Aarti Mohan
Co-Founder,
Sattva &
Editor-in-Chief,
The Alternative
Aarti heads Content, Communications and Audience Engagement across media properties at Sattva which she co-founded in 2009. Sattva started as as e-magazine about social impact and sustainability. Now, it combines media platform and consultation expertise in the areas of social enterprises and social development. Aarti is the Chief Editor of The Alternative, Sattva’s media platform for sustainable living and social impact.
Prior to Sattva, Aarti played key technical and mentoring roles in Texas Instruments and AMD. She holds a B.E(Hons) in Computer Science from BITS, Pilani, is a graduate of the IIM-B’s Management Program for Women Entrepreneurs (MPWE 2010) and a Goldmann Sachs-ISB fellow. Aarti is passionate about classical dance and marathon running.
Anirban Gupta
Co-Founder & President
Dhriiti - The Courage Within
Anirban is the CEO of Dhritti, which he co-founded in 2004 to promote sustainable livelihoods through development of micro enterprise value chains and by building an attitude & spirit of entrepreneurship amongst the next generation of Indians. It is an organization for the young and by the young.
Anirban did his a BA (Economics) from Delhi University, and spent one year “in trying out things that I enjoyed doing (from the advertising world to journalism)” and working for FODRA, a grassroot level NGO working in north east Delhi. He went on to do Rural Management Program from Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar, and joined Development Alternatives under their Leaders of Tomorrow Programme, before founding Dhriiti a few months later.
Anoj Viswanathan
Co-Founder & Lead
Milaap
Anoj co-founded Milaap in 2010, which is mission driven company to change the way people fund and impact communities in need. It connects hardworking borrowers looking to start a small business, pay for education, install better facilities in their households, etc. with people around the world willing to lend and rally their friends and family with as little as Rs. 500 ($25). Anoj leads the team in India, running day-to-day operations of the company with a focus on community engagement and corporate partnerships.
Prior to starting Milaap, Anoj had worked with SKS Microfinance in energy and water services. He has also worked at ReEx Capital Asia, a cleantech investment boutique in Singapore and served as a fellow at D.light Design, developing consumer financing & mapping models for rural electrification. Anoj graduated from National University of Singapore with a Bachelors in Engineering and Minors in Economics and Technology Management. He is a founder member of the Microfinance Society in Singapore.
Anshu Gupta
Founder & Director
Goonj
Anshu Gupta founded Goonj in 1998, an organisation which recycles anything that is discarded as an urban “waste” into a resource for others in the rural and calamity-hit areas. An Ashoka Fellow and Ashoka Global Ambassador, Anshu has created a mass movement for recycling and reusing tonnes of “waste” material by channelizing it from cities to villages, as a resource for rural development. The clothes and other material are collected, processed and sorted in centres run by Goonj across the country. The processed clothes are then channelized through grass root NGOs and provided either free or under the ‘clothes for work’ scheme.
Anshu Gupta is an Ashoka Fellow and Ashoka Global Ambassador. For his work, he has been the recipient of Changemakers Innovation Award 2004 & 2006, World Bank’s Development Marketplace Award 2007, NGO of the Year Award 2007, and Schwab Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2012. Anshu is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, and Masters in Economics.
Arindam Dasgupta
CEO
Tamul Plate Marketing Pvt Ltd
Arindam Dasgupta is the CEO of Tamul Plate Marketing Pvt. Ltd. (TPMC), which is an initiative of Dhriiti – The Courage Within in 2010. He is also the Co-founder of Dhriiti. TPMC was established by the rural producers of Arecanut Leaf plates in North-East india, and the employees of Dhriiti to collectively market the high quality, ecofriendly, disposable, plates and bowls. Besides providing marketing support, TPMC provides many other services to the rural producers and entrepreneurs for promoting good economics, ecology and peace. Through these two institutions, he has been instrumental in promoting more than 200 micro enterprises and generating employment for more than 5000 youth in India.
Arindam is a graduate from SRCC, Delhi University, and holds a rural management degree from IRMA. He has also worked with Confederation of Indian Industries.
Ashmeet Kapoor
Founder & CEO
I Say Organic
Ashmeet is the founder of I Say Organic (a project of Jagriti Agro Tech Pvt Ltd.) which is a for-profit social enterprise creating a supply of affordable organic produce in India sourced directly from farmers. The company was started with the mission to make farming profitable for small farmers, and works towards creating a model where small farmers look at farming as an enterprise, and plan their fields based on market demand while ensuring sustainable land use.
