Click on the links below to read about 2009 Fellows and their experience.
Ankit Saraf
Ankit Saraf is a pre-final year student pursuing B.E. in Electronics & Instrumentation at BITS Pilani. He is an alumnus of Ryan International School, New Delhi. He is passionate about societal development and project management.
He has been involved in many social services like Computer Literacy Program under NSS in villages around Pilani. His tenure at IPGCL, Delhi during Summer 2008 provided him with an industry- professional exposure. Being a member of the organizing committee for OASIS, cultural festival of BITS and Head of a prominent department has added to his leadership qualities in recent times.
Besides, he loves playing cricket. He has been a member of the cricket team in school as well as college. He likes listening to music and watching movies in his free time.
Ankur Saxena
Ankur Saxena is an alumnus of IIT Kanpur. He was among the top 10% article contributors at Wikinvest.com, the wiki of basic equity research. He has interned at Center for Analytical Finance of the Indian School of Business (ISB), where he worked on micro-structural analysis using actual trades and orders data of Euronext Stock Exchange.
Ankur is enthusiastic about learning and developing new innovative financial products for empowering the low-income community, a thing which he worked on during his stint with a unique online social one-stop-shop marketplace aimed at structuring the fragmented development sector in India.
Anurag Priyam
Anurag Priyam is a first year undergraduate student pursuing a B.Tech + M.Tech course in Mechanical Engineering at IIT Kharagpur. His areas of interests include Embedded System Designs, Computer Architecture, FOSS, Automobiles, Entrepreneurship, and Finance. Being a part of Tech Team of Entrepreneurship Cell, IIT Kharagpur Anurag has considerable experience in the field of website development. He is an active member of AIESEC, Kharagpur Chapter. In his free time, he likes to read and watch movies. He has also worked with Intellecap as a summer intern recently.
Anusha Paliwal
Anusha Paliwal, is a 2009 graduate from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur. She aspires to be an entrepreneur few years down the line. At her intern last year at Schlumberger an analytical approach to device efficient solutions, helped her earn a Pre Placement Offer from the company.
She attributes her interest in the social arena to her stay at IIT with her involvement there in Prayas, a NGO involved in educational activities for underprivileged; along with extensive first hand field analysis done in a couple of management projects, one studying the closure of Kanpur textile mills, gaining an insight into the plight of workers and other assessing educational standards in a low income locality. As an E4SI fellow at DhanaX, a peer to peer lending microfinance venture, she worked towards strategy development to economize and upscale the venture. She applied a No Frills Service approach; built a financial model for their business along with a Management Information System (MIS) to augment Service Quality.
Chitta Ranjan
Chitta Ranjan is a pre-final year Dual degree student at IIT Kharagpur in Dept. of Industrial Engg. & Management. He has excelled in all the academic exams and activities he has faced. His ruling passion is to solve the energy needs of the World and especially the rural people by using Green Technologies. He has been pursuing his passion for many years and has come up with some innovative system designs. He is dexterous; he solves any given problem very quickly. Besides, he has interest in literature. He reads as well writes. He is creative and perfect in his work, which always reflects from any work he does. He has also worked with D.Light as a summer intern recently.
Gaurav Sharma
Gaurav Sharma is final year Chemical Engineering student from National Institute of Technology Warangal and co-founder of Vinnoite Media Pvt. Ltd. and Chandigarh Blogger Alliance.He is a firm believer of power of internet and computing to bring about any desired impact.
He is passionate about implementing automation in each and every possible business operation to make it more efficient and effective.He is also working to develop a new concept called MediaLoop to help organizations increasing their brand reach and online traffic.He has successfully implemented his MediaLoop concept with one of his blogs.
Gaurav holds various key positions in college clubs like Innovation and Entrepreneurship Club and quiz committee. and gives sessions and workshops on blogging and entrepreneurship in colleges and schools and also is the part of Technozion'09 core team as Sponsorship head.He is also associated with company's like Microsoft,Opera and Mozilla as student partner and campus rep respectively. Early this year, he got selected for Harvard's Project for Asian and International Relation's Business conference , Tokyo 2009.
Gayatri Kannan
Gayatri Kannan joined the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur in 2007. She is pursuing a BTech degree in Industrial Engineering. An enthusiastic, dedicated and hard worker, she tops her department and is an NTSE scholar.
