Ashish Sinha

Ashish Sinha has an extensive background in multi-disciplinary research and consulting across diverse verticals including preventive healthcare, education, water sector restructuring, microfinance, family planning and marketing of health products in rural areas. He has worked with Abt Associates India in implementing USAID-funded Market based Partnerships for Health Project. Ashish also worked with the Social and Rural Research Institute at IMRB International. He holds a Masters in Management Studies from MNNIT Allahabad and a Bachelors degree in Genetics. Ashish is an avid photographer and occasionally plays the tabla.

Ashish will be working as a Villgro Fellow (2011-12) at Villgro Innovations Marketing Private Limited, an independent for-profit entity distributing a range of innovative products and services in rural Tamil Nadu. His focus areas include business model refinement and development of marketing and branding strategies.

Caitlin Marinelli

Caitlin pursued a bachelors degree in International Relations, and worked in Argentina and Guatemala on policy issues affecting marginalized populations. She quickly learned that even ideal policies were not sufficient to create change for those in need. Successful programming relies on a holistic understanding of the client population, capacity building, and inclusive leadership and communication. She therefore pursued a graduate degree from Columbia University in Social Work and Public Policy, dedicated to understanding how to harness the knowledge and potential of marginalized populations by taking a bottom-up approach to development.

"Learning that local ownership and access to mainstream markets is critical to empowering the poor, I found that social enterprise is a sustainable way to achieve these ends. I spent the last year reading and writing avidly about everything social enterprise I could get my hands on. I went to conference after conference, competed in a social enterprise business plan contests, and worked for a grant-making organization that funds high-impact social enterprises around the world. During that time, I learned about Villgro, the first company in India to incubate, train, and mentor early stage, for-profit social enterprises committed to making a difference with the rural poor in India. Villgro’s Fellowship gave me the opportunity to ask myself: I can advocate and raise money for social enterprises, but can I get my hands dirty and do it myself? Therefore, I applied to Villgro to learn the nuances of the implementation of social enterprises on the ground, in order to be a more informed policy advocate and fundraiser in the future.”

Caitlin will be at Uniphore where she will be involved in Business Development.

Emily Paarmann

Emily is from Richmond, Virginia and a 2006 graduate of the University of Virginia with a degree in economics. During college she spent a month in Nicaragua to study the challenges faced by small entrepreneurs in developing economies. Upon graduation, she moved to New York City to work as a consultant in the financial services and developed skills in finance, business development, sales, and marketing. She also became involved as a volunteer with several development organizations, including the Microfinance Council of New York, Acumen Fund, and ACCION USA. As she learned about the development sector, she knew she wanted to devote the business skills she learned in the corporate sector to the social sector, and began seeking avenues to work directly with the BoP, understand their struggles, and learn how she could help progress the movement.

Emily was immediately attracted to Villgro because of their unique approach to identifying and mentoring home grown social enterprises. Villgro has a focus on developing the social enterprise sector through their development of fellows, and their induction and mentoring programs help guide fellows throughout their career development."They also afford fellows high degrees of responsibility, allowing us to be truly challenged and immersed in social enterprise at its core"

Emily will be at UTMT Organics and Naturals and her role will be in Business Development and Finance

Hanu Kiran Panchakarla

Hanu reached a point in his career where he decided he needed to find fulfillment and a deeper sense of satisfaction in his professional life. He wanted to work in social entrepreneurship sector in order to help transform lives at the bottom of economic pyramid. Bringing low-cost services in banking, healthcare, finance, etc. to underprivileged sections of society is definitely a big opportunity as well as a necessity. He strongly believes that innovative business models can be employed in an economically viable fashion to solve many of the social problems. Villgro’s mission of empowering rural development by identifying and incubating innovations therefore really resonated with him . The Villgro fellowship has now offered him the right platform to learn and contribute to this rapidly growing domain.

Before coming to Villgro, Hanu worked with Bank of America at Mumbai as part of the Global Corporate and Investment Banking team. Having worked on various M&A projects,he is looking forward to apply the experience and knowledge in enabling the expansion of social business models so as to bring about a wider impact. Prior to that, Hanu had done his Bachelors in engineering from IIT Madras with a major in Biotechnology.

