He is Member of Parliament from Sikkim. He was educated at IIT Kanpur and at IIM Ahmedabad. He was awarded Eisenhower Fellowship (USA) for his contribution to Sikkim’s economic and industrial growth. He served as the Deputy Chairman of the State Planning Commission of the Government of Sikkim; Senior Executive at Bank of America, Managing Director of Sikkim Milk Union, Sikkim Flour Mills, Chairman of Sikkim Industrial Development and Investment Corporation (SIDICO) and Sikkim Scheduled Tribes and All Other Backward Classes Financial Development Corporation (SABCO), founding Chairman of the Ecotourism and Conservation Society of Sikkim (ECOSS), and CEO of BASIX-ONE.
She is Professor of Economics at the University of Allahabad. She has earlier worked with the UN World Food Programme (WFP), New Delhi, where, as Head of the Vulnerability Analysis, and Monitoring and Evaluation unit she led the WFP team to collaborate with the MSSRF in publishing the Report on Food Security for Rural India. She was the co-author of the first Human Development Report for Uttar Pradesh. She is deeply involved in working with organisations that seek to empower women and marginalised social groups.
She is Director of Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA). She also worked with Gujarat Institute of Development Research, Ahmadabad. She is life time member for Indian Association of Women’s Studies, Mumbai and Indian Society of Labour Economics, New Delhi. She is a Member of Advisory Committee, Society for Rational Thinking (SPRAT), Ahmadabad, Editorial Board, Indian Journal of Labour Economics, New Delhi. She is also member of Statistics and Social Protection Advisory Group Women in Informal Employment and Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO) an international coalition of academics, activists, trade unions and NGOs, SEWA, UNIFEM, HIID, Harvard University, since 2002.
He is retired, Indian Administrative Service (IAS) Officer. He has served as Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Industry and later Special Secretary/Additional Secretary, in the Department of Personnel & Training, Government of India. He also served as Commercial Counseller and Financial Advisor at Embassy of India in Washington and also as CMD of Mysore Paper Mills, a public sector undertaking under the Government of Karnataka. He was Chairman, National Authority for Chemical Weapons, Tariff Authority for Major Ports etc., and Secretary, Ministry of Road Transport & Highways, Government of India.
He has been working in community-based rural development projects for the last 32 years in various NGOs and bilateral and multilateral agencies. He has been involved in building up PRADAN as a national level NGO, and Grameen Development Services as a field NGO for Uttar Pradesh. He has been a founder member of two basic education organisations- Nalanda and IIMPACT. He holds an MBA from I.I.M. Ahemadabad (1978) and has worked for the last ten years in World Bank as a Senior Rural Development Specialist. He has also been a Consultant for national and international development agencies such as Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation (SDC); UNICEF, World Bank and MacArthur Foundation.
He is from Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi. and he retired as Chief General Manager, Business Initiatives Department, National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), Mumbai. He served as Director on the Board of National Commodity & Derivatives Exchange Ltd. (NCDEX), Mumbai (2013-2014), Member on the Inter Ministerial Group on Agriculture Marketing, New Delhi (2013) and Member of 12th Plan working Group on Watershed/Water resources. He worked with Indo-German Watershed Development Programme (Regional Programme Coordinator), Maharashtra, Reserve Bank of India, CRIDA (Scientist) and Coffee Board (Agronomist). He has Expertise in Programme Management and Administration, Farm based livelihoods, Livelihood Promotion, Water Resources Development, Rural Innovation in Renewable Energy and Drinking Water Sectors, Designing and Promoting Rural Communities to manage local resources efficiently with focus on Self-Help Groups (SHGs), Joint Liability Groups (JLGs) and Farmers Producers Organizations (FPOs).
Sattaiah Devarakonda is an MBA from Osmania University in 1988. He had undergone Entrepreneurial Development Programme and did set up a Micro Enterprise in 1992. Given the financial constraints, he opted to join Basix in 1996 and worked with field operations during the early year of the establishment of Basix. He later established Micro insurance, Corporate HR Divisions, built systems and developed Operations and HR manuals for BSFL, the flagship company of Basix. He led Corporate HR and Insurance as Sr. Vice President. Subsequently, he took up the role of COO of BSFL during the illustrative performance years during Sept 2008 to July 2010.
In Sept 2012, he took charge of Basix Sub-K iTransactions Ltd. as CEO & MD and achieved turnaround bringing the enterprise into profits by March 2014. He had taken an additional role at B-ABLE as ED in Sept 2015 and as CEO & MD in Sept 2016. He has been instrumental in turning around B-ABLE into a profit making, strong and process oriented institution by September 2016. He has developed deeper understanding of economic activities and their profiling to create a resource book on Livelihoods. He has attended Management Development Programmes at IIM Ahmedabad. Presently he is the CEO & MD of BASICS Limited, the holding company of the Basix Social Enterprise Group.