Microfinance India Summit 2009

Day 1 Speakers

Special Address

• Her Royal Highness Princess Máxima

  At the invitation of the United Nations, Princess Máxima was involved in the Advisors Group to the International Year of Microcredit 2005. In 2005, the Princess visited Uganda, Kenya, Brazil, and Argentina to see microcredit in action, meeting with government, business and NGO representatives.

  From 2006 to 2008, Princess Máxima served on the United Nations Advisors Group on Inclusive Financial Sectors, charged with following up on the results of the International Year of Microcredit 2005. The Princess has engaged businesses, donors, legislators, supervisors, microfinance institutions and international organisations on the role they could play in giving more small businesses access to the financial sector and achieving universal access to financial services.

• Brij Mohan

  Mr. Brij Mohan is the former executive director of the Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) and has been engaged in pro-poor development activities for the last 29 years in various capacities in Industrial Development Bank of India & SIDBI.

  He was closely involved in setting up of SIDBI Foundation for Micro Credit (SFMC) as an apex financing & development micro-finance entity in 1998.  Mr. Mohan continues to be associated with the microfinance sector as chairman of ACCESS Development Services as well as chairman of Ananya Finance for Inclusive Growth Private Ltd- a wholesaler microfinance institution.  He is also the Chairman and Managing Trustee of MicroSave India - a capacity building institution and a policy advisor to Sa-Dhan.  Mr. Mohan is a director on the Boards of M-Cril -a MF rating institution and Micro, Small & Medium Enterprise Foundation-a UNIDO promoted cluster development group.  Besides, he is the Vice chairman of RGVN ( North East) Microfinance Ltd as well as Rashtriya Gram Vikas Nidhi (a NGO support institution for the East & North East). Mr. Mohan is also on the editorial advisory board of UK based Enterprise Development and Microfinance Journal.

Panelists

• Arindom Datta

  Arindom Datta is Director and Head of the Rural & Development Banking/Advisory division at Rabo India Finance.

  Arindom Datta did his graduation from St. Stephens’ College, Delhi and has a MBA degree with specialization in Finance and Strategy from IIM (K)

  Arindom has over 17 years of experience in Cooperative Banking, Rural Finance and Agribusiness having worked earlier in NABARD, IDBI Bank and CARE India.

  Now he handles the Rural and Microfinance banking and advisory portfolio for Rabo India finance and projects in Agribusiness, rural cooperatives and microfinance for Rabobank Foundation.

• Eric Savage

  Eric is Co-Founder and Managing Director of Unitus Capital.  Unitus Capital is a financial services firm that aims to change the structure of the global capital markets to meaningfully include the poor for the first time.  Unitus raises capital for microfinance institutions and other companies and funds that benefit the poor across sectors including low income housing, agriculture, technology, education and health care.   Previously, Eric headed Citigroup’s Asia Power and Infrastructure investment banking group and helped secure and execute multiple landmark equity, debt and M&A transactions totaling many billions of dollars.  Eric was based in Hong Kong for 12 years and worked for Citigroup/Salomon Brothers for a total of 14 years. From 1996 to 1998, Eric was Head of Salomon's utilities sector equity research team and was selected as a member of Institutional Investors' All-Asia research team. Eric is a graduate (cum laude) of Duke University and the Harvard Kennedy School. From the Kennedy School he received the Lucius N. Littauer Fellow Award, the program’s top honor.

• Joy Deshmukh-Ranadive

  Joy Deshmukh-Ranadive is Director of the Indian School of Microfinance for Women, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India, a capacity-building organisation engaged in spreading microfinance as a strategy for poverty alleviation through the development of appropriate knowledge and skilled human resources via trainings and research. A doctorate in economics, Deshmukh-Ranadive has over twenty years of experience in gender and development. She has several published books and papers in the areas of microfinance, women’s empowerment, intra-household distributions, structural adjustment, women’s work, domestic violence, women and ageing and economic, social and cultural human rights. Her publications include the co-edited volume, Micro-Credit, Poverty and Empowerment, Linking the Triad, Sage, New Delhi 2005.

