Madhav is a respected thinker-practitioner who has been working on issues of urbanization, climate change, transportation and environment in various countries over the past few decades. Madhav joined WRI India in 2008 to become part of the Institute’s founding team. He has played a definitive leadership role at WRI India that has helped it reach its present position. He has consciously invested his energies in nurturing talent to build large, high-performance teams at WRI India that can support the design, implementation and scaling up of pioneering solutions to India’s complex challenges.

Madhav graduated from the University of Mumbai as a civil engineer and went on to earn a Master’s degree in Transport Planning from the University of California, Berkeley. His own research and programmatic work has evolved to prefer systems thinking as an approach to negotiate with the myriad complexities of the contemporary city.

Under his leadership as Executive Director of WRI India Ross Center and Director of EMBARQ India, the team has supported implementation of several pioneering projects. Notable successes include the Indore BRT, the Mumbai Climate Action Plan (MCAP), the Raahgiri campaign for democratizing public streets, and the National Electric Bus Program (NEBP). The team has also informed multiple national, state, and city level policy discussions on urban and regional planning, road safety, urban transport, transit-oriented development, electric mobility and clean air.

Madhav is a published author and has written several research papers for renowned journals as well as various articles and books on urban transport, urban planning, resilience and clean air.

Madhav lives in Mumbai with his wife Chaya and their daughter Ahilya. He is a wildlife enthusiast and is often seen bicycling with Ahilya on the streets of Mumbai.

He is a firm believer in public transport. He enjoys green open spaces. He experienced a sense of loss while growing up seeing Mumbai’s playgrounds disappear and buildings appear in their places. Madhav believes this sense of continual loss eventually led to his deep interest in environmental and developmental issues.