Team E4SI

                                                  Nitin Rao Nitin Rao is an alumnus of the StartingBloc Fellowship (London Business School, 2007) and the National Institute of Technology Karnataka (NIT-K) Surathkal (2008). His interests lie at the intersection of economics, business and development. Nitin is passionate about education for low-income communities and deferred an MBA admittance at the MIT Sloan School of Management to join the efforts of SKS Microfinance to create a branded chain of schools for the poor. He has earlier been involved in strategy for The Spark Group, an MIT/Yale education startup, and published papers on Indian education accepted by MIT International Review and the Harvard Project for Asian & International Relations Harvard On-Campus Conference. As the only Asian Staff Writer for NextBillion.net - Development Through Enterprise, Nitin analyzes sustainable business models aimed at the world's poorest citizens. He is the founder of Let Me Know -- a unique blog on opportunities for the Indian youth.

Sameer Segal  Sameer Segal is an alumnus of the National Institute of Technology - Karnataka - Suarathkal and the StartingBloc Fellowship (MIT Sloan). Sameer, currently works as an Analyst at the HSBC Group, evaluating the business performance of PFS products and banks in the USA. Sameer is a founding Fellow of Engineers for Social Impact (E4SI). His E4SI summer immersion experience was spent at Ujjivan, one of the world's fastest growing microfinance institutions, where he worked to conceptualize and implement a Service Quality Program (SQP). Since his immersion experience at Ujjivan, Sameer has actively sought out opportunities to improve efficiencies in the field through creative use of technology. He has recently started work on "MySlate" and hopes to soon start field testing in collaboration with microfinance partners.

Akash Raman Akash Raman is a StartingBloc Boston 2010 fellow, and an alumnus of Harvard University and BITS Pilani, India. Akash was the founder of the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership (CEL) at BITS Pilani Goa; a center for excellence aimed at promoting entrepreneurship in the student community. He currently leads one of India's largest alumni run initiatives for higher education - BITS2MSPhD consisting of over 2500 students, and also works for Godparents.in, an online platform which brings together NGOs and potential donors assisting in creating opportunities for the millions of underprivileged children in India. Currently, Akash is a Visiting Faculty in the Electrical and Electronics Department at BITS Pilani, Goa.

Neha Kumari Neha is senior undergraduate at BITS Pilani Goa Campus pursuing information systems and E4SI fellow 2009. She heads the University and Fellow liaisons at E4SI and is responsible for selecting E4SI university  partners, marketing and publicity, engaging the fellowship cohort, managing content on the website  and monitoring the fellowship  experience.  Her E4SI immersion experience was at Intellecap where she worked on developing web 2.0 applications for microfinance institutions and small and medium scale enterprises. She  is experimenting with her idea for a social enterprise, fondly named 'Connect for India'. She is involved in  developing startup ecosystem at BITS Pilani Goa with HeadStart  and Organizing Twestival 2010 at Goa. She covers 'NASSCOM' events for fun with  'BlogAdda' team and you can find all that she is up to on www.twitter.com/neha1989.

We would also like to acknowledge the valuable contributions of three original co-founders: Vikram Subramanya, Arnab Ganguly and Vivek Agrawal

Advisors

Ayan Sarkar  Ayan is an Associate at McKinsey & Company's New York Business Technology office. Ayan has an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management and a B.Tech from IIT Kanpur. He started and ran the Spark Group, a for-profit education company focused on providing good quality education to poor families in India. Ayan has ten years of experience in working with Fortune 500 companies through McKinsey & Company, Deloitte and Oracle (Siebel). He won the runners up prize at MIT's 100K Business Plan competition and worked with Nobel Laureate Prof. Muhammad Yunus at Grameen Bank in Dhaka.

Anand Shah Anand Shah is an alumnus of Harvard University and the co-founder of the prestigious IndiCorps Fellowship. He is currently the CEO of the Piramal Foundation and a consultant to the ambitious Vedanta University project.

Dharen Chadha  Dharen is a strategy consultant who specializes in the emergent domain of corporate brand strategy. His work combines the best from the fields of business strategy, core vision, and brand strategy to provide organizations with a sense of unique identity which becomes a constant source of sustainable competitive advantage. Over the last 10 years, he has developed strategies for Asian Paints, Tata Steel, ITC, GMR, Hindustan Unilever, Pepsico, Titan, Wipro, Reebok, Deutsche Bank, P&G, etc. Dharen spent 10 years with the ad agency, J. Walter Thompson in their strategic planning function working first in India, then Asia Pacific and finally serving as Global Director of Strategic Planning. Dharen is a graduate of Jamnalal Bajaj Institute, Mumbai. He has published in the Economic Times, Business World, and The Times of India and has taught strategic marketing at IIM- Bangalore and IIM – Calcutta.

Neerja Raman  Neerja Raman is a recognized author and executive in management research. She is former Director, Strategic Planning and Imaging Systems Lab, Hewlett Packard Labs and currently Senior Fellow at Stanford University where she is developing business and leadership models for social entrepreneurs. She is on the advisory committee for Cyber-Infrastructure, National Science Foundation and board member of several non-profits. She was inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame in 2005 for global leadership and was recognized with a Distinguished Citizen Award by Federation of Indo Americans in 2006. Neerja’s book, "The Practice and Philosophy of Decision Making" was featured in the category "Books that Empower Women" by WITI. Her research at Stanford has been published in various conference proceedings and as chapter "Eco-Stacking: A Strategy for Success in Social and Business Agendas" in the summer 2007 book "Innovative Approaches to Reducing Global Poverty." Neerja is a graduate of the Kellogg Executive Program, Northwestern University, and has Masters degrees from SUNY Stony Brook and Delhi University.

Dr. Parth J. Shah  Parth is the President of the Centre for Civil Society, an independent,nonprofit, research and educational organization think tank in New Delhi. A B.Pharm. graduate, he received a Ph.D. in economics from Auburn University. He taught economics at the University of Michigan at Dearborn before returning to India. He has edited two books and published academic articles in the areas of development economics, welfare economics, business cycle theory, free or laissez-faire banking, and currency board systems. In India, his research has focused on private initiatives in and reforms of the education system and property right approach to environmental problems and natural resource management. He is the youngest Indian member of the Mont Pelerin Society, the premier international association of classical liberals. Parth enjoys applying economic principles to understand various human and non-human behavior patterns.

Priya Naik  Priya heads Samhita Social Ventures, a social business that aims to provide social organizations with access to funds, people, knowledge, networks and customers. Samhita is supported by Nadathur S. Raghvan, founder and former Joint MD of Infosys. Prior to working with Nadathur, Priya co-founded The Spark Group, an education company that delivered affordable education to low income communities.

Priya’s interest in social entrepreneurship began when she worked as a Researcher at the Poverty Action Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, USA. At MIT, Priya was part of two student-led start-ups – Aerovax, a company that created safe, inhalable aerosol vaccines that could be delivered without the use of needles and Kalpataru, a company that delivered innovative, low-cost technology to increase the efficiency of microfinance institutions. Kalpataru's pilot was tested with the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and was presented to Nobel laureate, Dr Muhammad Yunus. Both social enterprises won several awards at MIT.

Priya has worked as a consultant with the International Finance Corporation in Africa. She started her career in Accounting at Arthur Andersen in Mumbai.

Priya has a Masters degree in Economics from Yale University, USA, a Masters degree in Public Policy from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA and a Masters degree in Commerce from Mumbai University where she stood first in the entire graduating class.