• Mary Ellen Iskenderian

  Mary Ellen Iskenderian is President and CEO of Women’s World Banking (WWB), a global network of 40 microfinance providers and banks, working in 28 countries to bring financial services and information to poor entrepreneurs, particularly women. Ms. Iskenderian, who joined WWB in 2006, has more than 20 years of experience in building global financial systems throughout the developing world.
   
  Prior to WWB, Ms. Iskenderian worked for 17 years in senior management at the International Finance Corporation, the private sector arm of the World Bank, and previously for Lehman Brothers.
  
  Ms. Iskenderian sits on the Board of Directors of the ASA Foundation, and the advisory boards of the Dignity Fund, Kiva, and Trickle Up. She is a member of the Women’s Leadership Board of Harvard University and the Council on Foreign Relations. She holds an MBA from the Yale School of Management and a BS in International Economics from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

• Robert Peck Christen

  Robert Peck Christen manages Bill & Melinda Gates foundation’s Financial Services for the Poor initiative and brings with him over 25 years of experience in over 40 countries advising institutions and governments on the best ways to extend high quality financial services to low income clients.  He has extensive expertise developing microfinance in commercial banks, creating performance standards and tools for financial management and in the regulation and supervision of microfinance institutions.  Robert has been a leading spokesman for the importance of incorporating the concept of sustainability in microfinance and the mainstreaming of financial services for the poor into regulated financial systems.  He has published extensively in these areas.

  Prior to joining the Foundation Robert served as Senior Advisor to the Consultative Group to Assist the Poorest (CGAP) in the World Bank.  He founded and continues to serve as President of the Boulder Institute of Microfinance.  Robert founded the MicroBanking Bulletin which is dedicated to financial performance of several hundred leading microfinance institutions and continues to serve as the Chair of the Editorial Committee.

  He received his Bachelors degree in Political Science and Economics from Beloit College and later obtained a certificate of Graduate Studies in Regional Planning from Syracuse University. He also holds a masters degree in Agricultural Economics and Development Finance from Ohio State University.  Robert was the recipient of the 2005 Distinguished Alumni Award, The Ohio State University CFAES Alumni Society in recognition of his work in the field of financial services for the poor.

• Samit Ghosh

  Samit Ghosh is founder & CEO of Ujjivan Financial Service (Ujjivan), a micro finance institution which as of August 31st, 2009, has 190 branches across India covering 12 States and over 448,000 poor working women as customers.  They have disbursed over Rupees 5.3 billion of loans and have a repayment rate exceeding 98.9%.  Samit is also a founder member and the Secretary of the Association of Karnataka Microfinance Institutions (AKMI).

  Samit was a career banker spanning 30 years and worked both in South Asia and in the Middle East. He started his career with Citibank in 1975 and was part of Citibank’s pioneering management team to launch consumer banking to the middle class in India in 1985-90 and the Arabian Gulf in 1990-93. He led the launch of Retail Banking in South Asia and Middle East for Standard Chartered Bank during 1993-96. In 1996 as Executive Director of HDFC Bank he initiated their Retail Banking business. His last banking assignment was as Chief Executive of Bank Muscat in India from 1998 to 2003.

  Samit is a graduate of Economics from Jadavpur University, Kolkata; and Master of Business Administration from Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

• Rajiv Sabharwal

  Rajiv is an Executive Director with Sequoia Capital India. Prior to joining Sequoia Capital, Rajiv served as Senior General Manager Mortgages, Retail Assets and Rural Finance at India's largest private sector bank, ICICI Bank Limited. He was instrumental in making ICICI Bank a leader in Mortgages and other Retail Assets. Rajiv has served on the boards of ICICI Home Finance Company Limited and FINO Limited. Prior to joining ICICI Bank, Rajiv worked with GE Capital in the risk function and with Godrej and Boyce in the consumer marketing area. Rajiv received an MBA from IIM Lucknow and a B. Tech. in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Delhi.

