Protecting India's natural habitats and indigenous species of flora and fauna
The Habitats Trust has a special focus on the conservation of lesser-known species and habitats that are threatened, but often neglected and are in urgent need of conservation attention. From working on the conservation of the Indian Pangolin – the world's most trafficked mammal, saving the Great Indian Bustard with fewer than 150 individuals surviving in the wild, or restoring coral reef ecosystems of which approximately 75% are threatened by human activity today, The Habitats Trust has been at the forefront of generating conservation action for these seldom highlighted causes.
The Trust engages stakeholders at every level, those directly involved in on- ground efforts and those affected by the loss of biodiversity, to promote capacity building and knowledge sharing for the common cause of conservation.
We believe the need of the hour is the development of sustainable and replicable source codes for conservation, which are holistic and encompass all the vibrant flora and fauna that comprise a healthy ecosystem.
Technology runs through every facet of our lives, aiding us in attaining our goals. Through the Trust, we seek to engage technology to make conservation efforts more efficient and effective.
India is a megadiverse country, home to a variety of species and landscapes. We aim to disseminate our message of conservation to both urban and rural communities to garner public support to protect our teeming biodiversity.
The logo of The Habitats Trust has two distinct elements – the outline of a human hand along with the ears of an elephant. The combination of these two elements represents the symbiotic relationship between the largest species to walk this planet and humans, perhaps the most powerful species with the capacity to influence crucial ecosystems like never before. Owing to their size, elephants require the largest habitats and in protecting these habitats we humans can secure millions of other species preserving a harmonious ecosystem for generations to come.
Roshni Nadar Malhotra is the Chairperson of HCL Technologies, a leading global technology organization with a market capitalization of $33 billion, and the Chairperson of its CSR Board Committee.
Roshni is a Trustee of the Shiv Nadar Foundation. Since its inception, the Shiv Nadar Foundation has invested $1.1 billion in nation building institutions and driving transformational leadership. Roshni is also the Chairperson and driving force behind VidyaGyan, a leadership academy for the economically underprivileged, meritorious, rural students of Uttar Pradesh, and has been working towards nurturing future leaders from rural India who can be catalysts of change for their communities, villages and the nation at large.
Passionate about wildlife and conservation, Roshni established The Habitats Trust in 2018. The Foundation aims to work towards protecting India’s natural habitats and its indigenous species with the core mission of creating and conserving sustainable ecosystems through strategic partnerships and collaborations with all stakeholders, at every level.
Roshni is a member of the Dean’s Advisory Council at the MIT School of Engineering, USA and also a member of the Kellogg School of Management Executive Board for Asia. She serves on the board of directors of US-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF) and is an independent director on the board of HDFC Asset Management Company.
In recognition of her outstanding work both in business and in philanthropy, Roshni has received several honors and accolades. Some of these include being featured for the fifth consecutive year in ‘The World's 100 Most Powerful Women’ list, compiled and released by Forbes in 2021. In 2020, Forbes also featured her among the ‘25 Most Powerful Businesswomen in Asia’. Roshni was conferred with Lewis Institute Community Changemaker Award by Babson College in 2017 and was recognized by Horasis, an internationally renowned think tank, as the ‘Indian Business Leader of the Year 2019. She is an alumnus of the Forum of Young Global Leaders (YGL, 2014-19), a unique and diverse community of the world’s most outstanding, next-generation leaders, an initiative of the World Economic Forum.
Since 2019, she has been producing a TV series for the Animal Planet/Discovery based on the most endangered wildlife species in India - ‘On The Brink’. In 2022, On The Brink episode on Bats was the recipient of the Best Indian National Film Award in the category of science & technology. In 2018, Roshni also produced a children’s film, ‘Halkaa’, directed by the National Awardee Nila Madhab Panda. The movie is based on the unique journey of a slum child battling the issue of open defecation.
Roshni holds an undergraduate degree in Communications from Northwestern University and a MBA from the Kellogg School of Management. At Kellogg, she was awarded the Dean’s Distinguished Service Award.
