Dr Karthick Sridhar — CEO

Dr Karthick Sridhar is a national systems architect and public policy advisor working at the intersection of higher education, institutional governance, and public sector capacity building in India. He is Vice Chairman of the Indian Centre for Academic Rankings and Excellence (ICARE) and Honorary Advisor to the Vice Chancellor, National Forensic Sciences University (NFSU), Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. He is the architect of India’s first state-level university benchmarking framework, the Karnataka State Universities Rating Framework (KSURF) (2012), which established the conceptual foundations for the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF). He subsequently advised the Government of India on the design and positioning of national rankings, contributing to the evolution of India’s institutional performance and accountability ecosystem. Dr Sridhar has played a strategic role in major national reforms including the Revised Accreditation Framework of NAAC, the Data Validation and Verification (DVV) system, the Institutions of Eminence (IoE) initiative, and policy consultations linked to India’s National Education Policy (NEP). He has advised leading institutions such as IIT Madras on performance improvement and global rankings strategy, and has worked with international ranking agencies including QS and Times Higher Education (THE) in their early engagement with India. He has also served as a strategic advisor to large and complex state governments including Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka, supporting system-level reforms in higher education, accreditation, institutional financing, and performance governance. Beyond higher education, he serves as a national assessor under Mission Karmayogi with the Capacity Building Commission, Government of India, and was a principal contributor to the creation of the National Standards for Civil Services Training Institutions (NSCSTI), supporting the transformation of India’s civil service training and institutional capability framework. Dr Sridhar’s work today focuses on designing data-driven, transparent, and scalable national frameworks across education, governance, forensics, and healthcare, aimed at strengthening institutional trust, performance, and global competitiveness in emerging economies. His long-term mission is to help institutions move beyond compliance and rankings, towards becoming credible public systems that serve society with integrity, accountability, and purpose.

Stackforce AI infers this person is a strategic leader in higher education policy and institutional governance.

Experience: 12 yrs 6 mos