2015 Asia Foundation Development Fellow

Ritesh Singhania is a strategy officer for Avani Bio Energy. A first-generation college graduate, Ritesh received his bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the National Institute of Technology, and received financial analyst training from the Chartered Financial Analysts Institute. He leveraged his educational background and professional experience in the manufacturing sector to develop a process to recycle scrapped railway track into spades, and set up a manufacturing unit in his hometown of Kolkata. He is also working with a social enterprise in the Indian Himalayas and developing the business to generate clean electricity from pine leaves; the enterprise currently operates the world’s first pine needle-fed power plant, impacting more than 50,000 lives. Ritesh also received an International Development and Design Fellowship from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.