Our Mission
About Us
Wadhwani Foundation is a not-for-profit with the primary mission of accelerating economic development in emerging economies by driving job creation in India and other emerging economies through large-scale initiatives in entrepreneurship, small business growth, innovation, and skilling. Founded in 2000 by Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Dr Romesh Wadhwani, today the Foundation is scaling impact in 20 countries across Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
The Wadhwani Foundation works in partnership with governments, foundations, corporations, and educational institutes through the below Initiatives:
Wadhwani Advantage: Empowers small business entrepreneur with AI-enabled business management and business consulting services to maximize their growth potential.
Wadhwani Entrepreneur: Inspires, educates, and enables startup entrepreneurs.
- Wadhwani Inspire: Establishes a culture of entrepreneurship at a national level
- Wadhwani NEN: Empowers students with knowledge and skills through Courses, Startup Labs and Practice Ventures to create high-potential startups
- Wadhwani Venture Fastrack: Maximizes success rates of early-stage startups with enhanced business traction and funding opportunities
Wadhwani Opportunity: Provides 21st-century employability skills to millions of job-seeking students and empowers them with family-supporting wages.
Wadhwani Innovate: Accelerates large-scale innovation in academia and industry through innovation grants in partnership with governments and other organizations.
Wadhwani Catalyst Fund, Wadhwani Technology Platform, Wadhwani Academy, Wadhwani Institute of Technology and Policy & Wadhwani Market Research and Policy support the Foundation’s Initiatives.
Dr. Romesh Wadhwani
Founder and Chairman
- Silicon Valley entrepreneur and philanthropist
- Until 1999, built three successful companies, the last of which was exited at over $9 billion
- Founding Chairman and CEO of $3.5 billion Symphony Technology Group (1999)
- Founder and Chairman of Wadhwani Foundation (2000)
- Founding Chairman of PE firm Symphony AI (2018)
- Member of the Gates Buffet Giving Pledge
- Padma Shri 2020 awardee
- President Obama appointee to the Board of Trustees of the John. F. Kennedy Center
- Board Member of Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C.
Meet the Wadhwani Leaders
Dr. Kela leads the Foundation’s initiatives globally and is driving its expansion across Asia, Africa and Latin America.
- Expanded Foundation’s initiatives across 20 countries and enabled over $100M of Govt. investment during the past eight years
- Scaled startup Symphony Services to $175M with eventual exit at $780M
- Grew AutoCAD business from $170M to $850M during 10 years at Autodesk
- PhD research on computer graphics lead to multi-million dollar products at GE and Autodesk
- B-Tech, IIT Bombay, India and Ph.D from University of Rochester, USA
Based in Mexico City, Javier heads the Foundation’s Latin American Operations.
- Expanded Schneider Electric CST and Stanley Security operations in Europe, Middle East, and Latin America
- Multi-million dollar product development of Solid State and Automation Components for Schneider Electric
- Founder & co-founder of ventures on mobility, health, and energy across markets in Latin America
- Specialist in global expansion of multi-cultural teams with a focus on talent management across emerging markets
- Expanded Wadhwani Initiatives to 5-countries in two years
- Bachelor of Electronic Engineering from Universidad Iberoamericana & Marketing Specialization from ITAM in Mexico
Samir leads the Wadhwani Advantage program in India, focused on accelerating small business revenue and job growth.
- Advised and executed 200+ engagements for domestic and multinational, small and large businesses, in a diverse set of manufacturing and service industries
- 25-years of experience in India, Asia, Middle East, Hong Kong, Singapore, UK, and US
- Master's degree in consulting and coaching for change from INSEAD, France
- Attended ‘Leading Professional Service Firms’ at Harvard Business School and ‘Challenges of Global Poverty’ at MIT
Sunil leads the Wadhwani Opportunity program in Asia and is expanding its footprint in emerging economies.
- Undertook multi-initiatives at NIIT:
- Contributed to building Industry connects for placing 200K students
- Co-founded a new business venture ‘Stackroute’
- Led the B2C Digital transformation series
- 25-Years of experience in vocational training
- Hons in Economics from Delhi University
Sunita drives the Foundation’s global expansion.
- Co-founded, modeled and led the Foundation’s entrepreneurship education program covering over 500 higher education institutes for over a decade
- Led and executed the expansion of ‘Wadhwani Entrepreneur College’ and ‘Wadhwani SkillUp’ initiatives across 20-countries and 4-continents in 5-years
- 25-years of experience with 15-years in leading operations and new market expansions in Asia and Africa
- Led and executed strategic and creative PR campaigns for several multinational clients including Atos Origin, Lego, Mahindra Intertrade, Baskin Robbins, Netmagic, Mastek, Onward Technologies, TiE for over 3-years at Litmus PR, Mumbai
- M.A. from Andhra University and MPhil from Sukhadia University
Monica leads the Wadhwani NEN and Inspire programs of the Foundation.
- Prior to joining the Foundation, she was a Director at Omidyar Network, where she lead the education/skilling investments as well as grants in India
- Has been a Founding Partner at Kaizen Private Equity, a $70 mn Fund, where she led investments to the tune of $25 mn in the education and skilling sector
- An education entrepreneur from 2000-2009
- An MBA from Thunderbird, The Global School of Management, Arizona State University, AZ, USA
Atul spearheads marketing activities of Wadhwani Foundation and its Initiatives, globally.