Her interests lie in world economy and finance. An internship at KPMG helped her realize that management consulting is her calling. She believes India will become the world’s leader, politically, culturally and economically and plans to contribute to this end.
She is an avid reader and enjoys travelling. She likes to explore new avenues and is currently learning to play the guitar. She has also worked with Ujjivan as a summer intern recently.
Ishwadeep Singh Sood
Ishwadeep Singh Sood is pursuing a dual degree in Electrical Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. His immersion experience as an E4SI fellow was at iDiscoveri with the mathematics team of the XSEED program. His work at iDiscoveri involved finding cheaper and better alternatives to the "manipulatives" being used for teaching mathematics in schools. He is very excited about the idea of developing a library of virtual manipulatives (applications for learning mathematics using virtual representation of real world objects), and is currently working on the development of the same. He strongly believes that education and the "virtualization" of it are going to be the major concerns and building blocks of the future of our country.
Mayur Chandak
Mayur Chandak is a final year student of Indian Institute of Technology – Kanpur. He loves to travel in rural areas and interact with people to share and develop a common bond. He envisages a country where vocational training and good education go hand-in-hand to create independent contributing masses.
He has founded CITROUS - an internship management system to create industry-academia relations and boost interaction between students, faculty and industrial organizations. He has worked with leading organizations including BLKashyap & Sons Ltd. and Hindustan Construction Co. Ltd. related to labor management, tendering process, workforce organization and micro planning of schedule at The Great Eastern Hotel, Kolkata and Park 247, Mumbai – an upcoming IT Park and a mall. Mayur has recently worked with iDiscoveri in one of their key markets to scale up the organization’s reach.
Mayur is interested in Public Private Partnership as he believes that amalgamation of the drive of entrepreneurs and the power of policy-makers need to be brought together to bring about a visible change in the BoP citizens of India.
Mohit Kumar Jolly
Mohit Kumar Jolly is a pre-final year student at Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. He is the President, Students' Gymkhana (the central student governance body) at IIT Kanpur and is a firm believer of teachings given by his parents- “Be the change you wish to see in the world”. He wants to bring science and society closer in India, percolating downwards the basic amenities of life to every section of the society. One thing which Mohit believes can catalyze this endeavor, though presently misguided by certain factors, is the Indian media. He wants to ameliorate this condition and is hopeful that his efforts shall bear fruits one day. His other interests include journalism and writing Ghazals. He has also worked with Vaatsalya as a summer intern recently.
Navesh Priyankar
Navesh Priyankar is a sophomore undergraduate in the Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Kanpur. He has keen interest in electronics and in the field of image processing. He has represented his school in various sports tournaments. He has played table tennis on the zonal level in the East Zone CBSE cluster tournament. He has played Badminton at the school level and is very passionate about cricket.
He has a keen interest in Music. He is a classically trained singer and has the qualification of “Sangeet Prabhakar”. He a member of the Music Club, IIT Kanpur, and is the lead vocalist of his college band called - “Parivartan”. He represented IIT Kanpur in the first ever inter IIT music challenge-“IIT Idol”, held as a part of the PAN-IIT
global conference at IIT Chennai which was broadcasted by SS music all over India. His band won the award for Best Composition.
He has been actively involved in organizing various intra hostel activities and has also been a part of the organizing committee of the cultural and technical fests of IIT Kanpur.
Neeraj R. Kedar
Neeraj R Kedar is an alumnus of BITS Pilani-Goa and is currently working on energy efficiency at Vaatsalya healthcare.
Neeraj is passionate about helping low-income households achieve a higher standard of living and believes education is the answer to most of todays problems. He is also passionate about solving the worlds energy crisis through the use of alternate sources of energy and energy efficient models. Neeraj has a wide variety of interests. He plays football and has been the college team captain. He also loves puzzles and organized a successful Sudoku event during QUARK 08. Neeraj is a trained Hindustani classical singer and has won prizes at school and district level in singing. He was part of a group of singers selected from school invited to perform song and dance at the Maha Kumbh Mela in 2001 and subsequently invited to perform for a show on DD.
Neha Kumari
Neha is an undergarduate student of Information Systems at BITS Pilani Goa campus. Recently she joined Amazon India Development Center (Bengaluru) as Intern-Sofware Development Engineer. She's passionate about institution building in rural india and entrepreneurship. She's interested in impact of national ID project. Back at campus, she headed Career Development Cell and ISPEAKS. She loves travelling and exploring with focus for people, places and ideas for a better tomorrow.
