Quick Facts
Biography
Praveen Chakravarty is an Indian politician belonging to the Congress Party. He is the Chairman of the Data Analytics department, appointed by Rahul Gandhi. He is the brains behind SHAKTI, the party's organisational backbone. He is responsible for providing data-backed inputs for strategic decisions the party makes. He was also actively involved in drafting the Economic Resolution of the Congress Party released at its plenary session in Delhi in March 2018.
Chakravarty is a former investment banker, angel investor and political economist. He is a co-founder of Mumbai Angels and is ranked among the top five angel investors in the country by a survey. Chakravarty quit as Managing Director of BNP Paribas India to work as a volunteer with the Manmohan Singh government's UID project under Nandan Nilekani. He subsequently retired from investment banking to focus on public policy and social impact initiatives while continuing to be an active angel investor. He was also a contributing editor at BloombergQuint where he hosted a popular monthly column called "Noise To Signal".
Early life
Praveen Chakravarty was born in Tamilnadu,Chennai and is an alumnus of BITS, Pilani and has an MBA from Wharton School.
Career
Praveen Chakravarty started his career with IBM in Japan and subsequently moved to Microsoft. He switched to investment banking in New York and San Francisco, after receiving his MBA from Wharton. Chakravarty moved to India to set up Thomas Weisel's India operations and 2 years later, captured headlines in a high-profile move to BNP Paribas as Managing Director with his entire team from Thomas Weisel. 4 years later, in a sudden move that caught everyone by surprise, he joined Nandan Nilekani's team at Aadhaar.
Chakravarty has served on many corporate boards. He was the founding board member of many successful startups.
Chakravarty's frequent opinion articles in newspapers use data extensively and challenge conventional wisdom.He was a founding trustee of the respected data journalism non-profit, IndiaSpend and was a board member of legislative research firm, PRS Legislative. Chakravarty is a well respected public affairs commentator.