• S G Anil Kumar

  Anil is currently the Chief Executive Officer of IFMR Holdings, a wholly owned subsidiary of IFMR Trust, leading a team of professionals involved in innovative product and channel design. Since April 2007, Anil has been involved in the set-up of a new breed of rural financial services channel named “Kshetriya Gramin Financial Services (KGFS)” in remote rural geographies.  He is also responsible for the incubation of the first three model KGFS’ in various locations.
  In addition to his work within IFMR Trust, he is a Board Member in Grameen Capital India and Member - Project Management Committee, MicroSave India.

  S G Anil Kumar has a Masters in Management (2005) from Asian Institute of Management, Manila, Phillipines and holds a Masters Diploma in Business Administration with an International Marketing (2002) specialization from Symbiosis Institute of Management Studies, Pune.

• Naina Lal Kidwai

  Naina Lal Kidwai  is Group General Manager and Country Head of HSBC  in India, which employs 37,000 people. The Bank achieved a compounded annual growth rate of 46% over the last 3 years and HSBC acquired a retail broking company and started a Life Insurance Joint Venture company and microfinance in India.

  An MBA from Harvard Business School, she has been recognised in India and abroad with several awards and listings for leadership and business. Repeatedly ranked in the Fortune global list of Top Women in Business, 12th in the Wall Street Journal 2006 Global Listing of Women to Watch and listed by Time Magazine as one of their 15 Global Influential 2002.  She received the Padma Shri from the Government of India for her contribution to Trade and Industry

  She is a non executive director on the board of Nestle SA and member of the Board of Dean’s Advisors of The Harvard Business School.

• Nigel Biggar

  Nigel Biggar has over 17 years working with microenterprise and microfinance in developing countries. He began in this field working as a microentrepreneur with a street youth project he established in Quito, Ecuador in the early 1990s.  He has worked extensively with MFIs and microentrepreneurs and street youth in Latin America and Asia.
  
  Nigel has been with Grameen Foundation since early 2000. He is currently the Director of the Social Performance Management Center and the principal for the Social Performance/ Progress out of Poverty Index initiative. He previously served as Grameen Foundation’s Regional Director for the Americas where he assisted start-up MFIs in Latin America to build and expand their programs based on the Grameen methodology.  He holds a masters degree in Development Studies from the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University.

• Robin Ratcliffe

  Robin Ratcliffe is Director of The Smart Campaign – “Keeping Clients First in Microfinance” at the Center for Financial Inclusion, ACCION. She works with the senior management to develop programs and partnerships that support its global expansion.  She is leading an industry-wide consumer protection initiative to align microfinance around core principles of fair and respectful treatment of its clients. She represents ACCION with international organizations including the United Nations, World Economic Forum, Microcredit Summit and Clinton Global Initiative, and directs Microfinance Cracking the Capital Markets, the ACCION-hosted microfinance investment conference. She joined ACCION in 1997 as VP Communications, with overall responsibility for the organization’s marketing and public relations. Ms. Ratcliffe spent 18 years in the travel and tourism industry working in advertising and public relations, events management and operations. She holds a B.A. in political science and Spanish from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Day 2 Speakers

• Vikram Akula

  Vikram Akula is the Founder and Chairperson of SKS Microfinance, an organization whose mission is to eradicate poverty by providing financial services to poor households. He was named by TIME Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2006 and SKS was named one of Businessweek's Top 5 Companies to watch out for in 2009.

  Vikram is a former management consultant with McKinsey, has a B.A. in philosophy from Tufts, an M.A. from Yale, a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, and was a Fulbright Scholar. He has received several awards, including the Social Entrepreneur of the Year in India (2006), the Ernst & Young Start-Up Entrepreneur of the Year in India (2006), the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leader award (2008), and he has been profiled in media ranging from CNN to front page of the Wall Street Journal.

• P.N. Vasudevan

  P.N. Vasudevan is the promoter and Managing Director of Equitas, a Chennai-based new-age microfinance organization. In a retail finance career spanning over 20 years, Vasu rose up the ranks at Cholamandalam Investment and Finance Co Ltd and last served as the Executive Vice President & Business Head at Development Credit Bank, Mumbai.  

