members
Sanjiv Rangrass
Sanjiv is a Mentor, Coach and an Angel Investor. He is a Senior Adviser with Mckinsey. He works as an Independent Director on the board of Zetwerk – a manufacturing Unicorn and a Venture Partner in Capria – a leading venture fund that supports early-stage tech startups. He is the global adviser to the fund on Climate related investments. He is also a co-founder of TAC (The Agri Collaboratory) – a “non-compete” not for profit, Agriculture “Think and Do Tank” – helping build Digital Public Infrastructure and Goods for Agriculture in Open Source, along with the Ecosystem and the Government.
Till June 2022, prior to his superannuation from ITC Limited, Sanjiv Rangrass was ITC’s Group Head for R&D, Sustainability and Projects. Prior to this, he was the Chief Executive of the Agribusinesses for ITC Ltd. He joined the Company in 1982 after completing his B. Tech in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Kanpur and spent 4 decades in the organisation.
Sukti Ghosh
Sukti Ghosh, is a doctoral candidate in management (specializing in strategy) at INSEAD Business School (France and Singapore). Her current research focuses on firm strategies and actions for decarbonization and climate action. She has a masters degree in management sciences from London School of Economics and Political Science. Prior to joining academia, she worked in the industry for over 8 years in India as well as in the UK across technology, FMCG, manufacturing and the social services sectors. Her research continues to be well informed by the experience she gained working in the industry.
Her research lies at the intersection of firm strategy and sustainability. In her PhD dissertation, she studies the multiple dimensions within sustainability (social and environmental), the interdependencies across these dimensions at the firm level and the implications of such interdependencies for firm strategy as well as for societal impact. Her research explores this empirically as well as theoretically in the context of firms’ decarbonization strategies and climate action. Methodologically, she employs a mix of approaches, including field experiments set in real-world contexts, large-scale data analysis and field interviews to gain in-depth insights.
Research interests: Sustainability; Nonmarket Strategy; Grand Challenges; Decarbonization Strategy; Emerging Market Strategy; Societal Impact
Rohit Pajni
Rohit Pajni, a seasoned leader in the agri-food industry with 16 years of experience, has held pivotal roles in both pioneering startups and established corporations like ITC Ltd. His expertise seamlessly navigates across the agri-food spectrum, with a comprehensive grasp of both pre-harvest and post-harvest domains, spanning from production to plate. Positioned at the nexus of innovative technology, business growth, and the profound challenges confronting the agri-food sector, he is deeply committed to scale up novel use cases for achieving net-zero transition in food value chains. Recognizing agriculture’s profound environmental impact, he spearheads initiatives aimed at transforming our food systems for a more sustainable future.
Ankit Gupta
Ankit is a General Manager-Sustainability Manager at ITC Limited, one of India’s largest private sector enterprise operating in FMCG, Pulp & Paper, Hospitality, Printing & Packaging, IT and Agri sectors.
He has close to 14 years of experience working in the sustainability space and at ITC, his work involves steering ITC’s sustainability strategy and goals in the areas of climate change, water security and circular economy.
He is an economist by training and did his Master’s in Economics from Delhi School of Economics. He has also passed the CFA Level III Examination conducted by the CFA Institute, USA.
Devdut Dalal
Devdut is a co-founder at Mitti Labs, a seed funded startup that is working toward decarbonization of rice farming. He has close to 9 years of work experience in agribusiness with a strong lens on sustainability at farm and production levels. He led sustainability initiatives at Foods and Inns (a public listed food processing company), is the co-founder of Fresh India Organics (farm-to-fork organic fruits and vegetables). He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA from the University of Cambridge.
Malavika Gopinath
Malavika leads the sustainability & research for Rice, Grains & Pulses at Olam Agri India. She has been with Olam for nearly two years and handles the implementation of various outgrower & carbon projects, sustainable procurement as well as sustainability across the value chains of multiple commodities. She has nearly a decade of experience spread across environmental research, environmental consulting, safety & sustainability and has worked with organisations such as ITC Ltd, Environmental Management Centre, ATREE. She was selected as a Young Change Maker by UN Foundation’s UNITE 2030 in 2023. She also serves as a trustee in NiceRice Foundation.
Apoorv Garg
Apoorv loves to work on disruptive technologies that have the potential to change how we operate our world. Academically trained at University of California Berkeley in the US and Delhi College of Engineering in India, Apoorv found his calling within climate deep tech startups.
Starting his journey at Suzuki engineering vehicles, Apoorv saw the potential of electric mobility early with Tesla, joining them in 2017. He managed the launch and scale-up of programs across Model 3, Model S and X, and brought up the global supply chain for Model 3 and Model Y, expanding Tesla’s footprint across China, Europe, and the US.
In 2020, Apoorv transitioned to Prometheus Fuels, a Direct Air Capture startup focused on producing net-zero carbon aviation fuel. This is where he saw the potential of alternate materials and the need for sustainability in our supply chains.
In 2022, Inspired by the potential of alternate materials, Apoorv co-founded altM, a company dedicated to reimagining the future of sustainable materials.
Yugal Raj Jain
Yugal has always been passionate about manufacturing and scaling up difficult technologies and processes. Through his academic training across Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US and Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology in India, he has furthered his experience in the world of manufacturing.
Yugal’s interest in automotive technologies took him to Tesla in California where he spent over 5 years program managing several factory and engineering product launches across all Tesla vehicle platforms globally – Models S, X, 3, Y, Semi-truck, and Cybertruck.
After returning to India, Yugal kept exploring manufacturing materials at scale. Ideating these plans led him to investigate alternate materials, and he ended up co-founding altM to bring scalable alternate materials to reality.
Aswathaman Vijayan
Aswath is a sustainability expert with over 14 years of experience in the Foods, Beverage, Agriculture, Tobacco, and Pharmaceuticals industries. He has a proven track record of implementing and leading sustainability initiatives at renowned companies such as ITC Limited, Imperial Brands UK, PepsiCo and Lupin Pharma. He’s not driven by sheer passion for sustainability, but he takes it seriously because, well, the company pays him to cover those everyday bills.
