Management Team

CAF India's CEO Meenakshi Batra spearheads a highly motivated team committed to making giving more effective in India.

• Meenakshi Batra, Chief Executive Officer

  

  Meenakshi Batra is a seasoned professional with over 24 years of experience in the international development, CSR and not-for-profit sector. She has served in leadership roles with international development and humanitarian agencies in South and Southeast Asia. Meenakshi has successfully led large country programmes in India, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Indonesia working with leading organizations such as DFID, Oxfam, etc. Child and human rights, poverty and vulnerabilities, equity and social exclusion, gender and masculinities are some of the areas where Meenakshi has extensive experience.

  Meenakshi has been conferred with many prestigious awards for her work in the developments sector - Indian Women Achiever Award (IWAA), NGO Women Leadership Award, Women in Leadership Award and many more.  Paving the way forward for a meaningful developmental discourse in the country, Meenakshi has helped pen many position papers such as Achieving Inclusive and Sustainable Industrialization by Promoting SMEs, Strengthening growth of not-for-profits through Inclusive Partnerships, Online Giving in India: Insights To Improve Results, Study on Corporate Foundations- An Emerging Development Paradigm. 

  Along with heading CAF India as the CEO, Meenakshi also serves on the boards of prominent organizations such as VANI, LEPRA and Resource Alliance. She has been nominated as the convener of MSD10 constituted by Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) to draft the requirement standards of CSR in India. Meenakshi has also served on various committees as a Member such as CII Regional Committee on Affirmative Action, CII Core Group on compendium on Industry-NGO Partnership Models, CII Core Group on CSR-CSO Bridge, CII pro-bono task force and CII Chennai CSR group. Along with being an ASPIRE Founder Fellow, she is on the CSR committees of European Business Group (EBG) and the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII).

  Meenakshi holds a Post Graduate degree in Child Development and Family Welfare. She has undertaken advanced studies in the areas of environment education from Centre for Environment Education, gender and social development from London School of Economics and Wye College UK.

• Avijeet Kumar, Chief of Operations

  

  Avijeet Kumar has more than 20 years of work experience in the development sector, teaching and research. He has worked with HelpAge India as Director of Programmes for more than eight years before joining CAF India. He is a graduate in sociology from Delhi University and a National Scholar in the Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics. He has extensive experience in designing CSR strategies for several companies. His deep understanding of the social development sector has helped build capacities and in organizational development of non-profits. Mr. Avijeet contributed substantially to one of the largest rights based projects in India as part of the ‘Poorest Areas Civil Society (PACS) programme, an initiative to strengthen the awareness and capabilities of poor older persons to demand and exercise their rights and entitlements and thereby improve their quality of life.

  He also holds an M.Phil. degree from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and has done a certificate course in designing and implementation of social programmes at the University of Cape Town, South Africa.

  Avijeet has been invited to prestigious forums and events across the country, to share his knowledge on various social development sector issues, including the World CSR Congress, CII & UNICEF Conference on Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan, NASSCOM Technology Roundtable, Strategic Planning Process for 2015-2020 of Global Compact Network India (GCNI), among many other important events.

• Rakesh Goswami, Director - Finance and Operations

  

  Rakesh is a seasoned finance & operations professional with more than 24 years of experience of which 17 years have been in the Development Sector. Rakesh is an expert in taxation, FCRA (Foreign Contribution Regulations Act) and formulation of policies and procedures. At CAF India, along with finance, Rakesh manages systems & policies to ensure a smooth and effective working environment. Rakesh is a multi-faceted agile leader and his key strength lies in his analytical skills, business acumen and people leadership. Rakesh comes with a degree in Chartered Accountancy and has vast experience of working in ERP packages.

• Sangeeta S. Thakral, Director – Communications and Marketing

  

  Sangeeta is an experienced communication and corporate social responsibility professional with more than 15 years of experience in the field of branding, communication, PR & media, campaign and project management. Through her efficient communication and marketing acumen, Sangeeta has been instrumental in augmenting brand equity & orchestrating change using systems thinking. At CAF India, Sangeeta pursues a consistent commitment in integrating social good for both business and society at large by developing creative solutions that draw on the complementary capabilities to address major developmental challenges. As the Head MarComm, Sangeeta manages integrated portfolio blending both MarComm & Social Initiatives sphere. She has been representing CAF India at various corporate and NGO forums and won many accolades. She has extensive experience of working in a cross-cultural global environment. Before joining CAF India Sangeeta managed several communication projects & campaigns mostly for the countries in the Middle East and Africa. Sangeeta is a commerce graduate with certificate in international communications from Chartered Institute of Marketing, United Kingdom. Sangeeta also holds a diploma in software engineering.