  Under Vasu’s direction, Equitas has built a reputation of a professional, efficient and transparent MFI. Equitas is widely known in the industry for its innovations including a centralized back-office, pre-printed collection stickers and real-time collections monitoring. To quote CGAP’s post on its website, “Equitas is one example of how good MIS is essential to well-managed microfinance”. Equitas is also involved in a wide range of social interventions including vocational training and medical camps that have covered over 100,000 members.

• Anil Sachidanand

  Anil Sachidanand is hailed as the mortgage banking financial expert and has been active in the residential mortgage business for more than two decades. Anil inculcated diverse experiences in companies like IDBI Bank where he was the Head of Retail Mortgage & HDFC Bank as the Business Head Mortgages. He also got a taste of the global scenario through the US based company, Adventity - Houston, Texas for four years.

  He is a veteran team builder with an innate ability to recruit, train and manage effective teams on a national scale. Anil believes in delivering consistent growth record and delivery of bottom line performance.
  
  As the CEO of Dewan Housing Finance, one of India's largest housing finance companies, he is primarily responsible for bringing in a strong focus to the retail side of the business. He has played a key role in improving productivity levels, increase business volumes and make the company a dominant player in its sector.

• Ashish Karamchandani

  Ashish Karamchandani is a Partner at Monitor. He has extensive experience in Financial Services including Life Insurance, Property and Casualty Insurance, Retail and Corporate Banking, SME Housing Finance etc. He has worked in these areas on policy, market development, branding, operations enhancement, sales force effectiveness, distribution strategy, mergers and acquisitions, joint-ventures, and outsourcing. After 7 years of leading Monitor’s consulting business in India, Ashish now heads up Monitor Inclusive Markets which catalyzes “market-based solutions to create social change”, working both at a broad sector level (developing a more rigorous underpinning of the opportunity, its drivers and barriers and how to address the barriers), and at the level of specific initiatives. One of the specific initiatives Ashish is extensively involved in is low-income housing.  Ashish and his team are currently in the process of facilitating a number of pilots that will help “make” this market.

  Ashish has a B.Tech from IIT Bombay, an M.S. from Berkeley and a PhD. from Stanford University.

• Joe Silva

  Joe Silva is the founder of TMC (www.tmcity.in). TMC has been pioneering the low income housing model in India.   The mission of the company is to build cities for the poor.  Most projects are public private partnerships in collaboration with local governments and are typically designed to house over 25,000 families.   The company’s philosophy is that there is greater merit in building new cities rather than imploding the existing ones with new population.   Additionally, the project office serves as a one-stop-shop for clients, providing in-house services ranging from helping clients prepare the necessary documentation to apply for loans, to connecting them with banks and housing finance companies (HFCs) interested in serving this income segment.

• Manohara Raj

  Manohara Raj is Senior VP & Business Head of the Micro Finance Division of HDFC Bank Ltd. With over 24 years of rich banking experience in different capacities in diverse geographies he was assigned the responsibility of designing the Microfinance business of the bank in the year 2003. He has been instrumental in introducing the Business Correspondent model in HDFC bank.

  Manohara Raj is a management graduate from the Madras University & has also completed the CAIIB from Indian Institute of Bankers. He started his banking career with Punjab National Bank in the year 1980 as a Probationary Officer. Since then he served the bank for 16 years in various capacities handling responsibilities in Corporate banking, Credit risk management and Rural banking. Then he joined the erstwhile The Times Bank in the year 1996 and then on till 2003 he handled various responsibilities under the corporate banking division in the post-merged HDFC Bank. He became part of HDFC Bank on its merger with Times Bank.

