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 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 and supports mission driven entrepreneurs through a network of innovation labs, venture incubators, accelerator programmes, seed funds and market access mechanisms. Social Alpha’s mission is to drive economic growth, social justice and climate action through the power of entrepreneurship and market-creating innovations. Since its inception in 2016, Social Alpha has evolved as a multistage innovation curation and venture development 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 150 start-ups, making 40+ seed investments and 3 exits.

Manoj is also a Senior Advisor to Tata Trusts, leading Tata Trusts’ engagements with universities globally, as well as all their initiatives to promote Innovation and Entrepreneurship in India. In recent years Manoj has been instrumental in setting up and managing Tata Centres at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB), Tata Institute for Genetics and Society (TIGS), School of Public Policy at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IITD), Tata Centre for Development (TCD) at the University of Chicago, and the Harvard South Asia Institute. Besides this Manoj has also set up and managed the India Health Fund, during its formative years. IHF is an initiative seeded by Tata Trusts in partnership with Global Fund to fight the huge burden of public health challenges in TB, Malaria and other communicable diseases. Manoj continues to provide board level support and strategic direction to the IHF team.

Prior to founding Social Alpha, Manoj has been an entrepreneur as well as an early-stage venture investor.

Manoj 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.