Prashanth Venkataramana is the Chief Advisor and Co-founder of Essmart, a social enterprise dedicated to driving technology adoption in rural India. He is also the Chief Operating Officer at Oorja Development Solutions, a strategic partner organisation of Essmart working in the solar irrigation sector. Essmart achieves its objective through the last-mile distribution of life-improving products and by using its network to provide market insights to manufacturers and research projects to better understand the needs of farmers. He co-founded Essmart in 2012 and has been instrumental in growing the business, which has positively impacted over 1.2 million lives through 5,500 shops since its inception. He also has sales and marketing expertise in India, Sri Lanka, East Africa and the Middle East and is deeply interested in agriculture and renewable energy, believing in using science and technology for development goals in rural India.