After his MBA from IIM Ahmedabad, inspired by Professors Ravi Matthai, Ranjit Gupta and Kamla Chowdhry, Vijay joined a Gandhian NGO, ASSEFA in Bihar in mid 1982, working to settle landless poor people on Bhoodan (gifted land) they had received.
Vijay topped up this flush of innovative projects by setting up three separate types of collaborative projects – for wasteland development with small NGOs in Purulia, West Bengal; for income-generation with ITC near its cigarette factories in Munger, Bihar and Saharanpur, UP; and with the local panchayats and district/block level government agencies in the Kishangarh Bas block of Alwar district in Rajasthan.
[citation needed] In keeping with the leadership norms then prevalent in his alma mater IIMA, he stepped down from the executive directorship after serving a five-year term.
He spent the initial few months with Mr Laxmi Chand Jain and Smt Ela Bhatt, who were both senior development activists then serving as members of the Planning Commission of India.
In 1996, realising the need to attract mainstream financial resources, Vijay conceptualised BASIX,[9][10][11] a new generation institution devoted to promoting a large number of livelihoods for the poor and women on a sustainable basis.
BASIX[12][13] established Bhartiya Samruddhi Finance Ltd (BSFL), which was among the first microfinance companies in the world to attract commercial debt and equity investments, both internationally and from within India.
[15] In 2010 he was elected vice-chair of the Global Agenda Council on Social Entrepreneurship of the World Economic Forum (WEF), Davos, along with Prof Greg Dees as Chair.
He served for several years on the Boards of various NGOs including Association for Sarva Seva Farms (ASSEFA), Gram Vikas, ARAVALI, Development Support Centre a.
Internationally, Vijay served on the board of Oxfam America from 1995 to 1998 and from 2006 to 2012 on the executive committee(ExCom) of the World Bank's Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), a global consortium of 33 bilateral, multilateral and private donor organisations on microfinance .
He was vice-chair, along with late Prof Greg Dees as chair, of the Global Agenda Council on Social Entrepreneurship, World Economic Forum, Davos, 2009–2010.