Kalyan Goud Janagam

I grew up in Hyderabad, and most of what I’ve done since has circled one question: why do societies so often fall short of what they set out to do? I studied business in Singapore, economics at UNSW in Sydney, and then International Social and Public Policy (Development) at the London School of Economics. I finished both UNSW and LSE with a Distinction.

At LSE I spent most of my time on development: social policy in the Global South, educational inequality, how global organisations work, and the anthropology of South Asia. What stayed with me were questions about institutions. Who are they really for? Who gets left out? What does it take to build one that is fair and lasts? I’ve come to see governance, distributive justice and social exclusion as design problems, not only moral ones.

Each city taught me something different. Singapore showed me how deliberately a state can be built. Sydney showed me how markets and public institutions bargain with each other. London let me watch diplomacy up close, over more than fifteen embassy visits as Head of Relations of the LSE Grimshaw Club for International Relations. Now I’m back in Hyderabad, putting those lessons to work.

I think that mix, a policy training and a builder’s impatience, is why I start things the way I do. I look for problems where one side knows far more than the other and trust is in short supply, then try to build something that closes the gap. With ImpactGrad that’s global education. With Unparalleld it’s travel. In my public work with Invest Telangana, it’s international investment.