Essence of WHEELS

by

Ratan Agarwal

President,  WHEELS Global Foundation

In 2006, WHEELS was born as the first major decision of the same PanIIT movement that just two years ago gave birth to a unified ‘uber’ umbrella brand ‘PanIIT’ so as to bring out the full aggregated power of a cluster of IIT institutions, as opposed to individual brand-building efforts of five IITs (at that time) with far less limited mindshare. Effectively, WHEELS was the first ‘child’ of the PanIIT organization.

It was a momentous response of an inspired group of 2500+ global alumni community coming together in Washington D.C., which got inspired by one of the most inspiring figures India has produced – ex-President Abdul Kalam. He asked some simple questions, with profound meaning. Two of them are elaborated here.

(1) ‘Yes, you are a very successful group (achieving financial and professional name & fame). But what have you done for the communities or countries?’ — Two implications – (a) As an IITian, we have been privileged to receive nearly half-a-million USD worth of education from the best institutions in India for almost free, an education enabled by contributions (taxes) of the average far less-resourced Indian. An education that has underpinned our name & fame. Hence, we ought to feel that relatively far-higher sense of moral & social obligation to ‘give back’ to those same communities.

(2) ‘If not you, who is going to solve the tough problems faced by these communities and the country?’ – Soon after the independence, in its march to take control of its own journey after several hundred years of subjugation and relentless stripping of all precious material resources, in 1951, India made one of the first key decisions of investing in premier technology institutions – called Indian Institute of Technology. Naturally, the expectation was that these IITs would become the answers to the tough dozens of problems a nascent & under-resourced nation was going to face. It is an expectation well embalmed on the entrance of the first IIT (Kharagpur) with the words ‘In the Service of the Nation’. So, if we, the Alumni don’t stand up to solve the tough problems faced by the population (especially the under-resourced segment of nearly 800 million+ in rural and underserved communities), then who else? Unmistakably, even after 77 years since Independence, those problems have not disappeared; they have rather become more pervasive and magnified. It does not mean the country has not achieved huge strides; it is that problems have clearly outpaced the progress.

The inspiration on that momentous day manifested through the concrete response of nearly two dozen most senior leaders of the PanIIT Movement. They came together and synthesized their individual understanding of challenges & giving-back passions into six areas of priority (Water, Health, Education, Energy, Livelihood, and Sustainability) – and arrived at a convenient acronym WHEELS. And the journey started.

This was a journey of a very simple beginning but with gargantuan implications. The challenge (and opportunity) was to figure out the right model that would harness the power of IIT ecosystem that WHEELS was underpinned on: 500,000+ global IIT alumni community (representing real-life business/execution expertise via the unparalleled capacity, capabilities, and network) and a network of IITs (that has grown to now cluster of 23 IITs covering entire footprint, and the fountain of innovations to match rapidly evolving problem set).

Once one reflects upon sheer diversity, geographical spread, journeys of that 500,000+ alumni community, and institutional structures of 23 IITs (often encumbered by the weight of the same characteristics that have inhibited the progress of the surrounding society they sit in), the magnitude of the task of building WHEELS becomes apparent.

Hence, WHEELS has gone through its own turns & twists, and many inflection points. One of them came in late Oct 2022, when the Board’s guided introspection led to a major decision: explicit embrace of a goal that would be worthy of the brand it represented ‘Impacting 20%+ of India’s Rural & Underserved Population by 2030’. Very often, clarity of vision & mission leads to a complete shift in the journey. For WHEELS, it enabled several big decisions: value-add positioning in the impact ecosystem it sits in, and its execution model. Understanding of each of these is important for a meaningful view of how WHEELS is in position to operate as the most unique value-add member in the social impact ecosystem, especially its role & responsibility for scaling, while serving its two critical founding pillars: Alumni and IITs (which together lend some of the most critical resources for WHEELS to function – including perhaps the most important one – the IIT brand).

