Steered by people who have built institutions

An agricultural economist with 25 years at ICAR-IARI, ICAR-IISS, ICAR-NAARM and ICRISAT, who now leads a-IDEA, NAARM’s technology business incubator.

Dr Ranjit Kumar began his career in 2000 as an ARS Scientist at ICAR-IARI, New Delhi. His work spans agricultural economics and agribusiness management: agricultural marketing, value-chain analysis, the development of Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs), and innovation and agripreneurship. As Principal Scientist at ICAR-NAARM and CEO of a-IDEA, its Technology Business Incubator, he works at the centre of India’s agri-startup ecosystem.

Institutional leadership

• Head, Agribusiness Management Division, ICAR-NAARM (2017–2022), leading the academy’s management education and research.
• Principal Scientist, ICAR-NAARM, leading research and mentoring agribusiness professionals.
• Senior Scientist, ICAR-IISS, Bhopal, for over six years, on the economics and sustainability of soil resource management.

Contributions

• Repositioned NAARM’s PGDM-ABM, established a-IDEA, and designed training for FPOs and on entrepreneurship.
• Research, consultancy and collaboration with ICRISAT, IFPRI and CIMMYT (Mexico).
• Member of the QRT and RAC of several ICAR institutes and the advisory boards of state agricultural universities; Vice President of the Agricultural Economics Research Association (AERA); editorial board, Indian Journal of Agricultural Economics.
• More than 75 peer-reviewed articles and policy papers on e-NAM, FPOs and entrepreneurship.

Recognition

ICAR’s Lal Bahadur Shastri Young Scientist Award; Fellow of AERA and BASA; NAARM’s best faculty and best trainer awards.

Dean of JNU’s School of Computer and Systems Sciences, researching artificial intelligence, information security and deep learning, with more than 190 publications.

Dr Manju Khari is Dean and Professor at the School of Computer and Systems Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her research covers artificial intelligence, information security and deep learning. Before JNU she taught at Netaji Subhas University of Technology (NSUT), Delhi.

Research and publications

• More than 190 publications in peer-reviewed journals and conferences published by IEEE, ACM, Springer, Elsevier, Wiley and Inderscience.
• Co-author of two NCERT textbooks and editor of 20 volumes.

Government research

Research consultant and member on projects with AIIMS, CSIR-NPL, the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) and the Department of Science and Technology (DST).

Editorial roles

• Associate and guest editor for book series at Springer, Wiley and Elsevier.
• Technical programme committee member and reviewer for international conferences, and peer reviewer for journals in computer science and engineering.

An environmental scientist with more than two decades in research and teaching, now Professor at JNU’s School of Environmental Sciences and formerly a scientist at ICAR-IARI.

Dr Usha Mina is Professor at the School of Environmental Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and a former Scientist at ICAR-IARI. Over more than two decades her work has moved from national applied research to teaching and to supervising doctoral and postgraduate scholars at JNU.

Expertise

• Environmental impact assessment: evaluating the ecological consequences of human and industrial activity.
• Agro-environmental research: connecting agricultural productivity with environmental sustainability.
• Interdisciplinary environmental science across physical, chemical and biological systems.

Teaches strategy at JNU’s School of Management and Entrepreneurship and researches Indian Knowledge Systems and sustainable entrepreneurship; previously on the faculty of IIM Indore.

Dr Vaniki Joshi Lohani has more than a decade of experience in higher education and corporate strategy. At Jawaharlal Nehru University she works on Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS) and public policy, applying them to strategic management and sustainable development.

Education

• MBA, IIM Indore
• B.Tech, IIIT Allahabad
• Ph.D., Indore University

Career

• Worked with Lehman Brothers and Sharekhan in financial markets and strategic planning.
• Full-time faculty member at IIM Indore before joining JNU.

Research

• Principal investigator on projects funded by IKS-AICTE, ICSSR, MGNCRE, NCST and others.
• Visiting faculty at Bayes Business School, London, and Lingnan University, Hong Kong.
• Research on sustainable entrepreneurship, the empowerment of rural women, and IKS in strategic management.

An environmental scientist who founded GRC India, a consultancy for environmental impact assessments and environmental management plans, with more than two decades in the field.

Dr Dhiraj Kumar Singh has more than two decades of experience in environmental consultancy, policy development and sustainable business practice. He founded GRC India, a consultancy for Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Environmental Management Plans (EMP).

Education

M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Environmental Science from JNU, with certifications from MIT, Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge.

Practice

• QCI/NABET-accredited EIA Coordinator, and Functional Area Expert in air and water quality, ecology and biodiversity, and waste management.
• Facilitates environmental clearances and brings occupational health and safety into industrial practice.
• Contributes to FICCI, CII and the Indian Green Building Council, and is a member of the BRICS Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Social work

Founded the GRC Sewa Foundation for grassroots environmental work, and is developing HelpBharat, a digital platform connecting environmental sustainability with social empowerment.

An AI researcher and practitioner with more than 18 years at companies including Amazon, Philips and ING, now building LLM systems at his own company in the Netherlands.

Harish Kumar works on applied artificial intelligence (agentic systems, knowledge graphs and LLM governance), with a focus on AI that is both rigorous and compliant with regulation. His research forms the technical basis of the modules he teaches.

