NFIA to honor Indian American entrepreneur Danny Gaekwad, 8 others 

Three-day NFIA convention to kick off on Friday.

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Prominent Indian American entrepreneur Danny Gaekwad and aerospace engineer Ajay Kothari are among nine people to be honored by the National Federation of Indian American Associations at its upcoming national convention, which will be held in Tysons, VA, from November 16 to 18.

“I am humbled to be honored by an organization like the NFIA which has a decades-long history in serving the Indian American community,” Gaekwad, a well-known Republican donor, told the American Bazaar.

The Ocala, FL, businessman will receive the award in the category “Business & Entrepreneurship,” NFIA said in a press release.

Kothari, founder and president of the Washington, DC, area-based Astrox Corporation, will receive the award in the “Engineering” category.

The following are the other honorees:

Shweta Misra (Classical Dance Art, Kathak)

Dr. Aman Mann (Health Sciences)

Umi Mukherjee (Service to Indian American Seniors)

Koshy Thomas (Mass Media, Print Media)

Arti Manek (Folk and Classical Dance)

Aloke Dasgupta (Performing Arts, Sitar)​

Nami Kaur (Service to Nonprofit Institutions)

The awardees will be felicitated during the banquet dinner on Saturday.

The three-day convention will begin at Sheraton in Tysons on Friday. The same day, a group of delegates will receive a White House briefing on the Trump administration’s “policies on issues of interest to the Indian Americans.”

There will be a number of break-out panel discussions and entertainment events, according to the press release.

A Saturday evening panel on technology, “Did we bite more than what we can chew?”, will feature Gaekwad and Dr. Satyam Priyadarshy, Chief Data Scientist of Haliburton.

A panel on “Data and Artificial Intelligence” will feature Kothari; Vijay Lakshman, author and specialist in intellectual property and management of technology; and Rajeev Kumar, customer officer at Appiri.

Aloke Dasgupta, who studied under Ustad Ali Akbar Khan and has performed with George Harrison and the Rolling Stones, will perform on Saturday.