Stratessence has a multi-dimensional team comprising people from IT, Web Architechture, Social Media, Strategy, Marketing, Corporate Law, Entrepreneurship, and GreenTech.

Dipankar Sarkar, Chief Executive Officer

Dipankar Sarkar is a serial entrepreneur who has co-founded various start-ups like kwippy, mosambe. He passed out of IIT Delhi with a B.Tech in Computer science and went to work with the great people at Slideshare LLC, which is one of Silicon Valley’s most promising start-ups. He has always worked at start-ups ever since and believes that such high pace environments keeps him intellectually stimulated. His interests are beyond computers including dabbling with retail & cleantech as well. In his spare time, he can be found reading books and playing the Wii.

Read more about him at http://dipankar.name and catch up with his latest fascinations at his blog http://desinerd.com/

Manu Mayank, Chief Thinker

Manu has diverse experience working on a range of development issues in Asia, Oceania, and Africa with different Non Profit Organizations, Local Governments, and in International Consulting for around ten years. Manu’s work-focus in past ten years has been on Social Enterprise Development, Environment & Economic Development, and Social Infrastructure Planning. Manu has also been mentoring several social enterprises across domains for past two years, and one of them recently have been voted among top five start-ups in India.  Manu previously led a national non profit in India as its youngest CEO.

Manu hold degrees in Economics, Planning and Development Management from premier universities in India and Australia. Manu pursues travel & world cinema in his free time. He passionately follows discussions on Start-ups and Quantum Physics to charge his brain cells, and is always ready to discuss innovative ideas over a cup of cappuccino.

Pankaj Lal, Senior Advisor

Pankaj Lal is an Alumni Fellow at the School of Forestry Resource and Conservation, University of Florida. He was educated at Indian Institute of Forest Management (MBA), Delhi School of Economics (MA Geography) and University of Delhi (BA Honours Economics). He has worked for several years at PricewaterhouseCoopers and Winrock International India in multidisciplinary consultancy projects on renewable energy, resource management and corporate social responsibility in collaboration with organizations like Ford Foundation, DfID, IDRC, IIED, IUCN, IWMI, ISET, USEPA, UNDP, SPMCIL and IGES. Recently, he led an international team to assess feasibility of large scale agroforestry investment project in Rukwa region of Tanzania. He was actively involved in preparing a bioenergy roadmap for Southern U.S and, also led an initiative geared towards developing sustainability indicators of bioenergy systems in region. He also has several articles and book chapters to his credit. He is passionate about supporting renewable energy initiatives and ideas and strives towards using lessons learned from “green energy ventures” to expand perspective and gain wisdom.

In his leisure time he enjoys spending time relaxing with friends and family, listening to soothing music, reading books, travelling and enjoying good food.

Neeraj Peters, Senior Advisor

Neeraj studied management and forestry at the Indian Institute of Forest Management, India. He has worked as a consultant to the European Commission, Japan Bank for International Co-operation (JBIC), DFID-India, Oxfam, ARCADIS BMB, Netherlands, Particip GMBH, Germany, Nippon Koei, Japan, and Natural Resources International (U.K.) etc. In a span of 17 years, he has also worked with various agencies like the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (India), WWF-India, the Edinburgh University, and Winrock International, in various capacities in India. Until recently in India, he was employed by Winrock International where he led major projects and managed a Grants Programme, funded by the Ford Foundation at the national level in the natural resources management sector.

Sanhita Dasgupta, Legal Advisor

Sanhita specialises in Trade & Business Law and practises Corporate Law. She holds degress in Political Science, and Law (CLC, Delhi University).

Sanhita is a pop art aficionado, and practises law to finance her pop art collection and buy old tins and boxes from kabariwalas.