Ajaita Shah is an entrepreneur, a mentor, a speaker, and board member. She is the Founder/CEO of Frontier Markets and the President of Frontier Innovations Foundation. Frontier Markets is a rural marketing, sales, and service distribution company providing access to affordable and quality clean energy solutions and appliances to low-income. households in India by building a network of rural entrepreneurs. Ajaita has committed to empowering rural women across the developing world through market based business models, clean energy, technology, and inspiring women to push themselves beyond their societal boundaries. Born in the US, Ajaita graduated Tufts University and started working in India from 21 til present. She started her career in Microfinance, where she won many award for her ground breaking innovation around healthcare, mobile technology, and social performance management in the sector. Some of these include: Most influential award in Microfinance for people under 30, and Business Week's 30 under 30 award, Forbes 30 Under 30’s Social Entrepreneur of the Year, #3 of top 40 women entrepreneurs of India in 2014, Nasscom Foundation’s 2.0 of 2015, Indian Affair’s India Leadership Conclave’s Women Entrepreneur of Year 2015, CNBC’s Young Business Women of the Year, Vodafone’s Women of Pure Strength, Loreal’s Women of Worth 2016, and the Global Enterprise Summit’s GIST Competition 2017 Winner. She has been a leader in driving socially conscious business models through partnerships, and pushing “bottom’s up leadership,” keeping the rural consumer in mind. After 6 years of success, and challenges, Ajaita started Frontier Markets as a need to build a new model for energy access, focusing on women entrepreneurs, market insights, after-sales service, and scale. She has an inspiring journey of risk taking and respect for the knowledge and skills innately existent within poor communities. In her leadership at Frontier Markets, Ajaita has helped Frontier Markets be recognized on a global platform through awards like the Ashden Award 2015, Most Innovative Rural Marketing Enterprise 2015, National Geographic’s Energy Challenge Winner 2013, Hogan Lovell’s Solar Community Award 2017, UN Seed Award Winner 2014, and more. An advocate for women led, transformational leadership and rethinking how market based approaches and social innovation organizations can better design for scalable impact, she has recently crafted a ground breaking partnership between Frontier Markets and the award-winning, Barefoot College, to exemplify this vision. She actively speaks at conferences for the US Green Business Council, Universities, Impact Investor Forums, United Nations representing SDGs, and more. She has been an active educator, collaborator, and catalyst in helping scale clean energy access globally. Ajaita serves on the board of Frontier Innovations Foundation, a non-profit focused on last-mile distribution support for clean energy companies. She is also an advisor to various social enterprises in India focusing on product development for the poor. She is an active member of the UN Practitioner’s Network, Asian Development Bank’s Energy For All Partnership. Ajaita Shah holds her B.A. in International Relations from Tufts University. Mantra: “Investing in Women is smart business and key to poverty alleviation at scale”
