Padma has worked for over 30 years as an executive, entrepreneur and board member in the for-profit and philanthropic sectors in India, UK and USA. She currently serves on the boards of Archean Chemicals, Adani Capital and PNB Metlife. She is a member of The Chennai Angels (http://thechennaiangels.in/) a leading angel investing group in India, and a charter member of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TIE) Chennai (http://chennai.tie.org/.)
She is a founding trustee and board member of Algolabs, the AI / data science initiative of the Chennai Mathematical Institute. Padma served on the board of directors of CAMS (Computer Aided Management Systems) and Sterling Software between 2013 and 2018. Padma has been on the advisory board and investment committees of three venture capital companies (Unitus Capital since 2013, AWE Funds since 2019, Pavestone Capital since 2022). Padma’s private sector experience (1984-2003) was in the IT / Internet sector during which she traversed the standard gradient of developer, manager, executive officer and entrepreneur. She spent between 1984 and 1994 in software services, working for ICIM / ICL UK in Mumbai, Pune, UK and the Bay Area, California.
She was a founding member of Sify Ltd, India’s first Internet company and part of the team that took it public on Nasdaq in 1999. She co-founded and grew a platform oriented software services company between early 2001 and 2003 and sold it to an acquirer. Between 2003 and 2011, she worked as Senior Program Manager for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She held responsibilities for strategy development, program implementation, impact evaluation and research in HIV prevention initially, managing a portfolio of over $200 million in grants. Subsequently she managed major initiatives in infectious diseases (vaccines, diagnostics) and maternal and childcare.
From 2012 to end of 2017, Padma consulted for the Gates Foundation on various health, life sciences, and global development related areas and continued to be on some of their advisory boards. Padma holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics / Statistics from the University of Calcutta; an MBA (PGP 1984) from IIM Ahmedabad and an MBA with specialization in Telecommunications from the University of San Francisco, California. She has authored several highly cited peer reviewed publications in academic journals such as The Lancet and the British Medical Journal. She has participated in several conferences and is a sought after public speaker. Outside work, Padma likes frittering away time reading and debating completely inconsequential things such as economics, science and technology, philosophy, history and science fiction. She is also an ardent fan of both systems of Indian classical music.
