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He spends his time focussing on education and rural development areas. He has conceived an intelligent village concept. Indrajit is the Director in the WGF Board, India and looks after Energy initiatives.
Year End Report 2023 - WHEELS Global Foundation
This letter is to give everyone a brief report on how your Time, Talent, and Treasure have been applied by WHEELS in 2023. None of the following would be possible without your support.
Address by the President, WGF
We entered 2023 on a high note after the resounding success of our first international-scale strategic event in Nov 2022 – “Ideal Village Conference” at Varanasi in partnership with Stanford University’s Ideal Village Center and our host BHU. More than 80 NGO Partners & foundations, industry consortiums, senior ministers and secretaries, and thought leaders joined us. It created a perfect platform for WHEELS to accelerate its journey into the next phase – launching new strategic initiatives such as ‘NGO Collaboration Platform’ (to drive rapid scaling and multiplier effect from existing proven best practices and create natural implementation pathways to IIT system created innovations), where we have already started working with nearly 70+ NGOs.
Our relevance to the 500,000+ strong alumni community is becoming evident through the introduction of nearly 2-3 new alumni-driven impact initiatives/entities almost every week. We have now launched on-the-ground impact initiatives across all of our six priority domains and nearly a dozen chosen solutions. In terms of impacting lives, our in-progress initiatives would easily take us to more than 15 million people, putting us well on our way to our mission of impacting ‘20% of Rurban India by 2030’. We have signed highly strategic partnerships with national footprint – CII and Sai Madhusudan Trust. These are all clear proof points that WHEELS’ operating model of technology-enabled philanthropy via catalytic support and scaling assistance to on-the-ground promising partners is working.
Our visits to alumni communities in all metro centers in India have reignited bonds and participation. Organizationally, we have further solidified our leadership bench by adding not only new Board, Chapter and Council leaders but also new leadership groups – WHEELS Ambassadors, WHEELS West Coast group, WHEELS India Executive Council etc. We have now taken concrete steps to extend our impact in our adopted land (USA) with several pilots for underserved communities (homeless, prisoners, inner-city youth, etc). WHEELS is now well-positioned for its next growth chapter. A growth that would be led by all our supporters and doers – alumni, doctors, lawyers, youth, public servants, and philanthropists.
On behalf of the entire WGF family of Board members, Partners, Volunteers, Staff, Donors, and well-wishers, I would like to thank each one for their dedication, passion, time, talent, and treasure to design, develop, and implement our initiatives for maximum impact. I take this opportunity to focus on a few of the achievements and initiatives in the past year that have yielded measurable, and tangible impact. I encourage you to visit our website for more details on our initiatives and ways to get involved.
Organizational Update
Building on the strong base of sustaining the organization structure, we made additions to leadership breadth and depth:
♦ In early 2023, we were saddened by the sudden passing away of our two beloved founders (Gulab Bhavnani and Anil Bhandari) who have left indelible marks through the decade-long support of WHEELS mission.
♦ We welcomed four new Board members bringing youth, West Coast and Midwest participation, and increased diversity – Nitesh Kumar, Sundar Kamath, Madhur Khanna, and Raghavan Ramanan.
♦ New youth leadership layer (WHEELS Ambassadors) has been set up with six young alumni and leaders, to ensure WHEELS has the generational capacity to keep marching forward.
♦ To guide the growing volume of our initiatives in India, we added a new leadership group ‘WHEELS India Executive Council’ with seven well-known professionals and leaders: Dr. Chaitanya Buch, Rahul Walwalkar, Gauri Kumar, Girish Kulkarni, Sujata Roy, Kishan Goenka, and Ramnath Mani. This council will also help drive regional outreach events and nurture CSR partnerships.
♦ We added two new Chapter leaders – Yadav Murti Sankaran in WHEELS India South, and Dr. Jayanta Saha in WHEELS India East.
♦ Our successful India Rising event, in partnership with Sai Madhusudan Trust, in the Bay Area led to the creation of our first WHEELS West group of young alumni.
♦ We further solidified our Governance through comprehensive review and enhancements to the Governance Document, enabling consistent and transparent decision-making.
♦ Our revamped website continues to receive great reviews, thanks to the great support from the offices of board member Himanshu Verma and operations director JVG Krishna Murthy (JVG).
♦ WHEELS Global Foundation India entity received FCRA certification in record time, thanks to the tireless efforts of WGF operations director JVG, and well supported by WHEELS India board chair Ashank Desai, board member Pradip Nadkarni, and WHEELS Advisor Ambassador Pradeep Kapur.
