Combining Market Returns and Social Impact with Social Alpha CEO Manoj Kumar

In this podcast, you will learn:

1. Principles of investing that optimizes both market returns and social impact
2. Constructs of building meaningful partnerships
3. Core elements of innovative organizational cultures

Manoj’s three decade long career has included roles as an entrepreneur, an investor, as well as a corporate leader spanning multiple sectors and geographies.

Manoj is the Founder and Chairman of Social Alpha, a unique initiative to strengthen the Science and Technology start-up ecosystem in India with a focus on “lab to market” enablement. Since its inception in 2016, Social Alpha has evolved as an integrated incubation and investment platform for high impact start-ups that aim to solve the most critical social, economic and environmental challenges faced by humanity. It has incubated and nurtured more than 60 start-ups, making 30+ seed investments and 2 exits. Some very promising start-ups in the Social Alpha portfolio include Voxelgrids, a New Generation MRI machine; Bionic Yantra, a Medical Robotics company with innovative exoskeletons for Locomotor Rehabilitation; Help Us Green, a circular economy company; and Hasiru Dala, a solid waste management start-up. (more at https://www.socialalpha.org/our-portfolio/)

Manoj is also a Senior Advisor to Tata Trusts, leading Tata Trusts’ engagements with R&D Institutions globally, as well as all their initiatives to promote Innovation and Entrepreneurship in India. Besides this, Manoj manages the India Health Fund, an initiative seeded by Tata Trusts to fight the huge burden of public health challenges in TB, Malaria and other communicable diseases.

Prior to founding Social Alpha, Manoj co-founded Malgharia Advisors, a boutique investing and consulting vehicle focused on Enterprise Software and Fintech businesses. Manoj has also worked for over two decades in investment banking and financial technology firms, holding global leadership roles in the areas of Corporate Strategy, M&A, Product Management and R&D.

Manoj is a founding trustee of Tata Institute for Genetics and Society (TIGS) and serves on the advisory and governing boards of a number of companies, non-profits and research institutions.

Manoj is an alumnus of Harvard Business School and lives in Bangalore, India.