Manisha Gupta – Founder & Director, Start Up!

Manisha has 19 years of experience in the  social entrepreneurship sector of India. She joined Ashoka: Innovators for the Public in 1994, where she served for nine years as the India Country Representative and International Director for Ashoak’s youth programs. During her tenure at Ashoka, Manisha worked with the India team to develop new initiatives to build a collaborative community of social entrepreneurs in the country.

Manisha is the founder and Director at Start Up! which works as an angel investor, incubator and consultant to social entrepreneurs. Start Up! provides deep and immersive strategic development and execution support to seed and scale ventures that create lasting impact in last-mile communities of India. Since 2009, Start Up! has incubated and scaled ten social ventures, several of which are hybrid models. It also conducts the outreach, due diligence and jury presentation for the India Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award – co-hosted jointly by Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship and Jubilant Bhartia Foundation.

Manisha has served as an advisor to several social entrepreneurs and their organizations and consulted with international funding agencies. She has co-authored two books, 1098- Childline Calling and Opening Doors – Ten Years of Ford Foundation’s International Fellowships in India.