♦ We signed a strategic partnership with one of India’s most influential industry associations, CII (Confederation of Indian Industries) which would enable us to leverage Corporate India resources to scale our initiatives all over India. The expansion of RuralShores to a new location near Varanasi has been selected as the first joint initiative.
♦ Our partnership with Sai Madhusudan Trust is driving joint efforts in health, education and livelihoods, and has huge potential to drive large-scale transformational initiatives in these domains.
♦ We are partnering with GOI’s ambitious initiative Unnat Bharat Abhiyan, coordinated by IIT Delhi to launch the NGO Collaboration Platform that would have two transformational impacts at the national scale: (a) enable rapid replication of one NGO’s proven best practices and solutions by thousand other ones and thus creating a rapid multiplier effect; (b) create a natural implementation pathway for vast repository of innovative solutions coming out of our IITs and other higher-education institutions.
♦ Some of the other noteworthy partners we engaged with are: Samhita Impact Ventures, ATE Chandra Foundation, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, MICRO, PeopleShores, Govt of M.P., Grameena Vikas Kendram, Urdhvam, RuKart, NOBA, Spoken Tutorials – IIT Bombay, Sri Annapoorna Trust, Gram Samriddhi Abhiyan, Rang De, Raah Foundation, Diksha, University of Silicon Andhra.
On 20th October, under the energetic leadership of our Board Members, Smita Siddhanti, Madhur Khanna, Suresh Shenoy, and Nitesh Kumar, we held the WHEELS Global Foundation Gala event at Congressional Country Club, Washington DC. The tireless efforts of so many members and volunteers paid off in a very successful event from all angles – engaging prominent alumni and community leaders (former NFL player Kyle Arrington & THE EVOLVE Foundation, Chuck Scofield & Save our Strengths); celebrating lifetime service to WHEELS by Rajat Gupta (Chairman), Arjun Malhotra (WHEELS Advisor), Ron Mehta (Executive Director, WHEELS’s sister entity WIN Foundation), and Dr Vibha Gupta (Founder, Magan Sangrahalya Samiti); showcasing WHEELS initiatives; and fundraising. The full-capacity audience enjoyed inspiring entertainment from guest Vatsala Mehra and formed new bonds of impact and giving back. We owe our heartfelt thanks to Mahesh Ramanujam and Geetanjali Prasad from our partner Global Network for Zero, who did amazing pro-bono work to drive all of Gala’s storytelling. Read More
Some of the brief highlights from our vertical domains, with more available on our website and to come in our quarterly Newsletters:
WATER
After a successful deployment of pioneering Collaborative Governance and Portal solution to help rejuvenate underground water springs in H.P. (on path to impacting the lives of 6m people), WGF is leveraging the same learnings and the model to help YEIDA (Yamuna Expressway Industrial Development Authority) rehabilitate 27 villages with full spectrum of services in health, water & sanitation, education, renewable energy & livelihoods. WGF has selected strategic partners Amritha Vishwa Vidyalaya, ATE Chandra Foundation and Development Alternatives to bring comprehensive capabilities to achieve YEIDA goals.
Our H.P. project and the YEIDA project were both recognized at the recent Annual Jal Prahari Samaroh 2023 – Water Conference in New Delhi – a great testament to the tireless service and leadership of our WHEELS Water Council Chair Person Mrs Gauri Kumar & Yogesh Andlay, Co-Chair.
In July, in partnership with our A.P. and Maharashtra-based impact partners (Urdhvam Technologies provider of BoreChrger innovation; Grameena Vikas Kendram pioneering Regenerative Farming; Rural Studies and Development Society supporting A.P. farmers for nearly two decades), the borewell recharging initiative leveraging the BoreCharger innovation was successfully launched in Kurnool district (Andhra Pradesh) to create objective proof points and replication framework.
This innovation, at nearly 1/3rd the cost and 3-times the speed relative to other alternatives, offers scaling ramp to > 10 million farmers across 15 States, who depend upon borewells for their livelihoods and drinking water.
HEALTH
Under our Health Council Dr. Raj Shah, Chairman and Dr. Bindukumar Kansupada, Vice Chairman, are building on the launch of 320+ Rural Tele-Medicine centers in 6 states during Covid (through partnerships with Mission Samriddhi, Jeevika Bihar, Rural Development Trust, and Evolko), several scaling activities are underway: launch of ten centers with Six Sigma HealthCare to serve pilgrims in high-altitude towns in Northern India; selection of 10 locations in Uttrakhand and Haryana to explore nationwide potential in partnership with Samhita Impact Ventures doing pioneering work with Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLEs); new model site in Jatoli (Alwar); developing an integrated telemedicine solution with Sai Swasthya Foundation to take the solution to hundreds of taluks.
