Manoj Kumar is the co-founder and CEO of Social Alpha, an initiative to strengthen the science and technology start-up ecosystem in India with a focus on “lab to market” enablement. Since its inception in 2016, Social Alpha has nurtured more than 50 mission-driven start-ups. Manoj is also a senior advisor at Tata Trusts, where he is responsible for managing the innovation portfolio, promoting entrepreneurship and nurturing the academic/R&D relationships globally.

Prior to founding Social Alpha, Manoj has been an entrepreneur as well as an early stage investor in a number of enterprise software start-ups and social innovation experiments. Manoj has also worked for over two decades in investment banking and financial technology firms, including global leadership roles in the areas of Corporate Strategy, M&A, Product Management and R&D.

Manoj is a trustee of Tata Institute for Genetics and Society (TIGS) and serves on the advisory and governing boards of a number of companies, non-profits and research institutions.

Manoj is an alumnus of Harvard Business School and lives in Bangalore, India.