Prior to I Say Organic/ Jagriti, he was a founding member at an early stage company designing a water purification device for rural communities, and also worked in the solar and telecom industries in business and technical positions. Ashmeet holds a Masters in Innovation Management & Entrepreneurship from Brown University, and Bachelors in Electrical Engineering from University of British Columbia.
Ashraf Patel
Co-founder & Director
Pravah
Ashraf Patel is a co-founder of Pravah, and headed the organization for the first nine years before stepping down in 2002. Pravah works towards promoting youth development and active citizenship, and directly intervenes with adolescents and youth and also provides institutional and capacity-building support to youth engaging and youth-led organizations. She is currently responsible for design and implementation of organization development within Pravah’s partner organizations and establishing Pravah Learning Voyages as a premier institution for building the capacity of the development sector in the area of youth development.
Ashraf is a post graduate in Human Resources from XLRI, an Ashoka Fellow and a trustee of the National Youth Foundation. Prior to setting up Pravah, Ashraf was heading the HR function at Escorts Finance. She has also been a working group member of panels appointed by the Youth Ministry and the HRD ministry to make recommendations for planning processes.
Ashutosh Kumar
Executive Director
Jagriti Yatra
Ashutosh Kumar is the Executive Director for Jagriti Yatra, an annual national train journey lasting 15 days and 8,000 kms that takes 450 aspiring young entrepreneurs to learn from role model social and business entrepreneurs of India. Over last 7 years the Yatra has spawned about 300 ventures by its ‘yatris’.
Ashutosh joined Jagriti in 2008 as Director Programming, after a working with CSC as a software engineer in Chennai – and has led the organization since 2012. An IIT Kharagpur alumnus, he is also the founder-director of Divaspana (Renukoot), a non-profit organization with an aim to provide quality education at affordable cost, and by converting the classrooms into creative and lively spaces by providing educational resources.
Biswajit Bordoloi
Founder
Axum Agri
Biswajit Bordoloi is the founder of Axum Agri, which works in Margherita Sub-Division, Assam to promote integrated organic farming and rural livelihoods. It works with rural communities by providing them an integrated service package that includes selection of livelihood projects, orientation and awareness sessions in relation to the selected projects, facilitating skill development program, facilitating banking and finance, relevant subsidy linkages, monitoring and marketing of the end products.
Biswajit is an mechanical engineer and an MBA in Entrepreneurship Management from XLRI Jamshedpur. Earlier has also worked with Mahindra Satyam as software developer.
Dhirendra Pratap Singh
Co-Founder & President
Milaan
Dhirendra is the Co-Founder and President of Milaan, a youth led non-profit, which he founded in 2007 at the age of 18, and which works towards educating, enabling and empowering children and youth in rural communities. Milaan has enabled and engaged with more than 1000 young people from the economically and socially challenged backgrounds to explore their potential through its “Swarachna Learning and Resource Center” in the remote dalit village of Kantain in Sitapur, Uttar Pradesh.
Dhirendra has earlier worked as Managing Trustee of Vidya Grants India, a subsidiary of Vidya Grants Foundation, USA, Consultant – United way of Delhi and Program Manager – Cap Foundation. He is a Bachelors in Mathematics (Hons) from Delhi University, and a Masters in Development Studies from Amity University.
Inir Pinheiro
Co-Founder & Managing Director
Grassroutes
Inir Pinheiro is the Co-founder of Grassroutes, and has a combined interest in rural development and sustainable livelihoods. Grassroutes creates platforms for urban communities to experience authentic village experiences and reconnect with their roots and for the village communities to access and avail of sustainable livelihood opportunities thus conserving their way of life, cultures, biodiversities and knowledge systems. Grassroutes is working towards establishing a network of village tourism destinations across India, where tourism is owned, managed & run by the local village communities. For its work, Grassroutes was recognised with Villgro's Wantrapreneur Award - Start-Up category '1.
Inir is a Post Graduate in Rural Management from XIM, Bhubneshwar, with ove 5 years of varied work experience ranging from fund raising to rural tourism. He is a recipient of the Karamaveer Purashkar for Social Justice and Citizen Action 2008 and has been a fellow of Foundation for Youth Social Entrepreneurship.
Jithin Nedumala
Founder
Make A Difference
Jithin C Nedumala is the Co-founder of MAD (Make a Difference). MAD is the largest youth volunteer teacher network in India, with 4000 college students from the top colleges in the country to deliver high impact family support at substantially lower costs to children living in orphanages and street shelters. Founded in 2006, when Jithin was in college, today MAD reaches out to 5000 children in 23 cities in India, based on the premise that the most important support a child in a shelter home needs is a family and if the community comes together, we would be able to provide every child a family they can fall back on.
