SpaceUpp is a workplace governance advisory firm helping Indian organisations build systems that protect, stabilise, and strengthen the workplace. SpaceUpp is founded by professionals with expertise spanning PoSH compliance, equity, and organisational communication.
Dr. Deepa Rajagopal is the founder of SpaceUpp and leads its workplace governance advisory practice. She has worked in PoSH since 2013, bringing experience that traces back to the very beginning of the law’s implementation, alongside over 15 years of broader work across workplace equity, organisational systems, and compliance advisory. A Cornell University-certified DEI Consultant, Dr. Deepa brings an interdisciplinary foundation to this work. Her practice is built on a single conviction: that workplace governance, done right, is not a legal obligation to be managed — it is a profit-protecting asset to be leveraged.
Her academic foundation in medicine was built at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and Johns Hopkins University, followed by clinical research conducted at the National Institutes of Health. That training did more than establish her credentials. It gave her a way of thinking — rigorous, evidence-based, and root-cause oriented — that she has applied to every organisation she has worked with since.
She carried that analytical lens into the corporate world, where her work with Pfizer and Moderna placed her inside some of the most compliance-driven, high-accountability environments in global industry, giving her direct experience of what it looks like when governance protects business performance — and what it costs when it does not.
What she consistently observed was a critical gap. Beneath filed policies, unconscious bias was shaping hiring, promotion, and retention decisions that eroded performance. Microaggressions accumulated in cultures with no mechanism to address them. None of it showed up in a compliance audit. All of it showed up in attrition numbers, escalating disputes, declining productivity, and reputational damage that organisations rarely traced back to its source — and rarely calculated as the financial liability it actually was.
That gap — between what the paperwork said and what was actually costing the business — is what led her to found SpaceUpp. To build something that goes beyond legal compliance and directly addresses the structural, cultural, and behavioural inefficiencies that suppress performance, inflate risk, and limit long-term profitability. SpaceUpp bridges law, lived experience, and operational reality into governance systems that protect both people and profit.
Today, Dr. Deepa leads SpaceUpp's advisory practice with a vision to make workplace governance a foundational business pillar of every Indian organisation — not a reaction to crisis, but a measurable driver of institutional credibility, talent retention, and long-term financial performance.