Day 3 Speakers

Special Address

• Agatha K. Sangma

  Agatha K. Sangma, a lawyer, an environmentalist and an amateur photographer, is currently the Minister of State for Rural Development. She represents the Tura constituency of Meghalaya state, and won the Indian parliamentary elections as a candidate of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). At age 28, she is youngest Minister of State in the current Cabinet. After doing her LLB from LS Law College, under Pune University, she joined the Delhi High Court as a lawyer and worked for one law firm before she plunged into politics. She did her MA from Nottingham University in the UK, on environmental management.

• Dr. Sankar Datta

  Dr. Sankar Datta is the Dean of the Livelihood School and also Director of the Indian Grameen Services. Dr Datta has a bachelor’s degree in agriculture and animal husbandry from GB Pant Agriculture University, Pantnagar, Uttar Pradesh, a post graduate diploma in Rural Management from the Institute of Rural Management, Anand, Gujarat and a PhD in Economics from the Sardar Patel University, Gujarat. He was at MP Oilseeds Co-operative Federation, PRADAN and IIM-Ahmedabad, before joining the faculty of the Institute of Rural Management, Anand for five years. Dr. Datta has been involved in extending professional services for rural development activities, specially focusing on livelihood promotion, working with micro-enterprises for over two decades.

• Nachiket Mor

  Nachiket Mor is a Yale World Fellow (2004); has a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania with a specialization in Finance from the Wharton School; a Masters degree in Management from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and an undergraduate degree in Physics from the Mumbai University.

  While completing his Ph.D., he was associated with a Philadelphia based hedge fund (Quantitative Financial Strategies) for three years. He has worked with ICICI since 1987 in a variety of jobs, including, Corporate Planning, Project Finance, Treasury and Rural Banking and was a member of ICICI Bank’s Board from 2001-2007. He is currently President of the ICICI Foundation for Inclusive Growth.

  In addition to his work with the ICICI Foundation, he is a member of the Boards of CRISIL, RUDI (SEWA), FINO, IndiaMart, Shorecap Exchange (USA) and the India Advisory Board of Intuit (USA).

Panelists

• Adarsh Kumar

  Adarsh Kumar helped establish and heads the All India Artisans and Craftworkers Welfare Association (AIACA), a membership-based policy advocacy body that brings together the private sector, civil society and the government to find innovative solutions to bridge the divide between poor rural producers and mainstream markets. Prior to AIACA, Adarsh has worked both at the Ford Foundation, where he worked on strengthening micro-credit institutions that serve the poor, and at the World Bank in Washington, D.C, where he worked on evaluating client satisfaction with welfare services in the Philippines. He holds a bachelors degree in Business Management from Georgetown University and a Masters Degree in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Adarsh has also been awarded the Echoing Green and Ashoka fellowships for his work on exploring different models of connecting poor producers to mainstream markets.

• N N Sharma

  Nagendra Nath Sharma has been associated with the social and development sector for more than 30 years. He has worked with public sector development banks, consultancy organizations, UNDP, UNIDO and other developmental organizations. He has been consultant to projects assisted by DFID, World Bank and GtZ in the areas of livelihood promotion, micro enterprises, promotion of clusters and entrepreneurship development.

   

• Sanjeev Kumar Asthana

  Sanjeev Kumar Asthana, an eminent expert in the Agri and Food sector, is the President & Chief Executive of Agri & Food Supply Chain of Reliance Retail Ltd. He is on the Board of Directors of Reliance’s various Agri & Food formats. Prior to Joining Reliance, Mr. Asthana was Director on the Board of Cargill India and headed their key business of Grains & Oilseeds. Mr. Asthana has been the Country Head in Indonesia and Romania with ITC Global Holdings (Subsidiary of Indian arm of British American Tobacco (BAT) from 1994 – 1997. He has had successful stints with Britannia and State Trading Corporation of India (STC) earlier.

