Our mentor network

Parmesh Shah

Dr. Parmesh Shah, Global Lead for Rural Livelihoods & Agricultural Jobs, The World Bank Group

Parmesh Shah is the Global Lead for Rural Livelihoods and Agricultural Jobs at the World Bank. He provides leadership to Bank’s work in these areas and supports the development of global knowledge and learning in these areas to offer solutions to clients and other development partners. His current areas of interest are economic and social organizations and networks of the poor, making markets and public services work for the poor, social entrepreneurship, ICT-based innovations in agriculture and rural development, promotion of on-farm and off-farm jobs and public-private and people partnerships for rural poverty reduction. He is currently involved in developing a regional program on scaling up digital agriculture in Africa region involving setting up ecosystems for entrepreneurship and incubation. He holds a D Phil in Development Studies from Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and B Tech degree in Agricultural Engineering from Pantnagar in India. 

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Samir Behl

A seasoned President and Company Officer with very broad global experience of living and working on four continents (America, Asia, Australia, Europe) with top-tier consumer packaged goods companies like Unilever, Kellogg’s, General Mills/Pillsbury and Amway. Strong P&L management skills with significant experience in General Management, Marketing and Innovation to drive continued strategic growth and business performance. Firm believer in leveraging the global trend of Digital Transformation while fully embracing diversity along with forging deep relationships with people.

Samir has participated in Leadership positions on several Industry Boards/Committees:

• Board Member of USIBC (US-India business advocacy organization to increase bilateral trade including investment flows between the two nations).
• Executive Council member of AmCham Europe.
• Member of Seldia CEO Council (Europe Direct Selling organization)
• Advisory Board of Australian Academy of Transformative Education Pty Ltd.
• Advisory Board of Sydney Study Tour Pty Ltd.

Born and raised in India, Samir attended the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), New Delhi, where he earned his undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering. He also earned an MBA with a major in consumer marketing from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad. He loves Tennis, hiking and international travel.

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Ajay Muttreja

Ajay Muttreja is Strategy Advisor & Mentor to multiple departments of Government of India & foreign organisations operating in India, Incubators, Accelerators, Innovation Centres, Angel Investors, Venture Capital Funds, Educational Institutions,  and many startups ( including social impact enterprises). Ajay is an Accelerated Scale-up Advisor, Jury, Investment Expert, Think -Tank and hand-holding virtual partner to many of these organizations.

Ajay retired as CEO & Board Member of Tecnova in April 2016 after 29 years in the organization. He is former Industry Advisor to Royal Government of Bhutan (1985-87).

Ajay has over 35 years of global corporate experience and has been engaged in various leadership roles:

• Business Development & Sales in 50 countries for high value B2B engagements
• Leading Project Teams involved in delivering complex turnkey projects in India
• Executive Search of CXO's for start-ups of Multi-national companies
• Finalising 100+ technology partnerships & strategic collaborations in 30+ countries
• Strategic and tactical support for global expansion of Indian companies 

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Chitranjan Dar

Until he retired in 2019, Chitranjan Dar has been responsible for overall supervision of Quality Assurance, ITC Life Sciences & Technology Centre, Central Projects Organization and Environment, Health & Safety. He started his career in ITC's Packaging and Printing business in 1981. In 1998, he was seconded to the then ITC Bhadrachalam Paperboards Limited as head of Marketing and was elevated to the Board of that company in 1999.

In 2003, Chitranjan joined the Lifestyle Retailing Business Division as its Chief Executive and continued in that role till he moved in August 2008 to the Foods business as Chief Operating Officer. He took over as Divisional Chief Executive of the Foods Business in August 2009 and continued in that role till May, 2015.

Chitranjan is an engineer from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and an MBA graduate from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

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Rohit Bhasin

Rohit Bhasin is a Chartered Accountant of repute with over 34 years of experience in leading organisations such as Standard Chartered Bank, AIG Inc, and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). 