Jithin has been awarded the Ashoka Global Youth Social Entrepreneur award, Karmaveer Puraskar, Cordes Fellowship, Dasra peer grant and Youth Actionnet Fellowship for his contribution to society, and has been a speaker in many forums including Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, Indian School of Business and Multiple Tedxs .
Kaushlendra
Managing Trustee/ CEO
Kaushalya Foundation/Knid Green
Kaushlendra is the Managing Trustee of Kaushalya Foundation and the Founder and Managing Director of Knids Green Pvt Ltd. Knids Green Pvt. Ltd. works towards reorienting the vegetable supply chain to reduce wastage, price spread, lead time of vegetable to reach the customers and customer transaction time. It has developed an organized vegetable supply chain which connects around 5,000 farmers from the villages in Patna, Nalanda, Ara and Jehanabad district with more than 500 vegetables vendors from Patna.
Kaushlendra, an MBA from IIMA, is a Cochran Fellow 2012 of United States Department of Agriculture (USDA ) & working group member of National Institute of Hydrology (Ministry of Water Resources, Govt. of India). He is an Ashoka Fellow, and winner of Grassroot Soldiers Award 2012 by Times Now, Sankalp Award 2011 by Intellecap, and Wantraprneur Award 2010 by Villgro & The Lemelson Foundation, mong many others. He is appointed as Founding Curator for the Patna Hub of the World Economic Forum’s Global Shaper Community in 2013.
Kumar Ankit
Co-Founder & Executive Director
Green Leaf Energy
Kumar Ankit is the Co-Founder & Executive Director, Green Leaf Energy Private Limited, which he established in 2009 while he was an MBA student at XLRI Jamshedpur. The company works on the integrated value chain in biofuel and horticulture plantation, and was the first Indian company to do convergence with MGNREGA and link employment generation with tree plantation. In 2012-13 alone, the company successfully completed plantation of 7 million saplings leading to sustainable employment for 1.4 lakh families across Bihar. The company has also tied up with BPCL, Indian Railways to build a biodiesel value chain in Bihar. Green Leaf Energy is also working with NRLM, Min of Rural Development and Bihar SRLM, and is also diversifying into AP/Telangana region.
Ankit is the winner of Bihar Innovation Award –II, a World Bank event, has represented India at the India-Afghanistan Innovation Meet at Mazar-e-Sharif 2014, and is a Global Shaper at World Economic Forum.
Malavika Sharma
Founder
Avika
Malavika Sharma founded Avika in 2008 in Ranchi, with the mission to “Bring wearable contemporary wear with work forms of an ethnic art form”. Starting with 7 rural women, Avika now touches lives of 700 women in the rural handicraft sector. Avika products span across 35 types of hand embroidery, Madhubani painting, Zardozi work, bead jewellery making juts work, etc, and blends ethnic art form with modern wear. The product range includes garments (e.g., kurtas, saris, stoles, dupattas, tshirts, etc.) and jewellery sets (e.g., necklaces, earrings, bracelets and anklets, etc.). The products are sold through net, special stalls at events and through established outlets, such as Mother Earth stores as well through e-commerce portals.
Malavika is an MBA from XLRI, and has earlier worked with Dr Reddy’s Lab as an HR professional. She also holds a law degree and is also a practicing lawyer.
Naveen Krishna
Founder & Managing Director
SMV Wheels
Naveen Krishna founded SMV Wheels Pvt Ltd in 2010 with the aim to bring dignity to rickshaw pullers and pushcart operator through asset ownership and other value-added services. It does so by by providing them better designed rickshaws/carts and support services on micro-leasing-cum-purchase and deferred payment basis to provide them ownership of their livelihood asset with a sense of dignity. It has benefited more than two thousand customers, out of which more than 600 have already become the owner of their vehicle.
Naveen holds a Master’s degree in Social Work from BHU, and has earlier worked with CAPART and Center for Rural Development, Assam. He has also been conferred some of the prestigious awards at social entrepreneurs village capital programme by DASRA & First Light Ventures (2010-11); Sankalp Awards under Technology for Development Sector (2010-11); ISB Idiya Awards held at Indian School of Business, Hyderabad (2011); World Bank, Development Marketplace (2013); and Inclusive India Awards by ICICI Foundation and Mastrapreneur India 2014.
