Asha Jadeja Motwani is a Silicon Valley–based venture capitalist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist who has invested in more than 200 technology startups across the Bay Area. Guided by the belief that technology-driven economic growth is essential to addressing poverty, her work focuses on empowering entrepreneurs to become catalysts for large-scale societal change. Her investment and philanthropic initiatives are rooted in advancing innovation, inclusive growth, and sustainable development, particularly in India.
Asha is the founder of the Motwani Institute for Thought Leadership in Innovation (MITLI), an advocacy platform that promotes policy innovation and strengthens collaboration between India and the United States. Her core areas of focus include gender equality, lean governance, national security, and technology-enabled entrepreneurship. She also founded MakerFest, a global grassroots innovation movement active across India, Africa, and Brazil, and helped establish India’s first network of FabLabs to promote distributed manufacturing and local innovation.
Committed to education and access, Asha supported the creation of India’s first self-sustained “School in the Cloud,” now expanded across South Asia. She remains an influential thought leader and patron of Indian art, working to elevate Indian artists on global platforms.
