PNN
New Delhi [India], June 25: Geetika Saigal, 7-time TEDx speaker, 4-time bestselling author, founder of Beeja House, and one of India's most recognised voices on authority and publishing -- has launched The Sabha, India's first invite-only intellectual gathering curated around a single question. Two evenings have been held. Both ran three hours.
The idea did not begin with ambition. It began with a frustration Geetika kept returning to across years of working with CXOs, doctors, founders, and senior professionals -- people who had spent decades building genuine expertise, and who kept showing up to conferences, panels, and networking events and leaving quietly disappointed. Not because the rooms were bad. Because the conversations were. The real questions, the ones that actually troubled them, never got asked. There was always a format in the way.
That frustration became a question: what would happen if the format was simply removed?
India is not short of events. It has summits and conclaves and stages and startup ecosystem gatherings and industry dinners and leadership forums -- and most of them are genuinely useful for what they are: stages for ideas that are ready to be performed, rooms for relationships that are ready to be transacted, platforms for expertise that is ready to be marketed. What they are not -- structurally, by design -- is spaces where a question can be asked before anyone knows the answer.
The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 found that analytical thinking is now the single most in-demand skill globally, cited as essential by seven in ten employers. By 2025, three in four knowledge workers globally were using AI -- tools extraordinary at answering questions, but incapable of sitting with the discomfort of not knowing. That capacity is becoming rare precisely as it becomes most valuable. An Ipsos global survey found that 43% of urban Indians report feeling lonely most of the time, placing India among the top three countries worldwide. A Harris Poll published in March 2026 found that 79% of US hiring managers say professional networking today feels more like a business transaction than a genuine human connection. The pattern is consistent across geographies: The more connected the infrastructure, the emptier the conversation.
By 2030, India will have the world's largest working-age population. Its events infrastructure is thriving. And yet that specific room, built around one question, with no agenda, no panels, and no performance, does not yet exist in India.
Davos shapes global economic policy. Aspen shapes American cultural thought. TED turned a conference into a global idea currency. India -- the world's most populous democracy, the fastest-growing major economy, a civilisation with millennia of intellectual tradition -- has no equivalent where its most serious professionals gather around a single unresolved question with no panels, no agenda, and no performance: a room built not to showcase thinking, but to do it.
The Sabha is Geetika Saigal's answer to that, and her most ambitious institutional bet yet.
"I wanted a room where you don't have to perform, pitch, or be 'on'. Where the quality of the conversation inside matters more than the quality of the photographs leaving it," said Geetika Saigal, Founder, The Sabha.
The Sabha 1 took place on 22nd March 2026 at Titlewaves Bookstore in Bandra, Mumbai, anchored by the question: "Can humanity mature as fast as it scales?" Many co-authors of Geetika's book "Wevolution" were present -- Dr. Ritu Garg Rastogi, Sandhya Prakash, Zeec Rustom, Poonam Sehgal, Dr. Suchitra, Dr. Pradnya Sriram, Nisha Shenoy, Gurpreet Labana and Bro Thockchom, then followed by an Ask The Doctors open house with distinguished physicians from Beeja House's "What Your Doctor Wants You To Know" book series -- Dr Suchitra, Dr Sudhir Pillai, Dr Yashodhara, Dr Kiran Bhavnani, and Dr Sameep Sohoni -- answering the questions patients are rarely brave enough to ask in a clinic.
The Sabha 2 took place on 23rd May 2026. At its centre was Dr Jatin Kothari -- nephrologist, social entrepreneur, cricket enthusiast and author of Kidney Spine Cricket - Tag Along. The question: "We built systems that don't need people. Did we forget that people need people?" Dr Kothari spoke without filters about thirty years of medicine, about 4am calls, about patients lost and saved. Nobody left. Nobody checked their phone. At the end, completely unplanned, Padma Shri recipient Swanand Kirkire sang. That moment is worth sitting with. It happened because the room had been built correctly. Building rooms correctly, at that level, consistently, is an institutional capability. It cannot be replicated by a better venue or a more famous guest.
The Sabha sits within an ecosystem Saigal has spent over a decade building. Beeja House, India's first Mentored Publishing House, has mentored numerous professionals into published authors. Its books have been recognised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, blessed by H.H. the Dalai Lama, featured on Times Square billboards in New York, endorsed by Naveen Jindal, Hari Bhartia, and Ajay Piramal, appreciated by cricketer Rohit Sharma and Dia Mirza, and carry forewords from H.H. Rajmata Padmini Devi of Jaipur and H.H. Maharaja Gaj Singh II of Jodhpur.
The Sabha 3 is in planning. The institution is being built.
Those who wish to attend may write to support@beejahouse.com. Invitations are extended by selection.
ABOUT THE SABHA
The Sabha is India's first invite-only intellectual gathering founded by Geetika Saigal, built on the belief that India's most important conversations are happening in the wrong rooms, or not at all. Each evening is curated around a single question. It is for the professional who has achieved enough to be invited everywhere, and who leaves most rooms quietly disappointed. Two evenings held in 2026. Sabha 3 in planning.
ABOUT GEETIKA SAIGAL
Geetika Saigal is a 7-time TEDx speaker, 4-time bestselling author, Founder of Beeja House (https://beejahouse.com/), India's first Mentored Publishing House and world record holder. Her work has been recognised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, blessed by H.H. the Dalai Lama, carried forewords from H.H. Rajmata Padmini Devi of Jaipur and H.H. Maharaja Gaj Singh II of Jodhpur, endorsed by Naveen Jindal, Hari Bhartia and Ajay Piramal, appreciated by Rohit Sharma and Dia Mirza, featured on Times Square billboards in New York, and covered in Business World, The Hindu, Hindustan Times, TOI, YourStory, Deccan Chronicle, Femina, Thrive Global, Tribune India, and Entrepreneur.com. Website: geetikasaigal.com (https://geetikasaigal.com/)
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