz3HoapSo 

Podcasts

1. Nullcom: https://www.facebook.com/nullcon/videos/750874622018268/ 
2. The Seen and the Unseen:
   • The future of the Internet:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXN9Deo328o
   • Aadhaar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19xbGltqqUE 
   • Online Content Regulation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRXb3Yz_IEw