Pankaj Jain
Principle
Impact Law Ventures
Pankaj Jain is the founder of Impact Law Ventures, a mission-driven, start-up law practice based in New Delhi and Mumbai, India which provides affordable legal counsel to start-ups, social business enterprises, impact investors and non-profit organizations. A corporate lawyer by profession, Pankaj specializes in venture capital and private equity matters, especially in the impact investing and venture philanthropy sector.
Prior to founding his independent law practice in early 2011, Pankaj worked in-house as the India counsel for Acumen Fund, a non-profit social venture capital fund and was involved in working across agriculture, healthcare, water, housing and energy portfolios as well as structuring transactions in the social development space. He was also an associate with the Indian law firm AZB & Partners in New Delhi on corporate advisory and private equity transactional matters.
Piyush Jaju
Co-Founder & CEO
ONergy
Piyush Jaju Co-Founded ONergy Pvt 2009 and serves as its Chief Executive Officer. ONergy operates in Eastern India with a mission to increase energy access for Bottom of the Pyramid rural people by proving a wide range of customized solar solutions. It provides a varied range of products across electrification, cooking and lighting besides offering unique products like solar powered computer centers, solar cold storage structures and solar irrigation pump-sets. It has effectively solved the last mile distribution problem through its unique business model of having Renewable Energy Centres in these inaccessible areas ,along with good quality products help us address the problems of the rural population.
Piyush’s prior experience is in financial services and investment banking across India, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia. His expertise lies in business strategy, marketing & finance. He graduated in Economics Honors from St. Xaviers College, Kolkata (University Topper).
Rahul Nainwal
Co-Founder
MITRA &
iVolunteer
Rahul is the co-founder of MITRA iVolunteer, which was established in 2001. MITRA works to brings skills and expertise to the Development sector in India through its volunteering ( iVolunteer) and recruitment programs ( www.jobsforgood.com). Through iVolunteer he introduced the concept of formal volunteering in India. In 2004 he created iVolunteer Overseas, a first of its kind in the history of India that sends Indians to volunteer in other countries. Till 2012 Rahul was responsible in creating the learning systems for the ICICI Fellows program (now the India Fellow social leadership program), which is an experiential leadership program for young Indians that include working full time for a year with a field partner organization (FPO) on a specific project or issue together with training, mentoring and reflection.
Rahul holds a BTech from NIT Rourkela and a Masters degree from IRMA. He is also a TED and Ashoka Fellow, and has been a VSO volunteer in Sierra Leone. He had also worked with Mukand Steel as sales engineer prior to moving into the sector.
Rustam Sengupta
Founder & CEO
Boond
Rustam is the founder and CEO of Boond, a social enterprise that creates rural entrepreneurs and distribution channels for development products like solar lamps, solar home systems, water filters, and efficient cook-stoves in the remote parts of India. Boond works with NGOs, manufacturers and villagers to design and develop the Boond products, model and supply chain. Boond has won a number of awards (Economic Times Power of Ideas 2010, Nokia DLD Global Challenge, and UN Women) and more importantly has impacted the lives of over 50,000 people in remote villages of Rajasthan, UP and Kashmir.
Rustam is an INSEAD MBA graduate and also holds an MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Irvine. He has lived across three continents and worked in banking and consulting for companies like Standard Chartered (in Singapore), Syngenta (in Switzerland) and Deloitte Consulting (in the US).
Saloni Malhotra
Founder & Director
DesiCrew &
Procaftstore
Saloni Malhotra is the Founder-Director of DesiCrew, and currently the CEO of Procraftstore. DesiCrew, founded in 2007, is a socially motivated business process outsourcing company, which focuses on creating knowledge-based livelihood opportunities in small towns and rural areas. She is also the co-founder of Safecity, a citizen’s initiative and online platform to share information on sexual abuse in India, a mentor to Traveller Kids, a young start-up that creates edu-taiment toys for 7-12 years olds and an Advisor to Start Up!, a social business incubator in Delhi.
An engineer from the University of Pune, Saloni Malhotra is the Founder of DesiCrew Solutions Pvt Ltd.She started her career in an interactive media start up, Web Chutney in Delhi. The Rural BPO concept was started-off as a project under the mentorship of Dr. Ashok Jhunjhunwala at TeNeT group, IIT Madras in Jan 2005. She has been nominated for Business Week Asia's Best Youngest Entrepreneurs, MTV Youth Icon 2008, E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year 2008 and also facilitated in the presence of the President of India by the CII. She is the recipient of FICCI’s Best Women Social Entrepreneur Award (2009) and TIE Stree Shakthi Award (2011).
