Srikumar Misra
Srikumar Misra is a first generation Indian entrepreneur, the Founder and chairman of Milk Mantra, a dairy foods business in India. He is a Yale World Fellow 2021 and a Fellow of the Aspen Institute since 2013. In 2019 he was Laureate of the McNulty Prize. Srikumar’s work as a founder of Milk Mantra have been covered in several case studies in global academia such as Stanford Graduate School of Business, ESSEC Business School Singapore, and Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. Srikumar has been invited amongst the select few to participate in the Prime Minister's round  table with experts & economists ahead of budget 2020, and identified as one of the Champions of Change. Srikumar has also been a part of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s core team, building the digital platform for India’s Agri value chain. Early life and education. Srikumar Misra was born & grew up in a simple family in Cuttack, Odisha. His father passed away in a car accident when he was just 8 years old, and he grew up facing serious financial challenges and uncertainty. Srikumar went on to complete his bachelor’s degree in Mechanical engineering from Pune University and  an MBA from Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar from where he was selected to the coveted Tata Administrative Service in 2001, the leadership resource of India’s largest conglomerate The Tata Group. In 2020 Srikumar completed post-graduation studies in Artificial intelligence and Machine Learning from University of Texas at Austin. Career. In his previous corporate life, Srikumar served as Director of M&A at Tata Global Beverages in London, and was part of the elite leadership resource - the Tata Administrative Service. In 2009, Srikumar Misra gave up his cushy job in London to delve into the area of conscious capitalism  and cofounded India’s first venture capital backed agri startup Milk Mantra with Lt Col Ashit Mahapatra and Rashima Misra in his home state, Odisha in India. Srikumar has also worked closely in shaping policy outcomes, in several forums with the Indian government’s highest policy formulating body. He is also part of a select public-private partnership group working to architect a tech agri-stack for India, where Srikumar leads the creation of a blockchain platform. Srikumar Misra has also received a US Patent for MooShake, a health beverage which is blended with curcumin, an extract from turmeric, believed  to have multiple health benefits; with the patent numbers US-10750758-B2 and US-10052293-B2. Entrepreneur Magazine in 2016 wrote “From heading merger and acquisition deals for Tetley, Tata Group owned tea beverage company, in London to sourcing milk from farmers in Odisha’s rural areas, Srikumar Misra’s switch to entrepreneurship can give a culture shock to many.”