Madan Padaki
Co-Founder
Madan is an entrepreneur working at the intersection of transforming youth, enabling entrepreneurial journeys & empowering social changemakers. His vision is that every youth is an empowered youth, every empowered youth is an entrepreneur & job-creator and every entrepreneur is a social changemaker!
An engineer from NIE Mysore and an MBA from SPJIMR, Mumbai, Madan has worked with Wipro, Infosys and Mphasis (Japan) – before being bitten by the entrepreneurial bug in 2000 when he co-founded MeritTrac as a pioneering idea in skills assessments. In 2011, he moved to Manipal Education to head up Strategy, Innovation and International Partnerships, and transitioned out in March 2013 – listening to his heart to embark on a journey as a changemaker.
With a vision of transforming rural youth to be entrepreneurs, he founded 1Bridge, a platform that empowers rural entrepreneurs to accelerate abundance of access, choice & convenience to rural citizens by leveraging technology. He is also the Managing Trustee of Head Held High Foundation, a non-profit that stands for human dignity. He is the co-founder of Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship (GAME), a network that aims to catalyse large-scale job creation by bringing together Government, Businesses & Civil Society organisations to work collaboratively on igniting a mass entrepreneurship movement
Partnering with other education leaders, Madan is also a Co-Founder & Director of Sylvant Advisors. He currently serves as a Strategy Advisor to UNICEF India and is helping to launch a large initiative on youth empowerment called Generation Unlimited, in India. He is a member of the FICCI National Committee on Rural Development, member of the CII National Committee on Women Empowerment, member of Governing Council of TiE Bangalore and Advisory Board Member of Youth for Seva . He had also served as a Senior Advisor to Tata Trusts between 2015-2016. A Bangalorean by birth & heart, he resides in the heart of the city – Basavanagudi with his wife & two children.
