People & Partners

Chief Operating Officer, Head - InSight

Amit Gupta

Amit Gupta is COO of the The/Nudge Institute. In this role, he is responsible for various horizontal functions such as finance, strategy, people & culture, impact and technology. Amit has over two decades of global experience in strategy, transformation and business finance. He has successfully led execution of many high-stakes business growth and turnaround initiatives for companies operating at the cutting edge of technology. He has worked in a diverse set of business contexts – be it an early stage start-up, or a high-growth scale-up company, or a Fortune 500 industry leader, or management consultancy firms. Amit is an alumnus of IIT, Roorkee and the University of Texas at Austin.

Founder & CEO

Atul Satija

Atul Satija is the Founder & CEO of The/Nudge Institute. After 17 years of starting, scaling and turning around various businesses in some of the largest and most respected organisations globally, he decided to start The/Nudge Institute to fulfill his passion of working on inequality and social issues facing India. Previously at his 5-year stint at InMobi, Atul helped scale the organisation from a small start-up to a global leader in mobile advertising. Prior to InMobi, Atul was the Head of Mobile Business for Japan & Asia-Pacific, and Head of Business Development for India at Google. Atul has also done various sales, consulting and business development assignments across telecom and technology companies including Adobe, Samsung and Infosys.

Head, Social Entrepreneurship

Gayathri Swahar

Dr. Gayathri Swahar is a seasoned leader in food technology and consumer behavior, currently serving as Senior Director at The/Nudge Institute, where she leads the Social Entrepreneurship vertical. She is the co-founder of YCook India, an award-winning food tech company recognized globally among the top 20 most innovative food companies and the only one from Asia. Under her leadership, YCook pioneered technology that extends the shelf life of fresh produce up to one year without preservatives or refrigeration.

With over a decade of experience at Nielsen, Dr. Swahar held various leadership roles, including heading the Consumer Neuroscience practice in India and securing patents in consumer research. She was also an Indian Administrative Fellow, supporting strategic government initiatives in the Horticulture Department, for which she was awarded by the Governor of Karnataka.

Dr. Swahar’s contributions have been featured in a UN-supported coffee table book celebrating 75 inspiring women from India.

Head - Village360

Gitanjali Rajamani

Gitanjali Rajamani heads Village360, a sustainable village development and poverty alleviation program at The/Nudge Institute. She is deeply passionate about resilient livelihoods and regenerative agriculture, and is working on village-level models that can secure sustainable income growth for all households in a community. At The/Nudge, she has previously led ReFarm, a regenerative farming program for rainfed farmers. 

A two-time entrepreneur, Gitanjali co-founded Farmizen, an award-winning farm-to-fork marketplace that connects small organic and regenerative farmers directly with conscious consumers, and founded GreenMyLife, an urban gardening and sustainable landscaping venture. Through Farmizen, she has helped build a transparent food ecosystem that improves farmer incomes and gives city consumers reliable access to chemical-free produce. Gitanjali brings over 24 years of experience spanning entrepreneurship, rural development, and corporate leadership. Before moving into agriculture and livelihoods full-time, she worked at Tata Consultancy Services, where she led large-scale clinical research operations and pharma BPO programs for global clients such as GSK, AstraZeneca, and Johnson & Johnson, with responsibilities across delivery, P&L, and large team management.

She holds a Master’s in International Management (MBA) and is an alumna of the Indian School of Business’s Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women program and the Ambassador program in entrepreneurship. Gitanjali was also recognized with the Goldman Sachs and Fortune Global Women Leaders Award in 2018 for her leadership and impact as a woman entrepreneur.

Head, Forum

Jerold Pereira

Jerold is a finance professional with 20+ years of experience in launching and scaling operations in sectors such as retail, consumer electronics, real estate and hospitality. He has worked in leadership roles with Indian business groups such as Tata, Piramal, DLF and Videocon before joining a B2B tech-first, scale-up that enables enterprises and education to engage and optimize their workforce and student bodies, respectively. Within The/Nudge Institute, Jerold leads The/Nudge Forum, a platform that helps accelerate problem solving by bringing together stakeholders for collective thought and action for large-scale social change.

Head, Livelihood Programs

John Paul

John leads Economic Inclusion Program and Asha Kiran at The/Nudge Institute’s Centre for Rural Development. He was previously Head of Product & Innovation for The/Nudge’s Centre for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship building employability programs for underprivileged youth. Before The/Nudge, he has worked in consulting, healthcare and FMCG with organizations such as Frost & Sullivan and Reckitt Benckiser. John is an alumnus of BITS, Pilani and the Indian School of Business (ISB).

