Akash Raman is the co-founder and CEO of Oodio, a post-production and design services company that works with 100+ photographers across the globe. Prior to Oodio, he worked at Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, where he built the Youth and Children vertical that aims to create an "Everyone a Changemaker" world with a specific focus on the 600 million Youth and Children across India. Akash has also worked at Engineers for Social Impact (as CEO), and at BITS Pilani (as a Visiting Faculty). He is an expert in strategy, design, teaching, and in development. Akash was awarded the Harvard University Fellowship, the Starting Bloc and the Sandbox Fellowships, as well as the BITS 30 Under 30 Award for Leadership. He holds an MS from Harvard University and a BE from BITS Pilani in Electrical Engineering. Akash is sector agnostic (largely!) and is passionate about solving hard problems that make the lives of billions of people easier and better. He is 2014 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in Bangalore.

Fellow since

After graduating from NIFT in 2003, she worked with a diamond export house catering to the American & European markets. In 2005, she was invited at my alma mater to be a faculty, researcher and project coordinator in the Department of Accessory design at NIFT, Gandhinagar, Gujarat. The tryst with the handicraft sector began here when she started working hand in hand with various crafts in Rajkot, Surendranagar and Kutch areas. With a full scholarship for Masters in Arts at Creative Academy, Milan which was followed by an internship under the Creative Director of Richemont Group, Mr. Giamporo Bodino, I got an opportunity to work closely with various international businesses. Eventually, Chicory Chai was established as an effort to integrate these experiences and join the growing design fraternity of India.

Fellow since

A mechanical engineer by profession, she started her career in automotive field. After working for nearing 7 years at Maruti Suzuki – India’s biggest passenger car company – she co-founded a venture with her entrepreneur husband Arpit Chhabra. Sparrow Devices has been started in 2012 with a vision to take India to New Age OOH Advertising. She started and headed Environment regulation group at Maruti. She has authored two international papers in field of Environment (Automobiles), published under SAE International. She is a 2013 fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in New Delhi.

Fellow since

Supriya Paul is the Director & Co-Founder of JOSH Talks, a company started with the sole purpose of finding India's most inspiring stories and showcasing them to the world through different mediums. She had earlier interned with companies like Outlook Magazine, Ogilvy & Mather and had done volunteer projects for TERI. She is an expert in Marketing, Team Management and Research. She holds a degree in Commerce. She is a 2016 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in New Delhi.

Fellow since

An architect by formal training, Uttiyo's body of work ranges from architecture, exhibit design, entertainment, museum design & management, retail development, performing arts and technology. His professional pursuit is anchored in finding resonances between design and business, and establishing profit as a measure of success. He has worked on the Select Citywalk project, India’s largest retail development, in downtown New Delhi), the Mahabharata 360 degree project with Kaleidoscope Entertainment, The Sadhu Vaswani Museum project with Design Habit, strategic organizational development and growth of Design Habit into India’s foremost Museum Development agency, India market strategy and operations for Heartwood Studios San Francisco, and is the founding vice-president of 2nd Foundation Theatre – an organization of architects in operation from 2000, working on experimental theatre in the city of Delhi. In the summer of 2010, he incorporated his business portfolio and experience into Design Business Collaborative to develop sustainable businesses operating within the intersections of design, culture and technology. [D+B]c is currently incubating a web-technology based enterprise [Hi!]Command, that integrates the best of militaristic command-and-control with non-linear human interactions to create efficient work-flows among remote participants, in real time.

Fellow since