The People Behind the Mission
Our Founding Team
Shiva Shankar Manjunatha brings over 25 years of deep expertise in cloud-native infrastructure, Linux systems engineering, and embedded firmware — now applied to one of the most urgent challenges of our time: making environmental conservation measurable, scalable, and investable.
As CTO of VGEI, he leads the technology architecture that underpins the company's MRV (Monitoring, Reporting & Verification) frameworks, carbon credit platforms, and project monitoring systems — translating ecological fieldwork into audit-ready data that international climate finance requires.
His grounding in the natural world is not incidental. A published ornithologist and co-author of two field guides documenting 224 avian species across coastal Karnataka, he has spent two decades contributing to citizen science through Cornell Lab of Ornithology's eBird platform as Regional Coordinator, and as a member of the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS). This rare combination — rigorous technologist and field naturalist — gives VGEI a leadership perspective that bridges engineering precision with ecological fluency.
He is a certified Heartfulness Preceptor, nature photographer, and an avid cyclist — someone who brings the same discipline and curiosity to every domain he enters.