Rushikesh heads The Habitats Trust, and has over 20 years of experience in conservation of ecosystems and species. He has a post-graduation in environmental science, coupled with few professional courses from some of the top global universities. He has also been on several Government and Supreme Court committees for conservation.
He brings with him established expertise in sustainable ecosystems, species conservation, organisational stewardship, community development and awareness. He has extensive understanding of achieving ecological and social impact with expertise in strategy development, program design, program management, grants management, capacity development, coordination, evaluations, and collaborations for large complex projects and has led several major projects for sustainable habitats and endangered species. He conceptualised and developed an evidence based policy think tank called Conservation Behaviour, which is first of its kind in India. It combines conservation biology, ecology, economics, psychology, developmental science, and data analytics to provide policy actionables through discussion papers and advocacy.
Rushikesh has contributed to over 70 publications in scientific journals, book, magazines, newspapers, etc. and has also given numerous talks on National and International forums. He is also an advisor and mentor to National, International organisations and individuals. He is a mentor at the global WILD Coalition 2020.
In his last assignment, he was associated with Wildlife Conservation Trust in the capacity of a Senior Conservationist. He also brings with him professional experience with organisations like Bombay Natural History Society, Lavasa, Eco Value, and Aireff DeTox Incineration Ltd.
Rushikesh is born & brought up in Mumbai and is married to Ira Bajpai. He is a certified scuba diver, likes surfing and exploring marine environments, forests, and grasslands. He enjoys teaching in his spare time for which he was engaged as visiting faculty for the Master’s programme in Sustainable Development & Environmental Management at University of Mumbai. He loves art, music and theatre, and also enjoys sports.
Shikhar Malhotra is the Director of HCL Corporation, the holdco for HCL’s operating companies. HCL has a distinguished lineage as one of India’s original technology garage start-ups, founded by Shiv Nadar. He is also on the board of HCL Technologies, a $11.8 Billion global technology firm with over 211,000 professionals operating from 52 countries.
Shikhar serves as the Vice Chairman & CEO of HCL Healthcare, one of India’s largest corporate health solutions firms, providing end-to-end healthcare solutions with a vision to make corporate India a healthier place. Today, HCL Healthcare is delivering personalized, sustainable and managed care health solutions to organizations across sectors including technology and banking. It has eight world-class corporate health centers across the country serving over 70,000 families.
As a Trustee, Shikhar plays multiple roles at the Shiv Nadar Foundation including shaping its vision of nation building through transformational leadership. Shikhar is the Chairman of Shiv Nadar Schools (established in 2012), having led them to become one of the most coveted schools in the National Capital Region of Delhi, and consistently recognized among the top schools in the country. The Shiv Nadar Schools are known to push the benchmarks in education to impart critical life lessons and making students future ready for a complex global environment. Under his leadership, the Shiv Nadar School is expanding its footprint to Chennai, with the first School being established in the city at the historic and serene campus of Theosophical Society in Besant Garden.
Shikhar is the Chancellor of Shiv Nadar University, India’s youngest university chosen as an Institution of Eminence by the Government of India. Today, SNU is one of the only eight private universities in the country acknowledged for being on an accelerated path to emerge as a world-class research-based, multidisciplinary institution.
Passionate about wildlife and conservation, Shikhar co-founded The Habitats Trust in 2018 with his wife Roshni Nadar Malhotra. The Trust is empowering on-ground conservationists to achieve its vision of securing India’s natural habitats and their indigenous species.
Shikhar comes from an entrepreneurial family, raised in Kuwait. His early lessons as an entrepreneur were learnt at his family business and were later sharpened at Babson College in the US, with a specialization in entrepreneurship.
Shikhar is passionate about sports and football in particular. He is married to Roshni Nadar Malhotra and they have two sons.
