Ramji Raghavan

Ramji Raghavan is an India based social innovator and entrepreneur. He is the Founder and Chairman of Agastya International Foundation, a Non Profit Organization, sparking curiosity, creativity and leadership amongst underprivileged children and government school teachers. Ramji is also a member of the Central Advisory Board of Education, Government of India, Karnataka State Innovation Council, a board member of Vigyan Prasar, Government of India, board member of the Indira Gandhi National Open University, executive committee member of the Visvesvaraya Industrial and Technological Museum and has served as a member of the Working Group on Attracting Children to Science and Math of the Prime Minister’s National Knowledge Commission. He is also a well-recognized public speaker and has spoken at the Education World Forum, the annual INK Conference in association with TED, the Clinton Global Initiative, Harvard India Conference, MIT Media Lab, Peking University, Indian Institute of Science, the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research the PanIIT Conference, the Confederation of Indian Industry, Deshpande Development Dialogue, the Indian Institute of Management – Bangalore, the WISE Summit 2014, Qatar and Indiaspora, USA and RAFT- Resource Area For Teaching, Bay Area, USA. He has also addressed school and university students, faculty, entrepreneurs, and corporate leaders in India at IBM, Morgan Stanley, E&Y, ASCENT Foundation and EdelWeiss on curiosity, creativity, innovation and leadership.

Ramji was raised in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Calcutta where his father KV Raghavan served as Managing Director of the ICI Group company, Alkali and Chemical Corporation of India Limited and later as Chairman of Engineers India Limited and President of EID Parry Limited. Ramji's father and his maternal uncle, Dr. P. K. Iyengar, former Chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission were founder trustees of Agastya International Foundation. A product of Rishi Valley School, founded by the philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti, Ramji was early on exposed to the power of self-awareness to create social change and dreamt of building a school for creative leaders in India. With support from the government of Andhra Pradesh, Ramji and his colleagues established a 172-acre campus creativity lab near Bangalore. In 2010 the Government of Karnataka signed a MoU with Agastya International Foundation to establish an ecosystem for hands-on science education in the state. Ramji is married to Monica (née Sanghani), great great granddaughter of Devkaran Nanjee, the founder of Dena Bank. Ramji holds an MBA from the London Business School and a Post-Graduate Diploma in Development Studies from The International Institute of Social Studies, The Netherlands. He graduated from Hans Raj College, University of Delhi.

As per popular media, Ramji started his career as a Consultant with A. F. Ferguson & Co., followed by Citibank in India, Puerto Rico and New York City. Later he worked with the Europe based Cedel Group as Director and member of the Strategic Advisory Group.

In 1998, Ramji left his commercial career in banking and finance to create Agastya International Foundation, which has reached creative hands-on science education to over 7 million underprivileged children and 200,000 government school teachers across India.

In 2009, Ramji was elected as a senior fellow by Ashoka: Innovators for the Public.

In 2011, Ramji was featured on Indian TV channel Times Now in its program Amazing Indians and honoured with the People’s Hero award by the Coimbatore unit of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) at its silver jubilee celebrations. In 2012, Ramji was featured on CNBC Awaaz’s program "Bharat Bhagya Vidhata". Under Ramji’s chairmanship Agastya International Foundation won the Google Global Impact Award 2013 and was ranked by The Rockefeller Foundation NextCentury Awards among the top 100 global innovators. In 2016 Ramji received the Deshpande Foundation's Sandbox Catalyst Award from Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus and the Innovation for India award from the Marico Innovation Foundation [1]