Smt. Sonal Chintamani Bhatawadekar, Director – STPINEXT, Director, STPl-Gandhinagar

She is Bachelor of Electronics Engineering in 1993 and before joining STPI, she worked in Electronics manufacturing corporate based in Pune. And further From The Indian Institute of Business Management & Studies she completed her post-graduation EMBA, Executive Master’s Program in Business Administration & Management in 2011 – 2012.

Before posted as Jurisdictional Director STPI Gandhinagar for Guajrat State on 14-3-2022, she was heading many Divisions for STPI—Pune (For Maharashtra & Goa Jurisdiction) like Data Communication Facility Group, Statutory Service i.e (EXIM) Group, Incubation Service Group & MIS Group for more than 25 years in STPI-Pune. She is having extensive experience in working with eco system partners for growing the IT/ITES & Electronics industry from the respective region. She was active member for getting implementation of digitization of STPI-Services.

Started her career in STPI since Feb-1997 as Assistant Director & she has got subsequent regular promotions to Deputy Director, then Joint Director & then to Additional Director. She performed her duties of facilitating IT /ITES/SMEs/ Start-ups companies established under STP & SEZ umbrella as well during this phase.

After getting promoted as Director (Scientist F) in Feb 2020, with her visionary leadership she has conceptualized and performed significant for creation of Centre of Entrepreneurship, for emerging domains of Automotive Engineering & IoT based -Smart Agritech CoE , in Pune & Akola respectively. CoE -Motion has launched successfully and many Star-ups working in Autonomous, connected, Shared & Electrical Vehicles are getting incentivized. She has also worked in establishing the LAB set-up for the project of creation of Centre of Entrepreneurship for Smart-Agri Tech CoE, in AKOLA. She also facilitated the ITES companies, operating under India BPO promotion Scheme which was for incentivizing the ITES operations from Tier-II & Tier-III cities for generating employment from these regions and successfully handled the activities as Nodal Officer from STPI-Pune for operationalizing as implementing agency for IBPS.