Under The Sangini initiative, our partner NOBA GSR has deployed the self-service sanitary pad dispensers in 600+ rural communities in Bihar & Jharkhand to provide affordable and quality sanitary pads to rural girls and women. WGF sees an exciting path to scale to 10+ states over the next 4-5 years reaching the majority of 46 million girls & women. We enabled the solution in Manipur (through State Govt), and expect launches in West Bengal through our MICRO (WB) and to migrant populations through our partner Pollinate Group. We are also bringing together sustainable solutions innovators partnering with AAPI (Association of American Physicians from India) so that there are affordable and environmentally friendly solutions available which also reduces the country’s import bill.
The mental health portfolio is strengthened by the collaboration with Feeling Minds (led by Dr Chinu Agarwal) and Yoga of Immortals (led by Ishan Sivanand ji) in imparting emotional education to young adults and young students.
Under the leadership of WHEELS India Board Member Prof Kannan Moudgalya, Dr. Rupal Dalal, and Dr. Devaji Patil, WHEELS kicked off statewide deployment of our Health Spoken Tutorials (HST) solution for Madhya Pradesh on 20th Nov in partnership with State Health Department. This is to date our most ambitious initiative to address pervasive newborn malnutrition & stunted growth. It would involve almost every corner of M.P. health infrastructure from the Health Secretary down to 20,000+ Asha and Aanganwadi workers who would be trained to use HSTs to teach mothers proper breastfeeding techniques and manage critical first 1000 days of newborn health.
This program would impact the lives of 10 million+ mothers & babies. We owe many thanks to our partners CSIS and RIST Foundation for making it all possible. We have already received interest from other States like Goa to replicate. This is a great example of the power of platform technology Spoken Tutorials (developed at IIT-Bombay by Prof Mougdalya) extending from I.T. to health.
We have initiated an exciting dialog with Prof Suman Chakraborty’s team at IIT-Kharagpur to help scale innovative low-cost screening medical devices covering several areas such as diabetes, anemia, and cervical cancer. This is a perfect opportunity for WHEELS to leverage its growing NGO Network and partnership with the medical community to drive nationwide penetration of new innovations.
EDUCATION
With the generous support of Ron Mehta and D.C. Agrawal, ST solution has now been taken to the schools network that serves underserved and tribal areas across India — Navodaya Schools and Tribal Schools. The launch is covering 30 EMRS tribal schools and 70 Navodaya Schools across India. Please see the inspiring testimonial from EMRS commissioner in WHEELS funded IT training for EMRS (Ekalavya Model Residential School).
In partnership with Samta Foundation, another exciting application of S.T. program is for inmates of Nashik Central Prison who have received training in computer literacy and office productivity tools like LibreOffice. Many inmates felt that they now had something to look forward to and were more hopeful of facing the world after their release. The Maharashtra Govt. wants us to extend the initiative to other prisons in the state. Nasik prison success has opened multiple opportunities to drive impact in the USA.
WHEELS, through efforts of our young WHEELS Ambassador Aprurvi Bharita and guidance from Board Member Madhur Khanna, has submitted a pilot proposal to enable inmates in Washington D.C. prisons with I.T. skills so they can get good-paying jobs and avoid being a statistic in 67% recidivism rate. See more on S.T. efforts in ‘Alumni Outreach’ section.
Under the direction of WHEELS India East Chapter leader Sujata Roy, WHEELS launched pilots of two innovative education solutions at WHEELS partner EkTara: (a) augmenting STEM education by partner Space-i-fic’s innovative curriculum on space, astronomy and robotics; developed by three young IIT-Bhubaneshwar and IIT-Kharagpur graduates. (b) Enhancing communication skills of teachers and students through an innovative storytelling platform Obo developed by co-founders Sanjukta & Amit Bhowmik (PanIIT Philaldelphia Chapter leader). Also, with Sujata’s efforts, NDLI (National Digital Library Initiative, housed in IIT-KGP) continues to scale up providing free valuable educational resources with several WHEELS leaders contributing thought-leadership webinars.
ENERGY
Under the leadership of our WHEELS Energy Council chair Indrajit Chaterjee and Customized Energy Solution’s Dr Rahul Walawalkar, we are exploring CES’ innovative integration of mini-grid and micro-grid configurations with rural agro-processing enterprises. With WHEELS India Board member Digvijay Choudhari’s leadership, a pilot in SOBUS area of Pandharpur is being designed.
