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Offering over 20 years of rich experience with impressive success in end-to-end design, implementation, and management of Rural Development & Corporate Social Responsibility projects even in resource-poor settings |
 Contact GIRIJANANDAN UPADHYAY
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Area of Expertise: |
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Agriculture, Livelihoods, Microfinance, Rural, Urban
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Capacity Building, Training, Advocacy
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Director, CEO, COP, President
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Monitoring, Evaluation, Policy, Research
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Private Sector, Corporate Social Responsibility
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Professional Experience: |
My professional career started way back in the year 2003 with a grass root level voluntary organization (Jan Sewa Parishad) based at Hazaribagh, Jharkhand where I garnered the basic knowledge of project implementation and reporting for diversified donors. This profile helped me understand, learn, and evolve the systems, processes, and complexities of dealing with and implementing a partnership project.
Post my first professional experience, my professional career has been diversified, lucky enough to be exposed to situations and environments that not only gave me opportunities to learn through failures but also enriched my experience working in diversified geographical and demographic setups.
Post my stint at Hazaribagh, Jharkhand, I joined a social enterprise (International Development Enterprises India) as a Branch Manager based at Kolkata, West Bengal entrusted with the responsibility of marketing low-cost irrigation solutions as well as cultivation practices that judiciously uses water.
My career path then took me to gain implementation experience in CSR program of a large cement conglomerate (Ambuja Cement Foundation) based at Farakka, West Bengal.
Having gained an in-hand implementation experience of almost 11 continuous years (2003-2014), I moved as Program Director in the Monitoring & Evaluation wing at Reliance Foundation. This was a marvellous experience, which provided me space to mentor the implementation team and also to define and implement M&E framework in conjunction with the Program Teams. As a part of the M&E team, I also have the opportunity of carrying out activities for adjudicating the program’s impact and its alignment with the overall objective of the organization.
By this point in my career, I have gained experience in program implementation, monitoring, and budgeting for both developmental organizations as well as CSR sectors. Thereafter, I moved to the Agriculture Skill Council of India based at Gurugram, Haryana, where I was exposed to the intricacies of the skilling sector with a major focus on PMKVY & RKVY schemes relevant to the agriculture sector.
These all experiences gained over the last 15 years gave me the opportunity to lead the biggest domain – the High-Value Agriculture (HVA) domain in a World Bank-funded JOHAR project being implemented by Jharkhand SRLM. The HVA domain was the biggest not only in terms of budget allocation but also in terms of geographical spread as well as household coverage. It was also one of the greatest learning experiences, in a leadership position as well as mentoring and leading almost 180 project staff along with diverse TSA. The project also provided me an opportunity to learn and develop strategies for forthcoming quarters.
Having learned and experienced and successfully implemented large-scale projects, I was associated with CropIn Technology Solutions Pvt Ltd, Bangalore, and am based in Ranchi, Jharkhand as Bid Manager/ Lead - Solution Specialist with the major responsibility revolving around understanding the client’s (Government as well as Development sector clients) needs and thereafter proposing solutions to address the challenges through Artificial Intelligence; Remote Sensing; and Agriculture Digitization. Prior to CropIn, I have a very short association with Development Alternatives.
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Education: |
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I am an Agriculture Graduate from Visva Bharati, Santiniketan and thereafter completed my master's in Agriculture Economics from GBPUA&T, Pantnagar. Later during my professional career, I completed Post Graduate Diploma in Business Administration from SCDL, Pune.
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Available for: |
- Consulting assignments
- Job opportunities
- Being headhunted – make me an offer
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