Kirti Prasanna Mishra

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Kirti, Cofounder and Director, has more than 25 years of experience of working with Base of the pyramid (BoP) communities and development sector organizations in designing and delivering customised sustainable solutions. 

He carries unique expertise in strategizing and designing sustainable and inclusive business solutions targeted at the low-income communities. He has been supporting several organizations which are working in themes like agroecology, regenerative agriculture, sustainable sourcing and marketing of safe and healthy food. He has been supporting reputed organizations like FAO, UNESCAP, GIZ, World Bank, GAIN, IDH Trade, Solidaridad, Swissaid, Swisscontact, the Nature Conservancy etc. He has been working extensively with GIZ, India towards strategizing its food systems related initiatives. Kirti is spearheading the action learning initiative of Ecociate called Earthy n Green. The driving purpose of this initiative is to establish a sustainable food system business model by linking farmer based enterprises engaged in producing safe and healthy products directly with the consumers.

Saroj K Mohanta

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Saroj, Co-Founder and Director, has a career spanning three decades in Market Research and  Consultancy. He has deep understanding of community, consumers and markets has been contributing to developing market insights, designing disruptive innovation and business modelling. He has been an architect to several BoP Innovation Models that have benefited partners from both Corporate and Social sectors. He has rich experience of developing Rural Marketing strategies for corporate businesses. His portfolio of Business Model Innovations(BMI) includes Arogya Parivar for Novartis, Bhaichara for Baxter, and Advanced cook stoves for Shell Foundation. He has also been part of the product development of Baby Warmer for GE healthcare. He has worked on international consulting assignments on supply chain and product distribution in Bangladesh, Nepal, and Nigeria. He leads the Nutrition Business Portfolio at Ecociate. He co-created a Nutrition Supply Chain model to create access to nutritious food products among the tea garden women workers in Assam for GAIN.

Ashwini Chandak

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Ashwini, Cofounder and Director, has over 20 years of experience in working with rural communities.

He has been instrumental in developing robust community institutions, promoting sustainable agriculture through agroecology, and regenerative and agriculture, etc. and has supported in establishing inclusive community-based enterprises across agri-horti-ntfp-livestock sectors, through public-private-community partnerships for economic well-being of communities and initiating a process for food system transformation.

He has worked extensively in India and Bangladesh and has been actively involved in developing enterprise promotion strategies and inclusive business models through a gender inclusive, environment friendly, market responsive value chain-based approach. He has led and supported multiple assignments for The World Bank, GIZ, DFID, IFAD, JICA, GAIN, FAO, The Nudge Institute, SWISSAID, and SWISSCONTACT etc. He is trained as a CII-certified Sustainability Assessor to assess the operations of business entities from the lens of sustainability and is trained to use FAO’s RuralInvest tool which aids in preparation of Investment (Business) Plans.

Nirmallya Mandal

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A Co-founder and Director of Ecociate, Nirmallya has around 20 years of rich experience in social and market research, consultancy and project management, across various subjects of sustainability, entrepreneurship development, sustainable agriculture, Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs), livelihoods, CSR etc. With a post graduate in Rural Management and a background of Economics, he is a certified Master trainer from Pearson, London and has also been a certified and empanelled ‘Sustainability Assessor’ for the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII). Nirmallya has led numerous national and state level value chain studies for various organizations and has deep rooted knowledge of sectors like Fisheries, Agriculture, Horticulture, Animal Husbandry etc. He has extensive experience across almost all states of India and Bangladesh.

Santosh Gupta

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Santosh is a Director at Ecociate Consultants with 12 years of rich experience in the domains of Inclusive Business, Sustainable Agriculture, Livelihoods and Micro-finance. He has done masers in Rural Management and Post Graduate Diploma in development leadership. He keeps significant experience and understanding of the principles and practices of agroecology, regenerative agriculture and other nature-based solutions addressing the sustainability issues in Agriculture. He holds a deep understanding of the Indian spice sector and has worked on multiple projects to address the sustainability issues in the spice sector. He is well connected with the various sustainability platforms and assessment tools to measure and value the impact. He has worked with several private sector players in the Agribusiness sector to build their capacities around sustainability, inclusive business, good agriculture practices, business modelling and planning and introducing new systems and processes. He loves to be in field and amongst the farming communities to have deep conversations and explore indigenous solutions to complex issues.