An Investment Banker, before he founded Build A Class Initiative & Whiz Mantra to enable education for imparting 21st Century Skils. This model intended to attain universal with a cohesive effort to bridge economics with culture both in urban and rural India. Presently, his intervention is empowering 1 million children presently in multiple demography.

Abhishek’s grass root working experience backed by strong fundamentals of business is not only helping the students to revive their dreams but also giving families several new directions in manifesting economic and cultural upliftment. His ability to execute the ‘Social’ initiatives powered by steady sustainable revenue engine has made the business model adaptive and scalable.

Whiz Mantra has facilitated the largest rehabilitation project in the world and ensuring education is imparted to the beneficiaries to incur the demographic dividends.

He also serves at several national and international boards working in the social impact segment. He was the jury in AIMA, NASSCOM foundation and also holds significant positions in AIESEC, TiE, FICCI. He also delivers guest lectures in the premier management and engineering colleges.

Beyond his professional credentials he is also an active sportsman and photographer.

Pratik has a career spanning over two and a half decades in the UN, International NGOs, Indian Government and the private sector. He is the Founder Director of Sashakt Foundation, an NGO that works with adolescent girls and on waste management. Apart from this he is an advisor and Board member of several other organisations.

In October 2016 he moved on from his role as the Executive Director at Magic Bus Global after seven years with the organisation. Earlier he was the CEO of Magic Bus India

Foundation and responsible for scaling the organisation from a small programme in Mumbai to 23 states in India, reaching out to 400000 children and youth. Magic Bus specializes in using sports as a development tool. He has extensive experience of managing large scale programmes in a leadership role. Prior to Magic Bus, he was at Population Services International at its New Delhi office as Director Programs leading a large maternal health project.

He completed his graduation in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. After a brief stint in the corporate sector, he joined the Indian Civil services in the Indian Information Service as a part of the 1992 batch. He has been associated with the social sector in all my assignments within the government. These included stints in the Health ministry and the Information and Broadcasting ministry. His four year stint in the National AIDS control programme in the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Govt. of India gave him extensive exposure to HIV/AIDS and health programmes and systems in India and inspired him to play a more substantial role in the social sector. In 2006, he left the government to join UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Regional Office for South Asia to head a project on drugs and HIV prevention.

Over the years he has been involved in management, supervision, policy development and strategic planning, including, development of national and state Project Implementation Plans in consultation with government and donor agencies. He has been involved in various roles like conceptualisation, capacity building, handholding for roll out, monitoring and evaluation, documentation etc. he has also been involved in several policy development and advocacy efforts especially in the field of Education, Children and Youth Development, Livelihoods, HIV/AIDS, Drug abuse, Health etc. He has handled administration and finance, budgets and procurement and also performed HR roles during his assignments. He has been extensively involved in setting up and managing Boards and putting governance structures around it.

Pratik is very familiar with compliance and legal issues relevant to the sector in India and getting good exposure of the same for countries outside of India. Over the years he has worked with more than 85 reputed corporate houses from the fund raising perspective. As an ex bureaucrat he firmly believe in the power of working closely with the government systems. He has had close working relations with various UN bodies like UNAIDS, UNDP, UNICEF, ILO, UNIFEM, UNFPA and donors like USAID, DFID, AusAID, SIDA, CIDA, NORAD etc. and several international NGOs and alliances.

Dr. Swapan Garain is a social entrepreneur, social work educator, trainer, social business mentor, and non-profit manager. He has been active in the social sector for more than twenty-five years. He has been engaged in guiding corporate for its social responsibility initiatives, setting up and managing NGOs, facilitating government policy making and appraising projects for funding, teaching University students, training change agents, action research, writing, field action, consultancy, networking among social sector stakeholders and promotion of social entrepreneurship. His work is in the area of structural and behavioral inputs in enhancing organization effectiveness of social sector organizations and the efficiency of delivery of services for the poor, deprived and disadvantaged.

Since 2006, he is on the Program Advisory Committee of the Department of Science and Technology (www.scienceandsociety-dst.org) , Government of India for channelizing funds for application of science and technology in development.

Dr Garain has been the Project Director of University of Technology Sydney Project on Asia Pacific Philanthropic Information Network for content development of Indian Third Sector (www.asianphilanthropy.org) , He was a member of the National Advisory Committee of Comparative Nonprofit Project India Country Study of the Johns Hopkins University(www.jhu.edu), USA.

