IIT Alumnus who became teacher

Meet Arvind Gupta: The IIT Kanpur Engineer Who Quit His Job At Telco And Began Teaching Science To The Children Of India

When Arvind Gupta quit his job, his mother came to his defence stating ‘good, now he will do something noble with his life’. A prophetic statement from a woman who never had a day of formal education in her life but ensured that her four children excelled academically.

For almost 30 years now, Arvind Gupta has been taking his love for science and learning to the young minds of your country. Gupta has travelled to over 3000 schools, demonstrating captivating science experiments to wide eyed children. What sparks their imagination further is that Gupta uses only everyday garbage as the building blocks of these experiments.

“All teaching aids we use are hand-made. It‘s important for children to see that you don‘t need fancy materials. Science can also help you look critically at materials that are often considered trash, there is a lot of learning in that itself”

An empowering lesson for his pupils who are of limited means. They watch him as he explains phenomenon like light and its laws of convergence & divergence with only used up ball-point pen refills, rubber slippers or empty tetra packs! He also distributes CD’s packed with massive collections of e-books and videos to the schools he visits. Often, these are the only teaching aids they have ever received or used. The keenest minds of our country might be hidden away in a broken down municipality school, in a town we have never heard of. A tryst with Arvind Gupta could open their eyes to endless possibilities and give them the chance to dream, despite their limiting environment.

Gupta’s dedication, perseverance and brilliance have not gone unnoticed. He has been recognized by organisations such as UNESCO, UNICEF, International Toy Research Association, Boston Science Centre, Walt Disney Imagineering and Research.

He has received a special award given by the National Association for the Blind for designing teaching aids for pre-school blind children and the Ruchi Ram Sahni Award for science popularization, among others.

“I have an enduring passion for my work because it allows me to reinvent myself. Every child has a dream in their eyes, and each of them instills a hope in me about the future”, he shares.

Thus, not every day do we come across good Samaritans like Gupta who would give their all for the betterment of the society!

The man who bravely fought his own case and won

Meet Rajesh Sakre: The Tea Vendor Who Fought And Won His Own Case Against One Of The India's Large Banks.

Rajesh has merely studied till Class five and runs a tea shop in Shabri Nagar in Bhopal. But single-handedly had to challenge the one of the India's biggest bank back in 2011 when a sum of Rs. 9,200 disappeared from his bank account. Mr. Sakre had Rs.20,000 in his account, from which he withdrew a sum of Rs.10,800. However, on his next ATM visit he realized his account had been wiped clean.

When Mr Sakre reached out to the officers at Bank, they cast the matter aside and blamed him for the mishap. He then made an appeal to the bank's Mumbai headquarters, but was of no use. As a last resort, he filed a case in the District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum.

Since he could not afford a lawyer, he went head to head with every bank lawyer in the city to fight his own case in court. The bank was convinced that it was Mr Sakre who had withdrawn the amount in question. But they could not produce any evidence like CCTV footage to back their claim.

The Victory:

Thus, after about a dozen hearings, Mr Sakre won the battle on June 16. The consumer court helped him gain justice and ordered the bank to return Rs.9,200 along with 6% interest within two months.

In addition to this, the bank also has to shell out Rs.10,000 for the anguish they caused their consumer and another sum of Rs.2,000 for his legal expenses.

Thus, the story of Rajesh Sakre is truly inspiring as he rose to the challenge and stopped at nothing until he got justice!

The story of true value computers

The Story Of A Team That Created More Than 10,000 Affordable Computers From Scrap! 

Mukund BS, the 33-year old young entrepreneur was an electronic engineer earlier and an IIM graduate. When he was traveling with his uncle once, an idea of selling affordable computers struck his mind. That is when Renew It came into picture with his cousin Raghav Boggaram as co-founder. Renew It has now grown to a team of seven technicians and sales persons. They collects scrap computers from corporates and sells them at affordable rates to the needy people after the required repair and maintenance.

How it works?

The business model is very simple. They tie up with the corporates and take all their scrap computers. The team of technicians work on it to convert the scrap into a working machine. The process of buying the computers from these corporates is often a long procedure and can take as long as six months. After getting the scrap, the team of technicians start working on it and convert it into a working machine. The process takes around 2-3 weeks depending on the efforts required to fix the old machine.
The organization has sold 10,000 computers so far in a span of five years.

The challenge

Mukund elaborates on this aspect:

“The biggest challenge or should I say fear is that I don’t know what will be the way forward, say, 5 years later as technology is completely evolving”

When he first started working on the idea of Renew IT, computers held an important place in the society as the Smartphones weren’t there. “Now when I see people doing most of their work on their phones I don’t know how useful computers will be in future,” Mukund says.

