Niranjan
Pai

Niranjan Pai am a seasoned government and public affairs leader with expertise in national and state-level advocacy programs and strategies across healthcare (medical devices, pharma) and public health and nutrition sectors. With over 20 years experience in combining disruptive thinking with pragmatism, he has driven strategic engagements with elected officials, policymakers, and policy influencers to impact public and private sector discourse on critical issues for various sector-agnostic clients.

Engagements which need solutions desings from a combination of deep technical expertise which conceptualised to arrive at overall ”Strategy” which is executed conbining actionable foresight from cross – sectoral intelligence.

As a Director with APCO in the Mumbai office, he leads policy advocacy and public affairs engagements with key national and global clients with accountability for strategic decision-making and risk mitigation at the national and state levels. Contribute to business development, organizational growth planning, client relationship management, project governance, stakeholder management, and engagement with decision-makers in the ecosystem.

Before this, Dr. Niranjan Pai served as a Senior Manager (2014 – 2015) at Population Services International. As a key leader in the $38M USAID-funded PIPPSE HIV initiative, he drove private sector engagement and system strengthening, focusing on improving services for at-risk populations. He developed national action plans, launched the National HIV and AIDS Helpline, and supported innovative social protection models. He worked closely with the National AIDS Control Organisation to integrate private sector support into HIV prevention and care. He led the implementation of a district-level service delivery model in one of India’s largest industrial regions. Dr. Pai also guided policy analysis, built cross-sector partnerships, and trained state officials in PSI’s employer-led engagement model. As a technical expert, he planned corporate engagement strategies in Maharashtra and contributed to USAID’s PEPFAR reporting, producing impactful case studies and communication materials to highlight programme success.

From 2011 to 2014, as a Senior Consultant at Ernst & Young, he provided hands-on consulting across public health, corporate social responsibility, gender equity, child protection, sanitation, and aid effectiveness. Along with advisory services —he built strong client relationships, drove business development, crafted winning proposals, and oversaw smooth project implementation from start to finish.

He has worked as a reseacher is Micosoft Research India where he collaborated with some of the most innovative minds in technology in conducting applied research and published research papers. He has also worked as a Clinician, and academician in the initial professional years and having worked extensively in both the private as well as the public sector, he brings the unique understanding of how these two vastly differently spaces function.