Vijay Pratap Singh Aditya

Vijay Pratap Singh Aditya is a first generation technology entrepreneur building platform to enable access to services and markets for millions of farmers and rural producers. Vijay is Electrical Engineering Graduate with Post-Graduation in management from the Indian Institute of Forest Management, Bhopal, India. Vijay’s work focusses on rural India; enabling access to markets, agriculture value chain, financial services and enterprise services for rural businesses, farmer-producers and artisans. Vijay brings in over 20 years of experience in technology innovation and understanding of rural markets. Vijay is passionate about networking rural communities and forging partnership, to seek transfer of equity in favour of primary producers and artisans in the value chain. Vijay having co-founded ekgaon 13 years back has built the company as a network-integrator providing real-time platform where service providers compete for the under-served consumer services markets. ekgaon platforms ensure cost effective service delivery by using mobile phone apps to transmit verified and secured transaction information, impacting in cost savings as well as enhancing productivity across the value chain. Its flagship platform www.ekgaon.com sells ‘direct from farm’ produce, from its network of farmers and producer organisations across India. Vijay, has been included amongst 50 Social Entrepreneurs in India by the India’s premier business magazine, “The Business Outlook” in its September, 2009 special Independence Day issue. The magazine identified these entrepreneurs as “New Wealth Creators – 50 Social Entrepreneurs…. and how they are making India better”. Vijay was awarded the “Civil Society Citizen Karmaveer Puraskaar – Social Entrepreneur, 2012 – 13”. Vijay is part of global community of social entrepreneurs as Ashoka – Lemelson Fellow since 2008 for life and Ashoka Globalizer Fellow 2010 & 2012. Vijay served as a mentor for Tata Social Enterprise Challenge (TSEC), organised by the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta for several years. He mentors the management team of Bodhi Health Education Pvt. Ltd. a health service enterprise with focus to provide knowledge and awareness among health professionals and community health workers. He serves in the Area Advisory BoardMarketing steam of the Amity University. He mentors entrepreneurs as part of Ennovent Pool, a sustainability enterprise accelerator. Vijay serves on the board of IndLinux Society, promoting Indic-language computing. Vijay is also founding member and the Chairman of Technical Affairs Committee of the Business Correspondent Federation of India (BCFI), promoting financial inclusion in India. Vijay was a judge for the DBS-NUS Social Venture Challenge Asia 2015, Singapore. In his personal time Vijay reads, travels and does gardening. He is an avid researcher of Indic-heritage and has widely travelled across the sub-continent researching Indic history and heritage. Vijay authors a blog http://ekchidiya.tumblr.com/, through which he is trying to bring the voice of common people to the forefront of social media and social discourse Vijay is Co-founder, Director and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of ekgaon.