Madan Padaki is an Indian entrepreneur and business executive. He is the co-founder and director of Sylvant Advisors, in the field of education management; CEO and MD of Head Held High Services, a social enterprise for rural youth, and former co-founder of MeritTrac Services, a skill assessment and testing company. Padaki holds an undergraduate degree in engineering from the National Institute of Engineering, University of Mysore and an MBA from S.P. Jain Institute of Management and Research. In 2011, he was conferred The Young Education Leader Award by EDGE Forum – a forum of leading educationists and educational institutions in India.

He serves as a senior advisor to Tata Trusts, serves on the Governing Council of TiE Bangalore, Indo-American Chamber of Commerce, Karnataka and also serves on the Governing Council of DOEACC, an organisation of the Ministry of IT, Govt. of India to evaluate IT education in India.

Padaki’s first entrepreneurial venture was in 2000, when he co-founded MeritTrac, a skill assessment and training company. Manipal Education Group (MEG) bought a 70% stake in MeritTrac in which he along with his founding team continue to lead MeritTrac as an independent entity. In 2011, he transitioned to Manipal Education from MeritTrac to head up Strategy, Innovation and International Partnerships before moving out in 2013. MeritTrac is today India’s Largest Skills Assessment company and is recognized as a thought-leader in the sector, having won several awards like the NASSCOM Innovation Award and Deloitte’s Fast 50 India Award. MeritTrac has also been featured extensively in several books on Entrepreneurship and is also a case-study at INSEAD.

Before co-founding MeritTrac, Padaki had stints with Wipro Corporation, Infosys Technologies and BFL Software (now EDS Mphasis). At Wipro he was attached to the Fluid Power unit in export sales and was into a product management and marketing role at Infosys. His stint at BFL Software involved a business development role and he was posted to Tokyo in a role that involved setting up their operations in the Far East.

He was also the CEO of Erudient, a global education management company. Erudient is now active in North America, Europe, Australia and Asia Pacific with clients across these geographies and operates out of offices in New York and Singapore.