DIGITAL INDIA FOUNDATION - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Senior Policy Associate
- Young India Fellow
Aakash is a Young India Fellow and Liberal Studies postgraduate from Ashoka University and Management Studies graduate from University of Delhi. He has keen interest in political theory of technology deployment, science and technology policies, Indian philosophy, philosophy of mind and its intersection with artificial intelligence. He has published articles in the Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research (JICPR), Social Science Research Network (SSRN) as well as authored a book of essays on Gender, Society and Self. Previously, he has worked as a Teaching Fellow at Ashoka University. He aims to align his research to aid decision making at top management levels of public, private and nonprofit sectors.
Abhijeet Tipnis is the CEO of ThinQable Ltd; a company focused on helping Governments worldwide provide digital GovTech experience to their citizens and bringing Governments and citizens closer. He has over 20 years of Global experience working in the IT consulting and services industry, supporting technology transformation in the Government and Manufacturing sector. As part of this journey, he has worked with industry-leading Tech transformation organizations like Atos, TCS, and HCL Technologies. Abhijeet has been a big advocate of citizen enablement and believes in creating platforms that will serve as a public good and act as a catalyst in job creation by enabling start-up ecosystems. His engagements in GovTech include providing advisory services in Banking, National ID, Citizen Benefit System, Citizen to Government engagement Platform in emerging markets across the Middle East, Asia Pacific, and LATAM countries. In the manufacturing space, he has had deep involvement in helping the manufacturing industry adopt the industry 4.0 approach and help them create the required ecosystem to support the transformation initiative. Abhijeet has a Master's in Business Administration from Anglia Ruskin, UK, and a Master's in Economics from Madurai Kamaraj University, India.
Arvind Gupta is the Head and Co-Founder of Digital India Foundation, a policy think tank working in areas of Digital Inclusion, Smart Cities, Internet Governance, Data Privacy & Cyber Security, Electronics Manufacturing. He is an Adjunct Professor at IIT-BHU, teaching "Data and Digital Economy".
He has over 27 years of industry experience, having worked in diverse sectors in variety of leadership, policy and entrepreneurial profiles in India and Silicon Valley, USA. He has considerable experience in Consumer Internet, Digital Media, Payment Systems, Analytics and Data Economy. He has been on the Global FinTech Top100 list of Influencers and also the Member of World Economic Forum's Global Futures Council on Digital Economy & Society, OECD Expert Member of Global Value Chains. He has been awarded the Eisenhower Global Fellowship for Innovation for year 2014.
He has been awarded the DataQuest Pathbreaker of the year award and Distinguished Centenary Alumni award from IIT-BHU.
In his last role, he was the CEO of MyGov, an initiative of the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, to Empower Citizens of India with Participative Governance and Digitally communicate Schemes and Policies to all Indians.
He led the Digital, Social Media and Communication Campaign for PM Narendra Modi, which resulted in PM Modi creating electoral history and achieving its Mission 272+ in 2014 Elections.
He is Member of Founder's Circle of iSPiRT, which has worked extensively on the "IndiaStack". He is one of the thought leaders in implementing DBT throughout India. He is an active member of TiE, NASSCOM and Founder Member of iSPiRT. He also co-founded startups such as amplify.ai, ApnaPay, Ideaswall amongst others. Mr. Gupta is also a frequent speaker at various industry and Global forums. He is visiting faculty at IIT, Management Schools, Innovation Forums and has published many articles on #DigitalEconomy, Value of Data, #GovTech in leading papers of India, Harvard Business Review and World Economic Forum.
Mr. Gupta graduated with a degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from IIT-BHU, Varanasi. He has a Masters in Computer Science and MBA (Finance & Marketing) from University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.
Job Titles:
- Director, Operations and Talent Management
Neeraj Kumar has an extensive experience of managing different projects at the Digital India Foundation. He has been with the DIF from the beginning. His interest lies in empirical qualitative research, survey design, volunteer management, technology deployment and social media analytics. Previously, he has worked as Director at a leading IT consulting firm. He has a deep passion for environmental issues and sustainable agriculture.
Pranav Obhrai has been associated with Digital India Foundation since 2016. He completed his under-graduation from SRCC, University of Delhi and MBA from Indian School of Business (ISB). He has worked in multiple startups such as Uber, Amplify.ai and Triller besides his consulting experience at Boston Consulting Group (BCG) He is extremely passionate about public policy's impact on the digital economy. He has a great experience-backed understanding of intersection of startups-policy-governance.
Shivank is an engineering graduate from VIT University, Vellore. Despite the STEM background, his passion lies in the fields of Technology policy and International Relations. He has co-founded Project Statecraft- A Youth Policy Think Tank comprising of a diverse cohort of over 18 countries. His pursuits in the field of public policy have also led him to work as part of the Young People's Action Team (YPAT) under the ambit of YuWaah (UNICEF Generation Unlimited) as a Youth Advisor.