Live About

Administration

The Administration team provides the back-end operational support at Ummeed. It oversees the day-to-day, smooth functioning of the premises. The team ensures the safety of all Ummeedians. Additionally the team also ensures that all events are held without a hitch.

Autism Intervention Services

The Autism Intervention Services team at Ummeed helps children with autism to address difficulties with attention, imitation, receptive and expressive communication and language, social interaction, play, unusual sensory responses and behavioural control. The team also runs various parent and professional training programs on early social communication skills, managing challenging behaviours and preparing for puberty.

Clinical Services

The Clinic Services team is the first face and voice of Ummeed that most of families and children interact with. From understanding a family’s initial requirements, to scheduling their appointments and following up post the appointment, are some of the ways in which the team supports our families. They also are the person that many families intuitively turn to when they seek more information or are not sure of next steps.

The team also manages the collection of relevant forms and fees from the families and data relating to the sessions in Ummeed. The team additionally supports all the professionals in the organization by managing their schedules and waitlists, providing on ground logistics and system related support as well.

Communications

The Communications Team is instrumental in creating knowledge resources and awareness on development disabilities and self-advocacy of young people with disabilities. It does this through awareness campaigns leveraging the use of social media and Ummeed’s website. Additionally the team provides support to internal Ummeed teams on content creation on upcoming training programs and other Pan-Ummeed activities.

Ujwal Thakar
Board Member
Ujwal Thakar
Ujwal Thakar joined the Ummeed Board in August 2005. Ujwal is an active member on the Board and plays a significant advisory role to the organization.

Ujwal Thakar has rich and varied experience spanning the banking financial industry and the development sector in India. He is considered a doyen of retail banking in India and also one of the leaders of the movement of professionals into the social space in India.

Ujwal was the CEO of Pratham, India’s largest NGO in the elementary education space for six years and later the CEO of GiveIndia which is one of India’s web-based philanthropy platforms. Ujwal currently chairs the board of Educate Girls, and is on the board of Arogya World, Shoshit Sewa Kendra, Lighthouse Communities Foundation and Jagriti research Foundation, and a partner at Social Incubator NCore, and on the advisory boards of many non-profits. Ujwal is also a Trustee of Missing Link Trust and Manzil Mystics.
Arun Jethmalani
Board Member
Arun Jethmalani
Arun has been on the Ummeed Board since August 2001. With his rich experience, Arun has been providing invaluable support to Ummeed’s operations right from its inception.

Arun Jethmalani is the founder and CEO of ValueNotes, which provides market and business intelligence to a variety of clients, across the world. His nearly 40-year working career spans management consulting, market research, equity research, competitive intelligence, IT services and web publishing.

Arun's expertise and insights have been widely recognized through his extensive publications in renowned business journals. For a decade, he contributed a weekly investment column titled "Value for Money" to the esteemed Sunday Economic Times.
He is a regular speaker at competitive intelligence, outsourcing, technology, Internet and finance events. His academic background includes a B. Tech. degree from IIT Bombay and an M.S. from Duke University, NC, USA.
Merry Barua
Board Member
Merry Barua
Merry Barua has been on the Ummeed Board from April 2004. As an individual who has pioneered some of the most effective care for children with Autism, Merry has been a very valuable resource person to Ummeed to effectively help service children with developmental disabilities.

Merry is the Founder and Director of Action for Autism, which includes a model school for Autistic children, an institution for training professionals, and an innovative mother-child program. She is also the Founder and Editor of the Autism Network.

Merry has served multiple terms on the boards of The National Trust and the World Autism Organization, currently serves on the boards of a number of organizations and is a member of several committees of the Rehabilitation Council of India, and the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities. She has a Bachelors and Masters from the University of Calcutta, has trained in the TEACCH Approach and at The Option Institute, USA and is an Ashoka Fellow.
Rajnish Dhall
Board Member
Rajnish Dhall
Rajnish Dhall was appointed to the Board in June 2010 as Alternate Director. He was later appointed as a Director on the Board at its AGM in September 2015. Rajnish is a shareholder of Ummeed, an active member on the Board, and plays a significant role in supporting its activities.

Rajnish is the Founder and ex-CEO of Micro Housing Finance Corporation Mumbai, India. In 2008, he set up Micro Housing Finance Corporation, an organization dedicated to providing housing loans to urban low-income families – especially those from the informal sector – who are excluded by the mainstream financial system. The company, a pioneer in this space, was acquired by the Birla family in September 2018.

Rajnish completed his P.G.D.M from IIM (Ahmedabad), after which he worked with American Express Bank in a variety of roles and locations (Mumbai, Singapore, London) for 15 years. He left the Bank as a Senior Director in 2006 and returned to Mumbai to work in the social sector.
Ashish Karamchandani
Chairman of the Board and Founder
Ashish Karamchandani
Ashish Karamchandani is the Chairman of Ummeed Child Development Center. Ummeed was incorporated in August 2001 and started its operations from 5th November 2001. Ashish has been an active member on the Board since its inception.

Ashish has 20 years of experience across strategy consulting and global development. He focuses on using market-based solutions to drive sustainable social change. This includes multi-year programs like low-income housing where he helped develop a market which now has 26 housing finance companies who have given over USD 5 billion of mortgages to finance over 350,000 houses. He recently led a program at The/Nudge Institute on “Transforming Agriculture for Small Farmers”. Ashish has a Ph.D. from Stanford University, an M.S. from University of California, Berkeley, and a B.Tech from Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai.

Dr. Anita Limaye
Chief Executive Officer
Dr. Anita Limaye
Anita, as Chief Executive Officer, has been working in close partnership with the founder, Dr. Vibha Krishnamurthy, to scale Ummeed’s impact and to bring the cause of developmental disabilities, child development and inclusion to the mainstream agenda.

Anita completed her MD in General Medicine from Seth GS Medical College / KEM Hospital, after which she worked for 10 years at Quintiles Transnational (India office) in the field of clinical research, holding various management positions in training and operations. Anita has been with Ummeed since 2015. During her tenure, Ummeed established its training and capacity building portfolio (individual trainings, partnerships, ecosystem-level work, university collaborations) leading to a manifold increase in Ummeed’s reach. Anita continues to drive consolidation of existing programs and focus on future direction with partnerships and collaborations as a key way forward for collective systemic change.
Juthika Nagpal
Chief Operating Officer
Juthika Nagpal
Juthika joined Ummeed in 2023 with the goal to strengthen Ummeed’s program management capabilities as well as optimise the organisation’s operational functions.

Juthika comes from a career in the corporate sector with experience in general management and leadership. She has worked with technology organisations focussed on analytics, data & AI, and cybersecurity, playing various roles and leading functions of Program Delivery, Pre-sales, Product Management, and Business Operations. During the last 16 years at technology companies such as Databricks, Inspira Enterprise, and SmartCirqls Infotech, Juthika has not only built and led start-ups through acquisition, but also worked in pre-IPO environments, prioritising efficient growth while scaling niche service delivery capabilities. Her clients have ranged across sectors - banking and financial services, media, retail, aviation, InfoTech, and digital native companies.

Prior to the data and analytics landscape, Juthika led product development at ZEE for ‘Ditto TV’ - India’s first Live TV streaming platform in India, where she witnessed the impact of access to television content on mobile phones in rural and tribal communities, as India moved from the 2G to 3G era.
Dr. Koyeli Sengupta
Ummeed Leadership Team
Dr. Koyeli Sengupta
Developmental Pediatrician; Senior Director – Autism Services, Monitoring and Evaluation, Research; Advisor – Family Resource Center, Speech Services

Koyeli is a Developmental Pediatrician with a post-graduate degree in Pediatrics and a master’s in clinical psychology (Eastern Illinois University, USA). She is currently pursuing a year-long fellowship in Developmental psychiatry with a focus on psychopharmacology in autistic teens and young adults.

Under Koyeli’s leadership, key services and training programs have been rolled out at Ummeed. This includes UPPA (Ummeed Parent Program for Autism -- a unique parent-mediated program culturally adapted from the evidence-based Project ImPACT); AITP (Autism Intervention Training Program – a one of its kind comprehensive training program in India for in-service professionals working with children with autism, which has to date trained around 100 professionals from different parts of the country); Ummeed ECHO Autism (a telementoring platform for primary care pediatricians to build skills in diagnosing and managing Autism); and the World Health Organisation’s Caregivers Skills Training or WHO-CST program (which builds caregiver skills to promote and support social communication skills and manage difficult behaviours in their children with developmental delays).

Koyeli is a member of the International Society for Autism Research (INSAR), a Resource member of the Forum for Autism (FFA) and on the Secretarial board of International Developmental Pediatric Association (IDPA). She has presented Ummeed’s work at multiple international forums, including International Society for Autism Research conferences and International Developmental Pediatric Association congresses. In April 2023, she was an invited panelist and one of two representatives invited from India to participate in Autism Speaks 6th Biennial Advocacy Leadership Networks (ALN) Meeting in New York (a global collective of accomplished advocates representing families, policymakers, leaders of advocacy organizations and researchers united in their efforts to promote greater autism awareness and improve the wellbeing of autistic people and their families around the world). Koyeli is also the Ummeed representative in the Indo-Canadian Autism Network (I-CAN) a network of Indian and Canadian organizations that focus on best practices in autism.
Pervez Daver
Ummeed Leadership Team
Pervez Daver
Consultant – Information Technology, Strategic Management and Consulting

Pervez has been a member of Ummeed’s leadership team for 15 years. Starting with a stint as its Chief Operating Officer from 2008 to 2011, he has played many roles at Ummeed, including most recently shepherding the implementation of IT systems at Ummeed. He is presently a consultant at Ummeed; his management background and involvement and insights into multiple areas of Ummeed’s work is valuable in formulating strategic directions and operational processes and systems.

Pervez is an IIT and IIM alumnus. Prior to joining Ummeed, Pervez had worked for 15 years in the corporate sector in diverse roles from Systems Analysis and Development, Project Management, Marketing and Sales at IT companies like Tata Unisys, KPIT InfoSystems and SQL India.

