Inir Pinheiro is a livelihoods and entrepreneurship practitioner with nearly two decades of experience in building scalable, community-based and enterprise-led livelihood systems across rural and urban India. Since the early years of his career, his work has been driven by a singular mission: to create livelihoods at scale by building strong enterprises, capable institutions, and empowered communities.
He is the Founder and Managing Director of Grassroutes Journeys Pvt. Ltd., a national award-winning social enterprise best known for pioneering Community-Based Hospitality Enterprises (CBHE) - a model in which village communities themselves own, manage, and operate tourism and hospitality enterprises. This model, first prototyped in one village in Maharashtra, has since been replicated across 17 villages in 4 states, empowering over 2,000 women and youth, and has received multiple national and international recognitions, including the National Tourism Award (GoI, 2016).
Following the COVID-19 disruption to tourism, Inir pivoted to lead the design and launch of a micro-enterprise incubation and rural enterprise development model, drawing on best practices from leading incubation ecosystems (IIMs, IITs, government programs, and global entrepreneurship frameworks), while grounding it firmly in the realities of India's grassroots.
Across his career, Inir has consistently focused on capacity and institution building - working not only with entrepreneurs and communities, but also with non-profits, CSRs and Foundations, and Government to embed enterprise thinking, incubation capability, and sustainability into their programs.
PROFESSIONAL QUALIFICATION
- Post Graduate in Rural Management, XIMB (2006)
- B.Sc. Chemistry, St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai (2001)