Jury

Vishnu Swaminathan

Vishnu, a lifelong entrepreneur, presently is Co-founder and president of Nourishing Schools Foundation and Indian Housing Federation.

He has brought several ideas to life over his professional career – both in the for-profit and non-profit worlds. Earlier in his career, he co-founded two internet technology companies in Singapore in the 90’s and early 2000’s. Both the companies were based on ideas that were ahead of their times – Artificial intelligence and Machine learning and another a fin-tech business. One of the companies was acquired in the early 2000s and he discovered his deep interest in social development after that.

Later in his exploration of the non-profit space, he worked with Ashoka as a Leadership Group Member for over a decade, and led multiple teams across South Asia, South East Asia and at the Global office. His work on affordable housing, enabled creation of over 15,000 homes across India – is now a separate organization he co-founded called the Indian Housing Federation. Similarly, his work on malnutrition has led to the creation of Nourishing Schools Foundation.

He is passionate about creating large scale social change using hybrid business models.