Pankaj Agarwal
Pankaj Agarwal is a dual degree candidate from BITS Pilani, Goa. He will be starting his fourth year pursuing a MSc. Economics and B.E. Electronics and Electrical Engineering. Fields like entrepreneurship and sustainable development approach with profit motive for the enhancement of the economy excite him a lot. He was the CEO of the company Xenon Technologies which made it into the finals of Eureka'07, Annual B-Plan Competition organized by IIT Bombay.
This summer he is a Guest Writer for NextBillion.net, an initiative of World Resources Institute to bring together the community of business leaders, social entrepreneurs, NGOs, policy makers and academics who wish to explore the connection between development and enterprise.
He is a nucleus member of Centre for Entrepreneurial Leadership (CEL) at BITS Pilani Goa Campus. Apart from academics, he is also a passionate blogger, very enthusiastic about tennis and graphy and got a Nikon D60 DSLR recently.
Rachit Chandra
Rachit Chandra is a rising senior at BITS Pilani. Having seen poverty in its brutal ferocity in rural Rajasthan, he wants to attack poverty through micro-enterprise. He is passionate about treating the BoP as producers and not just consumers. In the long term, he wants to become a policy
maker as he believes policy can give the nation a shove in the right direction. Rachit spent this summer developing a GIS based solution for Ujjivan to increase efficiency of the field staff. In the past, he has worked in an all women rural BPO and traveled in the Nilgiris making a documentary on environmental conservation.
Rachit is a Goldman Sachs Global Leader, Class of 2008 and an Aditya Birla Scholar, Batch of 2006. He loves traveling cheap and maintains a widely read blog.
Rishikesh B. G.
Rishikesh B.G. is a college senior at BITS, Pilani-Goa Campus.He has previously worked at Tamil Nadu Science and Technology Center,Chennai as a research intern performing an in depth market research on the institute's services, with recommendations.
He is specifically interested in Cause Marketing and Corporate Finance. He is a Co Founder and Ex-Secretary of Wall Street Club,the official Finance and Investments related Club at Bits,Pilani-Goa Campus and the
Ex - Coordinator for Department of Sponsorship and Marketing (DoSM) for QUARK 2009, managing a team of 50 individuals in raising 30,000 $ for the national technical festival. He has also won numerous debating competitions and literary events at the Inter College level, and is the Ex Vice-President of the Literary and Debating Club.
Rohini Deepti Natti
Rohini Deepthi Natti graduated from Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani this June. She had a six-month stint in market research and consulting as an Analyst in Telecom, Information and Communication Technology at Frost and Sullivan, Chennai last year. After that she interned at Orchard Advertising, Bangalore where she designed an awareness campaign for global warming.
This summer of 2009 at Ethos, Rohini is helping create a one-stop online portal for the NGO's, donors, service providers and community which will integrate existing solutions and help build a more efficient development sector. She is actively involved in marketing and designing of the portal. Rohini is a very creative person, graphy being her favorite pass-time!
Shrey Goyal
Shrey Goyal is a student at the Indian Institute of Technology - Kharagpur. He is an alumnus of the Future World Leaders Summit Program, Presidential Classroom, and a life member of Mensa. He was a part of the first cohort of Engineers for Social Impact (E4SI) fellows, spending his E4SI summer at iDiscoveri.
Shrey is passionate about developing sustainable business models, and has recently cofounded Urja, a venture which aims to provide low cost solar energy solutions to the masses, which has been selected as a Youth Venture by Ashoka, and has been recognised by several other national and international Social Entrepreneurship and B-Planning challenges as well. He is exploring his interest in Base-of-the-Pyramid theory and other avenues of Sustainable Development through academic research. He is enthusiastic about meeting new people and taking on new initiatives and challenges.
Sarabjeet Singh
Sarabjeet Singh is alumnus of IIT Kharagpur, Class of 2009. He possesses special interests in technology and online communities. He designed a search engine tool at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, MIT last summer. Sarabjeet is passionate about music, reading, social issues, entrepreneurship and globalization. He founded the KGP chapter of the world’s largest student organization, AIESEC.
Sarabjeet is an alumnus of TATA Jagriti Yatri '08 and volunteers with the Indian Youth Climate Network. He is currently working at Ethos Advisors and also leading Let Me Know as the new Head.