Kashish Madan is a Project Officer with The Habitats Trust (THT) since 2019. He is involved in the development of THT’s on-ground and Technology for Conservation initiatives. He is also a part of the strategic team, and seeks to integrate conservation management and policy with theories from the field of ecology.
He completed his Master’s degree in Biodiversity & Conservation and has worked with organisations like Wildlife Protection Society of India and Tiger Watch on various issues like wildlife crime, human-wildlife interactions, and wetland conservation and management. He finds spiders especially fascinating, and enjoys observing them along with other lesser-known arthropods in urban ecosystems.
Sunaina manages The Habitats Trust (THT) Grants programme, and helps lead the project at every stage. Her role includes strategising the THT Grants execution process, and regularly engaging with various stakeholders and partners that comprise the grants network.
She has previously worked closely with Belinda Wright, renowned conservationist and founder of the Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI). In her role as Project Officer at WPSI, she was responsible for overseeing community driven programs across India, engaging with various donors across the globe and creating proposals and reports for project funders. Prior to that, she had also undertaken several conservation-based projects with Wildlife SOS and Bannerghatta National Park, Bengaluru. After a successful stint in writing with a reputed media company, she joined The Habitats Trust in 2020.
In her free time, Sunaina volunteers with animal welfare NGOs across Delhi-NCR, helping them with street dog adoption drives, ABC programmes and foster care for abandoned or sick animals.
Tanya Singh joined The Habitats Trust in 2020 as Associate Manager-Grants. She manages the implementation and monitoring of The Habitats Trust Grants. She plays a vital role in building networks, coordinating with stakeholders and executing this annual initiative. She began her career in public relations, but was soon drawn to pursue her passion of working for the environment.
From a very early stage she recognised the necessity and urgency for communities, specifically those dependent on nature for their sustenance, to protect their changing environment and live in harmony with it. She believes organisations working in this space can act as conduits to this process if equipped with critical training and support. Tanya is committed to bridging the funding gap for conservation of the environment and wildlife. During her last assignment, she led Resource Mobilisation for a humanitarian organisation, SEEDS (Sustainable Environment and Ecological Development Society).
Vaishali works as the Communications and Outreach Coordinator for The Habitats Trust, where she develops outreach initiatives to create awareness about India’s threatened but lesser-known wildlife and habitats. She is passionate about communicating the message of conservation, and has written on wildlife and environmental issues for various publications like The Hindu, The Wire, Deccan Herald, LiveMint, Conservation India, Sanctuary Asia and others.
She previously worked on media and outreach with Wildlife Conservation Society, India, and later completed her M.Sc. in Biodiversity, Conservation and Management from University of Oxford as a Felix Scholar. She is fascinated by wildlife and nature thriving in urban spaces, and also enjoys reading books about nature, ranging from natural history to fiction and children’s literature.
Saket is the Associate Manager – Technology for Conservation at The Habitats Trust (THT). He is interested in exploring the potential of leveraging technology for conservation outcomes, and is involved with its on-ground implementation.
Saket hails from Nagpur, and being in close proximity to several tiger reserves shaped his passion for wildlife - especially tigers – at an early age. A computer science graduate-turned-wildlife researcher, he is also alumni of Nalanda University, Bihar (Ecology and Environment Studies) and University of Oxford, UK (International Wildlife Conservation Practices).
Over the last seven years, he has worked with several national and international NGOs focusing on wildlife conservation in various landscapes of central and north-western India. Before joining THT, he worked with Rajasthan Forest Department as a social scientist. His academic and research interests centre around community-level interactions and innovative approaches to wildlife conservation. He enjoys spending time photographing wildlife, as well as cities, their cultural heritage and communities.
Kaushik is a wildlife biologist by training who is deeply interested in avian ecology. He joined The Habitats Trust as Executive - On-ground Projects. His work involves designing and carrying out projects for species and landscapes in need of conservation efforts. He finished his master's degree in Wildlife Biology and Conservation at National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore, where his research focussed on studying owls in north-east India.
