Amitabh Kant is India’s G20 Sherpa. The G20 or the Group of 20 is a forum where policymakers of industrialized and developing economies meet to discuss key issues in the global economy.
Kant is a governance reformer and a public policy change agent for India, having driven key reforms and initiatives during his tenure as the chief executive officer of the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog) from 2016 to 2022 and the secretary of India’s Department for Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) from 2014 to 2016. He has been a key driver of flagship national initiatives such as Startup India, Make in India, Incredible India, Kerala: God’s Own Country; and the Aspirational Districts Program. These initiatives have repositioned India and Kerala and have widely been recognized as transformational.
NITI Aayog is India’s apex policy-making institution, with the Prime Minister as its chairman. As CEO of NITI Aayog, Kant has driven a vast range of national-level developmental and policy initiatives which catalyzed India’s social and economic development and have brought about a paradigm shift in policy-making.
As DIPP secretary, Kant has driven the Start-up India movement which has led to India emerging as the third-best ecosystem for startups globally, with over 70,000 startups and over 100 unicorns. His focus has been to facilitate the ease of doing business through predictability, consistency of policies, and elimination of rules, regulations, and procedures. This led to India jumping 79 positions in the "Ease of Doing Business Index." He also initiated competition and ranking among Indian states based on the World Bank-produced indicator. The competition and ranking has led to a transformational impact on India’s states.
Kant has also driven the Aspirational Districts Program, the largest outcome-based governance project in the world which improved the socio-economic indicators of the 112 most backward districts of India. Today, as per a number of independent assessments, including those by by the United Nations Development Programme and the Institute of Competitiveness, several districts in India have emerged among the best performing in their respective states.
A strong proponent of positioning India as a global hub for manufacturing and exports, Kant has been the key driver of Make in India and the Production Linked Incentive schemes which have given an impetus to manufacturing, innovation, and exports.
At NITI Aayog, he established India’s National Mission on Transformative Mobility and Battery Storage, which is responsible for driving the uptake of clean mobility in the country. The mission evolved policies and interventions which supported millions of citizens and hundreds of government agencies across the country to make the switch to electric mobility. Under his leadership, the mission supported the 26 states of India in evolving their electric vehicle policies and also successfully facilitated the launch of a tender for the procurement and operation of 5,500 e-buses, one of the largest tenders in the world.
Under his leadership, NITI also undertook extensive work on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) across the country. He supervised the development of the country’s first regional district SDG monitoring system in the form of the “North Eastern Region District SDG Index and Dashboard” which covers all North Eastern States and their 120 districts. He took the SDG localization model further to the level of urban areas and led to the development of the SDG Urban Index & Dashboard in November 2022.
He has been the driver of the world’s first government-led subnational SDG index, the SDG India Index, which was launched in 2018. Since its inception, and now on its 4th year, it has become the country’s principal tool for monitoring progress on the SDGs for states and union territories. During his tenure, India’s first-ever National Multidimensional Poverty Index was launched which provides poverty estimates for states and districts across the country.
Kant set up the Behavioral Insights Unit of India and was instrumental in the launch of the Lifestyle For Environment movement, conceptualized by the Prime Minister, which places individual behavior at the heart of climate action.
He is passionate about the sunrise sectors of growth, particularly mobile manufacturing, green hydrogen, advanced chemistry cell batteries, electric mobility and battery swapping, and has steered several initiatives in these sectors for the purposes of climate adaptation and mitigation.
Kant earned his bachelor's degree in economics at St. Stephens, Delhi University and his master’s from Jawaharlal Nehru University. He is a Chevening scholar and has undertaken a mid-term course with the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University and the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.