About Ashoka India
Founded by Bill Drayton in 1981, today Ashoka is the world’s largest network of leading social entrepreneurs and ranks among the top 5 NGOs of the world. The first-ever social entrepreneur to be selected as an Ashoka Fellow was Gloria De Souza from India, in 1982, who revolutionised the system of learning in classrooms.
Impacting millions of people and communities through their work, our Fellows include people like Nobel Laureates Kailash Satyarthi (Bachpan Bachao Andolan) and Magsaysay awardee Anshu Gupta (Goonj), among several others. Currently, we have over 400 Ashoka Fellows in wide-ranging fields such as farming, education, human rights, finance, local media, and women and youth empowerment, across India.
Ashoka India functions as a collaborative network that supports and amplifies change by bringing together these changemakers.
In the course of our work, having witnessed the changing patterns in society over close to three decades, and the way our problems are increasing at a pace faster than we can solve them, we have realised that to truly make things better for everyone we need to head towards a world where everyone is a changemaker. And just like social entrepreneurs, the world needs everyone to start practising skills like empathy, teamwork, leadership, and problem solving.
To this end, we believe that changemaking has to start young, and through our programs like Youth Venture, Changemaker Schools, and Health and Nutrition, we find, develop, and support young changemakers, enabling them to be role models in their communities, and give them the skills to thrive in our changing world.
Our office also serves as the regional hub for Ashoka’s activities in South Asia. Find out more about our work in Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. And to know more about our activities around the year, do read our latest annual report.
Ashoka Young Changemakers
Ashoka Venture and Fellowship
Ashoka Changemaker Schools
Ashoka Changemaker Schools enable all students to become changemakers—young people who have the skills and confidence to change the world for the good of all.
Law for All Initiative
Staff
Jayalakshmi Jayanth
Build Team Manager, ITI
Jaya joined Ashoka in April 2015 as a part of the Integrated Technology Initiative team. She is a mother of two, multilinguist, Drupal evangelist who started her career as an Analytical Chemist and then a Russian Technical translator and Interpreter and now enjoys development of websites since 2007.
Yashveer Singh
Executive Director, Ashoka Young Changemakers
Yashveer leads the “Ashoka Young Changemakers” program at Ashoka. Ashoka Young Changemakers program was launched in the year 2018 to identify, select and build a global community of Teen Changemakers. Prior to this, he founded a youth non-profit to address talent inequity in the development sector and influence youth culture in India by inspiring and educating university students to pursue social innovation and entrepreneurship. Yashveer has co-authored a book #ChangeStartsYoung featuring inspiring stories of young changemakers from across India.
For his work, Yashveer has been recognized in "Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia" list in the year 2016. He was also awarded Youth Action Net 2012 Fellowship – as 1 of the 20 young social entrepreneurs representing 16 different countries by International Youth Foundation.
Yashveer earned his MBA at University of Oxford, where he was the only MBA student to receive Vice-Chancellor Social Impact Award 2014 for his initiatives as Co-Chair Social Impact, Oxford Business Network (OBN). As the President of Student’s Union BITS Pilani 2006-07, Yashveer co-founded the University VISION 2020 Plan.
Shruti Nair
Director, Youth Years, South Asia
Shruti leads Ashoka’s Youth Years program in South Asia. In her role, she leads the efforts to search, select and build a community of teen changemakers & institutional partners to help society re-imagine a world where every young person can grow practicing to be a changemaker. Prior to this, Shruti has helped various social enterprises and impact organisations in measuring and communicating their impact. In her previous role, Shruti has worked with Aavishkaar, one of the largest Impact Investment fund in India and Social Venture Partners, an international venture philanthropy organization.
Shruti has a Ph.D. in Media Studies from Florida State University, and also holds a Master’s degree in Mass Communication from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
Manoj Shettigar
Chief Operations Officer
Manoj has over 20 years of experience in resource generation, partnerships building and leadership development. He is the co-founder of Fundraising Made Easy, which supports NGOs in developing fundraising strategy and communications for sustainability. Prior to that, Manoj worked for large social organizations such as CRY, HOPE Foundation and United Way helping them develop their fundraising efforts.
Manoj is passionate about Transformational Coaching and has authored ‘Awaken Your Parenting Superpowers’, a book that offers refreshing perspectives to enrich the parenting journey and empower children.