For his last assignment, he was involved in training local communities in systematic bird monitoring in Nagaland, Chhattisgarh. as a part of Bird Count India. He is passionate about birding and is interested in exploring how birds adapt to changing land-uses, and if their co-existence with people is possible. When not birding, he likes to paint and write about his adventures in the field.
Abhishek works at The Habitats Trust as Deputy Manager - Marine Programme and works on developing and executing projects focussed on marine conservation. He has a Masters in marine biology and has been a part of several marine ecological research, conservation, outreach and education projects. He started out in the field of cetacean research from a fisheries interactions perspective, spending long days on active fishing boats, where he ended up learning a lot beyond what he set out to study. His interests have since diversified to fisheries research, coral reef studies on the mainland west coast of India, and the use of traditional & local ecological knowledge and citizen science to document little-known marine ecosystems. He is a firm believer in the crucial role that coastal communities of all sorts play in meaningful and lasting marine conservation.
Abhishek has previously worked with WWF-India's marine programme and with Coastal Conservation Foundation, besides working independently as well. In 2017, he also co-founded the Marine Life of Mumbai initiative, a volunteer-led community effort to explore coastal biodiversity within Mumbai's urban limits. He also enjoys participating in marine conservation outreach and education.
Abhishek is from Mumbai, and has worked in different locations on the west coast of India. He is a birdwatcher, but also calls himself a 'backyard explorer' with an interest in watching just about all kinds of creatures, especially the ones close to home. He also enjoys cooking, drawing, long walks, old books, and comics.
Anup Bokkasa is a wildlife biologist with varied interests including vertebrate ecology, movement and landscape ecology, conservation practice and citizen science. He has experience working in different landscapes across India and with multiple teams. He has established and managed field stations and enjoys working with small and local teams and helping build their capacities. At The Habitats Trust, Anup joined as Deputy Manager - Conservation, and will be responsible for the On-ground Projects and will oversee planning and implementation of field projects and collaborations with other organizations working on ground. Through his work, he hopes to build consensus for conservation progress that does not leave the marginalized human and wildlife communities behind. In his free time, he enjoys singing cringe songs, playing chess, cooking south Indian food and day-dreaming about watching all the vertebrate species on the planet in-situ.
Farai is an ecologist with a passion for creepy crawlies and everything under water. He is a certified Rescue Diver and has completed his Master’s in Wildlife Biology and Conservation from the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore, where he studied coral reef dynamics in the Lakshadweep for his dissertation. That experience cemented his love for marine biodiversity. He then moved back home, to Goa, where he has been closely associated with the Save Mollem campaign, a citizens led movement that advocates for environmental preservation through science and art.
Farai joined the Habitats trust as an Executive in the Marine Program. As part of the team, he will be designing, planning and executing research and conservation projects across India’s understudied coastline. In his free time, you will often find him digging into a nice book on the beach or trekking around the Western Ghats in search of a new waterfall.
Santhosh comes from a town known for the mysterious cases of children killed by wolves, he was drawn to wildlife conservation after witnessing a pangolin trade incident. What started as a volunteering stint in wildlife awareness activities a decade back became a full-time involvement over the years in wildlife research and conservation activities. He has been part of the Nature Conservation Foundation’s IUCN-ITHCP project in southern India where he contributed to outreach, applied conservation, and wildlife corridor monitoring projects. Santhosh has worked closely with the Karnataka Forest Department and local communities towards conservation of several critical habitats and species.
Santhosh has received the coveted Chevening Leadership scholarship, He has a Masters in Applied Ecology and Conservation from the University of East Anglia and now leads the team for Technology for Conservation. He is an engineer who has worked on safety-critical systems for over a decade, he strongly believes that technology can assist and speed up wildlife research and conservation.