At a glance

• 18+ years of enterprise digital and AI transformation.
• 500+ professionals trained across EMEA, the Americas and APAC.
• Four production AI platforms built: CrawlQ.ai, GraQle, FrictionMelt and TraceGov.ai.
• EU patent EP26162901.8, and lead author of the TAMR+ framework for AI cognition.

Research

• GraQle (EU patent): a knowledge-graph reasoning engine for multi-hop LLM reasoning across 17,000+ nodes.
• TAMR+ (SSRN 6359818): a peer-reviewed framework for AI agent cognition, integrating episodic and semantic memory, reaching 74% accuracy on complex regulatory reasoning.
• TraceGov.ai: a platform for EU AI Act and ISO 42001 compliance, automating risk classification and audit trails.

Career

• Founder & CEO, Quantamix Solutions B.V. (Netherlands): production LLM systems and AI strategy.
• GenAI Platform Lead, ING Bank: 65% enterprise AI adoption within six months, deploying Azure OpenAI and Microsoft Copilot.
• GenAI Consultant, Amazon Ring: AI tools delivering 50% gains in content creation.
• Regional AI Lead, Philips: generative AI adoption across three continents, with EUR 500K in annual savings.

A sales leader with more than 25 years of growing businesses in India and abroad, now Assistant Vice President at Johnson Controls–Hitachi.

Piyush Gupta has more than 25 years of experience driving profitable growth in domestic and international markets. At Johnson Controls–Hitachi he works on go-to-market strategy and sustainable revenue growth.

Career

• Head of International Sales, leading growth across Africa, the SAARC countries and the Middle East.
• Business Excellence Head, leading turnaround initiatives and go-to-market strategy across the business.
• Leads and mentors teams across sales, service and operations.

Education

• Post Graduate Diploma in Business Management, NMIMS
• B.Sc., Dayal Singh College, University of Delhi
• Digital Marketing, MICA (2022)
• “Strategies for Winning in International Markets”, IIM Ahmedabad (2021)

A research scientist and university administrator with more than 25 years in teaching, research and academic leadership, now Pro Vice-Chancellor of Shobhit University.

Dr Jayanand has more than 25 years of experience in teaching, research and academic administration, and is Pro Vice-Chancellor of Shobhit University.

Research

• Ph.D. in Bioelectromagnetism, JNU, New Delhi.
• Work in biophysics, biomaterials and bio-electromagnetics.
• More than 80 publications in national and international journals, and eight books.

Leadership

• Formerly Vice Chancellor and Registrar of Noida International University.
• Expertise in NAAC accreditation, academic planning and quality assurance.

Mentorship

Has guided 14 Ph.D., 25 M.Tech and 16 M.Phil scholars, and has received national honours.

Director at Cotecna Inspection India, working on agricultural commodities, food safety and international compliance, and formerly Executive Director and CEO of Lok Sabha Television.

Dr Sumit Singh works in agriculture, food quality and compliance, with a career across the testing, inspection and certification industry and senior public-sector leadership: over 10 years in government and 15 in the corporate sector.

Cotecna Inspection India

As Director, he leads operations on agricultural commodities, food-safety systems and international compliance, helping exporters and governments meet international food-safety and market-entry requirements.

Lok Sabha Television

Previously Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of Lok Sabha Television, the public broadcaster of India’s lower house of Parliament.

An agronomist who directs ICAR’s Central Arid Zone Research Institute in Jodhpur, and previously led the Indian Institute of Maize Research.

Dr Hanuman Sahay Jat is Director of the ICAR-Central Arid Zone Research Institute (CAZRI), Jodhpur, and previously directed the ICAR-Indian Institute of Maize Research (IIMR), Ludhiana.

Research

• Developed and scaled conservation agriculture across intensive maize, rice and wheat systems, helping farmers produce more with fewer inputs and greater resilience to climate variability.
• At ICAR-IIMR, led work on climate-resilient maize hybrids and the national response to the Fall Armyworm pest.
• More than 100 peer-reviewed papers on sustainable crop production, resource-use efficiency and climate-smart agriculture, and several national awards.

Professor and Head at the National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj, working where environmental sustainability meets rural governance.

Dr Ravindra Gavali has more than two decades of experience in environmental sustainability and rural governance. He began his career in 2003 as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences at the University of Pune.

At NIRDPR

• Oversees research and training programmes that strengthen the Panchayati Raj system.
• Contributes to national studies guiding rural development schemes and environmental mandates.
• Designs and leads training for senior government officials and rural development practitioners.

Expertise

Rural resource governance, the effect of environmental change on rural livelihoods and Panchayati Raj institutions, and capacity building.

A computational neuroscientist at JNU who co-coordinates its Atal Incubation Centre, mentoring deep-tech founders.

Dr Saurabh Kumar Sharma is an Assistant Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University and Co-coordinator of its Atal Incubation Centre (AIC-JNUFI). He holds an M.Tech in Computational and Systems Biology and a Ph.D. in Computational Neuroscience, both from JNU.

Research

• Mathematical modelling and stochastic simulation of biological and healthcare systems, including delay stochastic models of biochemical reactions and cellular signalling.
• Time-series and image analysis of biological data, working in C, C++, Python and MATLAB.
• Bringing artificial intelligence and machine learning into biological research.

At the Atal Incubation Centre

Mentors early-stage founders as they turn scientific work into businesses.