Insight•Innovation•Partnership
We work on the future of intelligence.
We are an applied-research and innovation consultancy. We take frontier ideas in AI, climate resilience, net zero and decarbonisation, and turn them into evidence that convinces, partnerships that hold, and funding that moves.
Good research is only half the job. We help it land.
We sit between the lab and the real world, pairing rigorous research with the practical work of getting things adopted, funded and scaled.
Who we are
Buddhi means wisdom. Tattva means essence.
Buddhitva is the essence of wise thinking, and it’s what we bring to every problem we touch. bicofutures was founded in Kathmandu with a simple belief: the world’s biggest challenges won’t be solved by research that stays on the shelf, or by strategy that ignores the evidence. They’ll be solved where the two meet. That’s where we work.
To help institutions think ahead, turning applied research into strategies for an AI-driven, climate-changed world.
A world where every institution, in every economy, has the foresight and the tools to shape its own future.
Every engagement starts with genuine questions, not pre-packaged answers.
We follow the research, even when it’s inconvenient.
The best ideas live between disciplines, sectors and geographies.
We operate under a full governance and ethics framework, because trust is the foundation of every partnership.
What we work on
Four areas where the future is being decided.
Each is a field in its own right. We work where they meet, because that is usually where the hard, interesting problems live.
How we work
Lab-to-Land: how we get research out of the lab and into the world.
Most good ideas stall somewhere between the study and the decision. Lab-to-Land is the path we walk with every partner to close that gap: nimble on purpose, built on trust rather than handovers.
We sharpen the real question, the one worth answering, and build the evidence to answer it. We test our assumptions and change course as the evidence comes in.
We work shoulder to shoulder with you, not at arm’s length. Rigorous methods, applied honestly: we test ideas early and often, so what we hand over is grounded in evidence, not opinion.
We help you fund, communicate and scale the work, so the evidence doesn’t sit in a report. It leads to change.
Ready to move?
Tell us what you’re working on, and we’ll tell you honestly whether we can help, and how. Every engagement is scoped to your goals, your evidence and your funding landscape.
Insights
The questions we’re working on, in the open.
Articles, evidence pieces and publications from our four practice areas. We share our research and foresight as it develops. First pieces publishing soon.
Working on one of these questions?
Tell us what you’re exploring. We’d love to think it through with you.
Our people
The person who scopes your work is the person who delivers it.
bicofutures is built around focused, expert teams. Every engagement is led personally by our founder, with specialist associates brought in for the problem at hand, so the thinking stays consistent from the first conversation to the final result.
Founder
Rakshya Shah
Rakshya founded bicofutures to do one thing well: connect powerful ideas with the people and places that can use them. As Principal Consultant, she leads every engagement, setting the direction, keeping the standards high, and making sure partnerships turn into real change.
Behind that focus is more than a decade of delivery. Across eleven years as an international development leader, she has built and steered multi-country portfolios worth more than US$40 million across Asia and Africa. Just as crucially, she knows how to win the funding that makes ambitious research possible.
As Global Head of Programme Funding at United World Schools, she set global fundraising strategy. At Winrock International, she oversaw a US$24.5 million Feed the Future programme that reached 200,000 farmers. At DAI, she directed the grants portfolio of the US$33.5 million Tayar Nepal project. And wherever she has worked, from Humanity & Inclusion and Christian Aid to Fairtrade International and Practical Action Consulting South Asia, she has rebuilt win rates, taking one team from 25% to 75% and another from 35% to 85%.
Her relationships span FCDO, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, SDC, the European Commission, DFAT and leading foundations and philanthropies, alongside UK research-council project experience with the University of Edinburgh, Imperial College London and King’s College London.
She built bicofutures because she had watched too many good ideas stall somewhere between the lab and the world.
“The best ideas don’t need translating between the lab and the world. They need someone who’ll walk them across.”
- How can countries shape AI on their own terms, rather than only inheriting it?
- What does genuine climate resilience look like when the science meets local realities?
- How do we move research funding to where the frontier problems actually are?
- What can countries do to reimagine their policies for net-zero emissions and decarbonise their economies?
Work with us
Are you one of our future associates?
We deliver through a network of specialist associates: researchers, evaluators, climate and AI practitioners who share our standards and our curiosity. We match people to problems, so every collaboration starts with substance.
If that sounds like you, introduce yourself at hello@bicofutures.com with a short note on your field and where you’d add depth.
Ready to move?
Tell us what you’re working on, and we’ll tell you honestly whether we can help, and how.