Vidya Shah is the Executive Chairperson at EdelGive Foundation, the philanthropic initiative of Edelweiss Group, a leading Indian diversified financial services group. She also belongs to the group of Founders of Edelweiss and serves as a Director on the Board of the Group’s holding company, Edelweiss Financial Services Limited. With a career spanning nearly 35 years, Vidya has had a close ringside view of the growth of financial services in India, as well as philanthropy. She set up EdelGive Foundation in 2008 to address the challenges of grassroots organisations in growing and strengthening their programmes and organisations in a new way that placed CSOs at the centre of its work.
Vidya was an investment banker for 11 years, served as Edelweiss’s CFO for 7 years, and has, over the last 15 years steered the growth of Edelweiss’s social investments to develop EdelGive into a strategic philanthropic organisation. Having witnessed the potential of small to mid-sized, grassroots NGOs to better address India’s development concerns, Vidya has designed EdelGive’s structure of giving to include both financial and non-financial support to over 150 organisations, scaling their budgets, impact, and reach, exponentially. She has developed a unique model for EdelGive’s NGO partners which places them at the centre of grant-making, not only providing initial grants to these organisations but also managing funding from other institutional and corporate partners. Through this approach, over the years, EdelGive has emerged as a go-to partner of choice for Indian and foreign funders wanting to engage with the Indian development ecosystem. Consequently today, EdelGive functions as a Philanthropic Fund Manager and Advisor for both grant-makers and credible NGOs.
Vidya also serves on the boards of various prominent CSOs such as Akshaya Patra Foundation, Agastya International Foundation, Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy, Olympic Gold Quest, Jan Sahas Foundation, and the Indian School of Public Policy. She is also a member of the Governing Board of the Indian Institute of Management, Udaipur. Additionally, Vidya is also on the board of several international organisations including WINGS, Empower Families for Innovative Philanthropy and Equality Now. She is a member of the Asia Gender Network, a group of members curated by AVPN, committed to changing the future for Asian women and girls.
She has been recognised as India’s Top 100 Women in Finance by association of International Wealth Management of India (AIWMI) 2019 and, more recently awarded the ‘Exemplary Woman of the Year’ in Philanthropy, 2022 by Abhyuday Vatsalam. She also received the Shakti Award by the Rotary club. Vidya earned an MBA degree from IIM-Ahmedabad, India’s most prestigious business school.