Rahul Barakataky (2010-11)
Rahul is currently the CEO of Sewa Trade Facilitiation Centre (STFC). He has been a successful social entrepreneur who has co-founded and nurtured two high impact social enterprises in the last 10 years. He has 13 years of work experience in the development sector in India. He started his professional work life with Centre for Environment Education (CEE) in 1995, a centre of excellence of the Ministry of Environment and Forests in Ahmedabad. The passion to do something for the environment made him take this decision. He co-founded CFM in 2006 with the objective of creating wealth for artisan communities in India. He launched an innovative financial inclusion program for artisans and local entrepreneurs network with support from eBay Foundation in 2008. As the CEO of STFC, his mandate is to achieve a turnover of Rs 10 crores by 2012 and in the process create wealth for 3500 artisan shareholders in 80 villages across 3 Districts in Gujarat. He believes that economic empowerment of disadvantaged communities should be a priority for the development sector in India. And by economic empowerment he not only means access to credit, but promoting micro-enterprises at the village level so that people can tap locally available resources to create wealth, not only for themselves but also for the community at large. He had been awarded the Ashoka Affiliate in 2004 amongst his other recognitions.
Ms. Lakshmi Venkatesan (2010-11)
Ms. Lakshmi Venkatesan founded Bharatiya Yuva Shakti Trust (BYST), with the objective of fostering entrepreneurship among the under-privileged youth who lack resources to start their own ventures, in spite of having adequate knowledge. She brought in the concept of mentoring of the first generation young entrepreneurs and modified it in Indian context. BYST's successful partnerships with the corporate sector, government agencies and the NGOs have made it as a unique and successful tri-lateral partnership in India. BYST provides twin assistance of money and mentoring along with a whole range of other business development services to young entrepreneurs, turning job seekers into job creators, which is the need for the economic environment in India. BYST has empowered a number of women, people from ethnic minorities as well as the physically challenged people. BYST has created a model for corporate executives to accept their social responsibility and participate voluntarily in the process of nation building.
Siva Cotipalli (2009-10)
DhanaX was co- founded by Siva Cotipalli in 2007, along with the team of zealous and extremely competent financial experts. After graduating from BITS-Pilani and IIM-Kozhikode and working for five years, Siva wanted to build a business that would benefit millions of poor Indians, and thus came up with the idea of DhanaX. He strongly believes that doing well and doing good need not be conflicting objectives. In a country like India, with wide, unequal distribution of wealth, Siva has built a unique platform for the “haves” of India to help “have-nots” without getting involved in charities. DhanaX is a social lending site that matches lenders with investable savings and low-income borrowers who have no access to initial capital for their enterprises. Nevertheless, the project is a for-profit social enterprise and not a non- profit organisation. Dhanax encourages people to repay loans and not to fall in the vicious circle of debts.
Rajendra Joshi (2008-09)
Mr. Rajendra Joshi has been working for 24 years in the development sector at grassroots, program, organizational and policy advocacy levels, on issues affecting the urban poor. He has formulated strategies for city and state level implementation and translated these into programs and activities, achieving measurable success. He has promoted and sustained institutions that are working at state, city and community levels. He has provided leadership to such institutions, accessed and managed resources and fostered collaborations. Mr. Rajendra Joshi established Saath as an NGO in Ahmedabad in February 1989. Under his leadership, Saath has grown to an organization that now works in 8 towns and two districts of Gujarat and 6 districts in Rajasthan. Today Saath has 180 employees and an annual budget of about Rs. 5 Crores.Vipin Sharma(2008-09)
For the past 25 years, Vipin Sharma's work and interest has been closely linked to access to resources, capital, services and markets for the poor. As a development banker, technical resource provider and practitioner, he has been concerned with broadening the scope of development interventions to affirm the rights of poor people. His work in NABARD, at RUDA and at CARE, and more recently as the CEO of ACCESS, has been primarily focused in this direction. He played a significant role in linking the first SHGs to formal financial institutions in 1992. A significant global initiative that he led is the structuring of the Microfinance India summit. Over 25 years, by both design and default, his work has increasingly focused on the challenges that the poor face. He has been able to work at various levels - projects on the ground, technical support to governments, building national platforms and informing and influencing policy. Over 3 Million women have been benefited in small or big ways, encouraging bigger ambitions for ACCESS.
Vikram Akula(2006-07)
Vikram Akula is the CEO and founder of Swayam Krishi Sangham (SKS) Microfinance, an organization that offers microloans and insurance to about 350,000 poor women in impoverished areas in 11 states of India. He has created community wealth through effective micro finance models, where communities benefit with livelihood and enterprise at lowest interests,remembering that washers, barbers and tailors contribute more to the country's GDP (gross domestic product) than the IT sector.
Crispino Lobo (2006-07)
Crispino Lobo, being passionate about making a difference in the lives of the marginalized and under-privileged, chose to commit himself to working in rural areas. Together with Fr. Hermann Bacher, he organized the large-scale and highly successful watershed development initiative in Maharashtra called the Indo German Watershed Development Program (IGWDP). As co-founder of the Watershed Organization Trust (WOTR, founded in 1993) and the Programme Coordinator of the IGWDP, he has been instrumental in supporting and building up the capacities of 403 NGOs across the country as well as directly touching the lives of over 5,90,000 people..Crispino’s outstanding contribution has been to translate vision and passion into scalable accountability-based, outcome- oriented systems and processes. The approaches and management systems he has developed have been widely adopted across the country and are now being adopted abroad in development projects of a similar nature. He now heads the Sampada Trust and plans to extend its financial and entrepreneurship support services across the country, wherever poor women and youth need a partner in their struggle for betterment.
Dr.Marcella D’Souza(2006-07)
Dr Marcella D’Souza has been serving the people from the mountains of Peru to the arid plains of India. In the South Andes she organized a large-scale community-led, indigenous knowledge- based health care system. In Maharashtra, Marcella was responsible for developing a pedagogy for empowering women through self-help group formation and federation at the village level, as well as mainstreaming women into the decision making structures of the village. 55,000 women from 1100 villages have directly benefited from these efforts. Over 65,000 women benefit from access to financial and technical resources through the Sampada Trust, a micro-finance institution founded by her. She has been instrumental in developing a pedagogy for the empowerment of women, and creating the means for women to be creators of community wealth