About Nesta

Nesta is an innovation foundation. For us, innovation means turning bold ideas into reality and changing lives for the better. We use our expertise, skills and funding in areas where there are big challenges facing society.

More about us

Siddharth Bannerjee

Researcher, Digital Startups

Sidd was the policy researcher on two projects dedicated to fostering digital entrepreneurship and building entrepreneurial ecosystems across Europe – Startup Europe Partnership (SEP) and the European Digital Forum (EDF). He designed a composite city-level digital entrepreneurship index and a best-practises repository of European cities.

Sidd brought to Nesta over a decade’s worth of experience working at the intersection of technology, social policy and business innovation in various capacities.

He also has a solid background in fundraising, global and regional network building and managing stakeholder relations for civil society consortia, businesses and trade bodies and government policy makers.

From January 2008 to March 2012, Sidd was Director of Research of the Association for Canadian Studies, a non-partisan think tank with a mandate to provide thought leadership and insights on public policy issues.

Since moving to London, Sidd has started a community-based organization NetSquared London a volunteer-led project of TechSoup Global that connects the nonprofit and technology communities, and was recently appointed Regional Ambassador for the UK and Western Europe.

Sidd hails from Bangalore, India. In 2014 he published 'Start Up City: Ten Tales Of Exceptional Entrepreneurship From Bangalore’s Software Miracle', a book on entrepreneurship in the software sector of his native Bangalore.

Before obtaining an MSc from the London School of Economics in Social Policy and Development, Sidd studied government at Lawrence University in Wisconsin with a focus on international development and human security.