Aditya Natraj

Founder

Founder of Kaivalya Education Foundation

Aditya Natraj is the founder of Kaivalya Education Foundation (2008)[1], an Indian non-profit working on education from New Delhi.

Aditya Natraj is an Indian social entrepreneur working in public education reform. He founded the Kaivalya Education Foundation in 2008, an organisation that works with government school systems in India through the leadership development of state, district and school-level education officials. He later became chief executive of the Piramal Foundation, of which Kaivalya became a part.

Early life and education

Natraj was born in Mumbai and brought up in the Middle East, returning to India for his higher education in 1989. He took a B.Com. from Sydenham College of Commerce and Economics in Mumbai and qualified as a chartered accountant. He also holds a master's degree in economics and an MBA from INSEAD in France.

Career

Natraj worked as a consultant with KPMG in Chennai for five years and then practised as a chartered accountant in London. He was vice-president of business development at ProXchange before moving into the development sector.

In 2002 he joined the education non-profit Pratham, where he spent five years as its director in Gujarat, developing alternative schooling programmes in the aftermath of the 2001 Gujarat earthquake.

In 2008 he founded the Kaivalya Education Foundation, which began with a principal leadership development programme piloted with about 100 rural school principals in the Jhunjhunu district of Rajasthan. The foundation has since worked with education leaders across a number of Indian states. Natraj went on to serve as chief executive of the Piramal Foundation and the Piramal School of Leadership, and has sat on the governing boards of the Quality Council of India, the Akanksha Foundation and Bridgespan India.

Recognition

Natraj is an Ashoka Fellow, an Echoing Green Fellow and an Aspen India Fellow of the Aspen Global Leadership Network. He received the Times Now Amazing Indian award in the education category.[2][3][4][5]

Kaivalya Education Foundation

Kaivalya Education Foundation is a New Delhi-based nonprofit, founded in 2008, that works on systems change in Indian public education by developing the leadership capability of school heads and education officials. It runs leadership-development programmes with education leaders across 14 states, working to strengthen public schools so more children stay in school and learn.

Kaivalya Education Foundation reports the following, on its own site: