He’s an alumnus of London School of Business and Chicago University, has worked as investment banker for GE Capital and Morgan Stanley and heads the India unit of an investment fund, Zeus Caps, backed by a super wealthy Saudi Sheikh – but that’s not what makes Shaurya Doval (40) special. Neither it is that Shaurya’s father happens to be India’s National Security Advisor There are plenty of foreign-educated, foreign-trained, well-to-do progenies of senior, powerful babus. But Shaurya is something others in that privileged group are not – he’s an increasingly influential player in shaping Modi Sarkar’s policy thinking.Junior Doval’s rise since Modi Sarkar came to power has been a quiet affair. The media barely knows him. But those who know how things work in Delhi’s establishment say Junior Doval practices Track 1.5 diplomacy.That means Shaurya, a director in the principal driving force behind the BJP/RSS- heavyweights-dominated think-tank, India Foundation, is far closer to actual policymakers than your usual Track II enthusiasts are. ET spoke to over a dozen people for this profile. Shaurya Doval met ET. Ajit Doval, did not respond to ET’s questions. Many people ET spoke to participated on the condition they not be identified.India Foundation, set up five years back, calls itself an ‘independent research centre’. Its current offices are in a tony apartment in New Delhi’s ultra-posh Hailey Road. The apartment was used by Nirmala Sitharaman, minister for corporate affairs, before NDA came to power. When Sitharaman moved out to her ministerial bungalow, India Foundation shifted offices to the apartment. Its earlier offices were in Jangpura, a nice South Delhi locality, but nowhere as plush as Hailey Road.Sitharaman, along with ministers Suresh Prabhu and Jayant Sinha, are directors of the Foundation. Influential RSS leader Ram Madhav, who’s now a BJP general secretary, is also a director. As is ex-editor and current BJP spokesperson MJ Akbar. Madhav and Doval Junior set up the India Foundation. Doval Junior left his plum investment banking job and got back to India in 2009.Like the Viveknanda Foundation, with which Senior Doval was closely associated, the India Foundation is a forum for the political right. But the son’s think-tank has a reach the father’s never had.Senior government officials say India Foundation is beginning to have the same influence on Modi government’s policy thinking that the National Advisory Council had on UPA-1’s. “It’s Modi Sarkar’s quasi-NAC”, one bureaucrat said. NAC-like formal recognition may or may not come to the Foundation, but NAC-like access to the highest offices is evident... Shaurya Doval and Ram Madhav are deeply involved in planning Indian diaspora events that are such a crucial part of Prime Minister’s foreign visits... The Madison Square event during Modi’s US trip, a PM speech during his France trip that was broadcasted to French-controlled islands that have substantial Indian-origin population, many of the PM’s public functions during his visit to Indian Ocean island countries – Doval was a planner for all these high profile and crucial events... And Ajit Doval’s son is also playing a key part in planning the big diaspora event in San Francisco in September, where the PM will interact with Silicon Valley’s Indian elite.Being part of teams that plan crucial elements of the PM’s foreign trips is evidence enough of influence. But that’s not the only or perhaps even the most significant evidence of Shaurya’s importance. That significant evidence is apparent every Wednesday in Delhi. Every Wednesday, Indian Foundation holds closed door sessions on high policy issues.The venue is Ram Madhav’s South Avenue residence in New Delhi. Attendees include senior bureaucrats, senior members of New Delhi’s diplomatic establishment, strategic affairs and internal security experts, Indian and foreign, and well-connected people who hang around every political establishment, that is, lobbyists.Shaurya Doval’s and Ram Madhav’s Wednesday talk shops, a senior diplomat said, have become the meeting place in New Delhi now. Heavyweights of the Modi government – Defence Minister Manohar Parikkar, Shaurya’s father NSA Ajit Doval, Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar – have spoken at these sessions, which are closed to the media.And it’s not just Wednesdays. When India Foundation organised a seminar on counterterrorism in Jaipur in March, seven NDA ministers and NSA Ajit Doval attended. That kind of star power comes only when the organisers are very well-connected with the powers that be.Ram Madhav pretty much said it when he addressed a high-powered gathering under the aegis of the Foundation just before the PM visited Bangladesh in June. Speaking at New Delhi’s India Habitat Centre – a sprawling complex of buildings in Lutyen’s Delhi that’s an elite club as well as a favourite site for corporate, think-tank and NGO talkathons – Madhav said, “do not think that this (India Foundation engagements) is back-channel or track II. These engagements are as important as official engagements and government takes it very seriously.” In the audience were ministers from both India and Bangladesh. Incidentally, this was a two-day talk shop.The Foundation hosted the second day at the Habitat. The Bangladesh High Commission sponsored the first day. The venue was Oberoi Hotel in New Delhi.At that same seminar, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu said “I am not here as union minister but as the director of India Foundation… This is the ‘Foundation’ on which you can build a superstructure.”That was a pithy description of the Foundation’s influence. “This government listens to them (the Foundation)’, a senior bureaucrat said. Others in the policy establishment say it now pays to track the talk shops being organised by Shaurya Doval’s thinktank. “What they talking about and who is doing the talking…those are clues”, is how another bureaucrat put it.The Foundation’s December 2014 India Ideas conclave in Goa was an elaborate affair. Writing about it in the Foundation’s monthly journal, Doval Junior said the purpose is to make India reclaim her leadership role, by asking “nationalist thinkers from all over the world’ to debate the idea of India.A just-concluded August retreat in Madhya Pradesh with participation of young BJP MPs and a September economic policy conclave, expected to draw heavyweights from India Inc and NRI entrepreneurs, are other Foundation events that show its influence. The PM is likely to speak at that conclave. “It’s the talk shop number 1 in Delhi right now” is how a veteran bureaucrat, familiar with the establishment’s ways, described Shaurya Doval’s think-tank.Doval Junior met ET. He said India Foundation doesn’t make policies. “No thinktank makes policies. Governments make policies and think-tanks are one of the influences in policy formulation…” But he’s also clear about the goal of increasing influence. “In coming days, the think-tank will play a major role in government policy formulation…it will evolve the way think-tanks have evolved in the US and China.”He elaborated further on his idea of an influential think-tank. . “I think every political party in this country needs to have their think-tank. India Foundation has been able to influence government decisions in many ways…but the influence changes from policy to policy. It will not be right for me to name the changes in policy which came because of us.”People who know the New Delhi establishment say Doval is right but that there’s even more to India Foundation. “It’s a question of how easily you can reach the ears that matter”, one diplomat said, “the Foundation can reach all the ears that matter very quickly”.Shaurya Doval told ET he first conceptualised the role of India Foundation as a forum for economic agendas and religious studies. “I relocated myself to India in 2009,” he said. The Foundation was set up the same year. “We are a think-tank with a nationalistic view,” Doval said.Asked about funding – the Foundation is registered as a trust – Doval said the monthly journal is a big revenue source. “We raise sponsorship and get endowments from various sources. It is all done around the work we do or seminars we organize. We get into partnership with various stakeholders and we do our share and they do theirs,” he told ET.Ram Madhav, the co-creator of the Foundation, told ET, India Foundation is different from other think-tanks. “We are different… India Foundation has intervened at political levels so that certain issues can be pushed. This is done by actively networking… we first get to understand issues…we bring out research papers only after that,” Madhav said. He gives an example of networking – important visiting delegations meeting NDA MPs under the aegis of the India Foundation. Is NDA ministers’ membership of the Foundation a proof of its power and influence? Madhav says ministerial involvement is a “coincidence”. “These people were all public intellectuals before they became ministers… some of them were Foundation members before they became ministers”, Madhav said, adding that the search is on for more directors.India International Centre, a club for the elite that’s older than the Habitat, has for years been a venue where Delhi’s powerful would gather for apparently informal but ultimately influential chats. Before Narendra Modi stormed into power in May 2014, one of IIC’s notable chat sessions was the so called Saturday club. Ex-bureaucrat Nripendra Misra was the convener.The Saturday club was recognized by the power cognoscenti as a place to be. Misra was picked by the PM to be his principal secretary. And Shaurya Doval’s Wednesday closed door discussions have replaced the Saturday club as the Delhi establishment’s prime talk shop.That as ex-investment banker who used to strategise on leveraged buy outs now commands more influence than the grey eminences of IIC says much about the power shift in New Delhi – it encapsulates the rise of Shaurya Doval.