Our Team

Ramesh has a Business Technology degree in Computer Science from IIT Madras. He has done his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, where he was awarded a gold medal for academic excellence. Ramesh is actively involved in education – he is a trustee on the Board of Akanksha – a leading non-profit institution in India, advisor to Teach for India, and a member of the Board of Overseers of the NYU Tandon School of Engineering.

She was the Chairperson of the National Commission for Women from the year 1999 to 2002. She was appreciated for many issue-based challenges that she handled skilfully.

Formally educated at the Universities of Cambridge, London and Boston, she is currently an independent Consultant engaged with national and international research, advisory and mentoring projects.

As Joint Secretary in the Department of Elementary Education, he was responsible for the launch of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. He was also Secretary, School Education in Madhya Pradesh.

He is presently Vice Chairman, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP). He serves as an Independent Director on the boards of several companies and on the boards of various non-profits such as Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, Jal Seva Charitable Foundation (WaterAid India), Parivaar Education Society (Kolkata), Foundation to Educate Girls Globally and Samaj Pragati Sahayog (Bagli, Dewas).

Soumya also serves as the Vice Chair of Reach to Teach, a UK-based charity, which works in primary education for under-privileged children between the ages of 3-14 years in rural and disadvantaged areas of Gujarat, India. She is a Member of the Advisory Council of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Gandhinagar’s Research Park and Innovation and Entrepreneurship Centre and serves on the Advisory Council and as a Jury Member of the Economic Times Family Business Initiative.

Soumya won the Radhakrishnan Scholarship to study at Oxford University where she completed a post graduate degree in Mathematics from Balliol College. Prior to Oxford, Soumya completed her Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from St. Stephens College, Delhi.

In 2014, she took small but consistent steps to work closely with the public schools in India under the Exemplar Schools Project. Today she manages a portfolio of 7 programmes spread across Madhya Pradesh and Delhi, where more than 10% of our children can hope for better educational outcomes.

Prior to Peepul, Kruti worked in various management and leadership roles. She kickstarted her career by working at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, where she specialised in education sector policy, fiscal policy and financial sector reform. Later, she joined the Corporate Executive Board (CEB), in Washington DC where she managed the research, product development and client advisory in for their technology vertical. Later, she shifted to India as the Senior Director to lead CEB’s finance practice in India. At McKinsey and Co., she expertized in diverse sectors such as consumer goods, retail and agri-business.

An economist by training, Kruti has completed her MSc (Development Studies) with a distinction at the London School of Economics, MA (Economics) from the University of Maryland and her BA (Economics) with Distinction from Lady Shri Ram College, University of Delhi.

Kruti was recently recognised on Business World’s 40Under40 List for 2019. She was also awarded Social Entrepreneur of 2019 by Business World. She has been felicitated as Promising Leader for Innovation in Education by the Asian African Chamber of Commerce and Industry. In 2018, Kruti was selected by The Economic Times in their Women Ahead List of 26 women leaders, as Disruptor of the Year by Business World and received the Women Super Achiever 2018 award by World HRD Congress.

Urmila is currently the Education Director for Peepul. She leads the education and academic team at Peepul to run exemplar schools, contextualize and use international best practices, train teachers in both curriculum and pedagogy, design new programmes and develop scalable solutions for learning challenges faced by children from underprivileged backgrounds. With the core belief that every child, regardless of their background, deserves a great education, she joined the organization in 2015 as the Founding Principal of the flagship school started in Delhi in partnership with the South Delhi Municipal Corporation. In that role, she spearheaded the launch of the first PPP school in Delhi, growing the school from an enrolment of 9 to 120 students within the first month of operations.

Earlier in her career, she was the Director for Education at the Ahvaan Trust for Education, where she designed and led an intensive Professional Development Programme for around 30 Teachers across 6 model Delhi Government Schools. She also served as Programme Advisor, Scholarships and Grants at The Tiara Charitable foundation, a privately-owned philanthropic entity where she conceptualized and set up the scholarship programme which identified and supported deserving students irrespective of economic background.

Before joining the social sector, she taught for twenty years in two of India’s most prestigious schools — La Martiniere, Kolkata and The Shri Ram School, New Delhi. At The Shri Ram School, she was a teacher for 15 years and school leader for 5 years. Her first foray into the social sector was made when she volunteered for about 5 years in a school for underprivileged children that her mother had set up in a village close to Kolkata. She trained the teachers of the school and guided them in curriculum.

Her work and her writing have been featured in Times Education Supplement (TES) UK, Business Standard, Times of India and Reader’s Digest. She has spoken at international and national conferences, such as the India Economic Summit 2017 of the World Economic Forum and Imagine, a conference on Special Education Needs. Urmila has an MA in English, B.Ed. and CELTA (A Cambridge Certification for teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages).