Hemant Nitturkar is a tri-sector professional with multi-country experience  of over last two and half decades in research, commercial agriculture operations, information technology, financial services, venture capital and entrepreneurship development. He is a serial entrepreneur with experience of running four businesses, selling one, mentoring over one hundred startups. He is a two-time recipient of the Governor's Gold Medals from the University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad, India, for his academic achievement in BSc (Agriculture) and MSc (Genetics and Plant Breeding). He holds a Graduate Diploma in Applied Finance from Securities Institute of Australia, Sydney and has also received Executive Management Training in Raw Material Procurement for Agro-processing units from IIM, Ahmedabad and the Venture Capitalist Development Program, ISB, Hyderabad, India.

He is passionate about creating innovative grassroots business solutions to social and environmental problems facing the developing counties with large youth population by bringing in all the stakeholders in a symbiotic relationship.

He is currently the Project Director for a CGIAR Research Program on Roots, Tubers and Bananas (RTB) project called Building an Economically Sustainable, Integrated Cassava Seed System in Nigeria (BASICS) at IITA, Ibadan, Nigeria.