Ajaita Shah is an entrepreneur, a mentor, a speaker, and board member. 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.
Ms. Ajaita Shah drives vision, strategy, investments, and partnerships at Frontier Markets. Frontier Markets is a social tech commerce enterprise that focuses on rural India. It is an end-to-end commerce platform that provides last-mile products and services, delivered at the doorsteps of consumers in villages through an assisted commerce model run by rural women entrepreneurs called Saral Jeevan Sahelis. Operating in 2,000 villages in India, with 20 micro distribution hubs managing 10,000 Sahelis to facilitate access to products and services in agri, digital inclusion, home appliances, clean energy solutions, since covid, healthcare and essential services, and finance to over 500,000 households. Most recent awards include Fintech Innovation Challenge Winner UNCDF, SDG Finance Summit’s Highest Impact Award, Ms. Shah has been working with social enterprises and in rural India in microfinance, rural distribution, marketing, and access for 15+ years, and has committed to empowering rural women across the developing world through business models, financial inclusion, technology, data, clean energy, and inspiring women to push themselves beyond their societal boundaries.
She is the recipient of prestigious awards including: Forbes 30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneur of the Year, Women Transforms India Award, Digital Women of the Year, CNBC’s Women Entrepreneur of the Year, Loreal Women of Worth and more. She is a Women’s Changemaker Fellow at Womanity Foundation, Dasra Leadership Fellow, Echoing Green Fellow, and Cordes Fellow. She has spoken in many forums including COP 23, UN High Level Political Forums, UN SDG Summit, and more on social enterprise perspective from the field, to digital inclusion, to climate change to gender-smart investing.
Ajaita serves on the board of Frontier Innovations Foundation, a non-profit focused on last-mile distribution support social enterprises driving solutions to rural customers globally. As well as a Steering Committee Board Member for SHINE Investor and SAWIE. She is also an advisor to various social enterprises in India focusing on product development for the poor. 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.”
Ajaita and her team at Frontier Markets won the National Startup Award for Best Women-Led Startup in 2021. Frontier was recognized for making the startup ecosystem more gender inclusive.