Sheta Mittal
Sheta Mittal is a third year student of Aerospace Engineering at IIT Bombay. With sound academics, she is an athlete with best-meet-records in her kitty and currently heads the student organisation of Mood Indigo-India`s Largest College Festival. She is a very passionate about Education and its impartment in the society. She is ambitious and adventurous. With interests lying in reading and travelling she aspires to be the CEO of a multinational company. She has also worked with iDiscoveri as a summer intern recently.
Shruti Srivastava
Shruti is a final year student pursuing a Dual Degree in Electrical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. Having led the institute's Entrepreneurship Cell and the India chapter of the Asia Pacific Student Entrepreneurship Society, she was the Indian representative at the Global Student Entrepreneurship Summit held at Stanford University in 2008. Shruti is interested in for-profit social entrepreneurship viz, bottom of the pyramid models and clean development technologies. Having worked previously with startups in the technical as well as social space, she also co-founded a non-profit counsulting initiative called Young Birbals to provide free-of-cost advisory services to student startup organizations. Srikant Pasumarthy
Srikanth Pasumarthy is a first year student in IIT Guwahati-Assam in ECE stream and an alumnus of Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya-Andhra Pradesh. He is a recipient of Bharti foundation scholarship and received Air India RANK award in class 8. Srikanth is passionate about marketing strategies and currently he was involved in marketing team of Techniche- annual techno-management festival of IIT Guwahati. He is interested in our rich Indian heritage and has deep respect towards Indian culture. His interests include designing, playing games-lawn tennis, table tennis, volleyball, and robotics-manual and semi autonomous. He also worked with A Little World as a summer intern recently.
Srinath Ramakkrushnan
Srinath Ramakkrushnan is a third year undergraduate student from IIT Madras, majoring in Mechanical Engineering. At IIT Madras, he is the Overall Team Leader of IViL (IIT for Villages), a student organization where amazing things are done everyday, coupling technology and rural development. He is the coordinator of the IKC (Integrated Knowledge Center) project of IIT Madras and has inaugurated the first centre at Natham village in Tamil Nadu. He is also the co-founder of WRCG (WhiteSwan Rural Consultancy Group) which works with NGOs and CSRs for providing technical solutions to rural areas. Srinath was invited to attend the Acumen Fund Global Student Leaders Workshop in New York this summer and is a strong advocate of poverty alleviation through social entrepreneurship. He is passionate about developmental research and has published case studies for Skoll Social Innovation Conference and Rural Innovations Network.
Varun Jain
Varun Jain is a college senior at IIT Kanpur and is majoring in Electrical Engineering. A Goldman Sachs Global Leader Class of 2007, Varun has attended numerous international conferences like Global Leadership Institute - 2007 and Business Today International Business Conference - 2008 which has allowed him to meet interesting people from around the world, interact and learn from leaders in different walks of life and explore his interest in social innovation, globalization and leadership. He is an enthusiastic traveler and loves to read books, try out different cuisines and watch movie. He has also worked with Ethos as a summer intern recently.
I was in Sikkim when I applied and was accepted to be an E4SI fellow and the setting could not have been more perfect. During the fellowship application period I had found it very difficult to access the internet even in the state’s capital and completing my application for the E4SI fellowship had been quite a challenge. This experience led me to want to do something about the lack of internet connectivity and to glimpse for myself the vast business opportunity in encouraging people to do business online. This realization had a big influence on my immersion experience with Ethos Philanthropy and it played a major role in shaping the business plan of the first-of-its-kind online social marketplace for non-profits and social entrepreneurs that we worked on all summer.
Our aim was to create an online ecosystem to nurture and support social entrepreneurs and nonprofits in India. In order to develop the marketplace according to the needs of its target users, our team of 5 E4SI fellows interacted with nonprofits, social entrepreneurs and sector experts, and also conducted online surveys. The idea was to develop a one-stop website for everything related to social development in India, and bring together nonprofits, social entrepreneurs, donation agencies, and individuals on a single platform. We wanted to solicit donations as well as support in the form of volunteering, mentorship, consultancy, etc. for the nonprofits and also become an online resource repository. It is an entirely unique venture in India and we found there was great appreciation of our effort by all those who we approached to discuss our idea.
My work was focused on conceptualizing products and services to be offered online. During one of the brainstorming sessions (which were always an integral part of our daily routine and one of the most rewarding parts of the immersion experience as well) we conceptualized a fellowship program (www.isupportfellowships.com) to engage professionals to volunteer for short-term consultancy projects for nonprofits in India. The program has been implemented and has seen participation from professionals working in MNCs in Bangalore and Mumbai as well as MBA students from the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad.
