Team

Samhita Social Ventures evolved from Priya's work with the Nadathur family's social initiatives in the areas of nature conservation, art, education for differently-abled children, and livelihood generation through microenterprise.

Prior to working with Nadathur's family office, Priya co-founded The Spark Group, an education company that delivered affordable education to low income communities. At Spark, Priya helped define strategy, created the business plan and was also instrumental in raising funds from IFMR Trust.

Priya's interest in social entrepreneurship began when she worked as a Researcher at the Poverty Action Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, USA. At MIT, Priya was part of two student-led start-ups - Aerovax, a company that created safe, inhalable aerosol vaccines that could be delivered without the use of needles and Kalpataru, a company that delivered innovative, low-cost technology to increase the efficiency of microfinance institutions. Kalpataru's pilot was tested with the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and was presented to Nobel laureate, Dr Muhammad Yunus. Both social enterprises won several awards at MIT.

Priya has worked as a consultant with the International Finance Corporation in Africa. She started her career in Accounting at Arthur Andersen in Mumbai.

Priya has a Masters. in Economics from Yale University, USA, a Masters in Public Policy from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA and a Masters in Commerce from Mumbai University where she stood first in the entire graduating class.

Chandni Parekh is a social psychologist. She conducts workshops on sexuality education and sexual abuse in schools and colleges, and consults with Samhita.

In the past, she was a consultant on a Government of Maharashtra-World Health Organization (WHO) project on reproductive and child health and HIV/AIDS control, and an Advisory Board member of NGO Arpan's Personal Safety Education programme for schools. She has also worked as a research guide and conducted workshops on religious freedom and human rights. She has taught counselling theories and therapies too at post-graduate courses in counselling psychology.

Aside from helping a number of NGOs, she runs Fund-A-Cause, an online initiative that spreads the word about individuals and organisations in India that are seeking and offering money. She is also a founder-member of Vikalp@Prithvi, which organises free monthly documentary screenings on social issues in Bombay.

Devika would be completing Bachelors in Computer Science and Masters in Economics from BITS Pilani, Goa Campus as joint degrees. She’s currently pursuing her final thesis. The research is in development economics on impact and organizational analysis of non-profit organisations.

She enjoys working on multiple things. So she pursued her diverse interests in college - organised college festivals, lead the Election Commission for the Student Union and founded a reading club among other activities. Her passion towards social welfare stems from the disparity which shackles India. Working at Samhita is a beginning to a career in the social sector.

Besides economics, her interests include reading, writing articles and travelling.

Siddharth is a lawyer and an alumnus of NALSAR, University of Law, Hyderabad. Prior to joining Samhita, Siddharth spent three years working with the private equity advisory team of a leading Indian law firm, followed by six months with rural community based social organizations in Tamil Nadu, where he had an opportunity to study closely and take part in socially beneficial initiatives relating to community trade and forest rights. Siddharth continues to be associated as a volunteer with Just Change India, a community led trade initiative.

Siddharth has had a continued interest in community development and believes in sustainability as the way forward in ushering social change. Siddharth enjoys cooking, writing humorous fiction and watching cricket.

A philosophy and literature graduate from Mumbai University and an explorer by heart, she worked as a teacher in Akanksha with underprivileged children before taking up Human Resources as a Career. However she found her true calling while assisting for an independent evaluation project for an NGO and decided to work in this sector.

She loves traveling, reading, theater and poetry and has been involved in volunteering with different NGOs because of her strong belief that smaller contributions leads to bigger changes.