Raghav Khemka
Change Manager
Venture, Fellowship & Climate team at Ashoka South Asia. Raghav will be based out of our Bangalore Office.
Raghav started his changemaking journey as a teenager and brings an amazing entrepreneurial track record through his various initiatives. He graduated from the University of London (School of Oriental and African Studies) in 2015 with a degree in Law and Politics of South Asia. He has been working in the Impact Space from last few years through various organisations in areas as diverse as Governance, Health, Agriculture and Development. This experience has seen him spend time in different states & regions across India. Prior to this, Raghav also worked with SELCO, run by an Ashoka Fellow Mr. Harish Hande, which influenced his thinking to work at shifting mindset across various corporations.
Raghav is particularly passionate in engaging & mobilising communities to take ownership and bring behavioural shift to improve their quality of life. He is one of the youngest Global Shapers of the World Economic Forum in India, through which he continues to design strategic initiatives to better his city, Bangalore.
Outside of the impactful work that Raghav is doing, he has strong interest in Reading, Golf and spending time with his friends.
Raghav is excited to be part of our Global Team of Teams to help achieve our mission of creating an Everyone a Changemaker world. Kindly feel free to reach out to Raghav at [email protected]
Venkata Raveendra Yeddula
Finance & Reporting Manager
Venkata Raveendra Yeddula
Finance & Reporting Manager
Venkata has over 10-years of experience in Accounting, Finance analysis and Reporting. Venkata works with Ashoka Finance Team on Ashoka consolidated audit, Finalizing GL, Grant analysis, Forex analysis and Data Screening. He did his bachelor’s in Finance & Accounting and pursuing CA & MBA. Venkata Speaks Telugu, Hindi, Kannada and English with varied degrees of fluency.
Nikitha Varsha
Assistant Accounts Manager
Nikitha Varsha joined Ashoka as Assistant Manager for Finance & Accounts. She comes with 12 years of experience in the field. Prior to joining Ashoka, Nikitha was specialized in the preparation of receipts & payment, income & expenditure accounts, profit & loss account, cash flow statement & balance sheet, payroll, budget & MIS reports, coordinating with the auditors for the finalization of accounts and also interacting with statutory work like ESIC, PF, PT, TDS and Service Tax. She is well-versed in accounting softwares like Tally ERP 9 & Netsuite.
Divyadarshan Chandrasekar
Change Manager & AYC South Asia Co-lead
Divyadarshan Chandrasekar
Change Manager & AYC South Asia Co-lead
Divyadarshan works with the global Ashoka Young Changemakers team. At 13, Darshan and his friends launched a student club for environmental action in his hometown of Trichy and he has led several changemaking initiatives since. Prior to Ashoka, he worked with the Delhi University Research Council on improving the status of undergraduate education in the country. He did his bachelor’s in liberal arts and during college, he worked on a series of social innovation projects on issues like bullying, transgender rights, migrant labours, oral history, and higher education reform.
Dr. Neelam Maheshwari
Director, Livelihoods for All, South Asia
Dr. Neelam Maheshwari, in past twenty years, have championed the cause of catalyzing philanthropy to scale social enterprises and building gender and socially inclusive programs.
Before Joining to Ashoka, Neelam has headed Philanthropic initiatives of Deshpande Foundation India and contributed to building a social impact Ecosystem in various parts of India.
Building on her academic background Neelam has worked on creating poor and gender-inclusive programs at the foundation. She has worked with over 100+ enterprises including for profits and not for profits working on various sectors including Livelihoods, Health, Microfinance & Education sectors. Neelam has Launched and scaled one of the first Microentrepreneurs accelerator programs called Navodyami specially focusing on women enterprise owners. Neelam has also chaired the Development Dialogue, an annual conference hosted by DF at Hubli, Karnataka for over eight years.
Neelam is passionate about leveraging global ecosystems to leverage entrepreneurship to bring gender equity and livelihoods for all.
Neelam has a Ph.D. in Gender Studies from SUNY Buffalo (USA) and a Masters in International Development from Brandeis University (USA). Neelam is a recipient of the prestigious British Chevening Gurukul Fellowship (2020-21).