Smitha Daniel is a wildlife biologist and a nocturnal primatologist and has led 13 projects, on topics such as Slender Loris, climate change to environmental conservation and human-wildlife interactions management in India. She is completing her Ph.D. in 'Behaviour Ecology of the Malabar Slender Loris, Loris lydekkerianus malabaricus in its Natural Habitat' and has been researching the ecology, behavior, threats and conservation of the Slender Loris in India. She has been labelled as a 'ChangeMaker' by The Pollination Seed Grant for her work on the illegal trade of slender loris for the purposes of black magic and traditional medicines.
She is a commissioned member of the IUCN Primate Specialist Group, Section for human-primate interactions, and an executive member of the Association of Indian Primatologists, a project partner for primatologists from around the world, including those from the Oxford University. She has received the Women Scientist Fellowship (WOS-A) from the Department of Science and Technology, Ministry of Science and Technology and other prestigious grants such as the Primate Action Fund from The Margot Marsh Biodiversity Foundation.
She has served as a wildlife consultant and capacity building expert for developing human-wildlife interface management strategies and action Plans with the Indo-German Technical Cooperation, commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and has been instrumental in training the forest department officials, students in their undergraduate and postgraduate programs, nature enthusiasts and naturalists.
Outside of work, she takes a keen interest in travelling, exploring different native cuisines and interacting with new people.
Maxim is a Marine Geologist by training, with a keen interest in Citizen Science. He was born and brought up in Kasaragod, Kerala and his field of interest and work have been largely focused on birds and other wildlife. Working on diverse ornithological projects and travelling to explore citizen science initiatives in different parts of India instigated his interest and helped him gain practical knowledge in the field. While working, he enjoyed meeting new people and learning from their unique experiences. In 2015, he was introduced to the 'eBird' platform, where he began to contribute to the conservation of birds through citizen science-based data collection. He was impressed by the quantity and extent of data that could be gathered through citizen science platforms, which in turn inspired him to tap through the power of the citizen science network.
Maxim is the founder of 'Kasaragod Birders team' and has coordinated the 'Kasaragod Bird Atlas’, which is a part of the Kerala Bird Atlas project. After completing his M.Sc., he worked as a project assistant at the Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF). He interned at the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) on the Great Indian Bustard project and at the Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History (SACON) on a human-wildlife conflict project. When he is not observing birds or probing data, he loves to talk to people, write blog articles and travel around.
Maxim has joined The Habitats Trust as Executive - On-ground Projects.
Sejal Mehta has been a writer and editor (print and digital) for 20 years. She has been part of the core teams that started and helmed Lonely Planet Magazine India, National Geographic Traveller India, Nature inFocus, Marine Life of Mumbai. Her past work includes JPMorgan Editorial and Femina. You'll find her words in newspapers and magazines including Scroll, Mongabay, The Indian Express, The Hindu, BBC Top Gear, BBC Knowledge, TOI to name a few. She is a published author for children's books and one feminist anthology, and a debut non-fiction book on intertidal wildlife called Superpowers on the Shore, published by Penguin Randomhouse.
She walked the shores with Marine Life of Mumbai, an initiative that is creating awareness about the city’s coastline and the wildlife that lives there. Through her writing and outreach, she built a community of dedicated volunteers and tidepoolers.
To further her individual outreach goals, she has launched Snaggletooth, a line of nature-inspired merchandise that illustrates positive associations between humans and animals.
Through the pursuit of a masters degree in Wildlife Biology & Conservation and a doctoral degree in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Robin Abraham has been on a journey figuring out the Indian continent. He has been a research team leader for over a decade now, where his forte has been on freshwater ecosystems as well as on fishes and amphibians. He also has a penchant for patient natural history documentation which have led to unravelling previously unknown and fascinating animal behavior, some of which have been disseminated through peer-reviewed publications.
Robin’s research has demonstrated that many protected areas hardly represent much imperiled freshwater ecosystems, which is a cause for concern. His various expeditions and collaborations have also resulted in the discovery and descriptions of 12 species and 3 genera of amphibians new to science from India, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines and Madagascar. In the past, he has served as consultant for state & union forest and wildlife departments, and for global nature conservation bodies. At The Habitats Trust, Robin will be developing and leading an ecological restoration program.
