Padmini Ram is Assistant Professor, School of Business Studies and Social Sciences, Christ University, Bengaluru, India and Principal Investigator, Christ-LabourNet Academic Research Endeavour (CLARE), an industry-academia collaboration working on informal economy. With over 17 years of experience in various sectors of public policy and development in India and abroad, she combines the rigour of an academic researcher and the pragmatic approach of a practitioner. She holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge, and her research papers have been published in several reputed international journals.

Malcolm Harper is Emeritus Professor of Enterprise Development, School of Management, Cranfield University, UK. He was educated at Oxford, Harvard, and Nairobi. Since 1995 he has worked independently, mainly in India. He has published extensively on enterprise development, micro-finance, and livelihoods. He was Chairman of Basix Finance in India for 10 years and is Chairman of M-CRIL/EDA of New Delhi, the international microfinance and social rating company. He is chair, trustee, and board member of various institutions in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, the United States, and India, and has worked on issues of poverty across the world.