Inspired by her immigrant family’s entrepreneurial journey, Kajal Sanghrajka started her first business while studying in New York after a successful corporate career working in the City and on Wall Street, She leveraged her knowledge in Strategy and Operations to bootstrap and scale her first business in New York. Today, Kajal, an entrepreneur, advisor, and keynote speaker, draws upon her experience transitioning from corporate and academia to a portfolio entrepreneurial career.
Kajal sits on the Board of the London School of Economics entrepreneurship. LSE Generate and is an advisor to The Entrepreneurs Network, a think tank for Britain’s most ambitious entrepreneurs. Through her advisory practice, Growth Hub Global, she has worked with clients globally on launching and growing entrepreneurial ventures and programs.
She is a passionate advocate of building entrepreneurial skills for university students and has mentored and advised more than 50 early-stage start-ups on business growth, bootstrapping, fundraising, and managing mental health through the ups and downs of entrepreneurial life.
In 2012, Kajal co-founded Columbia University’s first incubator for graduate entrepreneurs and built a first-of-its-kind university entrepreneurial ecosystem in New York. She recently designed and launched the London School of Economics (LSE) first Accelerator GAP 1.0 for impact-driven start-ups and serves as an advisor to the Aspect Accelerator — the first cross-university social sciences accelerator in Europe funded by Research England.
Kajal was awarded the Churchill Fellowship in 2017 and traveled to 25 cities to conduct research on immigrant entrepreneurship. After presenting her findings in Parliament and the Economics Ministry in Finland – her work has influenced policy changes for start-ups. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and holds degrees from the London School of Economics and Columbia Business School.