LIVELIHOOD & SUSTAINABILITY
Supported by our partner IEEE Smart Village Division and local partners Shamlaji Community College, WGF’s livelihood & sustainability council leaders Ambassador Pradeep Kapur and Smita Siddhanti, are enabling a Digital Learning Lab in the Aravalli district of Gujarat that will provide digital literacy to 3,000 youth/women, college students & Self-Help Groups (SHG s). The lab will be using the Spoken Tutorials learning modules to enable youth with IT skills for jobs. Approximately 21,000 Gram Panchayat (GP) members, across seven Gram Panchayat village councils, will have improved access to information, online services and digital literacy through functional Computer Kiosks.
Under the guidance of partner Dr. Vibha Gupta’s Magan Sangrahalya Samiti and partner Sarjan Foundation, Phase II of the project will focus on various livelihood-related activities establishing rural enterprises involving Neem based products: Honey, Turmeric, Ginger, Incense, etc.
Led by WHEELS India Board member Digvijay Choudhary, ARISE (Accelerating Rural Innovation & Social Enterprise in India) project – a partnership of SVERI Group, Sobus Insight Forum, and WHEELS Global Foundation – is addressing the need for having a structured incubator program to develop capable Rural Entrepreneurs thus enabling an Ecosystem for Sustainable, Scalable, Social Enterprises.
Under the leadership of WHEELS India South Chapter leaders Ramnath Mani & Rajah Venkatraman, WGF is partnering with Auroville Foundation & Rotary Coromandel to help scale a pioneering model of EcoSchools that teaches young minds, via hands-on work, endemic flora & fauna, nutrition & health, climate & environment, and land & water resource management. The current pilot with six schools in Chennai metro is underway. Discussions are ongoing with the State Government of Tamil Nadu to create a network of Eco-Centers that support dozens of Eco-Schools around them.
WHEELS is actively supporting the pioneering work of Murali Vullaganti (IIT-KGP alumni) in building RuralShores & PeopleShores solutions that provide outsourced IT services from delivery centers in underserved tier-3/4 towns and create jobs for local youth, who would otherwise have to migrate to large cities. Peopleshores webinar in September for the Pan IIT USA group was well attended and received a positive response.
In the 2nd half of the year, nearly year-long tireless efforts by WHEELS Trustee Hitendra Ghosh culminated in WHEELS signing a strategic partnership with CII (Confederation of Indian Industries) to collaborate with India’s Corporate sector in scaling WHEELS solutions. RuralShores expansion to Varanasi has been jointly selected as the priority from that partnership. With active support from BHU team under Prof Sujit Dubey and CII leadership, we expect to launch in 1st quarter of 2024.
WHEELS India East Chapter leader Sujata Roy is working actively with local NGO partner Gram Samriddhi Abhiyan to help scale their innovative solutions such as Smart Tree Plantation and Biogas plants with IoT monitoring (provided by WHEELS partner Inclusive Energy Systems).
Alumni Outreach
WHEELS undertook extensive efforts with President Ratan Agarwal traveling to hold regional events in all major metro centers in India – Chennai, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Delhi and Mumbai, as well as visits to IIT Tirupati and IIT Bombay. These events have only been possible through outstanding support from Pan-IIT India team Chairman Debashish Bhattacharya, Chennai and Bengaluru leaders Yadav Murti Sankaran and Sunil Khanna, and office manager Padmini Padhy.
WHEELS and local Pan-IIT alumni held events in Chennai and Bengaluru that brought several new alumni-led compelling impact initiatives and partners such as CVC and Sampoorna Trust. It also provided an opportunity to visit our EcoSchool project sites (schools and EcoCenter) together with our partner Rotary Coromandel and Auroville Foundation.
In USA, WHEELS, led by visiting WHEELS India Chairman Ashank Desai, WHEELS vice-chairman Suresh Shenoy, and WHEELS Board member Sundar Kamath, partnered with Pan-IIT USA to hold ‘India Rising’ events in Baltimore, Dallas, New York, and San Jose, connecting with hundreds of alumni on WHEELS mission and rural transformation being driven by our diverse portfolio of initiatives and partnerships.
In October, our Dallas-based senior leader Prashant Newasker brought India’s Honorable Minister Shri Nitin Gadkari Ji – Minister for Road Transport & Highways – for a special interactive session with the IIT Alumni and guests on the subject of Sustainable Infrastructure as a Foundation for Economic Development. That dialog is expected to launch a ThinkTank to recommend technology opportunities for India’s growth.
WHEELS Board Member Nitesh Kumar is spearheading efforts to expand our presence in the U.K. and USA West Coast, and more is to come from these efforts.
