Amitabh Kant is Jury Chair for e4m Do Good Awards
Amitabh Kant is the former Chief Executive Officer of NITI Aayog and presently G-20 Sherpa of India
The G-20 Sherpa, Amitabh Kant has become the Jury Chair of exchange4media’s Do Good Awards which aims to empower professionals and organisations to drive positive change. He is a well-known and respected personality and has played an instrumental role in the government initiative domain. He is a retired member of the Indian Administrative Service, IAS and is rightly known as "The Governance Reformer" and a public policy change agent for India.
Kant is presently the G-20 Sherpa of India during its Presidency year after having assumed this role on July 8, 2022. Before this as the Chief Executive Officer of NITI Aayog (National Institution for Transforming India), he spearheaded a wide range of national-level policy and development projects that have revolutionised the way policies are made, accelerating India's social and economic development.
At NITI Aayog, he established India’s National Mission on Transformative Mobility and Battery Storage, which is responsible for driving the uptake of clean mobility in the country. Under his leadership, the mission supported the 26 states of India in evolving their EV policies and also successfully facilitated the launch of a tender for the procurement and operation of 5,500 E-buses, one of the largest tenders in the world.
He is the author of some bestselling books like Branding India – An Incredible Story, Incredible India 2.0 and has edited The Path Ahead: Transformative Ideas for India.
Kant has been a key driver of ‘Make in India’, ‘Startup India’, ‘Incredible India’ and ‘God’s Own Country’ initiatives which positioned and branded India and Kerala State as leading manufacturing tourism destinations. These campaigns have won several international awards and embraced a host of activities – infrastructure development, product enhancement, private-public partnership, positioning and branding.
Till March 2016, Kant was posted as Secretary of the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) – Government of India. In his capacity as Secretary, he actively promoted the Ease of Doing Business initiative and the ranking of States on outcome parameters. Due to these efforts, India has significantly improved its ranking in the World Bank's Ease of Doing Index and enabled it to compete among its states under the principles of competitive federalism.
He has worked as Secretary of Tourism for Kerala, Joint Secretary of Tourism for the Government of India, District Collector of Kozhikode and Chief Executive Officer of Delhi- Mumbai Industrial Corridor in the past as well.
The feathers in his cap are many. Some of the top titles he has been conferred with include:
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The Economic Times Policy Change Agent of the Year Award
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Bloomberg TV Personality of the year Award
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NDTV Administrator of the year Award
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Distinguished Fellowship of the Institute of Directors
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One Globe Award-2016 for leadership in Transforming Governance for the 21st Century
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Sir Edmund Hillary Fellowship awarded by the Prime Minister of New Zealand
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The most powerful people in India under the category of "The Supercrats - India's Top Bureaucrats" by India Today's High & Mighty rankings of 2019
The G-20 Sherpa not only has a pride-worthy history of professional life but also a very high-achieving academic life. He did his schooling from Modern School, Delhi and later graduated with an honours in Economics from St. Stephen's College, Delhi. Kant earned a master's in International Relations from Jawaharlal Nehru University. He was also a Chevening Scholar.
Kant’s father Rajni Kant was in the administrative services, and his mother Dr Sita Srivastava was a scholar, an author and the principal of Maitreyi College, Delhi. His brother Ravi Kant was the former managing director of Tata Motors. Whenever he can, Kant makes time to relax and spend holidays with his wife Ranjeeta Kant and daughter Vedika Kant.