Pervez was also a founding member of Foundation for Advancement of Craft Enterprise and Skills (FACES), an NGO set up in collaboration with Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) to build industry-style linkages for selected craft communities in South India. At FACES, he spent 3 years from 1995-1998 as a community facilitator assisting members of a tribal crafts community in Adilabad, Telangana set up local markets for their products and building linkages with banks, government and laboratories.

At the behest of the Director of IIT Jodhpur, Pervez has also volunteered his time to encourage students of the institute to become social entrepreneurs and mentored a few of them in their early stages as entrepreneurs.
Dr. Roopa Srinivasan
Ummeed Leadership Team
Dr. Roopa Srinivasan
Developmental Pediatrician; Senior Director – Early Childhood Development and Disability Services, Clinical Services; Advisor – Developmental Pediatric Services, Occupational Therapy and Physiotherapy Services, Social Work Services

Roopa completed her Fellowship in Developmental Pediatrics after completing her post-graduation in Pediatrics and has been with Ummeed since 2005.

Roopa has been instrumental in the articulation and operationalization of participation of children with disabilities in different walks of life as a key outcome for Ummeed’s activities. In her role as Head of Clinical Services, she has supported the adoption and implementation of family-centered care (FCC) principles and participation as an outcome across different services.

Roopa has been Project Manager in two international National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded research projects that have focused on the development and implementation of a monitoring tool for child development for children under 3 years of age. She has published in national and international journals on a wide range of topics such as early childhood development, telehealth, capacity building initiatives for pediatricians on diagnosing and managing childhood disabilities and participation of children with disabilities.
Shamin Mehrotra
Ummeed Leadership Team
Shamin Mehrotra
Mental Health Therapist; Senior Director – School Services, Mental Health Services, Awareness

Shamin has a master’s degree in applied psychology from the University of Mumbai and a master’s degree in psychological services from the University of Pennsylvania. Shamin has been with Ummeed since 2003.

Under Shamin’s leadership, Ummeed’s School Outreach Services has been working within the broader space of education and supporting schools to promote and facilitate the inclusion of children with diverse learning needs within mainstream settings. The team now has worked with multiple schools and organizations working in the education space toward creating cultures and practices that are more accepting of diversity and creating safe spaces to support children reach their maximum potential in both the academic and social arenas.

Shamin also currently leads the Mental Health team at Ummeed, a key but neglected service area for children and families with developmental disabilities. The work of this team is anchored in Narrative Therapy, and it runs several training programs for mental health professionals as well as community workers on how they can better support individuals and communities through externalizing problems, preferred stories, and other similar empowering ways of coping with challenging situations.

More recently, Shamin has also been heading the Awareness vertical at Ummeed and has been working with the team to build awareness in the space of developmental disabilities, especially in the contexts of early intervention, self-advocacy and inclusion. She has spoken at multiple fora, the latest one being her keynote address at the ‘Inclusion and Equity in Education: A Systems Dialogue’ by Leadership for Equity.
Dr. Vibha Krishnamurthy
Founder
Dr. Vibha Krishnamurthy
Vibha founded Ummeed Child Development Center in 2001.

Trained in developmental pediatrics at Children’s Hospital in Boston, Vibha has practiced as a developmental pediatrician in India for the past 22 years. She has trained and mentored several developmental pediatricians, pediatricians, therapists and other professionals during her career.

Vibha has been instrumental in building the child development and disabilities sector in India over the years, creating much awareness about the cause through speaking at multiple fora.

She has been a resource person for the Government of India in several roles (Expert Committee on Autism, Rehabilitation Council of India, Right to Education Act, Rashtriya Bal Swasthya Karyakram), as well as for the WHO (Expert Consultant in Early Childhood Development & Disabilities). She has been a founding member of the International Developmental Pediatrics Association (IDPA) and has ensured that work from India and other developing countries is heard in global platforms.

In 2007, Vibha was honored with the Ashoka Fellowship for Social Entrepreneurs and was one of the speakers at the TED Nayi Soch series in 2019. She was also awarded ET Now Leaders of Tomorrow ‘Women Entrepreneur of the Year’ in 2020.

Ummeed believes in leveraging the resources of other organizations to reach out to children and families. Many wonderful
organizations have contributed to Ummeed's learning and have benefited from Ummeed’s training programs. Ummeed
has also collaborated with organizations on both research projects and advocacy initiatives in the field of early child
development and disability.

VConnect Foundation

TFIx

Shree Chaitanya Hospital

Shishu Sarothi

Setco Foundation

Nayi Disha

Sethu

Latika

We are immensely grateful to all our supporters (individuals, foundations and corporates) who have put their faith in Ummeed. Every rupee goes a long way in creating an inclusive and supportive environment for our children with developmental disabilities.

Awareness

Directory of Services

People

Administration

Autism Intervention Services

Clinical Services

Communications

Ujwal Thakar

Arun Jethmalani

Merry Barua

Rajnish Dhall

Ashish Karamchandani

Dr. Anita Limaye

Juthika Nagpal

Dr. Koyeli Sengupta

Pervez Daver

Dr. Roopa Srinivasan

Shamin Mehrotra