Our outreach efforts have created great partnerships with several PanIIT USA chapters. PanIIT Phoenix chapter, under energetic Ravi Sharma’s leadership, has stepped up to drive WHEELS’ Spoken Tutorials initiative in the local homeless community in partnership with Phoenix-based NGO, Homeward Bound. For this upcoming pilot, student team of Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business’s Net Impact Club, made major contributions through their semester-long project of researching Phoenix market and identifying NGO partner candidates, and then designing the surveys. We are excited to see this level of youth engagement for service and impact.
Another noteworthy youth leadership engagement was with the University of Pennsylvania’s Impact Investment Club which led a semester-long project to research opportunities to take our Rural Telemedicine Centers solution to middle-America that face challenges similar to Rural India. Their research will help us design a potential pilot launch.
Very recently, we launched another strategic initiative, ‘Impact Innovation Challenge’ inviting our global alumni community to submit their impact initiatives and entities they are involved with. We would be recognizing three top entries at the upcoming Global PanIIT Conference in January at Washington D.C. This has three simultaneous benefits: the opportunity to take WHEELS message to the entire alumni base, the discovery of a vast number of impact initiatives supported by our alumni, and promotion of PanIIT event.
Priorities Going Forward – 2024
♦ Development of NGO Collaboration Platform and Portal in partnership with UBA, RuTag and IITs
♦ Help bring promising rural-India relevant innovations from IIT ecosystem to target rural and underserved beneficiaries
♦ Create ThinkTank to follow up on Mr. Nitin Gadkari’s ask of PanIIT USA and WHEELS
♦ Drive CSR partnerships to expand WHEELS financial capacity
♦ Continue expansion of NGO network and partnerships
♦ Leveraging strategic partnerships such as CII, Sai Madhusudan Trust, Samhita Impact Ventures
♦ Successful execution of key initiatives such as Newborn Nutritional Health for the entire State of Madhya Pradesh, YEIDA, and menstrual health.
♦ Chapter leadership bench and regional alumni engagement
At WHEELS Global Foundation we remain committed to our creed of embracing every individual and entity who is willing to partner with us for applying their talents, time, and treasure to leverage technology to scale philanthropy. We greatly cherish your engagement with WHEELS and appreciate your participation in our activities.
Please join us at the upcoming IIT2024 global alumni conference to be held in Washington DC, Jan 12-14 – where we will have exciting presence through a WHEELS booth, a special session with visiting IIT Directors / Deans on WHEELS-IIT Collaboration, and address by the WHEELS President to the alumni community. Meanwhile, we wish you and all your loved ones a Very Happy New Year, and our thoughts and prayers are with you for your safety, peace, and good health.
None of the work above would be possible without the able guidance, contribution, and stewardship of all the WHEELS Global Foundation Trustees and Board members, our Council and Chapter Leaders and Members:
Rajat Gupta (Chairman-USA), Ashank Desai (Chairman – India), Suresh Shenoy (Vice-Chairman), Digvijay Chaudhari (President- India), Hitendra Ghosh, Ashok Siddhanti, Mrs Gauri Kumar, Yogesh Andlay, Dr. Raj Shah, Dr. Bindu Kumar Kansupada, Indrajit Chatterjee, Dr. Smita Siddhanti, Nitesh Kumar, Sundar Kamath, Kannan Srinivasan, Sushil Bhatia, Ambassador Pradeep Kapur, Kavita Kapur, Prof. Kannan Moudgalya, Pradip Nadkarni, Madhur Khanna, Arjun Malhotra, Ron Mehta, D. C. Agrawal, Yagya Datt Sharma, Himanshu Verma, Dr. Raghavan Ramanan, Kishen Goenka, Mahesh Vaidya, Sujata Roy, Ramnath S. Mani, Surendra Makhija, Rajesh Tripathi, Raj Bhayani, Chintu Patel, Chirag Patel, Dr Ashok Gupta, Dr Varsha Vaidya, Dr. C. S. Buch, Rahul Walwalkar, Girish Kulkarni, Yadav Murti Sankaran, Rajah Venkatraman, Debashish Bhattacharya, Sunil Khanna, JVG Krishna Murthy and Padmini Padhy. We also wish to acknowledge all the Directors of the IITs who have been actively engaged in participating in WGF activities. Several members of the faculty have also been actively engaged in Data Analytics, Language translations, Site Visits, and student-led projects. Please accept my apologies if I have missed the many volunteers who have been actively engaged with us over time.
Sincerely,
Ratan Agarwal
President – WHEELS Global Foundation
