Subhajit Mukherjee, widely known as "The Green Man of Mumbai," brought his story of planting over 82,000 trees across the city and pioneering the concept of "Micro Sponge Gardens" a nature-based solution tackling urban flooding, waterlogging, groundwater depletion, and vanishing biodiversity in a single framework. "This gives the powers to the individuals to conserve Nature," he said.
Somdatta Karak, a scientist turned science communicator who heads Science Communication and Public Outreach at CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, addressed one of modern medicine's most urgent crises, antimicrobial resistance. "Let's pick our sphere of influence, be it our household, our community, our city or the country, and get the work started," she urged.
Tarun Kumar Bansal, a hospitality entrepreneur and Managing Director of Arya Niwas Hospitality, Jaipur, and a three-decade veteran of heritage hospitality, reframed tourism as an act of cultural preservation. "These are stories from the past, of nature, wells, buildings, forts, music, crafts and innumerable people who make up who we are," he said.
Pranshu Soni, an archaeologist and heritage educator, traced his journey from childhood storytelling to fieldwork, making the case that curiosity is the thread connecting people to their past. "Sometimes you are not discovering something that nobody has ever seen," he said. "You are learning to look at something that has been there for a very long time."
Anastassiya Savchenko, founder of the Indian Women Impact and co-founder of the "Back To School" initiative that brought underprivileged children back into education during Covid-19, spoke about the hidden cost of compassion work. "Compassion is not self-immolation," she said. "It is sustainable fire."
Seema Wadhwa, co-founder of Pickles and Wine, a food and recipe platform with a community of over 600,000 followers, asked students to rethink how they approach their futures. A former journalist turned entrepreneur turned content creator, she traced how every seeming detour in her career had quietly been building towards the next chapter. "What am I curious enough to try next?" she offered as an alternative to the question every young person dreads.
Arham Jain, a Grade 12 student of Neerja Modi School, Regeneron ISEF 2026 finalist and Gold Medallist at the IRIS National Science Fair, brought the youngest voice to the stage. He built a machine that studies how dust affects photosynthesis in urban plants. "A plant being green doesn't necessarily mean it's doing well," he said. "And planting something doesn't automatically mean we've solved the problem."
Eleven Years: A Legacy
This year's speakers were the latest in a line that stretches back over eleven years.
Journalist Bahar Dutt once issued an environmental call to action from the same stage. Ranjana Kumari spoke about equal rights. Abhishek Gupta, co-founder of WeVOIS Labs, showed students how technology can restore dignity to sanitation workers. Aradhana Rai Gupta, a Forbes 30 Under 30 awardee and co-founder of Project Baala, spoke about resilience as the most human skill in an age shaped by AI. Rajat Arya, CEO of 169Pi, challenged students to stop being passive consumers of artificial intelligence and start becoming its creators. Rishabh Suri, co-founder of Qudrat, told students why he chose entrepreneurship over the comfort of his family business. And Sanjeeva Shivesh, founder of ThinkStartup, drove home the power of small experiments and early decision-making as the foundation of entrepreneurial thinking.
These were not celebrity appearances or motivational spectacles, they were working professionals, activists, and founders sharing hard-won lessons with an audience young enough to act on them.
More Than an Event
At Neerja Modi School, recently awarded a AAAAA rating in Careers360's India's Best Schools 2026 for academic performance, faculty quality and infrastructure, the belief is clear: leadership is not taught through teaching alone. The school puts this belief into practice by providing platforms for engagement, role models to learn from, and experiences that connect what happens inside the classroom to what is happening beyond it.
For over a decade, TEDxNMS Youth has provided all these. By the time the final applause faded this year, the theme lingered: a reminder that the strongest wings are grown by those who know their roots.
