Advisory Council

Dr. HK Pradhan has been Professor of Finance and Economics at XLRI, Xavier School of Management, Jamshedpur, with 35 years of experience in teaching, research and consulting. He is a Director on the Boards of the Clearing Corporation of India Ltd., the State Bank of India-DFHI Limited and the Trustee Board of YES Asset Management (India) Limited, Mumbai. He has served as Chairman of the Indian Commodity Exchange (ICEX), member of the RBI Technical Advisory Committee on Financial Markets, Independent Director of SBI Mutual Fund, member of the Board of Micro Credit Rating International Ltd (M-CRIL), member of the Index & Option Committee of NCDEX, and member of the Board of XLRI. He completed his education at Columbia University, New York, and specialises in Finance, Risk Management and Capital Management.

Kanwal Singh Chauhan was raised in Aterna, a village in Sonipat district of Haryana, and began farming at the age of 15. In 1997 he began farming baby corn, at a time when the vegetable was mainly imported from Thailand at ₹4,000 per kg; he introduced it to the region and sold it at ₹70 per kg. By 2009 he had expanded into canned baby corn and exports. His one-man enterprise grew to employ over 200 people by 2019, and he established a fair price system for farmers growing mushroom, baby corn, sweet corn and tomato.

Dr. Kamakhya Nr. Singh is the IEPF Chair Professor at IICA, Ministry of Corporate Affairs. He was previously CEO of the National Centre for Financial Education (NCFE). He has about 25 years of experience in the development sector and corporate finance across Asia, Europe and Africa, including as Technical Expert with UNDP (AMSCO), CFO of LAPO Microfinance Bank in Sub-Saharan Africa, Technical Expert with the Asian Development Bank, and about 14 years with SIDBI. He holds an MBA from the University of Oxford, a PhD in Development Economics and a CFA charter.

Dr. Piyush Kumar Sinha has more than three decades of academic and industry experience. He chaired the Centre for Retailing at IIMA, and before that was Dean at MICA. He has more than 60 publications, including the book Managing Retailing, and headed the marketing function of several leading companies. He completed his PhD at Sardar Patel University.

Professor Ratneshwar Lal received his MS and MPhil in Physics and Biophysics from JNU, New Delhi, and his PhD in Neurobiology from the University of Alabama. After postdoctoral training at Caltech, he was on the faculty of the University of Chicago and UC Santa Barbara, and was Director of the Center of Nano-medicine at the University of Chicago before joining UC San Diego.

Smita Purushottam is the founder of the non-profit Do Tank SITARA (Science, Indigenous Technology and Advanced Research Accelerator), working to indigenise high-tech production and build a Science Nation in India. A former Ambassador to Switzerland and an expert in defence technology, she guides BEA in skill development, environment and clean technology. She is a Fellow of Harvard University.

Kamaljit Anand holds a PhD from IIM Ahmedabad and leads data science with about 15 years of experience in analytics and consulting for Fortune 500 clients and governments worldwide. He has advised several ministries in India and abroad, and specialises in data-based marketing, marketing-mix optimisation, risk management and macro-economic estimation.

Rakesh Ranjan leads a worldwide product engineering team for Instana and Watson AIOps at IBM, bringing AI-powered automation to enterprise IT. He leads BEA's US Bay Area chapter and is setting up a Centre of Excellence for AI in Patna.

Dr. Abhishek Anand Singh is a neurologist who graduated in medicine from Howard University Hospital in 2017. He is passionate about developing Bihar and its youth with emerging technologies in health and modern work processes, and brings new business and cultural opportunities to BEA and the state.

Mr. Pandey is a 1976-batch IAS officer of the Maharashtra cadre who gave 37 years to public service, and a Fellow of the Indian Council of Arbitration. An alumnus of Patna University, he worked at Bokaro Steel before joining the IAS. He has wide experience in environment, industries, ports, power, steel, tourism and water transport, and implemented a self-employment policy in Maharashtra that gave youth and women a platform for financial freedom.

Sara R. Gross founded Harvesting Lives (Bihar, India and Guanajuato, Mexico), dedicated to dignified and prosperous livelihoods. A policy-oriented political economist, researcher and social-impact entrepreneur with three decades of experience in Europe, Mexico and the US, she has advised the President of Mexico's Federal Competition Commission.

Dr. Sumeet Kumar completed his education at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he designed a microfluidic platform for polymerase chain reaction. He was an Associate at Dean Ventures, Washington D.C., and works on big-data analytics and machine learning.

Dr. Amrendra Kumar Ajay works on drug development and biomarkers of kidney disease using genetic mouse models and cellular signalling. He studied biotechnology at IIT Bombay.