Shashank Kumar & Manish Kumar
Co-Founders
Farm & Farmers Foundation
Farms and Farmers Foundation (FnF) was started in 2010 by Shashank Kumar (alumnus of IIT Delhi) and Manish Kumar (from IIT Kharagpur) with the aim of providing end to end solutions (from field to market) to small and marginal farmers. FnF focuses on reviving the current agriculture sector – and increase the earnings of land owners, farmers and farm labourers - in the northern states of India by improving land profitability through use of technology, sustainable and need-based organic farming, improving soil fertility, building more robust supply chain, etc.
Since its inception with one small village in Vaishali, FnF has set up five local centers (and a for-profit company, Green Agrevolution Private Limited Company (GAP) in 2012 to interface with institutional buyers), and expanded its work to seven districts in Bihar reaching out to ~3000 farmers and eventually increasing their profitability by 25-55%.
Shweta Chari
Founder & CEO
Toybank
Shweta Chari founded Toybank in 2004 with a vision of reaching out to children through fun and play using toys. The organization bridges the gap between the rich and the lesser privileged, and as a leveler of the society, by collecting toys from those who can afford them and reaching them to those who cannot. A small idea that started in a small restaurant in Bombay has over the years gathered momentum with the help and support of more than 2,000 friends and volunteers, and Toybank has presence and activities in 6 cities through 30 toy libraries, reaching out to more than 70,000 children.
Shweta is an electronics engineer, and was in her final year when she started Toybank at the age of 22. Her work has been acclaimed widely, and has been featured in Times Now “Amazing Indians” and various media.
Sombodhi Ghosh
Co-Founder & Director
Aakar Innovations
Sombodhi Ghosh is the co-founder of Aakar Innovations, an organization which provides commercially viable solutions for production, distribution, marketing and sales of affordable and environmentally friendly sanitary pads. It does so through local entrepreneurs who produce the pads in small, women-owned, energy-efficient, mini-factory set up in the village or slum. Its not-for-profit arm, Aakar Social Ventures supports awareness raising regarding sanitation and hygiene with a specific focus on menstrual hygiene, and also provides entrepreneur and business skills training to Village Level Entrepreneurs to enforce and sustain livelihood opportunities.
Sombodhi has been entrepreneur-in-residence at Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship, IIM Ahmedabad, and was also an ICICI Fellow when he spent a year with Watershed Organisation Trust (WOTR) and Society for Promoting Rural Education and Development (SPREAD) during 2011-12. He is an engineer by profession and earlier worked for 3 years with Accenture.
Sonal Kapoor
Founder & CEO
Protsahan India Foundation
Sonal Kapoor is the founder of Protsahan at the age of 24, a social venture which empowers every at-risk adolescent girl with creative education and entrepreneurial skills training so that she can break the extreme cycle of poverty and abuse. It does so by using its “5 pillars of creativity model” (design, art, digital stories, photography, technology & cinema) to revolutionize the education delivery mechanism for children at the bottommost of the social pyramid.
Sonal is microbiologist with MBA, and has worked in advertising and communications industry. She was chosen as The Youth Delegate in 2011 at The World Bank-IMF, again for Australia-India Youth Dialogue in 2012, and as a keynote speaker at TEDxYOUTH, TEDxJMI, TEDxDTU and several others (Link to TEDxYOUTH talk ). She has also been felicitated by the former President of Singapore, Mr. S R. Nathan. She is a digital and CSR consultant for other national and international non profits and a blogger at The World Bank, and a UN Advisor on Children's Projects. A frequent twitter user, she tweets at @ArtForCause.
Sujit Mahapatra
Founder & Volunteer
Bakul Foundation
Sujit Mahapatra is the founder of Bakul Foundation which he founded in 2007. Bakul started as library movement with an appeal for donation of 1000 books on internet, and has moved to become a movement of volunteerism which believes “believe if we all come together with our small energies and little contributions, we can bring about the change we want in underdevelopement, poverty, injustice and environmental destruction around us.” Bakul works in the area of education by promoting the reading habit and developing imagination and creativity among children through setting up libraries and story-telling sessions, environment through mobilizing youth and children in particular to take up the cause of the environment and climate change in particular, and arts.
Sujit is an alumnus of Delhi University, Hyderabad University and Utkal University, and is an alumnus of The International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the U.S. Department of State’s professional exchange program. He is also the recipient of National Award for Child Welfare from the Ministry of Women and Child Development, GoI.
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