(1) Value-add positioning in the impact ecosystem: Response to sheer magnitude & complexity of challenges faced by India has resulted in a huge number of social impact entities (predominantly NGOs) to address them, by some estimate 3 million+. Even if one argues that less than 10% of them are functional, even then, it is a vast number. However, the flip side of that is that, except for a handful of NGOs, they are hyperlocal and are known to a limited geography in which they operate. While they often have developed powerful solutions, they are unable to scale because the skills to scale are very different than those needed for new innovation & development. To scale a new offering from a few thousand to several millions, one requires leverage of technology, operational frameworks and execution rigor. While a typical NGO, a product of lifetime hard work of well-meaning & passionate local activist(s), lacks these skills, typical IIT alumni (coming out of India’s premier technology institutions and then spending 30+ years of corporate life honing skills to grow/scale the businesses they spent their lives in) possess those skills. Hence, rather than WHEELS trying to be another NGO developing new solutions, the more logical role for WHEELS is to help scale existing promising solutions and models with a scaling runway of millions and which fits with WHEELS’ model. Four years of journey (since WHEELS’ commit to new vision) indicates nearly 2000+ compelling entities created by alumni themselves. Hence, WHEELS has chosen to drive its impact and achieve its mission through existing social impact entities by enabling their scale. In that mode, WHEELS is fully accretive to all other existing promising impact entities with a potential scaling runway to millions. This is why WHEELS has been able to quickly build a very strong partner ecosystem of 120+ partners, and with the launch of Impact Collaboration Platform (ICP) – designed to enable & accelerate system-enabled replications of partner solutions – this ecosystem is expected to grow to 500+ in a few years, thus creating a powerful Pan-India deployment capability & asset.

(2) Key facets of WHEELS’ execution model: Diversified portfolio, Program design & management through its ‘Thin Operations’ layer, Serving IIT system, Scaling & Resource Mobilization.

(2A) Diversified Portfolio: Given that the very first reason of WHEELS’ birth was to inspire the 500,000+ strong alumni community to be involved in giving back (and in turn that collective capacity underpins WHEELS power to achieve the end goals of at-scale impact), it automatically necessitates building of an infrastructure that would make it easy for that 500,000+ community to discharge their ‘giving back’ obligations. Beyond the common link of ‘IIT education’, this community is extremely diverse (e.g., age, locations, life stage, vertical careers they have pursued, functional expertise, financial capacity, causes that they relate to, communities they feel deep bonds with). Hence, harnessing their collective power is only possible if they are given equally diverse ‘giving-back’ choices so they can find a ‘home’ in WHEELS. This is why WHEELS has gone about building a curated portfolio of 50+ technology-enabled scalable solutions with Pan-India applicability and an engagement model which welcomes every alumni – whether they have an hour to give or 50-hours/week, one dollar or million+, expertise in marketing or operations, domain knowledge of water or health or environment, interest in a hamlet in Assam or a district in Karnataka, they come from a Fortune 500 corporation or from Education Ministry of Govt of India or are just retired. In simple words, WHEELS welcomes contributions in any combination of time, talent, treasure, and network. Most of the current Diversified Portfolio has come from introductions by Alumni, WHEELS ‘family’, existing partners, and occasional innovation contests. This strong diversified portfolio makes WHEELS very relevant with multiple potential value-adds in any conversation with a District/State/Central Govt official, an NGO partner with feet on the ground, a funding entity (CSR, Foundation, High-Net-worth-Individual, Government agency) looking for credible/well-respected partner.