Dr Garain has been associated on full time basis for over 26 years with organizations like S P Jain Institute of Management & Research (2001-2003), Tata Institute of Social Sciences (Since 1985), Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies (1984-1985) of University of Mumbai and the Royal Commonwealth Society for the Blind, India (1983-1984).

Dr Garain hold a Honours degree in Social Work from Visva-Bharati University at Santiniketan, Masters degree in Social Work with specialization in Social Welfare Administration from Tata Institute of Social Sciences at Mumbai, Doctorate in Management Studies from Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies of University of Mumbai and a Diploma in Management from India Gandhi National Open University. He has done post doctoral work on internet fundraising and also been a Senior Fellow in Philanthropy at Johns Hopkins University (USA). He has received fellowships and scholarships from Ford Foundation, Johns Hopkins University, Indian Council of Social Science Research, and Tata Institute of Social Sciences.

Dr. Sharad Sarin is BE [Electrical], MBA and Ph D [Marketing]. After finishing his MBA from IIM, Ahmedabad in 1972, he worked for three years in a large engineering firm [Larsen & Toubro Ltd]. He has been a faculty member since 1976, with XLRI, Jamshedpur, a leading private management institute in India. He has been the Dean of XLRI [1984–1988] and a Visiting Faculty to the Indian Institute of Management at Ahmedabad [India], the University of Rhode Island, Kingston [USA], Colorado University at Boulder [USA] and Helsinki School of Economics [Finland]. He has presented seminars in around 20 universities in the US between 1984 and 2012.

In November 1995, Prof Sarin was named amongst the top five teachers of business management in India by Business Standard, a leading business daily newspaper in India. Prof Sarin is widely known as the originator of the novel concept of ‘Marketing Fair.’ Between 2001 to 2003, Prof. Sarin was on the panel of judges for Prime Minister’s Trophy [Government of India] to select the best integrated Steel Plant in India.

Prof Sarin’s major areas of interest are: Competition and Globalization, Strategic Management, General Marketing, Industrial Marketing, Marketing’s Role in Development, Relationship Marketing and Strategic Marketing. He has published articles in leading Indian and international journals. He has also participated and presented papers in several conferences in India and abroad. For the last two years, he is actively involved in organizing seminars on “Marketing for Masses” aimed at generating ideas to improve quality of life of the masses.

His publications include two books ‘Strategic Brand Management for B2B Markets’ and ‘Business Marketing’: Concepts and Cases’ in addition to number of articles in National and International journals.

Amongst the academic institutions, Prof Sarin was on the governing board of XLRI, Jamshedpur,(1993-2004) and on the board of the Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad,(1991-2010) .

He is on the governing Board of KGVK [Ranchi] and advisor to South Asia Foundation [Delhi]. He was on the governing Boards of: Tata Refractories Ltd , ( 2000-2011), Rane Group [Madras] Lark Cables and Technologies Ltd, Tega Industries Ltd [Kolkata] and SM Creative Electronics Ltd.

Currently, Prof Sarin is a Senior Faculty Member at XLRI. In last 36 years, Prof Sarin has been to China, Costa Rica, France, Finland , Germany, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, Nigeria, Oman, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, UAE [Dubai], UK, and the USA.

Has worked for MECON Ltd. For over 35 years.Gold medallist from Indian Institute of Metals. Also a member of Indian Cancer Winners Association.

A veteran union activist. Member, Participatory Research In Asia for Coal Industry. Has been a part of numerous national and international forums for protecting the labour rights.

Ex head- (design team) at the Pratham Foundation.Former consultant of USAID. Former Consultant of IICA. Key member in drafting the CSR bill.

Dr. Pathak is an ace academician and visiting professor, coordinating and teaching various courses at institutions of repute like Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, New Delhi, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, North Bengal University, Siliguri, B.I.T., Mesra (Ranchi), Indian Institute of Coal Management, Ranchi, Indian Institute of Mass Communication, New Delhi, Management Training Institute, SAIL, Ranchi, Institute of Entrepreneurship Development, Patna, Small Industries Service Institute, Dhanbad, S. K. Institute of Public Administration, Government of Jharkhand, Ranchi, School of Management Sciences, Varanasi, Indian Institute of Coal Management, Ranchi.

He brings in his years of experience to our board for best practices in human resource and attaining organisational excellence.