Rohit is a trustee on the PwC India Foundation. He was a senior partner in the Deals Practice of PwC and India Head of the Valuation and Strategy team. He was also a member of PwC India’s Leadership Team (ILT) and its Global Network of Valuation Leaders. He was also an Independent Director on Board of GE Capital Services India and Fortis Healthcare Limited.

Rohit is currently on the Board of:

• Board of Governors of Welham Girls School, Dehradun
• Governing Board of Azad Foundation, an NGO working with poor women and enabling them to acquire livelihood with dignity
• Governing Council of Mobile Creches, a pioneering NGO working for the rights to early childhood development. 
• Board Member of Srijan, (Self-Reliant Initiatives through Joint Action)

Rohit has been a special invitee on Government committees, and authored technical guides of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India. He is a frequent speaker at industry forums and academic institutions in India and at the Advisory Universities conducted by PwC in Berlin, China, Malaysia and India.

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VS Kannan Sitaram

Kannan Sitaram’s over 30 year career has spanned a substantial part of the Indian FMCG landscape including Foods, Beverages, Home Care, Health Care and Personal Care. He worked in leadership positions at Ponds and then at Hindustan Unilever for many years and was Vice President Strategy at Unilever’s Head Office in London. He was thereafter Chief Operating Officer of Dabur India where he led the transformation of their businesses in India, Nepal and Bangladesh through organic growth and highly successful acquisitions. As Operating Partner, India Equity Partners, he helped IEP acquire a controlling stake in Innovative Foods, which markets the Sumeru range of frozen products. He took over as the CEO and MD of this company and managed IEP’s exit to Peepul Capital in Jan 2016.
He is currently Venture Partner at Fireside Ventures, a fund investing in early stage consumer businesses. As Venture Partner, he is actively involved in the investment strategy of the fund and in building the eco system and is deeply engaged with some of the investee companies.
Kannan studied at IIT Madras and IIM Ahmedabad. He has also participated in executive programs at the Carnegie Mellon School of Business and the Kellogg School of Business.

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Ved Arya

Founder and Director

Buddha Fellowship Program

Ved is a development entrepreneur who has founded and developed multiple development organizations. Ved left behind lucrative jobs from the corporate world in pursuit of solutions to eradicate poverty and provide livelihood opportunities for the rural poor of India.

Ved is the Founder and Former CEO of SRIJAN (Self-Reliant Initiatives through Joint Action), which features among the top non-profit organizations in India in the sustainable Rural Livelihood Management space and empowerment of rural women. Ved is also the Founder and Managing Director of Srijan Infratech & Development Services (SIDS), which offers HR solutions and strategies to implement rural development programs of the Government of India. In 2016 he founded the Buddha Fellowship Program, a unique platform offering a complete eco-system for young emerging leaders from India's premier educational institutions such as IITs and IIMs, an opportunity to build development enterprises. 

Ved is an aeronautics engineer from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, and an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad

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Om Damani

Co-Incharge, Technology and Development Solutions Cell, Centre for Technology Alternatives for Rural Areas

Prof. Damani is a faculty member of the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay with research interests in the areas of Systems Thinking and Dynamics and the Interface of Technology and Development. His work focuses on solutions for water and agriculture issues.

Currently, Prof. Damani is Co-Incharge of the Technology and Development Solutions Cell at the Centre for Technology Alternatives for Rural Areas (CTARA), IIT Bombay. At CTARA, he has guided the development of Farm Assessment Index (FAI), a holistic composite index that takes economic, environmental, and social factors into account for evaluating farming systems. The Jaltantra system developed under his guidance is used by engineers of the Maharashtra Water Supply and Sanitation Department for design and optimization of the rural piped water networks. He has in the past worked in Akamai Technologies and IBM T J Watson Research Lab.

Prof. Damani has always been engaged with several voluntary organizations, NGOs, and people's movements. In particular, he has been actively associated with Association for India's Development, Adivasi Academy Tejgadh, and Narmada Bachao Andolan.

