New Delhi, Jan. 21: An 80-member strong Indian delegation from CII will participate in the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, from January 23 to 27, 2008.

The delegation comprises CEOs of major Indian companies, media and civil society representatives. While the Finance Minister, P Chidambaram, will lead the delegation, Sunil Bharti Mittal, President, CII and Chairman and Group CEO, Bharti Enterprises, will lead the delegation of over 60 CEOs from India.

The overarching theme of the meeting is “The Power of Collaborative Innovation”. The Indian contingent is part of the over 2600 participant-strong community that will include 27 heads of state or government, 113 cabinet ministers, along with religious leaders, media leaders and heads of non-governmental organizations from 88 countries.

K V Kamath, Vice President, CII and MD and CEO, ICICI Bank Ltd, will be a Co-Chair of the Meeting, along with Tony Blair, Former Prime Minister of UK and Indra Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo, among others. Dr R K Pachauri, Chairman of the UN Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change, which won the Nobel Peace Prize recently, will share the stage with Mr Hamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan, at the opening, where two epochal challenges, climate change and terrorism, will be discussed.

Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath, the Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel and the Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh will also participate in the programme. For the first time, India will have a strong presence in the faculty category, with participation by the likes of Dr R Chidambaram, Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government, Dr Brahma Chellaney, Professor at the Centre for Policy Research and an expert on geo-politics, Hemant Oberoi, Executive Grand Chef of the Taj Hotels and Jaya Row, Founder of Vedanta Vision.

Over 30 members of the Indian delegation will join the discussions in around 42 sessions over the four days to lend an important Indian perspective to global issues ranging from climate change, nuclear energy, science and society to water, global economic shocks, urban infrastructure and renewal and leadership and skill development.

Two India focused sessions will discuss India's strategic national interests and its take on major global issues ranging from climate change, energy security, terrorism and trade liberalization, as well as the ways in which Indian companies and institutions are transforming themselves into centres of excellence through the power of innovative models.

CII and Indian companies would be organizing several events on the sidelines of the Annual Meeting. While CII will organize its traditional annual “India Reception” and breakfast sessions in partnership with Indian companies, many Indian companies like Wipro, Infosys, Satyam, TCS and IBEF will organize their own breakfast sessions, reception and Bollywood music evenings in Davos.

The CII delegation includes Mukesh and Anil Ambani of Reliance Industries, Nandan Nilekani and Kris Gopalakrishnan of Infosys, Deepak Puri of Moser Baer, Malvinder Singh of Ranbaxy, B Rama Raju of Satyam, Adi and Jamshyd Godrej, Shiv Nadir and Vineet Nayar of HCL, Jignesh Shah of Financial Technologies, Ashwin Dani of Asian Paints, Rahul and Madhur Bajaj of Bajaj Auto, Rajendra Pawar of NIIT, Y C Deveshwar of ITC, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw of Biocon, Uday Kotak of Kotak Mahindra, Anand Mahindra of Mahindra and Mahindra, Vijay Mallya of UB, Azim Premji of Wipro S Ramadorai of TCS, Dhruv Sawhney of Triveni, KP Singh of DLF and Lt Gen S S Mehta and Ajay Khanna of CII, among others. (ANI)