EXANOR Meets Dr. Ashok & Rashmi Mittal at AI Summit 2026
EXANOR's team met Dr. Ashok Mittal and Dr. Rashmi Mittal of LPU at the India AI Impact Summit 2026 in Delhi. Read the story of how it happened.
Quick summary: At the India AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi, the EXANOR team had the chance to meet Dr. Ashok Kumar Mittal, Rajya Sabha MP and Founder Chancellor of Lovely Professional University (LPU), and Dr. Rashmi Mittal, Pro-Chancellor of LPU. Here's the story of how it happened, and what the conversation meant for us.
A Quiet Corner Away From the Main Stage
Not every meaningful moment at a summit happens under bright stage lights. Some of the best conversations happen in the quieter pockets — a lounge near the expo hall, a coffee counter between sessions, the kind of space where people finally get to talk instead of just listen.
That's exactly where our path crossed with Dr. Ashok Mittal and Dr. Rashmi Mittal. The EXANOR team had just stepped away from a session on applied AI in governance, still debating a point from the panel, when a familiar name came up on a nearby delegate badge — Lovely Professional University. It didn't take long to realize we were standing a few feet away from the very people behind one of India's largest private universities.
What followed wasn't a scheduled meeting. It was one of those summit moments that happens because everyone in the room is, in some way, chasing the same question: how does AI actually change things for the people it's meant to serve?
The Conversation: Education, Entrepreneurship, and AI
Dr. Ashok Mittal has spent decades building something from the ground up — starting with the Lovely Group's roots in Jalandhar and growing it into LPU, a university now home to tens of thousands of students from across India and dozens of countries. As a Member of Parliament, his perspective on AI naturally leaned toward policy and scale — how emerging technology finds its way into classrooms, curriculums, and eventually, into the workforce.
Dr. Rashmi Mittal, who has spent years steering LPU's academic and administrative direction as Pro-Chancellor, brought a different lens to the conversation — one shaped by watching thousands of students move from campus to career every year. Her questions circled around a theme our team knows well: how do you build technology that's powerful enough to matter, but simple enough for a first-time user to trust it immediately?
For a young company like EXANOR, talking through our own journey — building AI tools that simplify GST filing and accounting for small retailers — in front of two people who've spent their careers thinking about accessible, large-scale systems felt like a genuine masterclass disguised as small talk.
Who Are Dr. Ashok Mittal and Dr. Rashmi Mittal?
For context, Dr. Ashok Kumar Mittal is the founder and Chancellor of Lovely Professional University (LPU), one of India's largest private universities, home to over 30,000 students from across India and more than 50 countries. He has served as a Member of Parliament in the Rajya Sabha since 2022, representing Punjab, and comes from an entrepreneurial family that built the Lovely Group from its early roots in the sweets business into a diversified enterprise spanning education, retail, and more.
Dr. Rashmi Mittal is the Pro-Chancellor of LPU and Dr. Mittal's wife. She began her career at the university as a lecturer before rising through academic and administrative leadership roles, eventually shaping LPU's push toward stronger entrance standards, global academic partnerships, and institutional growth. Together, the couple has been central to building LPU into a nationally recognized name in Indian higher education.
Why This Meeting Stuck With Us
There's a particular kind of validation that comes from an unplanned conversation like this. No pitch deck, no scheduled slot on an agenda — just two builders from very different worlds (higher education and AI-powered fintech) realizing they're circling the same core problem: making powerful systems simple enough for ordinary people to actually use.
By the time we walked back toward the expo floor, the conversation had shifted from AI in classrooms to AI in kirana stores — a reminder that no matter the industry, the real work of "AI for impact" comes down to the same thing: solving a problem for someone who doesn't have time to learn a complicated tool.
What's Next
Meeting Dr. Ashok Mittal and Dr. Rashmi Mittal was a reminder that the India AI Impact Summit 2026 wasn't just a stage for global tech leaders — it was a place where founders from education, governance, and fintech could all sit at the same table and compare notes. For EXANOR, conversations like this continue to sharpen how we think about building AI tools that are genuinely simple for India's retailers and SMEs to use.
Want to see how EXANOR is applying these lessons to AI-powered accounting, GST, and inventory management? Explore EXANOR here.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Who is Dr. Ashok Mittal? A: Dr. Ashok Kumar Mittal is the Founder Chancellor of Lovely Professional University (LPU) and a Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha, representing Punjab.
Q: Who is Dr. Rashmi Mittal? A: Dr. Rashmi Mittal is the Pro-Chancellor of Lovely Professional University (LPU) and Dr. Ashok Mittal's wife, overseeing much of the university's academic and administrative leadership.
Q: Where did EXANOR meet them? A: At the India AI Impact Summit 2026, held at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi, from February 16–20, 2026.
Q: What is Lovely Professional University? A: LPU is one of India's largest private universities, based in Phagwara, Punjab, with over 30,000 students from across India and more than 50 countries.
