Courses & Events
Action for India: Scaling Social Impact through Tech
May 28, 2013
04:15 pm - 05:30 pm
Action for India: Scaling Social Impact through Technology
In this week’s seminar, Mr. Sanjay Kadaveru, Founder and President of Action for India (AFI), will describe the work that AFI is currently doing in India to facilitate social innovation. Ms. Radhika Shah, Member of the AFI Silicon Valley Chapter’s Leadership Circle, will join an interactive fireside chat moderated by Dr. Richard Dasher, Director of the US-Asia Technology Management Center. Mr. Sam Pitroda, Advisor to the Prime Minister of India and the guiding force behind AFI, is also slated to join the discussions by video conference.
Action For India (AFI)’s core mission is to help social entrepreneurs in India overcome barriers to scale and achieve greater impact at the Bottom of the Pyramid. AFI helps social innovators in India leverage information and communication technology and connect them with investors, mentors and technology experts worldwide. Launched in 2012, AFI is supported and guided by Sam Pitroda, Advisor to the Prime Minister of India and Chairman of the National Innovation Council of India.
AFI’s Silicon Valley Chapter Leadership Circle is focused on building and fostering a local community that supports AFI’s work and brings together silicon valley resources and people who would like to have a social impact and help social cause in India via the AFI platform. The group’s Leadership Circle includes seasoned entrepreneurs, tech executives and people with a deep background in the world of non-profits.
Sam Pitroda, Adviser to Prime Minister of India & Honorary Chairman, AFI
Mr. Sam Pitroda is an internationally respected development thinker, policy maker, telecom inventor and entrepreneur who has spent over four decades in Information and Communications Technology and related human and national developments initiatives. Credited with having laid the foundation of India’s technology and telecommunications revolution in the 1980s, Mr. Pitroda has been a leading campaigner to help bridge the global digital divide.
He is currently Advisor to the Prime Minister of India on Public Information Infrastructure and Innovations and has undertaken the ambitious task of providing a plan for creating digital infrastructure in the country for enhancing governance and improving delivery of public services. He is also the Chairman of the National Innovation Council (NInC) which is working on several initiatives to boost innovation performance in the country. He holds close to 100 worldwide patents and has published and lectured widely in the US, Europe, Latin America and Asia.
Sanjay Kadaveru, Founder and President, AFI
Sanjay has over 17 years of international experience spanning the domains of investments, management consulting and business development. He has extensive business and personal relationships with leading executives, investors, and institutions in the US-India corridor, including a significant concentration of high net worth individuals, family offices, and venture capital/private equity firms. Sanjay is also co-founder and Board Member at the Center for Healthcare Innovation, a not-for-profit thought-leadership organization focusing on the life sciences. Sanjay is a Charter Member of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) and served as a co-chair for TiECON East, one of the largest innovation focused conferences in the US. Sanjay is a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology at Madras and the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
Radhika Shah, Member, Leadership Circle, AFI’s Silicon Valley Chapter
Radhika is a Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur. She is involved in civic engagement initiatives and also advises and helps organizations that leverage technology for social impact such as Samasource, the Lurdes Mutola Foundation – helps educate girls in rural Mozambique, and CGNetSwara – helps empower the voice of tribal Indians. She is an alumna of the Stanford CS Dept and U.C Berkeley Haas School of Business and is an active mentor at Stanford’s Startx Mentor Labs, Berkeley SkyDeck Labs and at Rajeev Circle of which she is a founding volunteer.
Immediately following the session, we’ll have a short-networking reception from 5:30 – 6:15PM. This is the eighth session in the US-Asia Technology Management Center’s ten week seminar series on “Entrepreneurship in Asian High-Tech Industries.”
Presented by the US-Asia Technology Management Center in Stanford’s School of Engineering, with support from the Miner Foundation and major series support from ISI Dentsu of America.