Head, Prize

Kanishka Chatterjee

Kanishka leads The/Nudge Prize – A social innovation initiative that bring urgency & scale to stagnant livelihood issues, by inducing for tech-first solutions through grand challenges. Before joining The/Nudge Institute, he spent 16 years in consumer marketing & digital analytics as a consulting and commercial analytics leader. He has worked across Pharma, CPG & BFSI, focused on growth-hacking digital marketing strategy and driving differentiated research & social media insights practices for CXOs/enterprises. He’s worked with Genpact, Clarivate, Axtria and led the marketing analytics portfolio and established new practices in digital transformations. Kanishka has a Bachelor’s in Economics and PGDBM in Marketing from TAPMI, Manipal. He’s also a post graduate public policy student at the Takshashila Institute.

Chief People Officer

Krishna Raghavan 

Krishna Raghavan is Chief People Officer, The/Nudge Institute. His focus is on crafting and implementing a people and culture strategy that enables every Nudgester to live the Nudge Spirit in the pursuit of the organisation’s mission.

With 25 years of experience across Tech and HR, Krishna has served as Chief People Officer at Flipkart, where he spearheaded transformative initiatives that significantly enhanced the employee experience and positioned the company as an employer of choice.

Previously, Krishna has worked with Navi, Cleartrip and Yahoo. In his HR roles, he has led talent acquisition and development, compensation and benefits, organisational design, employee engagement, and diversity and inclusion. Krishna holds a Bachelor’s degree in mathematics from St. Xavier’s College and a B.S, Mathematics, Computer Science from Denison University. 

Chief Financial Officer

Sachin Mardikar

Sachin Mardikar is the CFO of the The/Nudge Institute. In his role he leads the Finance, Compliance and Accounts function.  Sachin started his professional journey with two of India’s most respected institutions — the Tata Group and Deloitte in the core areas of finance and compliance. These early years shaped his path over the next decades, working at the intersection of philanthropy, livelihoods, social impact finance and CSR. In his previous engagement as the CFO at the Reliance Foundation, he oversaw finance and compliance functions. . He is passionate about working with purpose-led organizations that leverage finance and technology to address urgent challenges like climate change, healthcare, environment, and skills. Sachin is a Chartered Accountant (CA) and Cost and Management Accountant (CMA).

Head, Fundraising & Partnerships

Sriram Venkatraman

With 18 years of experience across the corporate and development sector, Sriram leads global partnerships and fundraising at The/Nudge, and has been a member of The/Nudge’s leadership team since its inception in 2015. At The/Nudge, he has led community mobilization for skilling programs, fundraising from foundations, corporates and government besides contributing to the organization’s overall strategy, operations, people practices and culture. Prior to The/Nudge, Sriram led public mobilization and individual fundraising at Amnesty International India after having spent 8 years in healthcare consulting. Sriram, along with his partner, is a signatory of a giving pledge – “Living My Promise” and is an engineer from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani.

Head, Livelihoods Ecosystem

Subhashree Dutta

Subhashree Dutta is the Managing Partner, Social Entrepreneurship at The/Nudge. Subhashree has 30 years’ investing experience in the Asian credit markets across the broad spectrum of credit strategies. She worked with Fiera Capital (Asia) (formerly Clearwater Capital Partners) for about 20 years and her last assignment was as CEO of its Singapore office. She was a member of the Firm’s Investment and Management Committees. She started her career with ICICI Bank in India. Subhashree has a PGDM from IIM Calcutta and is a CFA® charterholder.

Chief Government Alliances Officer

Swati Rangachari

Swati Rangachari is the Chief Government Alliances Officer at The/Nudge Institute (TNI) and plays a pivotal role in strengthening initiatives with the central and state governments as TNI expands its footprint in shaping programs for poverty alleviation.

Passionate about nation building, she has worked at the intersection of public priorities and long-term impact for India – an experience that is deeply relevant to TNI’s model of working. She aims to build long-term synergies with the government towards a shared purpose and responsiveness to community realities. 

A seasoned public policy leader, Swati brings three decades of experience spanning government relations, strategic communications, social responsibility, and shaping multi-stakeholder ecosystems. She led the government interface for advocacy, large-scale infrastructure initiatives, and anchored relevant engagements with central ministries, state governments, and regulatory bodies. Prior to this, she held leadership positions at the UnitedHealth Group, Sterlite Technologies, Visa, Ericsson and Boeing. Her work in shaping policies across some of India’s critical sectors — IT/ITES, telecom, digital infrastructure, manufacturing, financial services, aerospace and technology —places her among the known experts in her field. On the academic front, she holds a management degree from Fore School of Management and an executive program from Boston University.

Head, Marketing

Vaibhav Budhraja

Vaibhav is the Director and Head, Marketing at the Nudge Institute. In 15 years of his professional journey across diverse organizations (IBM, PepsiCo and HCL Corp.) and sectors(IT, FMCG and Education), he has had the opportunity to create impact in roles spanning Strategy, Marketing and Business Development. Vaibhav has done his Masters in Business Management from IIM Lucknow and Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering from IIT, (ISM) Dhanbad.