M.V. Ashok an Agribusiness Professional, retired as the Chief General Manager of National Bank for Agriculture & Rural Development (NABARD) Head Office, Mumbai on 31 July 2017 after 37 years of development banking service having been with the Reserve Bank of India and Canara Bank also earlier. Currently he holds the position of Adviser to Mumbai based Agritech Startup Swansat. Earlier he was Senior Adviser BAIF Research and Development Foundation Pune after a stint as Adjunct Professor for School of Agribusiness Management, MIT World Peace University, Pune. He also was Visiting Professor at College of Post Graduate Studies Shillong with the Central Agricultural University North East, as Tata Chair Professor (Honorary position) of Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai besides being an Adviser to Aditya Birla Group as well as Dr. Reddy’s Foundation and several NGOs and FPOs promoted by them and a Mentor to about six agri tech startups. Mr. Ashok co-authored along with Dr. P.K. Joshi (IFPRI) & Dr. Gyanendra Mani (NABARD) a book ‘Financing Agri Value Chains’ another book on ‘Emerging Trends in Agricultural Marketing in India’ based on his long years of experience with farmers and the recent association with Farmer Producer Organisations and Agri tech startups. Currently he working on the latest book on Circular Economy in Agriculture – Agricultural Waste into Wealth.

A Post Graduate in Agriculture, Mr. Ashok is from the 1980 batch of Indian Agricultural Research Institute New Delhi after a Bachelor’s degree in Agriculture from the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University Coimbatore (1978 batch) with additional qualifications in Agri-Business Management from Cornell University, USA as well as on Financing Micro Enterprises from the Institute of Development Studies, University of Reading, UK and in General Management, Human Resources Development & Training & Development.

Mr. Ashok has considerable exposure in NABARD to collective farming models beginning with the Farmers Club Scheme from 1985 onwards to the introduction of the Farmer Producer Organisations model from its inception from the late 1990s. He has been studying the subject of agricultural marketing for the last one decade and learning from the experiences from agri startups, Farmer Producer Organisations he has been associated with. Mr. Ashok has had exposure of rural finance and agribusiness sector in several countries including Thailand, Kenya, China, Germany USA, Finland and England.

Uma Prabhu is an award-winning journalist and editor with over three decades of experience shaping education and media narratives in India. She has held senior editorial roles at The Times of India, DNA, Zee News, and iTV Network, leading teams, curating impactful content,

and driving education-focused initiatives. She also serves as an Independent Director on the Board of IFFCO Tokio General Insurance and chairs Manav Sadhan Vikas Sanstha, an NGO dedicated to education, skill development, and rural transformation across Maharashtra