Gopal Garg
Change Leader
Gopal Garg is ASPI-Re´s Ecosystem and Partnerships Director. Last 20yrs he has led many social impact initiatives with a focus on Youth. Innovation, big thinking, and systems change has been his strength. He co-founded Youth4Jobs Foundation, an organization mainstreaming persons with disabilities in the job market. His innovative programs on ecosystem building for inclusion of people with disabilities in corporate has changed mindsets and influenced many policies in corporate which was recognized as a global best practice. He scaled the program across India, Mauritius and Kenya through knowledge sharing and partnerships. During his work with the Government as part of the World Bank programs, he was instrumental in designing and implementing the one million jobs mission for the unemployed youth and changing policies for systems change in this field. He is a Vipassana meditator and a trekker. Gopal holds a Master's Degree in Management and is an Acumen and UnLtd India Fellow.
Rajesh Kumar
Operations Manager
Rajesh leads the admin and talent efforts for Ashoka in India. Rajesh has been with Ashoka from November 2014. Before joining Ashoka, he has worked for international not-for-profit organizations and various corporate sector organizations in Administration and Finance Departments.
Deepali Bhardwaj
Change Manager
Deepali Bhardwaj
Change Manager
Deepali works as a Change Manager with the Globaliser team under their ASPIRe program. She comes with six years of experience in the development sector working with youth & women in rural India and a master’s in development studies. Through ASPIRe Deepali is keen on understanding how technology especially digital platforms can support social entrepreneurs reach scale and higher impact. She is also an avid reader and a traveler!
Avantika Jain
Senior Intrapreneur, Venture and Fellowship.
Avantika Jain
Senior Intrapreneur, Venture and Fellowship.
Avantika’s role includes fellow research and evaluation under the Venture arm at Ashoka India. In her role, she digs deeper into different social ecosystems and keeps up with upcoming changes and innovations in the social sector.
With a diverse background, she brings an understanding of local cultures and cross-sectoral experience with non-profits, politicians, government officers, marketing, and PR.
Avantika is passionate about animal welfare and has been working on stray animal rescue in India since 2012. She is a keen climate activist and is also passionate about working towards livelihoods and criminal justice.
She holds an MSc degree in Animal Behaviour and Animal Welfare, along with a BA degree in Psychology, English Literature, and Economics. Apart from this, she holds 2 certificates in Equine Behaviour and has been selected as a participant for the ClimateForce Leadership Expedition to Antarctica in March 2022.
Supporting Staff
Lengchengphi Rongui
Consultant – Project Manager for Law for all Initiative

Lengchengphi Rongui
Consultant – Project Manager for Law for all Initiative
Acheng leads the Venture and Fellowship for the Law For All Initiative at Ashoka.
Her journey as a changemaker started from a young age by serving her community in Manipur. She was instrumental in running campaigns for women's rights as part of a tribal women's group in her hometown, Ukhurl district of Manipur. Prior to joining Ashoka, Acheng worked in an organization that empowered the urban poor by enabling access to basic services, healthcare, education, and livelihoods. Inspired by her personal journey, Acheng is passionate about empowering young people to realize their full potential.
She holds a Master's in Social Work and has done a PGP in Development Management from the Indian School of Development Management (ISDM 2018 batch).
Meghana Parik
Consultant, impact assessment for Law for All Initiative
Meghana Parik
Consultant, impact assessment for Law for All Initiative
Meghana leads the impact assessment for Law for All Initiative at Ashoka, South Asia. In her role, she strives to empower changemakers’ communities to shape practices and influence policies in the law and justice landscape through evidence-based impact assessments.
Previously, she worked as an International Consultant for the United Nations Partnership on the Rights of Persons with Disability, hosted by UNDP NY Headquarters. She has a diverse research background in science, policy studies, and international development.
Meghana finds her ardent passion in human rights law, equal access to justice and legal rights, social and international development, and has worked on related projects in her recent professional experience.
She holds an MS degree from Binghamton University with a specialization in public health and biological sciences. She has also completed a certification programme in UN, Global Challenges, and policy reforms from the Graduate Institute, Geneva, Switzerland.
Contact
Ashoka India
Ashoka India
54, 1st Cross Road
1st Stage, Domlur
Bengaluru 560071
Karnataka
India