While discussing social entrepreneurs’ business models with them, we felt there was a need to develop a different framework to examine and capture their high social impact instead of using the conventional venture capital models. Hence, we worked to develop a framework for analyzing social entrepreneurs’ business models using not only traditional economic parameters but unconventional social impact parameters as well.
Overall, we got a very good idea of the state of the social development sector in India. The immersion experience gave us a complete picture of social entrepreneurship and it was exhilarating to be a part of the founding team of a social venture. Priya Naik, who is herself a social entrepreneur and carries immense social development sector experience, is one of the best mentors I have ever had and I learned a lot from her as well as from my other colleagues who were all E4SI fellows themselves.
Though the words "Social Impact" have always excited me, prior to my E4SI fellowship I was unsure of the nature of work involved. Intellecap offered me an opportunity to work at the intersection of the field of Technology and the Social Sector. Through E4SI I got the opportunity to work for a 'real' project. I got the opportunity to work with the 'professionals'. What could be a better platform to learn? E4SI gave me the chance to meet the change makers. Intellecap's work environment instantly put me at ease. I was to stay at the company's guest house with a jogging park, mall, gym and lots of restaurants and snack corners nearby. It was only a fifteen minutes walk to work as well. I was to work with the Tech Team (also called the Geek Team by co-workers) under Siddharth. Though office hours were from twelve in the afternoon to eight thirty in the evening, to Sid what ultimately mattered was my motivation to work and productivity.My first task was to write tests for MISFIT (our MIS for the MFIs). The aim was to get acquainted with the existing codebase and the tools and technologies used. The working platform was GNU/Linux with Ruby for scripting and Merb/Rails for web programming. My major project was to develop a Knowledge Management System for SMEs . The software essentially is an easy to use, feature rich "Office Twitter", with the ability to create group updates and private messages, comment on updates, attach multiple files along with the update, tag the update, create and moderate polls and groups, and perform full text searches. Alongside, I also developed scripts to audit loans for the MFIs that migrated to MISFIT from their older solution. Later, I also worked on improving, and demonstrating the web API of MISFIT to potential clients for easy integration with their legacy system.Very soon I gelled with the highly skilled team that drives Intellecap. Lunch break was interaction time with the entire Intellecap team, where they would share their experiences in work and life. Friday afternoons were always dedicated to watching an episode of TED talk, which would invariably invite a heated discussion.This was my first opportunity to work at a professional level. I made a product that brings to the enterprises the power of the Internet to share information within any company in real time and, manage work. Thanks to Intellecap and E4SI I enjoyed a summer filled with fun and learning.
I have a penchant to work in the energy sector, particularly in renewable sources of energy. I am grateful to E4SI and D.Light for having recognized my passion and intelligence in this field and offered me an internship.
Primarily, I was to work on developing an economic Solar Lighting device for hawkers. Working with a team of product designers taught me to break the “feasibility” inhibition that I faced as a true engineer and to think without limits. And guess what, it worked at times! I came out with some impressive out-of-box ideas. I learnt how to generate a plethora of ideas and how and when to filter them to get a gilded product out of it.
I visited a few market places in Noida at night when hawkers open their stalls. I interacted with them, to understand their needs and problems they faced with existing lighting sources. Silent observation helped me learn what was unsaid. I developed some working prototypes and had them user tested from which I arrived at the best possible specifications for the product. Thus was born the final product.
I was also asked to improvise an existing product. I made trips to villages of Uttar Pradesh, where the particular product was being used I interacted with the users and asked for their feedback and other suggestions. I also tried to understand their general needs and expectations from a Lighting Product. Also, I personally used the product to identify its shortcomings.. Finally, from my experimentation and study I came with two prospective versions of the product, one which met all the shortcomings and the other which was a trade-off between improvisation and change in the cost of production. The latter was selected for production and the former was recorded for probable implementation in the future.
Apart from these, I was also assigned some short term exercises, which were part of other ongoing projects, which included identifying customer segments and testing of prototypes. One of my important contributions to the company was a proposition to stop one of their projects which I proved would not be successful. The company accepted it and the project was terminated, thereby saving time and money,
My team at D.Light shared tremendous camaraderie. Everyone had expertise in a certain field and we had constructive discussions over any problem. Being the only person with a technology background, I was handed all the technological research. I was also given due weightage in decisions concerning feasibility of an idea. Overall, it was a great learning experience at D.Light, for which I’m grateful to my team and the Manager of Product Development and particularly to my supervisor who shared his experiences and knowledge and always gave me time when I was faced with problems..