Hanu will be at Skymet where his roles will include Finance and Operations

Josep Borràs

Josep Borràs is from Barcelona (Spain) and studied economics in Barcelona and holds a Msc in Urban Management by the Erasmus University of Rotterdam (The Netherlands). He has been working in different projects across several European countries, in terms of strategic planning, economic development, cultural management and urban regeneration.

His aim in doing the Villgro Fellowship programme is to utilise his professional and personal experiences and transfer his expertise to the field of economic and social development. This programme is also a good chance to get a deeper knowledge in the social enterprise sector, by promoting the development of entrepreneurial activities to enhance sustainable economic growth in rural communities.

Josep will be at Villgro Stores where his roles will be in development of marketing and branding strategies.

Lance Casey

Having always been passionate about helping people and curious about other cultures, Lance’s interest in social innovation became a passion in 2009 when he worked for a Microfinance Institution in Bangladesh. “While I realize the importance of basic financial services in the lives of the rural poor, in order to bring about widespread sustainable change it will require more.” Lance is particularly interested in seeing how Villgro uses their ability to impact all aspects of infrastructure to foster lasting social change in rural India. Yearning for differing perspectives through hands-on experience, the fellowship will allow him to utilize skills and experiences to serve social enterprise, while gaining a deeper and broader understanding of the field as a whole.

Lance is a Finance graduate from Texas A&M University and has experience working in various sectors including financial services.

Neel Shah

Neel Shah has worked on several projects in the domain of solid waste management and eco design. He pursued research in application of Clean Development Mechanism in Commercial Building sector and authored a thesis on Design for Frugal Sustainability. Neel holds a postgraduate degree in Design from IIT Kanpur.

As a Villgro Fellow for 2011-12, Neel will work with ROPE – Rural Opportunities Production Enterprise and explore opportunities in connecting rural artisans to global and local markets.

Nilima Achwal

Nilima Achwal is looking forward to working directly with Villgro during her fellowship. She accepted the Villgro Fellowship because it offers the rare opportunity to work closely with social enterprises across different sectors, use Villgro’s mentor network to develop long-term professional goals, and gain a first-hand understanding of the social enterprise space in India.

Nilima is also a Staff Writer and former Editor of NextBillion, a prominent online consortium of experts in social entrepreneurship, business and nonprofit leaders, policy makers, and academics exploring the connection between development and enterprise. Previously, she was a Business Case Writer at the William Davidson Institute, where she worked with faculty at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business to develop case studies for MBA courses, with a particular focus on base of the pyramid topics. She was also a Kiva Fellow at a microfinance institution in Bolivia, for which she trained staff on Kiva processes and interviewed borrowers to assess the impact of their micro-loans. Nilima graduated with distinction in Economics and Spanish from the University of Michigan.

Shrey Goyal

Shrey Goyal recently graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur, India. While there, he had worked on a clean energy project, Urja, which has since been deemed an Ashoka's Youth venture, and won the Oxford Youth Business Development Challenge in 2009. Shrey has previously worked in the spaces of innovation in microfinance and Social Enterprise consulting, and was a consultant for OECD-PISA with the World Bank, India. He also founded AnaGenesis, a social enterprise that provides research-based solutions and top University talent in the financial inclusion sphere.

As a Villgro Fellow for 2011-12, Shrey will be working with First Energy, Pune, and is looking forward to gain hands-on experience in the Clean Energy space while acquainting himself with the operational challenges associated with enabling innovations at the Base-of-the-Pyramid.

Swetha Krishnakumar

Swetha became interested in social entrepreneurship because she was looking for innovative and new approaches to international development. She has always been passionate about education and poverty issues and had developed her background with traditional non-profit organizations. When she initially learned about social enterprises, Swetha was intrigued by the use of market-based approaches and more sustainable methods to development. "I was also excited to learn more about the business and analytical skills involved in social entrepreneurship that would allow me to bring forward some of the important knowledge I had gained through my industrial engineering degree"

Through the Villgro fellowship, she will be working with Sustaintech which sells and distributes fuel efficient stoves for urban small businesses and restaurants. "I am looking forward to the opportunity to understand the Indian poor population as consumers to work with rather than passive beneficiaries. I hope this experience will allow me to develop my understanding of the Indian context so I can continue to work in India in the future"

Want to know more about the Fellow's experiences in the field?  Visit the blog.