Umesh Pandya

Design Lead

2024

Venture Partner

2019

Investor in ambitious founders using technology to tackle big social and environmental problems that aim to radically improve millions of lives. • Working with portfolio teams to identify, deliver and align beneficiary, customer, business and impact goals. • 31 teams over three years. A mixture of teams building digital ventures that respect people's well-being and the health of the planet. • Participate in application selection and interviewing teams for the accelerator programme. • On the programme, I coach teams and present workshops I have developed on Eco-System Mapping, The Social Venture Canvas and Prioritisation for founders. Also, I participate in fortnightly reviews with portfolio companies that cover - refining your business model, telling your story, measuring your impact and designing with people in mind. • At the end of each programme, I get involved in recommendations for programme improvements. Since starting in 2019, the NPS score for the accelerator has increased from 83 to 100. ⁠ Some of the teams I have had the pleasure of working with directly. https://www.joinoto.com https://www.taskher.co.uk https://www.compair.earth https://preactiv.co.uk https://www.resilienceenergy.co.uk https://www.tranquilcity.co.uk https://www.tswrevolution.com https://www.curocarers.com https://askultra.co https://www.cogs-ai.com https://www.spokesafe.com https://www.spareable.co.uk

Founder

2017

We need purpose-driven entrepreneurs with creativity, adaptability, and persistence to tackle today's complex social challenges. HumanityAssist serves entrepreneurs, building mission-led companies, that assist humanity to thrive. HumanityAssist supports and celebrates entrepreneurs building businesses that respect people's well-being and the planet's health — by providing training, resources, mentorship, and opportunities to meet and learn from other like-minded founders. ​ Guided by the belief that "Each one of us can make a difference. Together we make change." HumanityAssist works closely with impact-focused organisations to ensure that our efforts are aligned and that we create a more just, equitable, and sustainable world for all.

Design and Product Director

2020 - 2023

At HealthLumen, we assist customers in making decisions that improve the futures of people living with NCDs worldwide. We project trends in risk factors and non-communicable diseases and quantify the impact of interventions on global health outcomes and the economy using our modelling platform. One of the notable highlights is that I was responsible (alongside the co-founders) for creating and communicating the company values, purpose and mission. I now work directly with the co-founders to develop strategies to realise our mission and generate revenue, guided by our purpose and values. I have implemented processes and trained staff across the company that keep us all on track and focused on shared goals. I'm accountable for aggregating and facilitating the creation of the quarterly OKRs across the teams working with heads of Engineering, Data Science, HR and Business Development. In addition, I built and now oversee and coach staff through our product discovery to delivery process. I'm hands-on in this process and lead a multidisciplinary team of designers, researchers, data scientists, epidemiologists and engineers. Together with HR, I led the development of our remote work policy.

Design Associate

2020 - 2023

Affiliate Consultant

2020 - 2023

Co-Founder, CEO | Board Advisor

2015 - 2021

Wayfindr is a multi-award-winning, social tech, not-for-profit that empowers vision-impaired people to navigate the world independently - backed by google.org (raised $1m), Comic relief and the Big Lottery. Wayfindr is the world's first international standard for audio-based indoor navigation. Co-designed with young vision impaired adults from the Royal Society for Blind Children, we identified that the growing indoor positioning and navigation market could enable and empower people with sight loss to travel independently. In addition to the social benefit, cities that adopt the standard would have a clear economic advantage by increasing access to services through a safe and consistent travel experience. I built and managed a multidisciplinary team of designers, developers, audio engineers, marketers and domain experts and served as CEO from July 2015 to June 2017. Highlights included. • Building a passionate community around our mission; this unique community of 100+ organisations that crossed over disciplines and sectors — successfully bringing together hardware and software companies, charities, transport networks and academia. • Becoming the world's first standard for audio-based navigation (ITU: F921) n 2107, which meant that we had a chance at creating a positive impact scale. • Received many honours and awards that helped spread our design and purpose-driven story to many. These awards included Nesta's and The Observer's 50 New Radicals in 2016, winning best in category and best in show at the IXDA Awards and receiving a Tech4Good Award amongst numerous other awards. Original Open Standard https://www.wayfindr.net/open-standard International Standard https://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-F.921

Design and Product Director

2019 - 2019

87% is a platform that helps employees manage and improve their mental wellbeing in-turn making their workplace better. During my time here: I improved the ways of working between the design, engineering (remote in Poland) and clinical research functions of the business to efficiently deliver a high-quality mobile experience for the growing user base. I attended internal board meetings and fund-raising meetings with investors to discuss how our design decisions would benefit the customer and the business. I contributed to the company strategy and was hands-on in executing the strategy working alongside the CEO, CTO and Clinical Director.

Innovation Design Lead

2018 - 2019

I worked with the team at The Global Disability Innovation Hub, as a part of the DfID funded AT2030 programme and lead the research and design of the version of the assistive technology innovation ecosystem called “Innovate Now”. The scope of the ecosystem is to facilitate entrepreneurs who have developed new inclusive assistive technologies to get their products to market. Innovate Now is part of the Spark Innovation Sub-program of AT2030-Life Changing Assistive Technology for All, a £20 million led by the Global Disability Innovation Hub in partnership with partners worldwide across the UK, Africa and India. Innovate Now aims at helping to launch 60-80 new AT ventures through targeted world-class venture acceleration support, a live-labs network for building and testing with persons with disabilities and a mentor network of local and international business, AT and disability experts. This is the World’s First Innovation Ecosystem Dedicated To Assistive Technology.

Design Manager | Lead

2018 - 2018

To ensure that every individual on the planet is recognised, protected and provided for from birth. My job was to recruit and manage a design team capable of creating an open-source, responsive CRVS system that worked in low-resource settings. I was involved in refining the vision and shaping the roadmap alongside the CEO, CTO and Product Manager. In addition, I recruited and managed a design team in London and a local user research team in Bangladesh and built a process that facilitated deep collaboration with the distributed engineering team, healthcare workers and government officials. I also mentored the Product Manager as she grew into the role. Two years after working on this project, OpenCRVS was able to spin out of Plan International to become its own independent organisation and the first baby was registered in the OpenCRVS system on 15th January 2020 :)