Another challenge which Mukund faces is the unavailability of right type of scrap. Also, uninformed customers is yet another issue. “Some people in not so developed areas don’t know how a computer works. So sometimes they wouldn’t handle it properly which reduces the life of a machine,” he says.

Scaling Up

The company which started in Bangalore has now extended to Hyderabad and Mumbai. They also provide after-sale services to their clients for free for one year. Started with the initial capital of around Rs. 20 lakhs. They have grown to a capital of around Rs. 50-Rs.60 lakhs.

Thus, we applaud Mukesh and his team for their innovative endeavors in uplifting the less-privileged communities.

Mobiles can be good for health.....learn how

Meet Shelley Saxena: The Mastermind Of The Incredible Sevamob Which Cures Illnesses Through Mobile Technology!

The entrepreneur Shelley Saxena who was born in Lucknow came up with a novel idea of providing healthcare to low-income families by tapping mobile technology. Sevamob is headquartered in Atlanta, USA with a fully owned subsidiary in India and was started in 2011.

The Goal of Sevamob

Sevamob was developed to fundamentally transform the delivery of primary healthcare in the developing countries, particularly for the low-income segment that has limited access to primary healthcare and limited awareness about insurance.

How it works?

The delivery happens through a cloud based mobile platform. The monthly subscription based primary healthcare is delivered through mobile clinics staffed with doctors carrying Android tablets. Then at signup, the team captures patient demographics and medical record in the software and gives a subscriber card to the patient.

Once a month, basic primary care such as BP, Sugar, ECG, BMI, Dental, Vision, Diet plan etc), is delivered on-premise. This includes preventive care (prescriptions and medicines for common ailments. For advanced issues, prescription requests are created in software. These go to back-office specialists who either give a prescription or set up a no-charge appointment.

Where are they functioning?

Sevamob is currently successfully serving in Lucknow city, Kakori, Mohanlal Gunj, Barabanki and Unnao in Uttar Pradesh. In Liberia (Africa) too, this model has been replicated through a license.

Besides Village Capital, they have received recognition from several other organizations like Nasscom Foundation, mBillionth Awards, Mahindra Rise and Artha Venture Challenge.

The multi-faceted and well-integrated Sevamob team is supported by back-office specialists, a 24×7 call center and a network of 3rd party service providers like hospitals, clinics and pathologists. The field teams are equipped with Android tablets having mobile software which can operate without network even in the most remote areas.

While Sevamob is doing a fabulous job in its designated zones, the health venture is at a nascent stage and rearing to spread its wings across a wider territory. Their goal is to scale from 4000 subscribers in 2013 to 240,000 direct subscribers within 5 years in India. They also plan to replicate the model in additional geographies.

We hope Team Sevamob scales higher reaches and betters the health of several more people, cutting across social and economic boundaries.

Micro Liver

Dr. Sangeeta Bhatia: The Indian Origin Scientist Who Developed World’s First Human Micro Liver Won $250,000 Heinz Award 

As a 16-year old Bhatia was taken to the bio-engineering lab at MIT by her father and her encounter with the fascinating scientific experiments stirred her imagination and got her interested in Science. 

Her first intervention happened during her graduation at MIT. Dr. Bhatia was assigned the task of cultivating living liver cells in a petri dish, an endeavor that had been attempted unsuccessfully for many years. After three years of effort, a visit to a microfabrication facility—where students laid circuits out on silicon chips—inspired Dr. Bhatia to experiment with the process to see if it could be used to “print” tiny liver cells on plastic.The result was the first human “micro-liver”, a miniature model organ that makes it possible to test drug reactions efficiently and predictively, and could eventually lead to an artificial human liver.

Micro-livers are now used by dozens of bio-pharmaceutical companies and are being developed as a powerful laboratory tool for testing cures for malaria, specifically the testing of drugs that can eradicate the reservoir of parasites that remain in the liver even after a patient’s symptoms subside.

Owing to this incredible micro-liver discovery, Dr. Sangeeta Bhatia received the Heinz Award in Technology, the Economy and Employment category, for her seminal work in tissue engineering and disease detection, including the cultivation of functional liver cells outside of the human body, and for her passion in promoting the advancement of women in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields.

Dr. Sangeeta Bhatia is currently Director of LMRT at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and the John J. and Dorothy Wilson Professor at MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS).

Bhatia has also been recognized as one of the “the nation’s most promising young professors in science and engineering” by the Packard Foundation. Forbes named her one of 18 Indian scientists – across all nations – who are “changing the world” and “one of the 100 most creative people in business” by Fast Company. In 2014, Dr. Bhatia was awarded the $ 500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize.

She and her over 150 trainees have contributed to more than 40 issued or pending patents and launched 10 biotechnology companies with 70+ commercial products at the intersection of medicine and miniaturization.