My application to E4SI started with a desire to work in the social sector, about which there is so much hype these days. The experience turned out to be more satisfying than I had imagined.
In the first week of my internship at Ujjivan, I was given a chance to interact with the customers and experience microfinance at its grassroots. These customers were poor women who sought credit to educate their children or to buy tailoring machines that would bring home extra income, in many cases, just the basic income. The innocence and trust in the eyes of these women moved me, as they interacted with the Ujjivan staff, both doing their best to make sure the loan was delivered.
As E4SI promises, the internship is as much about working for a business organization as it is about working in the social sector. Ujjivan has a welcoming and friendly work culture, which I found refreshing. Everyone at work was encouraging. There were no issues of confidentiality within the organization and that made work easier. The management was supportive of interns and considered their work with due credibility.
I worked on building a dynamic model to calculate the cost of operations in the back offices. This helped the management recognize operations that could be outsourced. I also studied the back end operations at the company’s various regional offices and compared them, to bring to the management’s notice the differences and their impact. Best practices were further identified.
Due to the interest I showed in finance, I was also given a chance to work with the finance department, where I categorized the expenses of the company and compared the operating cost ratio of Ujjivan with industry standards.
E4SI also held a conference at the end of the internship, which was attended by the likes of Laura Parkin, Gurucharan Das, Lily Paul, and Bindu Ananth, to name a few, who inspired and encouraged the fellows with their stories and their insight into the development sector. The conference proved an excellent platform to interact with these inspiring leaders as well as the other fellows of E4SI. The E4SI fellowship, in its entirety, has given me the courage to believe that I can make a difference.
When I first decided to apply for the E4SI fellowship, I had no idea what would be in store for me for I only vaguely understood what a social enterprise is.. My choice of organization was automatic-“A Little World”, popularly known as “ALW”. I was really excited about this company because the work was related to biometrics and image processing which really interests me.
For the first few weeks I was assigned at the ALW Mumbai office. Within a few days of coming on board, I learnt that the project I was meant to work on had been scrapped. I was devastated to say the least. However, the following day, we had a reassuring meeting with the Vice President and Founder of the company Anurag Gupta. We had a very enlightening conversation where I learnt more about the company, its various products, the business model and other details. I was assigned a new project related to the solar lights that the company was going to launch. We were given the task of finding out sustainable and cost effective sources of energy for setting up charging stations for such lamps. We did a lot of research in this area, and got a lot of exposure to the challenges associated with the widespread commercial use of renewable sources of energy.
After 2 weeks, the company sent me to Hyderabad to begin work on my original project related to fingerprint de-duplication. Ankit Saraf, another E4SI fellow and I, worked together on this project. The company works as a business correspondent to banks in rural areas and uses fingerprints as the biometric for recognition. Efficient recognition and de-duplication of fingerprints is essential for this. They wanted us to come up with an optimum solution to the problem of duplication in creation of accounts and cash disbursements with the technology available in the market. We studied the basic components of algorithms used in identification and verification of fingerprints. We also tried out the Megamatcher SDK with the field data. We visited Warangal district and saw the enrollment and cash disbursement process. We interacted with officials from Commissioner Rural Development (CRD) Government of Andhra Pradesh, National Institute of Smart Government (NISG) and 4G Identity Solutions & studied in detail about the technology involved in the process of De-duplication in the state of Andhra Pradesh. We finally presented a detailed report regarding the technical challenges and possible solutions regarding Fingerprint de-duplication. Our research has helped ALW with the basic framework required to undertake de-duplication.
The 2 months I spent with ALW provided me with a whole new perspective on our country and the problems it faces today. I got a firsthand exposure of the economic and social conditions prevailing in the villages of our country. It made me aware of the enormous amount of work being put into this sector by the government, NGO’s and other social enterprises for the social and economic welfare of the masses. It made me realize the massive contribution that technology can make in the development of our country. The E4SI experience was a real eye opener.
