Santosh Choubey

Chairman and managing director of the AISECT Group, Santosh is an award-winning social entrepreneur and a senior Ashoka fellow whose career spans over four decades across education, enterprise creation and literature. He has pioneered advancementsin information and communications technology
and skill-based education and services for semi-urban and rural India. Under his leadership, AISECT has grown into one of India’s largest education, skill-development and financial-inclusion networks. Santosh is also the chancellor of five universities of the group, including Rabindranath Tagore University, MP, and Dr C.V. Raman University, Chhattisgarh, and is credited with bringing in multiple innovations in formal and non-formal education. He is the recipient of prestigious awards, including the Schwab Foundation Award for Social Entrepreneurship by the World Economic Forum, the Indian Innovation Award 2005 and the National (NASSCOM) IT Innovation Award; the latter two were presented by President Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. Besides being a prolifically published poetry and fiction writer, he has also authored and edited over forty books on popular science topics, including India’s first Hindi book on computers, Computer: Ek Parichay.