For most people, meeting a Nobel Prize winner is about as commonplace as volleying with tennis pro Andy Roddick. And having that esteemed scholar encourage your business pursuits, well, that would be like returning one of Roddick’s 155 mph serves.

Unless, of course, you’re Pranav Gupta. The 2002 Wharton grad had the honor of meeting Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, in September 2003. What’s even cooler? Stiglitz told Gupta he liked his model to rate non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and urged him to discuss it with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). “It was pretty inspiring,” he remembers. “It was good fuel for that year.”

Today, Gupta is President and CEO of ForeignAid Ratings, a company that evaluates and seeks to bring more visibility to NGOs.  He can boast—but he doesn’t—that USAID became a client and that he’s worked with 13 groups in Africa, Eastern Europe, and Central and South America. His company also dabbles in tech services and consulting, and it partnered with major players like 3Com to bring technology to underdeveloped countries. He has an office outside New York and one opening in Delhi, India, and he’s able to make a living from a company he built that helps people around the world.

Was this endeavor the realization of a childhood dream? Not exactly. As a high school student, Gupta figured that an undergraduate business degree would open a number of doors for him. “I’m the type of person who likes creativity,” he explains. “So a business degree seemed to make sense.” Doing good, he thought, would be an added bonus. He decided on Wharton, in part, because of its outstanding reputation in the business world, but he also liked the idea of participating in the Jerome Fisher Program in Management and Technology (M&T), through which he received a B.S. in Economics from Wharton and a B.S.E. in Computer Science Engineering from the School of Engineering and Applied Science. He also minored in Math. All of which begs the question:

Did he have any fun at college? Gupta
laughs. “Yeah, I definitely had a pretty good
social circle,” he says. “I had a lot of fun.

“I think the best thing about going to Wharton is the company that you keep there. Because everyone there is extremely motivated, enthusiastic, and ambitious—that's the most important word. If you surround yourself with ambitious people, you’ll also become ambitious.”

Sometime between studying and socializing, Gupta managed to find his future. “In undergrad I was pretty flexible. I didn’t have any set plans,” he says. 

“I just thought that I would take the
best opportunity that came to me.”

Even without a set course, he still took advantage of opportunities that would one day impact his career pursuits. Before he entered Penn, he studied abroad in India, where he worked with some NGOs. And the summer after graduation, Penn funded Gupta’s research trip to Kenya to study the impact of NGOs there.

Then in his senior year, he received a Thouron Fellowship and scored the chance to study economics at the renowned London School of Economics. As a grad student, he took the requisite courses, but also fit a class on development economics into his schedule.

“I thought it was really interesting to be
working on issues that affect global economics
and Third World countries,” he explains.

“Coming out of the program, I thought that I should try to apply some of the things that I learned. I worked with some people to create a rating model for NGOs. So we created this model to rate NGOs based on their organizational development, financial efficiency, social impact, transparency, and monitoring and evaluation assistance.”

Gupta returned to the United States in June 2003 amped about his new concept. And a few months after his homecoming, he went from amped to ecstatic: USAID’s Office of Private and Voluntary Cooperation contacted him to learn more about his model. “We had a good meeting with them, and they said they would like us to rate seven of their partner NGOs in Central America and Africa,” he says. Once his budget and proposal were approved, Gupta and his company rated seven NGOs in Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Zambia, and Burundi. “It’s pretty exciting when you have USAID buy into something that you’ve done because they set the tone for all international development,” he explains.

It’s not every day that a government agency knocks on the door of an average citizen looking for help—especially when that someone is under 25. “They were definitely impressed with how young I was,” Gupta recalls. “But that, I think, was seen as an asset because we have new thoughts coming into the space. International Development typically is a space where you have people with PhDs who have been working for 30 years, and there are huge barriers of entry to young people. But here we created a model which made sense, which the government liked, and that was really good.”

While he’s still focused on the future, especially in growing his company, Gupta can’t help but look back, pointing to his Wharton education as a key to his success. “You’re still marketing your services. It’s still very much a business venture,” he notes. “I think I’m definitely applying a lot.” He also credits Wharton with his focus on contributing to the community. “It’s a big thing. Penn really emphasizes service learning,” Gupta remembers. “I think that it’s a huge misconception that you can’t do good with a business degree. It's a very naïve perspective.”

And that is exactly what Pranav Gupta continues to do: use his business degree and entrepreneurial spirit to help the developing world. Like any successful businessman, he can’t stress enough that people, no matter how young, should “just go for it” and make their visions a reality. “Things just kind of worked out that I am doing something really interesting, and it’s still a business that’s generating revenues and earnings for myself,” he says. “I’m doing what I love.”