Gayatri Jayaraman is Senior Editor with DNA and author of three forthcoming books, ‘Who Me, Poor?’ and ‘Who Me, Feminist?’ both by Bloomsbury India and of ‘IndieGenius: India’s 10 Best Working Models’ by Juggernaut. She has 18 years experience in journalism and has worked with India Today group, where she designed the opinion site DailyO, conceptualised the India Today Art Awards and wrote a satirical column called The Daily Toast. She’s worked with Mint Lounge and the Times of India group and has been a columnist for Swarajya, Newslaundry, The News Minute, IndiaSpend and other online news magazines.


The title of her talk is, "Going For Broke". Young Indians are in a never before scenario of democratisation of talent. No longer do you have to have professional degrees from specific institutions to make it all of three worthy career options. Life has opened up to great ideas, great personality and great drive. The flip side of that is that talent today compates for virality with a cat video on the internet to be noticed. Young people are therefore going for broke – putting themselves literally into debt to get the message of themselves out. What factors influence it and is it of any use if it boxes us into a single definition of what constitutes success?