- Instrumental in launching and managing leading FMCG brands like Airtel, Royal Challenge, Daewoo Matiz, Tata Indicom, Videocon, Sansui and Kenwood
- 25+ years of cross-industrial marketing experience across leading organizations like Bharti Airtel, Tata Teleservices, Shaw Wallace, Videocon, Bennett & Coleman, Biocon, and Daewoo Motors
- An avid writer in leading publications
- Extensively awarded for marketing initiatives
- Strategic Marketing, Product Management, and Corporate Branding from Wharton Business School - University of Pennsylvania, Marcus Evans -London, Indian School of Business (ISB)-Hyderabad, Indian Institute of Management -Bangalore (IIMB) and Tata Management Training Centre - Pune (TMTC)
Austin heads Impact Measurement and Partner Development operations at the Foundation.
- Vice President with Dallas based i2, an SCM application software firm, headed both Solutions and Services business units in U.S and India
- Leader of i2’s move for offshoring development to its India Center in 2002
- A management consultant, worked with the World Bank, The Gates Foundation and the Botswana Govt.
- MBA from University of Chicago, M.S. in IE & OR from Purdue University & B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Bombay
Swati is the Financial Controller at the Foundation.
- Prior stints with Deloitte Haskins and Sells, International Taxation, United Rentals Inc. Corporate Finance, a listed U.S company, and a startup, Rate Integration
- Chartered Accountant & Certified Public Accountant, from Colorado State
- B.Com and LLB from Gujarat University
Raghu heads the Foundation’s technology initiatives, globally.
- CTO and Co-founder of a women’s health startup which scaled to 7M+ app downloads worldwide
- Started Netapp’s Engineering Center in India and was instrumental in scaling it across multiple functions
- Leadership roles at global companies like Juniper, Cisco, and Netapp
- Building an AI-enabled micro-services based tech platform along with a variety of mobile/web products to scale Wadhwani initiatives
- B.Tech from IIT Madras, India and M.S from University of Wisconsin, Madison
Based out of Mumbai, Ratna heads the Wadhwani Catalyst Fund which will invest in high quality entrepreneurs with scalable business models across emerging markets, with a focus on India. The fund will catalyse businesses across sectors, with the overall objective of accelerating economic development by creating livelihoods / jobs.
- A private equity investor with 18+ years of experience across investing, consulting and banking
- Has experience spanning the entire cycle of investing, portfolio turnarounds and exits across multiple investments
- Prior to joining the Catalyst Fund, she spent over a year at Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in strategy consulting
- Prior to BCG, she was an Executive Director at Everstone Capital, an Asia focused PE fund with over US$ 3 billion in AUM, where she spent 11+ years overseeing investments in consumer, education, financial services and healthcare
- Her other experiences include:
- Investment Banking at JP Morgan, covering telecom and media in South East Asia
- Consulting at Arthur Andersen
- Ratna is a rank holder Chartered Accountant and has completed all levels of the CFA program (Charlottesville, USA). She has also attended the “Negotiations and Leadership Program” of Harvard Business School
Shantanu heads the Wadhwani Academy, globally.
- OD, HR & L&D professional in the areas of organizational development, people development strategy and implementation, digital education, learning management systems and content development
- Extensive experience in consulting with global organizations on their leadership skill development, L&D strategy and implementation, to help them attain greater efficiency, RoI and alignment to organizational goals
- Master’s degree from Pune University and certifications in Management, Digital Marketing, Knowledge Management and Instructional Design
Ajay heads the Wadhwani Venture Fastrack program of the Foundation.
- An entrepreneur, mentor, angel investor, and an active contributor to the innovation and startup ecosystems
- Founding Director of Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Bennett University
- Headed Bennett Hatchery – the startup incubator of the Times Group
- Worked with the Azim Premji Foundation for many years
- A Charter Member of TiE and serves on several national committees of FICCI and CII
- M.S. in Computer Science from Stevens Inst. of Technology, NJ, and a B.E. in Computer Engg. from Delhi University
- Several certifications from Carnegie Mellon University
Sameer spearheads Products and AI-empowered automation for the Foundation.
- Sameer is a product, technology, and business leader with experience of working with a global set of organizations and ventures including a few of his own
- He has extensive experience in delivering tech-driven business applications in areas of digital, marketing, retail merchandising, ERP and supply chain for industries like Retail, CPG, Travel & hospitality and Banking
- His last stint was as CPO at Manthan, a specialist SaaS provider of AI and data analytics powered business applications for retail industry
- He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from Shivaji University and a Diploma in Entrepreneurial Business Management from IIM Bangalore
Winning Values
Give Forward
-- Wear your passion on your sleeve
-- Give with a smile
-- Share knowledge unselfishly
-- Think Impact, not activity
Together Is Better
-- Partner around purpose
-- Network actively
-- Be super-responsive
-- Reach out; solve together
Make It Large
-- Think big & beyond
-- Considered risk-taking
-- Embrace agile – test, learn, scale
-- Empower down the line
With You All The Way
-- Proactively engage to support
-- Partner across the life cycle
-- Measure success, assess impact
-- Digital for lifelong engagement
Foundational Values
At Wadhwani Foundation, our six values represent a strong belief in the contribution we are making towards a better future. These values dictate our actions and are based on a framework of passion, commitment, enduring quality and impactful socio-economic delivery.
Innovation
Effective deployment of technology along with new ideas, new possibilities and new ways of working to maximize impact & benefits to our stakeholders
Collaboration
Working with diverse individuals and organizations to achieve common goals and inclusive solutions, in a mutually empowering way
Integrity
Being honest and dedicated with transparency in ownership and communication, and a zeal to meet commitments
Excellence
Driven by high professional standards in delivering quality products and services to our stakeholders
Leadership
Leading with an agile approach to problem-solving and creating a balance between grassroots experience, strategic thinking and policy making
Impact
Creating transformational, sustainable and scalable economic acceleration in emerging economies with high-impact outcomes