User Profile

Head, Future Thinking, Yunus Social Business

Aarti is currently CEO and Co-Founder of Yunus Social Business India, a company she co-founded with Nobel Peace Laureate, Muhammad Yunus, that catalyses social business in India through capital and corporate action. Under her leadership, YSB India, in partnership with the Tata Trusts and with support from the Boston Consulting Group, created the Indian Corporate Action Tank (ICAT)- India’s first incubator for large companies to create in-house corporate social businesses. In creating corporate social businesses, these companies leverage their core business capabilities (their “98%” as opposed to their “2%”) to solve large social problems through social business. The ICAT counts in its first cohort, some of India’s leading corporate houses- Tata Steel, Tata Chemicals, CEAT, Siemens Healthcare and others where it is working with their business and innovation teams to develop new products and services (eg: solar powered micro-cold storage for smallholder farmers) in the areas of farmer distress, malnutrition, waste recycling etc. On the “capital” side, Aarti has led the creation of YSB’s two Yunus Social Business Funds in India- in Bengaluru and Mumbai – that provide low cost debt and non-financial support to social business start-ups in India. Aarti loves work that is at the edge of innovation- she is ideator of the “Social Success Note”, a unique pay-for results- instrument that has the potential to act as a catalyst for commercial capital into the social sector without creating the normally attendant mission drift. YSB is currently piloting the SSN in Africa in partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation and UBS Optimus Foundation. Aarti is a leader in social business and is a regular speaker at social business events- in India and internationally. She was voted to the Asia 21 fellowship for young leaders making a difference in the Asia Pacific region in 2014. Aarti is also part of the India Australia youth dialogue (2014). Previously, Aarti worked as an investment banker at JP Morgan in Mumbai. Shen holds a Master’s degree in Finance from the London School of Economics and was one of two Indians to receive the Standard Chartered Bank full scholarship to study there. She is a Fellow of the seventh class of the Kamalnayan Bajaj Fellowship and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.