  Mr Asthana has been nominated to serve on several boards and committees appointed by Government, International Agencies and Chambers as an expert on agriculture and food issues. He serves on several Executive Committees of National Business Associations and trade bodies like FICCI, CII, PHD, etc. He is a Member of the Executive Committee of NCDEX and on the Board of Directors of NCDEX Spot Exchange. Mr Asthana is affiliated to International Forums viz., Enterprise Solution to Poverty (ESP), US – India Business Council, India Water Forum of Columbia University, Produce Marketing Association (PMA), etc. He is a regular speaker at various national and International seminars on Commodity trade, Risk management, Food Supply Chain, Retail, Agriculture, etc. He is also a visiting guest faculty at several leading management institutes like IIMA, IIFT, Cornell University etc. Mr. Asthana is an alumnus of IRMA and IIFT.

• Aloysius P. Fernandez

  Aloysius P. Fernandez has worked in several sectors of the development world: as a volunteer in several post disaster situations, as a staff of national and international financial institutions and development agencies, as a Tutor in Development Studies and since 1982 as Executive Director of Myrada and founder Chairperson of Sanghamithra, a Micro Finance Institution. He pioneered the Self Help Affinity Group (SHG) movement in 1986 and promoted it since then with the active support of NABARD, which started the SHG-Bank Linkage Program in 1992.

• Neerja Raman

  Neerja Raman is a seasoned executive in technology and new business creation. At Stanford University, Ms. Raman is researching business models and metrics for sustainable development and is coach and mentor for social entrepreneurs. Prior to joining Stanford, Ms. Raman was Director, Strategic Planning and founder of the Imaging Systems Lab at Hewlett Packard Labs. Ms. Raman has served on the advisory committee for Cyber-Infrastructure, National Science Foundation, an initiative to improve science education in the US. Among other awards, Ms.
  Raman was honored with 2009 Outstanding 50 Asian Americans in Business and she has been inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame. Ms. Raman has also published the leadership book The Practice and Philosophy of Decision Making.

  Ms. Raman is a graduate of the Kellogg Executive Program, Northwestern University, and has Masters Degrees from S.U.N.Y Stony Brook, New York and Delhi University, India.

• Vanita Viswanath

  Vanita Viswanath is the CEO of Udyogini, an organization providing business development services to poor women in the backward and remote regions of India. Prior to joining Udyogini in 2000, she was a consultant to the World Bank and other international agencies. She was a staff member of the World Bank in Washington in the early 1990s. She has several writings to her credit including books and articles on political development, gender, development practice and microenterprise. She has a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin in the United States.

• Meera Shenoy

  Meera Shenoy is the Executive Director of EGMM, a Mission which she helped the Andhra Pradesh government to set up, from scratch. Today, it has grown to become the largest Jobs mission for the underprivileged globally. Its innovations are the learning products developed for the poor tailored to the needs of the market. She has been invited to speak on this topic in national and international seminars and given invited lectures on Youth and livelihoods in India, Europe and the US. The work has featured in several prestigious publications including Knowledge @ Wharton.
  Currently, she also works with the World Bank in Bihar, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh on Youth and employment. Her previous work experience is corporate, and media, both print and television.

• Orlanda Ruthven

  Since 2002, Orlanda Ruthven has researched and worked with players in a variety of global value chains across India, including decorative metalware, garments, jewelry and farm sector cash crops. Most of her time is taken as the India representative for Impact Limited, an ethical trading consultancy which engages global brands and their Indian suppliers in strategies to address and remedy poor labour standards in their supply chains in a way which makes business sense. In 2008 she completed her thesis on ethics in the workplaces of a global supply chain (University of Oxford). Earlier she worked with DFID and University of Manchester on programming, policy and research on microfinance and rural livelihoods. She has been based in Delhi since 1998.

• Nishant Saxena

  Nishant Saxena is the Founder CEO of Elements Akademia (EA). EA partners with colleges to fill up the great industry-academia divide in India. In his endeavor to make India’s Tier II city youth employable, he has created India’s first holistic vocational training – focusing on life skills, behavior, technical skills and campus placements.

