Vijay Mahajan was born in Bombay. He did his electrical engineering at the IIT Delhi and MBA at the IIM Ahmedabad. He graduated with a gold medal for scholastic performance, and public policy at the Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University.

Vijay Mahajan worked at Philips in a marketing position for four years, mostly in Eastern India. His work took him to several industrial project locations in the hinterland.

He started work in rural economic development in 1981.

PRADAN

In 1983, he founded an NGO, PRADAN. It is one of India’s more effective NGOs, specializing in rural livelihoods and microfinance. It works with over 150,000 rural poor households.

In 1991, he decided to work as an independent trainer, consultant and researcher and to focus exclusively on the issue of rural livelihood.

BASIX

In 1996, realizing the need to attract mainstream financial resources, he conceptualised BASIX, a new generation institution devoted solely to promoting rural livelihoods. It is among the first microfinance companies in the world to attract commercial debt and equity investments, both internationally and from within India.

It also offers a range of services including savings and insurance, agricultural, livestock and non-farm enterprise development, and institutional development to rural producers and their groups.

He was a member of the Committee on Financial Sector Reforms, chaired by Raghuram Rajan and also of the C. Rangarajan Committee on Financial Inclusion. Vijay serves on the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority, and the Micro Finance Development and Equity Fund. He is the Principal Advisor to the Government of Rajasthan on Livelihoods.

He serves on the Boards of Association for Sarva Seva Farms (ASSEFA), Gram Vikas, ARAVALI, Development Support Centre and on the Executive Committee of the CGAP, a global consortium on microfinance. He also serves on the boards of management institutions Indian Institute of Health Management Research, Institute of Rural Management Anand and Indian Institute of Forest Management. He has been an advisor to the Planning Commission , Government of India, the state governments of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Sikkim, and to RBI and NABARD.

Among his inspirations, he includes Ravi Matthai of IIM Ahmedabad, Verghese Kurien of NDDB, Prof. Mohammad Yunus of Grameen Bank, Bangladesh and Ela Bhatt of SEWA.

Vijay has co-authored a book “The Forgotten Sector” on the rural non-farm sector in India. He has published over 60 articles on rural livelihood, development and micro-finance in international journals.