Rahul Rishi leads social sector practice and impact investing at Nishith Desai Aassociates. He is a graduate in law from Gujarat National Law University with Masters in development studies from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. He has been an avid speaker on various domestic and international forums on philanthropy, impact investing, blended finance and social businesses. He has extensively advised domestic and foreign non-profits on cross-border philanthropies, program-related investments, foreign contribution laws, impact funding and has worked closely on developing us$ 1b IEOF (India Education Outcomes Fund). He has also worked closely with various impact investing bodies on policy changes and has authored newspaper articles and published academic articles on electoral funding, whistleblowers’ source protection, constitutional law, corporate social responsibility, cross-border and domestic philanthropy and the like. He was an integral part of the committee set up by the Maharashtra Chief Minister’s office to reform Maharashtra’s charity laws and has been actively involved in assisting several philanthropic bodies and institutions in reforming India-US philanthropic corridor in the past. He is also a part of 15-member taskforce organized by the world bank water resources group with a focus on developing innovative solutions to solve post-harvest credit crunch in the agriculture sector for farmers including blended finance and disruptive technologies. His work with blueprint for free speech and Thomson Reuters foundation on source protection for whistleblowers was awarded Financial Times’ Asia Pacific Lawyers Awards 2019 in the category of innovation in the Rule of Law and Access to Justice. He is an avid speaker on impact and philanthropy sector and has been a part of various conferences in India and abroad on philanthropy, social financing, impact enterprises, public policy, foreign contribution, CSR and the like.