(2B) Program Design & Management: As mentioned earlier, India is blessed with several hundred thousand very good NGOs with promising solutions that need scaling help – via complementary resources (geographical reach, access to a larger pool of resources, operational skills, and models & tools for scale). In other words, developing ‘programs’ that identifies & integrates these capabilities, articulates them in a language/model that would create a compelling win-win proposition (often public-private partnerships) for the other party, and then subsequent execution of that ‘program offering’ with the same ‘operational execution rigor’ that these world renowned alumni are known for (having reached the apex of corporate ladder as CEOs/CFOs/CIOs/CTOs etc). Sometimes, the ‘Program Offering’ may include products/services from multiple partners and technologies from IITs. This Program Development & Execution becomes a perfect complement (i.e., brings the best of both worlds – Partner & WHEELS) to existing efforts & capabilities of the partner who created the involved solution, and is already taking it to a number of targets within its reach or capacity. Partner does the ‘heavy-lifting’ (i.e., delivery of the product/service, including on-the-ground resources, day-to-day project management), while WHEELS contributes a ‘thin operational layer’ (i.e., stakeholder & client management, reviews & escalations, operational discipline of ensuring optimal use of funds and timely achievement of milestones, impact assessment & reporting). This symbiotic model obviates the need for WHEELS to maintain an army of implementation resources and instead relies on the partner(s) who have those field resources. This, then aligns with the design & cost structure of the engagement (i.e., WHEELS building relatively lighter capacity of Program Design & Management layer that gets correspondingly supported by Program Management cost elements in an engagement). Further, it enables WHEELS to effectively leverage one of its biggest assets the ‘IIT brand’ (as an institution of IIT ecosystem). That brand gives privileged access to all varieties of resources necessary for Scale: highest Govt officials, industry associations/consortiums, CSRs, HNIs, Foundations, premier technology/business institutions. All because they expect the same level of depth & breadth of expertise (technology & business), quality & results that the ‘people’ behind that brand are known for. Hence, a Program designed and offered by WHEELS gets its due access and heightened interest.

When WHEELS brings that Program to address particular needs / pain-points, it is naturally expected that it would be on ‘WHEELS paper’. Hence, the ‘client’ then expects WHEELS to be responsible for the execution of that Program and the results therefrom. Hence, Program Management becomes a natural obligation and necessity for that model of ‘brand’ leverage and ‘privileged access’ to work in practice. In the end, WHEELS and its Partner perfectly complements with Program and Project Management capabilities.

(2C) Strategic priorities – Serving the IIT system: WHEELS, being part of the IIT ecosystem, is underpinned by two pillars of the ecosystem – alumni and IITs. And hence, there is a natural obligation to serve the related needs of those two pillars; only then can it claim to be a part of that ecosystem. Otherwise, words would soon come across as hollow and would lack the requisite ‘power’ for leveraging in all varieties of interactions described above. The section on ‘diversified portfolio’ has already explained how WHEELS serves one of the two pillars: 500,000+ global alumni community. To serve the other pillar of ’23 IITs’, WHEELS must build functional pathways that fulfil the needs of IITs. India, soon after independence, made a prioritized investment in creation of IITs with the expectations that these premier technology institutions would be the places to address the biggest challenges that the population at-large (especially, the 800 million+ underserved segment living in rural & tribal areas) would continually face across all domains (such as water, health, education, livelihoods, energy, environment,..). These challenges are not static and have not diminished despite the rapid economic strides the country has taken. Many IITs have formed purpose-driven divisions to meet those expectations: CTARA in IIT Bombay, CRTD in IIT Delhi, RuTags in 7 IITs, UBA-linked rural development centers in almost all IITs, and so on. These efforts are producing a steady stream of compelling new innovations, for which researchers & professors work hard to create ‘proof-of-concepts’ / pilots. However, there must be structured pathways for those ‘limited pilots’ to be guided to the full scale that many of them deserve. While innovations with glamorous commercial potential achieve structured support (via technology licensing or start-up launches), those meant for ‘greater / underserved India’ do not benefit from that. WHEELS, with its mission of serving that same ‘greater / underserved India’ and building a large Pan-India deployment asset (via its NGO network), becomes a logical complement. Hence, one of WHEELS strategic priorities is building effective structured pathways to IITs so it marries ‘development ecosystem’ to ‘deployment ecosystem’. Doing this is a win-win for everyone. The country benefits from a much better ROI from its investments in premier institutions. IITs benefit from a much larger volume of innovations seeing the light of the day as opposed to being decorative shelfware. NGOs get new solutions to complement their hard efforts (but with gaps). Citizens benefit from the best technology-enabled solutions. And WHEELS walks the talk of being an effective member of the IIT ecosystem, and thus a critical 3rd leg of the stool that integrates outputs of the other two legs (23 premier institutions creating an innovation pipeline, product of 50000+ alumni translating academic grounding into world-renowned deep business/execution expertise) to make it count for that greater India that has enabled both the legs. WHEELS taking 2025 PIWOT to six IIT campuses, signing formal MOUs for collaboration with eight IITs, day-long working sessions with IIT Director and department heads at six IITs during Nov-Dec 2025, mental resilience initiatives at two IITs, orchestrating conversations for large-scale investment in AI Infrastructure Innovation R&D at IITs, are some of the examples of the rubber-meeting-the-road. Also, while several ultra-successful alumni have translated their financial muscle to amazingly large social impact entities, their efforts would always be seen as efforts of individuals. These efforts do not cover impact aspirations of the ‘alumni junta’ – i.e., 99%+ of the alumni community. Hence, WHEELS becomes a necessity to both harness and represent that institutional power of the brand, which is not feasible for any individual, no matter what his/her resource size or reach is.

