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Yashraj Akashi
TEDx | EDGE Community | PHD Chamber of Commerce | Refash | TEDxGateway | 15 years of bringing the best ideas to the global stage
Yashraj Akashi is a prominent figure in India's business and innovation landscape. He serves as the Co-Chair at the PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry, focusing on the development of small and medium-sized businesses.6 Additionally, he is the founder of TEDxGateway, which is India's largest ideas festival, established in 2010.35 Yashraj is also a Senior Ambassador for TEDx and the founder of the EDGE Community HQ.3 He is known for his collaborative and visionary approach, often engaging in discussions with influential figures in various fields.24
On LinkedIn, Yashraj Akashi shares insights and engages in conversations about innovation, entrepreneurship, and community building. His profile highlights his role as a collaborator and a visionary with a strong network of professionals and entrepreneurs.17 Yashraj is based in Maharashtra, India, and has been involved in various international events, such as the DLD Conference in Munich.4
Highlights
I thought we’d lost him!
There are moments in life that make your heart stop—moments when you receive news so devastating that it feels like the world has come crashing down.
For me, that moment happened on April 17th, 2023, when I learned that Anurag Maloo, FRSA, a friend of a dear friend and a cherished member of our EDGE community, had gone missing on Mount Annapurna.
I was in Detroit at a TED event when the news reached me. Anurag had been attempting to climb his first 8,000-meter peak, but somewhere between Camp 3 and 2, the most dangerous section of Mt Annapurna, he vanished.
My heart sank.
Days passed, and with no sign of him, we feared the worst. People speculated and everyone was slowly losing hope!
I was still in shock! I couldn’t believe it—how could this happen to someone so full of life, so committed to making the world a better place?
One by one, people were giving up!
As soon as we heard, the EDGE community and others Anurag nurtured over the last decade sprang into action. Friends, colleagues, and even strangers rallied together, reaching out to everyone—from Apple’s top engineers to government officials, Garmin’s management, local politicians, army leaders, and sherpas—all working to bring Anurag home.
The sheer scale of the effort was breathtaking. It felt like the entire world was pulling together, refusing to let go of hope.
We felt hope again!
And then, after 3 days and 3 nights, our prayers were answered most miraculously.
Two Polish climbers, Adam Bielecki and Mariusz Hatala, along with a team of Nepalese Sherpas, found Anurag alive but hanging by a thread—trapped in a 80-meter-deep crevasse.
Against all odds, they pulled him out. The rescue was nothing short of a miracle.
But the journey wasn’t over. Anurag was in critical condition, barely clinging to life.
He was airlifted by the fearless pilot Sobit Gauchan to a nearby hospital in Pokhara, where doctors declared him dead after 30 minutes of CPR.
Yet, even then, his younger brother, Aashish and his family, refused to give up.
He begged the doctors to keep trying, and after four relentless hours, Anurag took his first breath, his second chance at life.
Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to meet Anurag a few times, especially as we worked closely together on building his talk from October 2023 to the main TEDxGateway stage in March 2024.
His resilience and spirit during this time have been nothing short of inspiring.
As the founder of TEDxGateway, I’ve witnessed some of the most incredible stories, but Anurag’s will stay with me forever.
His story shows us how to fight against the odds, trust in community, and keep hope alive in the darkest moments.
We are all incredibly proud of you, Anurag, and we’re honored to have you back with us. Your story is far from over, and we’re all here, ready to support you every step of the way.
The TEDx talk is live now, and you can check it out from the first comment.
#InspiringStory #TEDx #TED
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Mesh works by automatically bringing together your contacts from various sources like email, calendar, address book, iOS Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and iMessage. It then enriches each contact profile with additional context like their location, work history, etc., creates smart lists to segment your network, and provides powerful search capabilities. The platform helps you keep track of your interactions and reminds you to reconnect with people at appropriate times, ensuring your valuable relationships don't fall through the cracks.
Mesh offers several powerful features including:
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Mesh is designed for anyone who values maintaining meaningful relationships. The app is popular among a wide range of industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. It’s even used by half the Fortune 500! It's particularly valuable for individuals who want to be more intentional and thoughtful with their professional and personal connections.
Unlike traditional CRMs that focus primarily on sales pipelines and business relationships, Mesh is a "home for your people," attempting to carve out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. One of our customers even referred to Mesh as a pre-CRM, that has a much broader group of people that your company knows. Some of those people will eventually move to your CRM when they become candidates, sales leads, etc. Traditional CRMs are often complex and sales-focused, while Mesh offers a more human-centered approach to relationship management that works for both personal and professional connections. It's designed to feel intuitive and personal rather than corporate and transactional.
Mesh takes privacy seriously. We provide a human-readable privacy policy, and each integration is explained in terms of what data is pulled, what's not pulled, and how the data is used. Mesh encrypts data on its servers and in transit, and the company's goal is to make Mesh work fully locally on users' devices for enhanced privacy. Mesh is also SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
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Mesh offers tiered pricing options to suit different needs. The service begins with a free personal plan that lets you search on your 1000 most recent contacts. Mesh offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Mesh for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Mesh accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
Yes, Mesh offers extensive integration capabilities. Mesh introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Mesh supports. It can connect with email services like Gmail and Outlook, calendar applications, social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, and even Notion for knowledge management. Mesh also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
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Mesh makes it much easier to stay in touch with the people you care about. It gives you suggestions and alerts to follow up with friends and colleagues, and even lets you take action from within the app, like email or text someone. Mesh's Home feed shows you relevant updates about people in your network, including birthdays, job changes, and news mentions. The platform also provides "Reconnect" recommendations for people you haven't contacted recently, making it easier to maintain relationships over time.
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Mesh is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Mesh offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Mesh's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Mesh has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Mesh is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Mesh beneficial.
Mesh offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Mesh offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Mesh's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Mesh offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Mesh focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Mesh also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Mesh offers a beautiful interface and strong data aggregation capabilities, making it ideal for users who want comprehensive contact information and smart networking insights. Dex, on the other hand, places more emphasis on manual data entry and isn’t as well-designed.
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Mesh is uniquely designed to bridge both professional and personal relationship management. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh helps you organize your contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. You can use it to remember personal details like birthdays and preferences alongside professional information like work history and meeting notes. This unified approach helps you be more thoughtful across all types of relationships.
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