Dr. Ajit Ranade is presently Senior Fellow with the Pune International Centre. His thirty-five-year career has spanned academic, research and corporate assignments. He served as the Vice Chancellor of Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, a deemed University in Pune from February 2022 till October 2024.

Prior to that he was Group Executive President and Chief Economist with the Aditya Birla Group, an Indian multinational conglomerate. Ranade has been a member of the executive committees of apex industry chambers CII, FICCI and MCCIA. He has also been a faculty member at universities in the U.S.A. and in India. He serves on the board of several companies and trusts, and has been a columnist for over two decades, writing on economics and current topics.

He is a co-author of an award-winning book “Rising to the China Challenge” (2021).Ranade is co-founder and trustee of Association for Democratic Reforms. He is a Trustee of the Pune International Centre and an Honorary Senior Fellow at the Takshashila Institution.

Ranade was educated at Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay and Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. He received his PhD in Economics from Brown University. He received the Distinguished Alumnus award from IIT Bombay in 2009.