Ritu Verma is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Ankur Capital ' an early stage fund that focuses on technology innovations for the next billion. The fund has a large focus on Agtech and Food and Ritu has a keen interest in this area, especially on how technology can be leveraged to increase efficiencies and disrupt agriculture and food. Ritu is passionate about the bringing innovations from the lab to market. Prior to setting up Ankur she worked with BASF on sourcing opportunities for renewable energy, agri-biotech and materials. For over a decade before that she played different roles at Philips and Unilever across the globe bringing new innovations to the market. Ritu is also part of the steering committee at ThinkAg an agri-sector platform for scaling innovations in India. She is also a member of the IMC agri and food processing committee. She sits on the board/board observer positions at multiple of Ankur's portfolio ' Cropin, Agricx, BigHaat, StringBio, Niramai and Healthsutra. She holds an MBA from INSEAD and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Pennsylvania and has bachelors from Middlebury College, Vermont.