Founder and CEO, Frontier Markets – Entrepreneur

For more than 15 years, Ajaita Shah has been committed to empowering rural women in India and across the developing world through business models and financial inclusion. She is the founder of Frontier Markets, a social tech commerce enterprise that focuses on rural India and believes that investing in women is a way of alleviating poverty at scale.

Frontier Markets provides last-mile products and services, delivered to consumers in 2,000 villages through an assisted commerce model run by 10,000 rural women entrepreneurs, called Saral Jeevan Sahelis. The initiative uses a customised e-commerce app to facilitate access to products and services in agriculture, digital inclusion, home appliances, clean-energy solutions, essential services, and finance to more than 700,000 households. Shah has won a clutch of awards, including the Fintech Innovation Challenge Winner UNCDF, the SDG Finance Summit’s Highest Impact Award and Forbes 30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneur of the Year.

Director Founder Institute & Social Tech Entrepeneur

Vidya Munde-Müller has never let fear stop her, actively living by the motto that “in hindsight you are always smarter!” Born in an Indian slum, and the first woman in her family to go to college, the Founder of smart donation and engagement platform Givetastic hasn’t gotten to where she is today without taking risks. While the path hasn’t always been easy, Vidya has learned from her mistakes and has it as her life goal to make the world a better place through entrepreneurship. With 10 years’ experience in the telecom and internet industry and a certificate in Innovation and Entrepreneurship from Stanford Graduate School of Business, Vidya is now helping other entrepreneurs navigate the ins and outs of building a business as the Director of the Founder Institute in Frankfurt. And she’s not stopping there. This wonder woman has even more on her mind – she’s hard at work creating a mental health app together with several universities.

Director, Programs for Asia DW

Debarati Guha is Director Programs for Asia at Deutsche Welle (DW), Germany’s international broadcaster. Born in Kolkata, India, her parents are originally from Bangladesh. Hailing from a family of freedom fighters, historians, and activists, she developed a fighting spirit and an interest in politics at an early age. Ms. Guha did her master’s and M.Phil. in political science at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University. Her thesis was titled, ‘Representation of Women in Postcolonial Literature: Exploring the Subaltern Studies Perspective.’ As a journalist, she never misses out on an opportunity to tell exciting stories about women’s lives and the challenges they face. Debarati Guha worked as an assistant to the Asia correspondent of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in New Delhi from 2003 to mid-2005.

Later, she completed a training program in online, radio, and television journalism at DW and joined its Bengali department as a senior editor in 2007. After working as the coordinating editor for Bengali, Hindi, and Urdu departments from 2009 to 2012, she was appointed as head of DW’s Bengali service in 2013.

In 2015, Ms. Guha was given the responsibility to run DW’s South and Southeast Asian services. In 2018, she was promoted to head DW’s Asia Department, and in 2021, she was given the charge of three additional offices in Asia – in Taipei, Delhi, and Jakarta – as the Director of Programs for Asia. Debarati Guha currently manages DW’s nine Asian language programs as well as its German and English desks. In 2022, she completed the prestigious Executive Management Program organized by the European Broadcasting Union. She also conducts workshops and seminars on ‘Digital Leadership,’ ‘Future of Digital Media,’ and similar subjects.

Apart from journalism, Ms. Guha works as a researcher and as a performer with a Berlin-based theatrical company Flinnworks. She has been living in Germany since 2005.