Aliens, Advocacy and Compassionate Alternatives: PETA India at the Vegan India Conference 2025
From compassionate advancements to conscious conversations, the Vegan India Conference 2025 was a vibrant hub of all things kind, innovative, and animal-friendly. The country’s biggest celebration of plant-powered change, the Vegan India Conference 2025, proved that compassion and progress go hand-in-hand, as it brought together passionate vegans, visionary entrepreneurs, change-making advocates, and ethical brands.
At PETA Youth’s stall at the Vegan India Conference 2025, visitors were transported into an unsettling alternate reality through our one-of-a-kind virtual reality experience, ‘When They Came for Us’. Visitors found themselves abducted by powerful alien species that viewed humans as inferior and exploitable, forcing them to plead for their freedom in under seven minutes. Many viewers described the experience as intense, emotional, and deeply thought-provoking, as it mirrored the way animals are treated for food, clothing, entertainment, and experiments daily, forcing the visitors to reflect on how they contribute to animal suffering.
PETA India Legal Advisor and Director of Cruelty Response, Meet Ashar conducted an impactful workshop on ‘Animal Laws Every Animal Activist Must Know’ and took the attendees through how cruelty to animals is linked to other forms of violence, how it poses a direct risk to human health and safety, Indian animal protection laws and ways to help animal in distress. This was followed by a Q&A session, where pertinent questions answered were regarding the legal status of slaughterhouses, leaving the audience empowered and motivated to do their bit for animals.
PETA India Director, Corporate Affairs Division, Ashima Kukreja shared PETA India’s role in creating awareness about animals killed for leather, fur, and other animal-derived materials through investigations and videos which goes onto inspire consumers into making a switch to vegan leather during her panel discussion titled, ‘Achieving Scale With Biomaterials: Building the Future With Ethical Fashion’. She went on to explain how India is home to a huge expanse of plant species and the ideal place for plant-derived leather innovation, which is already underway. Other panelists included PETA-Approved Vegan certified brands Eori and House of Serein founders Manish Pareekh and Muskaan Mundhra, respectively, professor and researcher of material science, Dr. K.C. Mohite; moderated by sustainability and animal activist, Shreya Ghodawat. The discussion aimed at inspiring young entrepreneurs and consumers about the potential and opportunities in the growing movement of vegan fashion.
The vegan movement in India is on the rise, with growing awareness and exciting opportunities for change. As awareness spreads and the community flourishes, the landscape is ripe for innovation, compassion, and progress. Inspired?