Prof. Damani earned his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Texas, US

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Sheila Hooda

Chief Executive Officer

Alpha Advisory Partners, USA

Sheila Hooda is a business leader with over 30 years of expertise in managing global operations, financial and technology domains. Sheila has lead businesses in the US, Europe and Asia. She started her career in the USA as a strategy management consultant with McKinsey & Co.

As CEO & President of Alpha Advisory Partners, Sheila provides strategic advisory services to C-Suites of Financial, Business & Professional Services firms who are facing digital, market or regulatory disruption. She has a track record in leading customer-centric transformations, driving growth & strategic development at Fortune 500 firms. She is a published thought leader and speaker on Governance, Strategy & Leadership. Directors & Boards Magazine, USA honored her as a Director to Watch 2016; NACD Directorship and C-Suite magazines in the USA have profiled her in their Board Spotlight.

Sheila serves on the board of Mutual of Omaha Insurance Company, a Fortune 350 full-service, multi-line organization. She also serves on the board of Virtus Investment Partners (NASDAQ: VRTS), a leading investment management firm. From 1998 to 2014 Sheila was the Global Head of multiple functional and operating areas at TIAA, Credit Suisse Investment Bank and Thomson Reuters.

In addition, Sheila serves on boards and think tanks focused on Global Policy, Education and Women’s Empowerment including The Council on Foreign Relations, Demand Institute, Pratham (education), Medha (vocational development) and formerly Women’s World Banking (micro enterprise), The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, The Harvard Kennedy Center of Public Leadership and The World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council. Sheila has also initiated and mentored Diversity and Inclusion programs.

Sheila has a MBA with a specialization in Finance from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and is an alumna of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. She has been recognized by the National Association of Corporate Directors, USA as a Board Leadership Fellow and has received the Carnegie Mellon University CERT Certificate in Cyber Security oversight and the MIT Sloan certificate on Artificial Intelligence.

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Rajeev Kapoor

IAS (Retired)

As an officer of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS, 1983 batch), Rajeev Kapoor served in the Uttar Pradesh cadre and held senior positions in both the Central and State Governments.

At Central Government, he worked as Secretaries in the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy and in the Department of Chemicals and Petrochemicals and as Director of the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA), Mussoorie where he was responsible for training officers from the IAS and other services.

 At the state level, Rajeev served as Sub Divisional Magistrate, Chief Development Officer and District Magistrate, as Secretary in departments of Finance, Institutional Finance, Industry, Health, Agriculture, Technical and Vocational Education and Energy and, also in PSUs and autonomous organizations. He also worked as a Governance Adviser with Department for International Development (DFID), UK for three years.

He is passionate about teaching and training and his academic interests include Finance, Economics, Public Policy, Human Resource Development and Governance. 

Rajeev is a graduate in Electrical Engineering from IIT Kanpur (batch of 1979) and has a Post Graduate Degree in Management from IIM (Ahmedabad). Rajeev also has a Master’s degree in Public Policy from Princeton University, US.

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Sushil Ramola

President Integrated

Mountain Initiative

Sushil Ramola is a social entrepreneur and a civil society volunteer. He is a founding member and current President of Integrated Mountain Initiative (www.inmi.in), a civil society platform for bringing all stakeholders together around issues of sustainability and collaborative action in the Indian Himalayan region.

Sushil hails from Uttarakhand and, completed his schooling from Shimla. After a long stint of intrapreneurship, leading businesses and board membership in the corporate sector in India and overseas, he founded a community led rural tourism initiative DueNorth in his native village Saur (www.duenorth.in) in 2008. He also founded and ran a social enterprise B-ABLE (www.b-able.in) which provides skills and meaningful livelihood opportunities to a large number of less educated and disadvantaged youth in 26 states of India.

Sushil is engaged with many well-known civil society organisations as mentor and serves as member on several boards. He is a chemical engineer and an alumnus from IIM Ahmedabad.

