Antara is an Entrepreneurship and Diversity and Inclusion Expert. She is an Associate Director with the Social Sector Advisory practice of PwC India. She has 8.5 years of consulting experience with significant exposure in cross-functional teams across PwC India. She is part of the team that helped teams in PwC India understand and develop different models to scale-up and co-create with startups. Over the last 6 years, she has impacted over 5000+ entrepreneurs. Over 50% of these were microentrepreneurs from the unorganized sector, belonging to semi-urban and rural areas. She is passionate about working on the tripartite challenge of unemployment, misemployment and underemployment and solving the same by championing entrepreneurship as a viable career option in India. She aspires to enable this not only in urban centres but also at the last mile – in tier 2 and tier 3 cities and towns in the country. Antara aspires to bring about a paradigm change in the way entrepreneurship is perceived and dealt with as a career option in the country. Her areas of expertise include - Startups and Innovation, Business analysis, Market research, Program design, Creating go-to-market strategies, Government relations, Partnerships and Policy related interventions for entrepreneurs. She has also been engaged by different Indian State Governments to provide policy recommendations on – improving the ease of starting up, helping to bring the entrepreneurship ecosystem of a state out of the impact of the COVID19 pandemic, sector specific policies to encourage growth of startups in a particular sector etc. She has designed incubation programs for women entrepreneurs, people with disabilities, student entrepreneurs (colleges, polytechnics, and Industrial Training Institutes), for indigenous and tribal populations in different parts of India amongst others.

Some of her notable work in the space of entrepreneurship and innovation includes – setting up a social impact incubator for the Pernod Ricard India Foundation, setting up a fund for an automobile giant for them to fund startups graduating from their in-house accelerator, creating a roadmap and strategizing the development of the startup ecosystem of the Indian states - Uttarakhand and Orissa, conceptualizing and executing the first National Startup Awards for the Department of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), and strategizing and executing a hackathon designed to come up with solutions to urban mobility challenges for NITI Aayog.

Antara has worked with 30 smart city CEOs to familiarize them with the idea of working with startups to solve different civic issues. She has created blueprints for incubation centres and maker’s spaces for 10 smart cities. Additionally, she has been instrumental in deploying startup solutions in the cities of Bhopal, Raipur, Saharanpur to name a few. She has also worked with the Deals team at PwC India to raise ~150 crores INR and designed go-to-market strategy for an early-stage startup working in the hygiene and sanitation sector.

Over the last one year, Antara has been leading the effort to create India’s first exclusive platform to encourage entrepreneurship amongst the LGBTQIA+ community at Surge Impact Foundation (a local not for profit in the city of Hyderabad). She is leading the effort in terms of designing and executing India’s first incubation program focused on entrepreneurs from the community. She is also working towards building a pipeline of investable enterprises from the community which in turn can get funded via impact investors and ESG investors in the country. Her team is getting recognized for their efforts at the Sankalp Global Summit 2022.

She is passionate about social entrepreneurship and has been a core team member of the Jagriti Sewa Sansthan for the last 7 years where she has been instrumental in curating an experience that exposes the youth of India (~500 every year) to challenges at the last mile and encourages them to leverage local resources and innovate to solve for local problem statements. She has also been a core team member of the School for Social Entrepreneurs in India where she played a critical role in helping them select social entrepreneurs for their flagship 9-months fellowship program. Antara has personally mentored 500+ high school, college students and young professionals especially with respect to their interest in entrepreneurship and the importance of having an entrepreneurial mindset.

Antara is also the lead author for a book on mental health – ‘Is it all in my head?’ an upcoming co-authored initiative that seeks to articulate the mental health journeys of young professionals in the context of varied social constructs with a vision to bring about greater awareness, inspire constructive dialogue and most importantly normalize taking affirmative steps towards a healthier future mental healthwise. The book will be published in September 2023.