Parag Gupta

SOCAP15

Overview

Parag Gupta has been active with social ventures for the past 12 years as an entrepreneur and advisor to Fortune 500 CEOs, public officials, and nonprofits alike. He created both Waste Ventures Charities and Waste Capital Partners to incubate waste picker cooperatives and provide them with the access to finance so they may scale and generate a margin at a commercial rate of return. Prior to founding Waste Ventures, Parag served as Associate Director of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship where he directed the South Asia and Eastern Europe portfolios involving luminaries such as Montek Singh Ahluwalia, the Honorable Sonia Gandhi, and Vaclav Klaus in the coveted ‘Social Entrepreneur of the Year’ selection. He also designed Base of Pyramid programming at the World Economic Forum for Fortune 500 CEOs in India, China, the Middle East, and at the Annual Meeting at Davos. Parag also founded IDEAS which applied venture philanthropy principles to advocacy outcomes in developing countries. Previously, he was a management consultant at the Bridgespan Group advising foundation and nonprofits. He also was involved in creating a specialty coffee sector for Technoserve. He started his career working in government at the US federal, state, and local levels. Parag received his Masters from the Harvard Kennedy School, his Bachelors from the University of Chicago where he also served as President of the Student Association. He was a World Economic Forum Global Leadership Fellow and has been recognized twice for having a ‘Top 2%’ concept by the Echoing Green Foundation for two different social ventures. He has been featured on CNBC and in the San Francisco Chronicle, and Times of India. Parag has also been published in multiple anthologies and the editorial columns of the Business Standard, Economic Times, and the HT Mint. He is a featured blogger on the premier social entrepreneur site, Social Edge with his blog, ‘Talking Trash’.