(2D) Scaling model & resource mobilization: WHEELS has built its organic funding capacity underpinned by contributions from its base of alumni-at-large (as well as mission-aligned non-IIT supporters) augmented by annual commitments of its Trustees and Board of Directors. While this funding would never match that of large foundations (many created by ultra-successful alumni themselves), it is a perfect fit for its Scaling Model. WHEELS follows a logical three-step scaling model with corresponding resource mobilization that aligns with other elements of its strategy and operating model explained above:

1. Catalytic funding to support the introduction of selected solutions in its portfolio: These introductions often fire up the geographical distribution channel of alumni present in all corners of India, giving them support to accelerate their ‘giving back’ journey and leave a legacy in the communities they grew up in. Other times, it enables a local partner with additional solutions to complement their work in the local communities they are working in. This first step allows WHEELS to get a deeper, firsthand understanding of operational details (including impact validations) of the supported solution, and get ready for the second phase of scaling.

2. 3rd party funding for larger deployments: In India, CSRs have become the most potent funding pool, critical for scaled deployments. Armed with deeper operational details from the 1st step, WHEELS leverages its brand advantage (to gain access & favorable disposition) to make win-win propositions to other funding entities (CSRs, Foundations, HNIs) for larger-scale deployments. This enables WHEELS build much larger impact studies and proof-points necessary for the 3rd stage of scale and resource mobilizations.

3. Public-private partnerships for District/State-wide spread/scale: Most social impact domains (Water, Health, Education, Livelihoods,..) flow through the Government infrastructure, where the largest last-mile resources (field personnel, systems, policies, etc.) and funds (via plethora of schemes and budgets) exist. It would be foolhardy for any non-governmental entity to hire a parallel army of field resources, which, even if hired, would run into non-stop interference anyway. Finally, for long-haul sustainability of any social impact intervention, the best chance of its success is the ownership by respective Government departments. For those reasons, effective public-private partnership (PPP) — from Program Design to Co-Execution to Enablement & Hand-off — is a must. WHEELS is in the best position to orchestrate these PPPs for two reasons: (a) brand leverage (for access and respect); (b) 30%+ senior IAS officers (as decision-makers at the highest levels) are IIT alumni. These PPPs allow the large-scale and mobilization of required resources, which are underpinned by the first two steps of the Scaling strategy.

While the above text squarely speaks to IIT alumni & institutions, everything said is applicable to other similar alumni networks as well (e.g., medical schools, other premier technology & engineering schools like IISc or BITS, IIMs). These other networks reflect the core nature of WHEELS – i.e., an entity created to harness the power of large networks and present it as an ‘Institutional Power’ (versus the capacity of individuals acting as solo actors with corresponding limitations). Hence, WHEELS has been set up as a welcoming institution to all similar mission-aligned networks. A principle enshrined in its governance, which explicitly targets a 75%-25% ratio of IIT alumni and non-IIT Board members, to strike an optimal balance between its pristine ‘IIT brand’ as the core identity, and equally important, other strategic capabilities. Evidence is evident in WHEELS having participation of 120+ physicians, dozens of IIM alumni, IAS/IFS/IPS officers.

This blog should enable everyone to be a part of WHEELS’ impact journey with an understanding of the unique position of WHEELS as an institution of the IIT ecosystem with its vast role and responsibilities, enablement through its complementary Program Design and Management model, serving the key legs that afford its core identity, scaling and resourcing mobilization.

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