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Ankur Sarin

Public Systems Group (primary member)

Ravi J Mathai Center for Innovation in Education
IIM Ahmedabad

Prof. Sarin is a faculty member of the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad’s (IIMA) Public Systems Group (primary member), Ravi J Mathai Center for Innovation in Education (RJMCIE) and Economics areas.  Prior to joining IIMA, Prof. Sarin was a Researcher at Mathematica Policy Research (MPR), Princeton. A 50-year-old organization, MPR is considered a pioneering institution for program and policy evaluations. At MPR, he worked on impact evaluations for many departments of the U.S. Government including Education, Food Nutrition and Security and the Millennium Challenge Corporation

At IIMA, Prof Sarin has worked as a Principal Investigator on research projects with organizations like America India Foundation Trust, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Central Square Foundation, Pratham Education Foundation, SELCO Foundation, UNICEF and Video Volunteers. In addition, he has been part of the core evaluation teams of the National e-Governance Program, India and the Mahila Samakhya program for the Government of India. He has also taught program and policy evaluation as part of courses in the doctoral program at IIMA, as well at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy for Phase 3 and Phase 4 officers of the Indian Administrative Service. In recent work, Prof Sarin has worked on an action research project on India’s Right to Education. The research stemming from this project included a field experiment tracking over 1600 children provided information and assistance on benefits stemming from the policy.

Prof. Sarin has published and presented work on various topics in social protection for disadvantaged groups in international journals and conferences. His work has been published in journals that include Social Science and Medicine, Economic and Political Weekly, Journal of Nutrition, Journal of Business Research, Marketing Letters and Journal of Cleaner Production.

Prof. Sarin has a Ph.D. in Public Policy from the University of Chicago.

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Ved Arya

Founder & Director

Ved is a development entrepreneur who has founded and developed multiple development organizations. Ved left behind lucrative jobs from the corporate world in pursuit of solutions to eradicate poverty and provide livelihood opportunities for the rural poor of India.

Ved is the Founder and Former CEO of SRIJAN (Self-Reliant Initiatives through Joint Action), which features among the top non-profit organisations in India in the sustainable Rural Livelihood Management space and empowerment of rural women. Ved is also the Founder and Managing Director of Srijan Infratech & Development Services (SIDS), which offers HR solutions and strategies to implement rural development programs of the Government of India. In 2016 he founded the Buddha Fellowship Program, a unique platform offering a complete eco-system for young emerging leaders from India's premier educational institutions such as IITs and IIMs, an opportunity to build development enterprises. 

Ved is an aeronautics engineer from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, and an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

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Souvik Dhar

Team Leader

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Asha Gopinath

Consultant – Digital Marketing & Communications

As the marketing and communications consultant for Buddha Fellowship, Asha’s role is to effectively communicate the Fellowship's mission and cause by building and implementing a strong brand and digital presence.

Asha is a sales and marketing professional with over 23+ years’ experience. She specializes in end-to-end marketing and corporate communications, with emphasises on building web and digital presence, web content management and monitoring, organising and managing conferences and seminars, strategic partner management, branding and communications solutions. She has led high performing teams and has experience working for domestic and international markets.

Asha is a Business Management graduate with an additional diploma in Computer Science.

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Kunal Ranjan

Media Consultant

Kunal is Media Consultant for Buddha Fellowship.

Kunal has over a decade of experience in research and reporting in media. He’s worked with major broadcast, print and digital media organizations in India and abroad and is passionate about development journalism and audience engagement.

Kunal is a Fulbright Alumnus, selected on Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship, USA (batch of 2016-17).

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Shipra Singh

Theme Leader

Shipra is Theme Leader at Buddha Fellowship Program, where she is actively engaged in recruitment of Fellows, field projects of Fellows, partnerships building and strategic planning.

She has more than a decade of experience in leading rural livelihood, women entrepreneurship and financial inclusion programs in different geographies in India. She has led functions across project implementation, strategy, business development, partnerships and contributed in pan-India level research studies in financial inclusion space.

Shipra is a Ford Foundation International Fellow and has a Master’s in Public Administration (MPA) from Cornell University, NY, USA. 

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