Brawin’s interest led him to explore the world of small mammals in both the Eastern Ghats of India and the Taklamakan Desert of China. As a ZSL EDGE Fellow, he worked on one of the most critically-endangered species, (Cremnomys elvira). He received his PhD from the Institute of Zoology at the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, China, on the ‘Phylogeographic history and range shift of the Yarkand hare, (Lepus yarkandensis), due to the influence of Quaternary climate oscillations’.
His PhD research was funded by The World Academy of Sciences, Italy, and he received an award for ‘Outstanding International Graduate of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ in June 2019.
He worked as a National Postdoctoral Fellow at Tirupati's Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER and is a member of the International Society of Zoological Sciences (ISZS), IUCN SSC - Small Mammal Specialist Group), IUCN Commission on Education and Communication (CEC), World Lagomorph Society, European Hedgehog Research Group, The Linnean Society of London - Systematics Association, International Zoo Educators Association USA.
He was the recipient of ‘The World Academy of Sciences’ (TWAS), grant as well as Italy’s International CAS TWAS PhD research study in Beijing. His work on conserving a rare small mammal, the Madras Hedgehog (Paraechinus nudiventris), by involving local communities in Tamil Nadu garnered much attention. His innovative methods of outreach (such as using puppet art and comics for education and communication) won him the Tamil Nadu Environment Award 2016 and the Green Champion Award 2021. ). He believes in knowledge-sharing and collaborations for high-impact research. His interests include essay writing, long walks, and travel and interacting with those from younger mindsets and generations.
Rutuja did a Master’s course in Environmental Science from the University Pune and explored the carbon stocks in mixed land use types and butterflies in the Southern Western Ghats. It piqued her interest in understanding the communication between organizations and communities. The keenness to get closer to understanding communication and conservation made her pursue a second Master’s degree at the University of Kent in Conservation Project Management. She then worked as a coordinator of Turtle Action Group (TAG), India with Dakshin foundation. The curiosity to understand the associations between people and their environments led her to design an education program for communities living outside protected areas in the Chandrapur district of Maharashtra while working with WCT India. To work with teams that work on a large scale to build capacities of nature educators while creating content, she joined Nature Conservation Foundation. At THT she will be handling education initiatives with Shiv Nadar Schools, Shiv Nadar University, and other institutions, and her major role will be to develop the environmental conscience in students in collaboration with experts from the field of conservation and ecology.
Lubna is a multimedia journalist and editor who has worked in organisations like National Geographic Traveller India and Brut India. With a mixed bag of interviews and stories, Lubna has had the opportunity to cover a wide range of topics, from travel, human interest, to Bollywood. In that, she has stood under the dancing Northern Lights in Finland, spoken to the daughter of a vegetable vendor who became a judge, and interviewed actor Ranbir Kapoor.
Her work allowed her to understand formats meant for news cycles as well as long form storytelling meant for magazines. She has been part of social media strategy and website formation teams, edited stories, written scripts and produced videos, and oddly enough, enjoyed making Excel sheets. Lubna explored parts of India by road as part of the formative team for a tech-travel startup called Easy Roads, and built all of its content.
She trusts in the magic of words, has written for various mediums, and believes that the next story is always around the corner. When her nose is not spine-deep in a book, it's often scenting food or sniffing out the next adventure. She hopes to tell the story of The Habitats Trust in a way that is engaging and informative to audiences.
Kishore is a mechanical engineer with a passion for solving real-world problems, particularly in the area of conservation. He has worked with organizations like Nature Conservation Foundation, Indian Institute of Science and SELCO Foundation, developing and implementing technologies to prevent crop depredation by elephants and renewable energy-based livelihood solutions. Kishore has also explored tech interventions for research and conservation in high altitude landscapes with Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER-Tirupati). At The Habitats Trust, he works with the Technology for Conservation team as an Associate Manager. Besides work, Kishore enjoys running, hiking, and camping.