Astha Kapoor

Astha Kapoor is co-founder and director of Aapti Institute, a research organisation in Bengaluru that studies how technology and society shape each other. She leads its Data Economy Lab, which tests new ways of sharing, stewarding and governing data. Her own work focuses on participatory data governance and on building AI collectively, through models such as cooperatives.

She came to research from more than a decade in public policy and strategy consulting, much of it on technology in welfare programmes. She worked at Azim Premji Philanthropic Initiatives, Dalberg, the Planning Commission of India and the Self-Employed Women's Association. She holds a master's in social development from the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague.

Kapoor advises the Data Trust Initiative at the University of Cambridge and the India Urban Data Exchange, and is a visiting fellow at the Ostrom Workshop at Indiana University. She was a Global Governance Futures fellow in 2018 and 2019. Her writing has appeared in Mint, The Hindu, the Deccan Herald and Rest of World.