  Nishant holds an MBA from Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Lucknow. He started his career with Proctor & Gamble, where he was responsible for Strategic Planning, M&A, and Corporate Finance, and worked for eight years in different geographies of Asia pacific—Philippines, Japan, India and

  Singapore. Nishant has also worked as Guest faculty with IIM Lucknow, NUS Singapore and SP Jain, Dubai. He teaches Corporate Finance, M&A and Strategy. As a corporate trainer, he has trained senior employees of organizations like P&G, Cadbury, Sumitomo Motherson, Aircel, J&J, ICSI etc.

• Prof. D N Rao

  Prof D N Rao is presently the Managing Trustee of Centurion Group of Institutes (India), which is a consortium of five institutions, each one a model of excellence in its own capacity. He has worked extensively in the Rural Development Sector, this being his first priority and first love, throughout his career. He has pioneered several innovations such as a novel method of revenue collection as part of Power Sector Reforms in Orissa, which has
  been taken up by World Bank for replication in other countries, capacity building and formation of SHGs in the 1990s and a new venture by the name of Gram Tarang which is poised to bring about a revolution in the job creation paradigm.

• Manish Sabharwal

  Manish Sabharwal is currently the Chairman and co-founder of Teamlease Services, India’s largest temporary staffing firm. The four year old firm now has over 75,000 employees in 770 cities/ towns across India.

  Earlier he co-founded India Life, an HR outsourcing company in 1996 that was acquired by Hewitt associates in 2002. Consequently he was Managing Director of Hewitt Outsourcing (Asia) in Singapore.

  Manish is a member of the Prime Ministers Council on Skill
  Development and served on the Planning Commission steering committee on labor and employment for the Eleventh five year plan (2007-12). He got his MBA from The Wharton School and undergraduate degree in business from Shriram College, Delhi.
  

• Neelu Bhullar

  Neelu Bhullar is currently an Associate Professor at the Management Development Institute, Gurgaon. She is an academician with a deep sense of practical business orientation. She is passionate about entrepreneurship development in rural India and is trying to build methods of sustainable income generation for women in the region of Mewat District (Haryana). She is also an advisor to Fair Trade Forum India. She has directed many training programs and trained senior and middle level executives of Nestle, Fortis Healthcare, Bank of Baroda, Cairn Energy, etc. She has worked closely with several NGOs, giving them practical implementation oriented solutions to market their products in India & abroad. She holds a Ph.D. from IIT Kanpur & M.Sc. (Information Systems) from London School of Economics. Neelu’s dream is to create a platform for Management schools to play an active role in the upliftment of the social sector in the country.

• Biswajit Sen

  Biswajit Sen is a Rural Development Specialist at the World Bank, Delhi. He has experience of over 25 years in the development field. Biswajit initiated and mentored several national level NGOs including PRADAN and GDS. He is an advisor to UNICEF in African and Central Asian countries, to the Government of Switzerland Aid in India and the McArthur Foundation. He holds a B.A. (Econ) from Delhi University & a PGDM from IIM Ahmedabad.

• Nisha Agrawal

  Nisha Agrawal is currently the Chief Executive Officer of Oxfam India, a rights-based advocacy organization that works with partners to create a more equal, just, peaceful, and sustainable world by empowering the poor and marginalized to demand their rights, and by building active and engaged citizenship that upholds the right to life with dignity for all. For the last 18 years, she has worked with the World Bank on development issues, and has extensive experience working in countries in the East Asia Region (Cambodia, Vietnam and Indonesia) and in the East Africa Region (Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda). She has also worked as a Research Economist at the Impact Research Center, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia. Nisha holds a B.A. in Economics from Miranda House, Delhi University, a M.A. in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics, Delhi University and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S.A.

• Ujjal Ganguly

  Ujjal Ganguly has been working with ITC's social initiatives program since November 2004. He has over 15 years of experience in working with the public sector like Rajasthan Oil Federation, Corporate Brooke Bond Lipton and NGOs like Chirag, Pradan and Srijan. He has also worked as a consultant with Sida and the World Bank. He holds a masters in Economics from JNU and a PGDRM from IRMA.

Day 1 - October 26, 2009

Day 2 - October 27, 2009

Day 3 - October 28, 2009