Globally, hunger kills more people than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined together. Poor nutrition causes the death of nearly 31 lakh children every year. Worldwide, 16.1 crore children suffer from hunger and malnourishment. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, about 79.5 crore people, one in nine of the global population, suffer from chronic undernourishment. These are some facts which show the dark side of life.

Hunger is one of the biggest killers in the world. But what makes the situation worse is that around 40 percent of all food produced in the world is wasted. So the actual problem is not the lack of food but its wastage and inefficient distribution mechanism.

To change this grim picture, Ankit Kawatra along with his friend Srishti Jain started a great initiative in 2014. In a life-altering experience at a wedding, Ankit realised the real problem, when he saw food for almost 10,000 people being wasted. Without any delay, he left his corporate job and started Feeding India. With five volunteers initially, he started collecting excess food from restaurants, hostels, weddings, parties, canteens, etc. and donated it to people in need. Over the years, Feeding India has grown over 20000 plus Hunger Heroes in around 80 cities across India.

Recognised globally for his initiative, Ankit has been conferred with Queens Young Leader, Forbes 30 Under 30, United Nations Young Leader and National Youth Awards. It is the leadership of such incredibly talented and amazing people like Ankit that will lead India into a better future.

Acquired by Zomato, now Feeding India can create a bigger impact in ending hunger and food wastage in India and around the globe. Recollecting his journey in a TEDx talk, Ankit inspires us to contribute to resolving some of the major global challenges. Every minor step in the right direction will aggregate towards greater impacts.

Anne Sweeney, the Co-Chair of Disney Media Networks once said, “Define success on your own terms, achieve it by your own rules, and build a life you’re proud to live.” Swati Jain, a young entrepreneur from Bhilwara, is redefining and achieving her own rules of success.

Born and brought up in Bhilwara, Rajasthan, Swati graduated in B.COM (Hons.) from the prestigious Shri Ram College of Commerce in 2015, post which she worked with A.T. Kearney, a leading global management consulting firm for around three years. Despite having a successful corporate life, she felt that something was still missing. On her journey to find her passion she turned to her roots.

As a young girl in the Textile city of Bhilwara, she grew up in a family of businessmen. So naturally, her perception and outlook towards work life were shaped as a result of those factors. Along with it, the simple moments of clarifying the doubts of her friends in school to the volunteering experience with Pratham to teach young kids at Balwadi in Mumbai, made her realize the true calling of her life. Over the years, through her keen observation, she noticed that the process of learning through games and activities leads to greater involvement and higher learning outcomes in children. With this invaluable lesson at hand, she started her entrepreneurial venture Shikshanad.

Aiming to make learning fun, Shikshanad converts important academic and general knowledge based lessons into educational fun games, along with building social intelligence. Her journey as an entrepreneur so far has taught her that there are a lot of uncertainties, doubts and insecurities in the initial days. In those moments of tough times, her family became her support system.

Her message to every dreamer or passionate person is “to find a way to pursue it because regrets can be really haunting, much more than the tough days in pursuit of passion!” But she also cautions the youth to take calculated risk in life. Along with pursuing a passion, one should have a plan to fulfill the basic needs.

She concludes by saying that, “A side income or safety net and a bag full of courage, patience and perseverance are all that one needs to beat the challenges in pursuit of one’s passion.”

The Talented Indian Community extends best wishes to her for a successful, impactful and fulfilling career ahead.

Rubhen D’sa appreciates art- writing and poetry in particular. He loves music, plays guitar and spends his free time listening, singing and composing music. He loves dogs, walking around Delhi observing, meeting, talking to strangers and trying new food joints. He has recently developed a taste for travelling and someday wishes to have a lifestyle, where he travels and writes. He is a nineteen years old English language writer from New Delhi. He is pursuing his graduation from Delhi College of Arts & Commerce and is passionate to become an author in the near future.

He was excellent in academics till the eighth grade. Then after, he decided to give academics a break and focus more on co-curricular activities. His grades in the mark sheet deteriorated with every passing term and the certificates he won in competitions kept piling up. “That’s gloomy, dark and depressing”, remarked his school teacher on the first poem he showed to her. It was seven pages, fourteen stanzas long poem. She gifted him the book later that month, ‘Jonathan Livingston Seagull’, a fable written by Richard Bach. She wanted him to read it and hoped that he would learn from it and do well in his life.