My internship experience at Intellecap was unique. A blend of technology, microfinance and social Entrepreneurship, it offered me even more opportunities than the immersion brief had stated. Intellecap can easily qualify as one of the best places to work at in the social entrepreneurship sector with the startup culture, flat hierarchy and creative freedom they offer to their employees. My immersion experience was based in Mumbai. The technology solutions team is based in Mumbai along with representation from Business Advisory, Knowledge Advisory and Publications teams as well. The work environment was amazing and we as interns could take a peek into all that Intellecap as a company was doing, which was rewarding.
My work at Intellecap included contribution to two projects, MISFIT being the first. MISFIT/MOSTFIT is MIS product for Microfinance institutions (MFI). It is designed for small microfinance institutions who cannot afford the expensive and complicated offerings in the market. The project can be found at URL http://mostfit.intellecap.in/ which also contains a demo server. Working with MOSTFIT introduced me to a few new technologies, I was largely unaware of. It was a good learning experience. One of the best parts was to attend the meetings with prospective clients and see customizations happening. Information Technology (IT) at Intellecap is all passionate about free and open source software and the passion is almost palpable. If you happen to be a proud geek and are motivated by innovation as a daily practice, IT at Intellecap is the place to be.
My next contribution was a project management and collaboration tool being modeled on the lines of Basecamp by 37Signals (http://basecamphq.com/ ). It was a great pleasure working with ruby on rails. The neat code looks beautiful to even the guy who has to maintain it. Working at Intellecap was a great exercise for me in understanding Web 2.0 applications.
Another thing that impacted me was the experience of people around me. The mentorship I received at Intellecap was fabulous. Everyone at office was eager to share. We had discussions on TED talks every Friday and the lunch conversations were mostly fierce (very!) and insightful debates with participation from everyone. We were rewarded with knowledge about everything from the operations domain to publications. All you needed to do was to ask the right questions.
Engineers for Social Impact fellowship doesn’t finish with the immersion experience. It begins there. After having diverse experiences at even more diverse companies with social consciousness, all the fellows gathered for the conference. We all shared our experiences in the most thought provoking and electrifying atmosphere possible. The aggregation of experiences from different places made my fellowship even more dear to me. The best part is yet to be described.
At the conference, we had an exceptional line up of speakers to interact with on a personal one to one basis. I have never had a more productive and inspiring weekend in my life. The conference was the highlight of the internship for me. The mood was elevated with keynote address from Laura Parkin (Executive Director of the Wadhwani Foundation and NEN). We interacted with the likes of Harish Hande (Managing Director, SELCO), Pankaj Jain (Legal Associate, Acumen Fund), Bindu Ananth (President, IFMR trust) and so on. The conference had representation from all sectors; Venture capitalists, strategy consultants, serial entrepreneurs, for profit and not for profit organizations and so on. We learned legal aspect and the nuances of raising capital from the experiences of the best in the Industry.
My fellowship continues and so does my learning. Till now, it has been a great ride for me. Good luck to those who follow.
E4SI's existence came to my knowledge as a result of a conversation with my batch-mates back on campus. In January 2009, when E4SI released their second edition, I followed the criteria in detail. After reading up on the impressive network support they have in the form of their partner social enterprises and advisors, I decided to send in my application. Choosing the organization I would be interning with, however, did force me to stop and think twice given the vast sector options that the immersion experiences offered. I finally settled on A Little World , a Mumbai based nonprofit organization which heads ZERO Mass Foundation engaged in bringing financial inclusion in the remotest of the villages of India where banks are not able to set up their operational unit because of the costs. ALW, which acts as the banks' correspondent carry out their operations in villages and provides front-end transactional services.
The interview process was sharpened to determine my compatibility with the work activity that I would be performing rather than to test my knowledge of the organization which, I think, worked well. The work ambience took me off guard for I was welcomed by comfortable bean bags and a friendly and helpful staff. After brain storming with the head of the technology department of the organization, I was put to research on the expansion plans of the company and check out case-specific feasibility by taking different scenarios. The research varied from analyzing the capacity of a bio-gas plant to finding the legal mandates for setting up a theatre in rural domains. This sphere involved a considerable field work and I was constantly traveling either to take the quotations from an organization manufacturing bio-gas plants or to know the intricacies of business procedure in a village Panchayat. As a result of this multi-pronged work task that I had to perform during my internship, I learnt a lot about the opportunities that exist is the development sector and various technicalities which can be learnt only by personally testing the waters.
