Shridhar Venkat

CEO, Akshaya Patra Foundation
India

Shridhar serves as CEO of The Akshaya Patra Foundation. He has over 25 years of work experience with leading multinationals like Philips, ABB, Webex Communications (CISCO), etc. He is an Eisenhower Fellow .

Prior to joining Akshaya Patra he was Vice President – Sales, Webex Communications (CISCO). He is with Akshaya Patra for the past 12 years.

Shridhar holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering and a Master’s Degree in Marketing Management, NMIMS Mumbai. He is a graduate of the Advanced Management Programme from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

His search for ‘Existential Purpose’ in life made him quit a corporate career and join the Akshaya Patra Foundation, a not-for-profit organization with a vision that ‘No Child in India shall be deprived of Education because of Hunger’. Akshaya Patra is the World’s largest school meal program run by an NGO feeding over 1.6 million children every day in 37 locations and 12 states in India.

Akshaya Patra’s mission is to feed ‘5 million children daily by 2020 ‘. It has been rated as one of the top 100 NGOs in the world (ranking 23) by the Global Journal of Geneva.

Akshaya Patra has received ‘Gold Shield ‘ for 5th time in a row from the prestigious Institute of Chartered Accountants ( ICAI ) of India for excellence in financial reporting.  It’s in the hall of fame of ICAI. Harvard Business School has done a case study on Akshayapatra. MIT has featured it in its technology review. Akshaya Patra has been covered by Forbes Magazine, National Geographic, Discovery channel, CNN, BBC, etc.  Akshaya Patra has also received the Nikkei Asia Prize 2016 for Economic and Business Innovation category.