Fellows by Category
Svati Bhogle has come up with a distribution system to counter the inefficient use of cooking stoves by street food vendors in India; enabling them to easily own fuel efficient stoves, save money on fuel, and earn a better profit. Built on ecological considerations, these improved stoves not only increase their income, but ensure better health conditions for vendors and their consumers.
Santosh Choubey sees the IT and mobile revolution connecting all of India in the next ten years and wants to ensure that rural youth will be equipped to take the opportunities that come with it. An avid author of books and poetry, he is committed to bridging the skill and IT gap between urban and rural India and creating local opportunities for rural youth.
Through interventions based on modern technology in Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, and Orissa, India, Rikin Gandhi is focusing on the efficiency of information dissemination and application and creating new knowledge networks for agriculture extension services. Rikin’s method entails replacing the old architecture of agriculture extension services with a new one; and the community is...
Dr. U. Jaikumaran is working with agriculture laborers in India to prepare the agriculture sector to meet the country’s food needs, by organizing them into a Food Security Army and introducing technology, efficiency, and professionalism to their work.
In Bihar, the poorest and most underdeveloped state in India, vegetable farmers are locked into an inefficient and extractive system currently controlled by middlemen. But Kaushlendra has re-engineered the value chain so that small-scale farmers organized as majority shareholders in their own producer companies bring vegetables to local collection points where his organization transports...
Livelihoods Equity Connect
Adarsh, schooled in Economics in the USA, is providing venture capital to small agricultural and craft producers who have lifted themselves out of poverty through microfinance. His beneficiaries a no longer the poorest of the poor on account of access to microfinance and markets, but even these successful micro-borrowers face daunting hurdles, namely a lack of larger capital investments for...
Sunanda Mane is bridging the gap between education imparted in secondary schools and real-life skills required in rural India. By introducing trained local entrepreneurs into schools, Sunanda creates an environment where students are able to develop entrepreneurial skills. As a result of her work in over sixty government-aided schools in rural Maharashtra over the last four years, absenteeism...
Bibhu Kalyan Mohanty is establishing an industry with small farmers, healers and government to create a healthy and sustainable industry of Indian natural herbal and plant-based medicine and remedies. The “Healing Heritage Producers Company” owned by local producers, organic farmers, medicinal plant collectors, and women’s Self Help Groups, is increasing the availability of remedies,...
Vaatsalya Healthcare
Dr. Ashwin Naik, the co-founder and CEO of Vaatsalya, aims to provide affordable and quality healthcare services to India’s underserved, rural, and semi-urban populations. The success of his health care service company has demonstrated the viability and potential of small-medium sized private hospitals to efficiently serve impoverished citizens in India. Furthermore, Ashwin is working to make...
LEDS/HomeShops
To increase sustainability of micro-enterprises in India, Anup Nair has created local production and supply systems driven by micro-entrepreneurs that fosters a “local-to-local” economy. By creating networks of specialized entrepreneurs focused on management, marketing and distribution, this system leverages the collective strength of local micro-enterprises to compete with large corporations...
Kaivalya Education Foundation
The 2009 Right to Education Act makes free elementary education the right of every child between the ages of 6 to 14 years in India. This is a historic milestone for the country and implementation of this Act on the ground is a focal point of concern. Aditya Natraj envisages a major shift in education leadership, where the government school principal is perceived as a lever to affect large-...
Ram is generating a systems-changing way of delivering credit services to the poorest individuals by blending peer-to-peer lending with a strong back-end delivery system that controls interest rates. By carefully prequalifying citizen organizations (CO’s) and establishing robust back-end processes, he repurposes CO’s to act as branches and for the first time, deliver loans at interest rates as...
