NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

P.R. Ganapathy, the chief operating officer at Villgro, is an experienced business executive with Global (US/India) leadership experience and a proven track record in scaling B2B businesses. A significant portion of his experience has been in the Outsourcing, Financial Information / Research and Telecom sectors. In addition to mentoring rural social enterprises in the Villgro portfolio, Ganapathy volunteers a portion of his time to help Teach For India in Chennai. Prior to Villgro, Ganapathy’s experience includes being Managing Director and Chief Executive of DSNL Ltd; Co-founder and CEO, Gridstone Research; and working at Infosys and the Tata Administrative Service. He has an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad, and a B.Sc. (Hons.) in Mathematics from Hindu College.

Jessica Seddon Jessica Seddon is the Founder of Okapi, an India-based research and consulting group focused on institutional design for complex goals in changing times and a Senior Fellow at the IIT Madras Centre for Technology and Policy. Her research and consulting focus design and evaluation of informational interventions, including investments in generating and/or managing information, formation of metrics, and policy and regulation toward information technology. Her work cuts across sectors – from infrastructure to air quality to healthcare – to enable innovative approaches to achieving collective purpose. She is on the advisory boards of the Wilderhill Global Clean Energy Index (NEX), as well as Indian startups Prakti Design Labs and career discovery service Vidyartha. She holds a Ph.D.from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business and earned her B.A. from Harvard University. Seddon worked as Head and later Senior Consultant – Knowledge Management with the Villgro Innovations Foundation until September 2014.