Neera Nundy

Neera Nundy is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Dasra, a Mumbai-based strategic philanthropy organization she launched in 1999. Born and raised in Canada, her connection to India was personal — her mother had founded a day school for tribal children near Kharagpur, West Bengal. She earned an MBA from Harvard Business School and began her career on Wall Street, working as an analyst at Morgan Stanley (and later UBS Warburg). It was at Morgan Stanley in New York that she met Deval Sanghavi, a fellow analyst who became her co-founder and husband.

In 1998, Nundy and Sanghavi — both 24 at the time — began fundraising for Indian non-profits while still bankers. After securing early backing (including roughly $162,000 from former Morgan Stanley Chairman Richard B. Fisher), they left investment banking to build Dasra. Nundy formally departed Morgan Stanley in June 2000 — after a brief return to banking to pay off her Harvard Business School loans — and relocated to Mumbai, working with Dasra full-time from around 2003. The name "Dasra" means "enlightened giving" in Sanskrit.

At Dasra, Nundy has helped build the organization into a central player in Indian strategic philanthropy. The organization has supported 800–1,500+ NGOs, advised 750+ philanthropists, foundations and corporates, run executive-education programs training 730+ social-sector leaders, and produced dozens of sector research reports that have unlocked tens of millions in funding. Dasra reports impacting the lives of over 170 million Indians. In recent years Nundy founded GivingPi, described as India's first family philanthropy network, an invite-only community that has grown to 350+ philanthropic families.

Nundy is a Kamalnayan Bajaj Fellow at the Ananta Aspen Centre and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network. She serves on the boards of The Hunger Project (Global Board), LGT Venture Philanthropy, the American School of Bombay, and Aangan Trust. Her recognitions include Forbes India's Self-Made Women (2020), Vogue India's "Agent of Social Change" award (2019), Forbes' "Crossover Leaders" philanthropy award, and the Canadian Governor General's Medallion.

• Philanthropy as strategic capital: Nundy applies investment-banking discipline to the social sector — treating grants as investments in scalable impact. Her guiding logic: "If you support other NGOs and help them grow, their impact will grow."
• Backs organizations, not just programs: Dasra focuses on building the management capacity and systems of NGOs and social enterprises so they can scale sustainably.
• Collaborative / pooled funding: Emphasis on collaboratives (e.g., adolescent-focused programs) that pool philanthropic capital toward shared outcomes rather than one-off grants.
• Systems change and equity: She drives Dasra's commitment to "equity, proximate leadership, systems thinking, and collaborative platforms," centering the needs of communities and frontline leaders.
• Sector priorities: gender equality and adolescent girls' empowerment, urban sanitation and resilience, climate action, health, nutrition, and education.
• Family philanthropy as the next frontier: Through GivingPi she is mobilizing India's wealthy families, arguing that "with the right support, families in India and the diaspora can scale high-impact nonprofits, drive social innovation, and position India as a global leader in development."