Vartika Jaini
Founder
Vartika Jaini is a rural development professional committed to bringing large scale transformation in Central India. She has incubated several institutions and initiatives in themes including livelihoods, human and institutional development, youth development, arts, education and health in tenure spanning over 17 years at one of the oldest and well respected foundations in India. She is a Chevening Gurukul Fellow at Kings College London.
Prasanna Rao
Co-Founder
Prasanna Rao is the CEO and Managing Director of Arya, an agribusiness value chain integrator. Arya works with more than 400 Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) in providing them sustainable market access through a suite of post harvest interventions. Arya and its Financing Company have a specific focus on catalyzing the eco system for farmers and FPOs through post harvest interventions that include storage solutions, credit and risk guarantees, financial and market linkages and policy level changes. Prasanna brings his experience of working in the Cooperative marketing, FMCG Sales and Agri-financing sectors for the last 18 years. As part of his 8-year stint at ICICI Bank, the largest private sector Bank in India, Prasanna headed its Agri-commodity finance business. He has been a part of the supply chain, marketing and sales teams of organisations like Amul and Coca-Cola in India. Prasanna is a Chevening Fellow in Financial Services at Kings College London
Manoj Kitta
Co-founder
Manoj been involved in the field of education and educational reform for over 28 years. He has worked as Educational Quality Advisor and Consultant to Tata Trusts, UNICEF, Jesuits of Guyana. He has developed the strategic plan for the implementation of Educational quality improvement initiatives specially for the indigenous communities across the country and abroad including Africa and South America.
Roopali Sood
Co-founder and Design Lead
A Graduate from National Institute of Design, Roopali brings her experience in UX/UI design to Vriddhi. She has created design solutions for management consulting firms and cross industries such as e-commerce, finance and agriculture. Roopali is an alumnus of Delhi College of Art.
Pinki Ojha
Outreach manager
Provides administrative support to the I am Kisan platform. She supports digital outreach by contacting and responding to farmer calls. She manages farmer subscriptions for I am kisan outreach services. She collects and collates price data from various Mandis in Odisha. She is the backbone for day to day operations.
Pinki is a graduate in Sociology from Jajpur, Odisha.
Sarat Ojha
Project Manager
Sarat manages the field operations of I am Kisan. He is responsible for all trader network and price intelligence. He is also responsible for strengthening our relationship with our farmer users.
Sarat graduated in Science from Utkal University and has a post graduate diploma in computer applications. Sarat started his career as a resource teacher working in a primary school on inclusion. After this he was associated as customer service in an NBFC. Sarat has extensive experience in conducting audits of MFIs in Eastern region.
Rupei Hansadah
Field Manager
Rupei is responsible for coordination with farmers, I am Kisan Bandhus and traders in and around Harichandanpur.
He is a farmer himself and passionate about making a change in his region.
Rupei has completed his graduation.
Asha George
Program Manager
Asha P George is a rural development professional with more than 14 years of working experience in managing Social Development
projects on Natural Resource Management, Drinking Water & Sanitation, Social Security Welfare Schemes and Child Right Protection.
She has extensively worked in areas related to food and nutrition security, food sovereignty, natural resource management,implementation of National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) and pension schemes.
She holds a Post-Graduate Diploma in Rural Development from XISS, Ranchi and Post Graduate Certificate in Human Resource Management from XLRI, Jamshedpur.
Madhusmita Jena
Creative Associate: Audio
Madhu brings with her over 10 years of experience in media. She was an RJ at Radio Chokolate in Odisha. She has been in news reporting, script writing, copy editing. anchoring stage shows and producing programms for television channels. At Vriddhi, she is the voice of our audio messages lending them that extra pull!
Madhu is a graduate from DAV College and has done her Post Graduate Management in Journalism and Communication from Koraput, Odisha
Neelanjana Banerjee
Creative Associate: Film
Neelanjana, through her production house, Reels and Trax, collaborates with Vriddhi on audio visual content, particularly films. Neelanjana is a film and media professional. She is a Chevening Gurukul Fellow at Kings College London
Payal Randhawa
Associate: Strategy and Implementation design
Payal is passionate about telling stories of human endeavor and brings her experience in training design and facilitation. She has deep experience in training grassroots women in leadership. Payal has designed and launched initiatives tailored to scale the impact of social purpose organisations, such as The Khemka Awards and The Changelooms Fellowship. Payal founded BWorks Communication & Advisory Services in 2020.
Payal supports Vriddhi in communication and training design.
Swapnil Gaikwad
Creative Associate: Design
A graduate from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, he has illustrated books for children and adults and has also worked as a guest lecturer at the AJK Mass Communication and Research Center, Delhi. He heads Project reimagine, at Flourishing Minds Foundation. With a desire to connect theory and practice, he pursued an MA in Education from TISS Mumbai.As an educator, counsellor and artist, Swapnil’s body of work rests on the belief that the essential ingredient of true learning is a sense of inner wellbeing. And that art is a wonderful means to foster that.
Swapnil brings this spirit into the design work he does with Vriddhi and helps us create inspiring designs.