Associate Director – Entrepreneurship

About PRAGATI Rural India is central to India’s economic future, accounting for 63% of the population and 70% of the workforce. Yet a large share of rural livelihoods remains concentrated in relatively low-productivity agriculture, creating a significant opportunity to shift towards higher-income economic activity. PRAGATI (Programme for Rural Advancement, Growth and Transformative Initiatives) is a TCF-incubated organisation focused on accelerating economic prosperity in rural India. Its work is centred on two priorities: Increasing agricultural incomes by addressing structural constraints across land, inputs, finance, markets, processing and trade. Creating scalable non-farm livelihoods by identifying, financing and supporting promising rural enterprises that can generate local jobs. PRAGATI works with central ministries and state governments to combine policy and economic analysis with hands-on implementation. It identifies high-potential opportunities, partners with relevant government institutions, tests solutions on the ground, and develops models that governments can ultimately own and replicate. Role Summary PRAGATI believes entrepreneurship can be an important engine of non-farm employment and income growth in rural India. Yet promising rural enterprises often fall between existing sources of support—too ambitious for traditional livelihood programmes, too risky or collateral-light for conventional bank lending, and often too early or small for mainstream institutional capital. PRAGATI’s approach is therefore to help build an ecosystem that can identify promising entrepreneurs, provide the support required to build stronger enterprises, and create appropriate pathways to capital and scale. The Associate Director – Entrepreneurship will lead this agenda. The role sits at the intersection of entrepreneurship, investing, capital formation and ecosystem building and requires someone who understands both how investors evaluate opportunities and what it takes to build a business in practice. A key part of the role will be to help develop new financing mechanisms for rural enterprises. These may include government-backed investment vehicles in which the government provides anchor capital, while investment decisions and fund management are undertaken independently by professional fund managers. PRAGATI’s role would be to help shape the architecture, build alignment among stakeholders and enable the right ecosystem partnerships—not to manage these funds itself. The individual will therefore need to move comfortably between entrepreneurs, investors and government—assessing businesses, understanding capital gaps, engaging potential fund managers and investors, and helping design institutional solutions that can mobilise significantly more capital into rural enterprise. Key Responsibilities Develop a clear point of view on where entrepreneurship can create meaningful rural jobs and incomes, which types of enterprises have…