As a biotech engineer and medical researcher at MIT, Dr. Bhatia also works as an inventor, entrepreneur and is also a classical Indian dancer.

Thus, Indians such as Bhatia bring fame to our country no matter where they are!

The Indian Innovator who is on and on

Meet Annasaheb Bhavu Udgavi: The 82-Year Old Who Invented A Water-Powered Clock, A Foldable Charkha And A Farm Equipment.

Annasaheb as an ideator and innovator started when he was in 20s and has just kept going since.

The contribution made by him is immense and in fields as diverse as agriculture and renewable energy. Some of his innovation Milestones are:

Early 60's:

In 1960, he developed a clock which ran on drops of water. The second’s hand of the clock moved forward when a drop of water fell on it from a dispenser, which had been timed properly. In 1962, he made a horizontal charkha that was foldable and could fit into a suitcase. He displayed this at Sabarmati Ashram, which improvised on his design, and increased the number of ‘belanis’ from three to eight in the conventional one, in order to increase the output.

Mid 70's:

In the mid 1970’s, to save his betel vine orchard from acute water scarcity, Annasaheb fitted PVC pipes used in electrical fittings with perforations made on them using nails. By irrigating each day for one hour, he ran the crops for seven years. This was Annasaheb’s very own drip irrigation, when the term ‘drip irrigation’ was unheard of in this part of the World.

The 80's:

To protect his sugarcane crop from aphids and white flies, he created the rotor sprinkler system called ChandraPrabha that could cover a radius of 140 feet. Besides whisking the pests away, the ChandraPrabha rain gun can irrigate 1 acre in 1.5 hours.

The innovative Raingun irrigates more than twice as much area using the same amount of water. Along with irrigation, the sprinkler can be used for application of fertilizers and plant protection chemicals simply by mixing them in the water tank. This can save huge labour costs.

The 90's & Beyond:

Fed up from paucity of labour and exorbitant diesel costs to run the tractor for a single operation while cultivation sugarcane, Annasaheb developed an equipment that could perform three simultaneous operations for producing better quality mulch. The equipment can be attached to a 30-40 hp tractor and can simultaneously perform farm operations like bund forming, seed sowing, manure application and harvesting. He has been using the equipment for many years, and also holds a patent for it.
Age hasn’t slowed him down a bit, but made him more inquisitive and daring. India can surely do with more Annasahebs!!

The longest hunger strike

Meet Irom Chanu Sharmila: The Civil Rights Activist Whose Hunger Strike Against The Controversial AFSPA In Manipur For 500 Weeks Made Her ‘The Iron Lady Of Manipur’ 

Irom Sharmila as a Manpuri Journalist grew up with a strong loyalty to the land. She actively espoused social issues during her college days and participated in rallies to protest against violation of civil rights. 

It was the incident at Malom called as Malom Massacre that made Irom Sharmila to take a drastic step. In November 2000, 10 civilians were killed in a shooting allegedly perpetrated by the Assam Rifles, which is part of the Indian Paramilitary forces. Among the victims were a 62 year old woman and an 18 year old boy. The incident outraged Sharmila to such an extent that she announced a fast unto death, unless the AFSPA was revoked. Having refused food and water for more than 500 weeks, she has been called “the world’s longest hunger striker“.

Just three days after her protest, Sharmila was arrested for “attempt to commit suicide” which is considered an offence under the Indian Penal Code. She was later transferred to judicial custody, where her deteriorating health condition caused the authorities to feed her through a tube attached to her nose.

What is AFSPA?

The armed force special power act was passed in 1958 by the parliament. It comprises of six sections in which it grants special powers to the armed forces in ‘disturbed areas’. The U.N too has questioned the validity and constitutionality of the AFSPA and termed it as “dated and colonial-era law that breach contemporary international human rights standard.” The U.N has urged India to revoke the act.

International Attention and Honours

Her historic protest has not only garnered international attention but has also won Sharmila many awards and honours. Sharmila is also the recipient of Gwangju Prize for Human Rights which includes a $125,000 prize money. She donated this money to the victims of human rights violation in Manipur. In 2010, Sharmila won a lifetime achievement award from the Asian Human Rights Commission. She has refused to accept any award until her demand of repealing AFSPA is fulfilled, which she probably considers to be the best reward for her struggle.

Her struggle may be ongoing, but that does not mean success has been elusive. The mere fact that modification of AFSPA is now being discussed in party meetings and among political leaders is a testament to her achievement. In October 2013, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) ordered the state government to lift restrictions imposed on access to Sharmila.

All these are suggestive of the progress she has made. Sharmila has fought a long and hard battle for the preservation of civil rights and the time to savour victory is not far away.