The Leadership Team
Meet the young and dynamic leadership team at Buddy4Study. Together, they bind the entire team to lead a single mission – Making scholarships accessible and empowering student community towards nation building.
Prakash Chandra Kandpal
Director
With over 36 years of distinguished service at the State Bank of India (SBI) Group, Mr. Prakash Chandra Kandpal brings a wealth of leadership experience across banking, insurance, mutual funds, and investments, driven by a strong commitment to governance, compliance, and inclusive growth. As a former scholarship recipient, Mr. Kandpal is deeply dedicated to ensuring that financial constraints do not limit deserving students’ access to education. His journey from a scholarship beneficiary to a respected leader is a testament to his belief in the transformative power of education.
Mr. Kandpal retired as Deputy Managing Director at SBI, where he oversaw Retail Business, Personal Banking, and Real Estate verticals. He has held several key leadership roles, including MD & CEO of SBI General Insurance, COO at SBI Funds Management Ltd., and Nominee Director, SBI Foundation. His leadership has played a pivotal role in advancing India’s financial services sector, driving transformative initiatives in banking, insurance, mutual funds, HR, and investments.
As an independent director, Mr. Kandpal currently serves on the boards of several prominent institutions, including Nucleus Software Exports Ltd., Tata AIG General Insurance Company Ltd., HDFC Pension Management Company Ltd., among others.
His contributions have been recognised through major awards, such as the Business Leader of the Year 2021 and the Great Managers Award 2021 on behalf of SBI General Insurance. He also received the Brandon Hall Award in 2018 for groundbreaking Learning & Development initiatives at SBI.
As a Director at Buddy4Study India Foundation, Mr. Kandpal channels his vast experience in governance and institutional leadership to uphold transparency, ethical conduct, and strategic growth. His presence strengthens the Foundation’s mission to democratise access to education funding for lakhs of deserving students across India—ensuring that financial constraints never hold back merit and aspiration.
Varadarajan (Varadu) Sridharan
Mentor & Chief Product Officer
Varadarajan (Varadu) Sridharan is an EdTech leader who blends a deep passion for education with a decade of leadership experience, managing global education outreach for Microsoft Edge, EdTech transformation for Nettur Technical Training Foundation (NTTF) and large-scale Digital Learning for Cognizant L&D. Prior to his EdTech journey, Varadu has spent the first decade of his career in IT delivery roles at Infosys, in India and the US.
A BITS Pilani alumnus, EdTech Fellow under Prof. Marmar Mukhopadhyay, holder of a PG Diploma in Educational Technology from University College London (UCL), Varadu has spent much of his career at the intersection of technology and learning. For more than ten years, he has also served as a mentor, guiding students, educators, and professionals as they navigate the evolving landscape of technology and education. Varadu also runs The EdTech Club, which is an active community of 1000+ education and EdTech entrepreneurs across India.
As Mentor and Chief Product Officer at Buddy4Study, Varadu is driving the organisation’s strategic vision and product innovation. With his extensive expertise in technology and education, he spearheads the development of transformative solutions that are reshaping access to education funding.
Ashutosh Kumar Burnwal
Co-Founder & Director
Popularly known as the 'Scholarship man of India', Ashutosh founded Buddy4Study in the year 2011. Having closely experienced funding problems for his own education, he dedicated his life on this mission to help students facing financial difficulties. His passion and vision of impacting the lives of millions of students form the basis of all innovative products coming out from the organization’s armoury. Ashutosh is working towards expanding the universe of scholarships and encompass corporations, foundations, institutes and individuals in its fold to offer one-stop funding solution.
An alumnus of MERI, Kolkata and IMT-Ghaziabad, Ashutosh is also a prolific writer and has authored India's first scholarship book for students. He regularly contributes to leading publications such as The Hindu, Indian Express, Prabhat Khabar, etc.
Raj KISHOR
Co-Founder & Director (Technology)
Technology is not helpful if it doesn't learn to dream your dream. The DNA of Buddy4Study, its scholarship search engine, has learnt this coveted attribute courtesy Raj. He is a man of coding and programming languages and makes complex systems simplify the process of scholarships match-making. A Software Engineer by profession, Raj has built Buddy4Study's portal from scratch and is constantly endeavouring to achieve technological milestones in this journey of Buddy4Study. His belief is that online platforms must keep evolving their user journey in line with the advancements in technology and changing user preferences.
He spends most of his holidays in travelling to hills and mountains!
Ashish Jha
Chief Content Strategist
He is passionate about new/digital media and strongly believes that customised data/content supported by technology is the only effective way to create two-way engagement with young audience today. You can find him flipping through the political and international news and updates on start-up world in his free time.
A thorough communication professional with a strong background in online and print journalism; and marketing communication, Ashish has more than a decade of work experience in varied roles with multiple online education platforms and India’s premier news agency PTI. At Buddy4Study, he leads a young team of creative writers, researchers, digital enthusiasts and designers to keep the buddies of Buddy4Study engaged 24*7 with scholarship opportunities and career counselling.
Manish Singh
Deputy General Manager
My Core Area is managing Finance, admin, Income tax & FCRA. also Handle independently the partners’ finance management related issues and ensure fulfilment of legal compliances and corrective measures by partners through partners visit, communication and regular follow up.
He has more than 13 year of experience in Finance and Account, out of 13 year He has 9 year plus year of experience in managing international NGO Finance and Accounts.