E4SI gave me a brilliant opportunity to work in the organization which scaled massively during its tenure and gave me deeper insights about the myths that prevail regarding social entrepreneurship and development sector. I am now more focused about the career options that behold my future and I sincerely thank the E4SI team to have made this opportunity available for me.
E4SI's existence came to my knowledge as a result of a conversation with my batch-mates back on campus. In January 2009, when E4SI released their second edition, I followed the criteria in detail. After reading up on the impressive network support they have in the form of their partner social enterprises and advisors, I decided to send in my application. Choosing the organization I would be interning with, however, did force me to stop and think twice given the vast sector options that the immersion experiences offered. I finally settled on A Little World , a Mumbai based nonprofit organization which heads ZERO Mass Foundation engaged in bringing financial inclusion in the remotest of the villages of India where banks are not able to set up their operational unit because of the costs. ALW, which acts as the banks' correspondent carry out their operations in villages and provides front-end transactional services.
The interview process was sharpened to determine my compatibility with the work activity that I would be performing rather than to test my knowledge of the organization which, I think, worked well. The work ambience took me off guard for I was welcomed by comfortable bean bags and a friendly and helpful staff. After brain storming with the head of the technology department of the organization, I was put to research on the expansion plans of the company and check out case-specific feasibility by taking different scenarios. The research varied from analyzing the capacity of a bio-gas plant to finding the legal mandates for setting up a theatre in rural domains. This sphere involved a considerable field work and I was constantly traveling either to take the quotations from an organization manufacturing bio-gas plants or to know the intricacies of business procedure in a village Panchayat. As a result of this multi-pronged work task that I had to perform during my internship, I learnt a lot about the opportunities that exist is the development sector and various technicalities which can be learnt only by personally testing the waters.
E4SI gave me a brilliant opportunity to work in the organization which scaled massively during its tenure and gave me deeper insights about the myths that prevail regarding social entrepreneurship and development sector. I am now more focused about the career options that behold my future and I sincerely thank the E4SI team to have made this opportunity available for me.
I was introduced to Ethos Philanthropy through E4SI. My short journey was both challenging and exciting, constantly pushing me beyond limits. With very limited knowledge and experience in the development sector, the first few weeks were more about learning and discovery. When I first read the idea of creating a one-stop portal for the social sector and making “giving” cool, easy and effective, I loved it.
NGOs, foundations, social enterprises, corporations, professionals and youth – all stakeholders have an important role to play if we are to make “giving” part and parcel of our lives. During my stint with Ethos, I interacted with a several individuals and organizations who strongly believed in the idea we were embarking on. But when I started talking to nonprofits, I was slowly losing confidence and often felt annoyed and irritated at the inefficiency and informal organization of this sector in India. Gradually, as I learnt more, I realized how the sector has been extremely neglected. In this respect, E4SI is serving a very crucial need at a time when no such program exists in a country which is one of the fastest growing economies of the world.
It was during the conference held by E4SI at the end of summer at Bangalore that I realized how powerful and innovative the program is. From Ashoka to Acumen Fund to NEN (National Entrepreneurship Network), the two-day long event covered a series of talks in varied areas of social entrepreneurship.
I believe that the future of our country lies in the hands of organizations who are taking up community problems, creating elegant solutions and scaling them drastically. Driven by the motive to tell the one billion people in India, how some inspiring social entrepreneurs are changing the world, and urge the masses to help these change agents, I have now joined Ethos as a full-time employee and am heading fast towards creating the one-stop portal for change.
I spent the summer of 2009 at SELCO, as a part of the Engineers for Social Impact (E4SI) fellowship. I worked on building a multifunction paddy dehusker/dry-grinder/oil-expeller machine at SELCO's Incubation Lab in Ujire. I greatly cherish my stint at SELCO because of two reasons in particular:
(i) "Engineering for Social Impact": Being an extremely passionate person in the social sector, the internship at SELCO Labs gave me my first real break - Engineering need based solutions for the rural community. I think when passion meets need, magic is certain! (ii) "Learning by Doing": My lab had a strong focus in delivering rather than just designing. Most of the learnings in designing my machine came from rustic field surveys and interactions with local paddy farmers. Trust me, online literature on rural technologies is highly inadequate! Innovations, ideas and actions came from different sources - automobile workshops, hardware stores, engineering college workshops and Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs). SELCO gave me a unique and highly satisfying summer. You get a lot of independence to translate your ideas to action, and I think there is nothing more rewarding!