• Krishna Chaitanya Rao, Chief Operating Officer, India
  
  
• Anand Rao, Projects Manager
  
  
• Nataraj, Projects Manager
  
  
• K.B. Saraswathi, Administrative Support
  
  
• Aradhana, Coordinator  - Fundraising, Monitoring and Evaluation
  
  
• Venugopal, Project Coordinator
  
  
• Arpana Udupa, Project Associate
  
  
• Raghavendra Prasad, Project Consultant
  
  
• Naveen Lakshmipathy, Volunteer
  
  

Krishna Chaitanya Rao

Mr. Krishna Chaitanya Rao is a Chemical Engineer by training and has been the project manager of S³IDF’s Indian affiliate office at Bangalore since its origin. Krishna is responsible for the overall staff management and program oversight of the India office operations. He has the lead responsibility in project development for all S³IDF portfolio and pipeline activities and his duties include managing key partner and funder relationships, negotiating agreements with financial institutions and entrepreneurs, fundraising and networking, and reporting on staff progress and project status to S³IDF’s Board and President. He is also involved in the technical aspects of S³IDF’s project development work and for certain projects oversees financial engineering.

Krishna also has extensive experience in the Information Technology industry gained through his previous work experience at Juno Online Services, an Internet Service Provider in the United States. In this role, Krishna was the point of contact for the Quality assurance of WebMail product and for the Migration processes of Juno users from outsourced systems to the company systems.

Anand Rao

Mr Anand Rao has been working with S³IDF since July 2004, responsible for project development of S³IDF portfolio and pipeline activities and is the lead coordinator for fundraising activities.

Anand holds a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering from Bangalore University and two Master’s degrees. He earned an MBA from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT-Mumbai) for his thesis, Evaluating Potential Climate Change Mitigation Projects in the Indian Rural Sector. His Masters in International Relations comes from the Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs at Syracuse University, where he concentrated on Environmental Policy. He has done some short-term assignments with organizations such as World Watch Institute and World Resources Institute in Washington before joining S³IDF.

Nataraj

Mr Nataraj has been working with S³IDF since June 2004 as Project Associate and his duties include identification of specific investment opportunities, arranging/developing investment(s) partnerships and coordinating implementation of small-scale pro-poor infrastructure projects.

Nataraj completed his graduation in Mechanical Engineering from Kuvempu University in 1995 and an MBA in Marketing in 2006. Subsequent to his engineering degree, Nataraj served as a branch manager (Mangalore Branch) of ATCO Products Ltd., an Indian firm manufacturing and retailing electronic weighing scales and weigh bridges, for around one and a half years. He then moved on to serving as the Director of Apex Pyro Char Ltd., which manufactured and distributed coconut-based products for three years. He has then served as a Project associate for four years with Automation Research, Mysore, a firm providing engineering, research and development consultancy and manufacturing services for special purpose machinery to the manufacturing sectors. He joined S³IDF in the year 2004 first as a consultant and then subsequently as a Project Associate. From very early stages of his career, Nataraj has shown a flair for entrepreneurship and enterprise development.

K. B. Saraswathi

Ms K.B. Saraswathi is the “Administrative Support” in the office. She is involved in the day-to-day administrative functioning of the organization and in accounts keeping and maintenance.

Saraswathi has done a Personal Secretarial Course from Davar’s College of Commerce. She has vast experience in corporates like Festo Controls Pvt Ltd (Germany based) and Japan Metal Building Systems Pvt Ltd ( Japan based )companies.

Aradhana

Aradhana is a Post-graduate in Statistics from the US and has been working with S³IDF since February 2004. Aradhana is in charge of Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) activities for S³IDF’s projects. Aradhana is responsible for various activities including, but not limited to M&E and project work, networking, fundraising and report writing.

Aradhana has an extensive work experience in the Corporate world, having worked at Kaiser Permanente’s Division of Research in the United States. She has also been associated with the non-profit organization AID (Association for India’s Development) as a volunteer and treasurer, and brings valuable experience from working in partnership with other grassroot NGOs.

Venugopal

V Venugopal is a Post graduate in Environment Management from IISWBM (Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management), Kolkata. Subsequently he has worked in the areas of environment and natural resource management both as a researcher and as a practitioner / implementor. In his last assignment he has worked with the World Bank Assisted State government project on participatory watershed development called "Sujala" with the Watershed Development Department of the Karnataka State Government under the Ministry of Agriculture. He brings with him new networks of NGOs and resource persons and knowledge and contacts within the state government departments and schemes.

He holds a keen interest in understanding larger economic issues, especially for rural India, in addition to the environmental and social issues he has been dealing with.

Arpana Udupa

Arpana Udupa is working as a Project Associate for S3IDF and her job responsibilities include evolving partnerships and networking, project development and management. Arpana has done her Masters in Social Work, with specialization in Medical and Psychiatric Social work from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. She has extensive fieldwork experience in various capacities as Community Health Worker, Hospital Social Work Counsellor, Facilitator and Community Organiser.

Raghavendra Prasad M.S

Raghavendra has been working with S3IDF since October 2007 as Project Consultant and his duties include identification of entrepreneurs and business development for small businesses in line with S3IDF’s mission. Raghavendra completed his graduation in Mechanical Engineering from Kuvempu University in 1995. Subsequently he served as a Sales Engineer (Shimoga Branch) of ATCO Products Ltd., an Indian firm manufacturing and retailing electronic weighing scales and weigh bridges, for around two years. He also worked as a Production Engineer at Bharat Foundry in Shimoga. He has been an independent consultant for various business development concepts for several years.

Naveen Lakshmipathy (Volunteer)

Naveen Lakshmipathy joined S3IDF in September 2007. Born and raised in the U.S., Naveen has come to India and S3IDF through the Indicorps Fellowship Program, which encourages members of the Indian diaspora to contribute to India's development and reconnect with their heritage through service at the grassroots level. At S3IDF, Naveen has taken on various roles in project development and monitoring, and is primarily in charge of implementing projects in and around Dharwad District, Karnataka.
Naveen grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and is a graduate of UC Berkeley and the London School of Economics, where he studied Political Economy and Public Policy. Previously, he served as an analyst at a Washington, D.C. think tank, where he researched and advocated policies to expand access to the Internet in rural and underserved communities in the U.S.