Rubhen is a state and national level award winner in creative writing. He was also seen reciting poems on Doordarshan- Indian television channel. He represented his college among the top 25 colleges all over India at the ‘National Youth Poetry Slam’, organized this year at Bengaluru.

He is always financially independent, as he started earning at a very young age by giving his hands on all kinds of odd jobs such as giving guitar and academic tuitions, writing for agencies, composing jingles, performing music at cafes. He not only earned for his survival but also for savings and investments. He likes money and thinks that everyone should do what they love to do and earn enough money to fulfill their needs in the world. He believes in the fact that being rich is not bad so long as the means adopted for it is right in all respect.

Rubhen is also the founder of an art-social enterprise Taameer. Among the old and newly founded art groups in Delhi, Taameer stands as a lone wolf for its discrete core vision. It was founded on 21st July, 2016. Taameer is a community of artists. The group has many young, talented singers, musicians, painters, dancers, writers, poets and even college professors. Rubhen visited many poetry slam events and art meets and found that all of them are revolving around the same cultivated ideas of glamour, glitz and commercialization. He could never connected himself to them. They gave him an impression of ‘art for the elites’. A few spoke to him, a few listened to him and he noticed that there was a sense of art in the air but only confined to the rooms. These organisations lacked what is being imbibed in the core of Taameer- a vision to transform the society through the art.”

With four successful events in Delhi, Taameer, the group of highly passionate artivists, as they call themselves, is thriving across various platforms. This group of artists has organised art events and meets at Friendicoes- the famous animal shelter home, an old age home in Karkardooma and recently organised a fun event for more than fifty underprivileged students near Tihar Jail. “If science can help us find life on the Mars, art can help us continue life on the Earth.”, proudly says Rubhen D’sa.

The best part of Taameer is that the majority of its members are students, who are still pursuing their graduation. Taameer is run purely by the passion for art and social service. Taameer runs a Facebook page with original writings. Taameer also has foreign language professors from the University of Delhi and Amity University as its members. Taameer wishes to reach out to every artist in the country, as he says with a sparkle in his eyes, “We wish to continue to grow as a family of artivists. Art heals what science can’t cure.” says Rubhen.

Moved by the news of the death of some Afghani soldiers due to landmines, 10 year-old Harshwardhan wondered if there was a way to avoid such unfortunate incidents. This resulted in him embarking on a journey to being a self taught 14 year-old Drone developer. In this talk he shares the amazing journey, how he used the internet to gather the knowledge he needs and shows us what it takes to be a true problem solver.

Harshwardhan Zala is a 14 year old self-taught Drone developer, Robotics entrepreneur, and along with all that, a 10th grade student.
He is the founder & CEO of Aerobotics7, his technology startup. He started his journey when he was 10 years old. His experience is truly inspiring and something everyone must hear.

Click here for full video.

Soure: TEDx Talks

StartupEd – Why & What?

We roam around with ideas in our heads. According to us, some ideas are good, some are bad and some are extraordinary. But most of us have no clue what to do with it and how? It’s like having a seed in our hands, but not reaping from it because we don’t know how to sow or nurture it in an appropriate ecosystem.

Since, we don’t have knowledge about the required procedure or have any guidance; most of us leave our ideas midway and forget it forever. We need proper direction and advice to transform our ideas into a reality and thereafter start building a massive business empire. That is exactly what StartupEd endeavors to do for us. It guides us through the foundation of the business and caters to every requirement from having an idea to establishing it.

StartupEd is an entrepreneurship school and a start-up incubator. It provides student entrepreneurs with all the necessary education and resources to convert their ideas into reality. StartupEd provides a holistic infrastructure to emerging start-ups from conception to establishment and thereafter.

StartupEd has an innovative and diverse toolkit along with laudable sets of founders, mentors and investors in its portfolio, which is vital for any young entrepreneur looking to make his/her dreams into a reality.

The History & Founder Story

Ankit Buti, founded StartupEd in San Francisco, California, USA in September, 2015 with one focus, to help India prosper and contribute to government initiatives like Startup India and Standup India by providing the highest quality of education to India’s young entrepreneurs.

Ankit was born in New Delhi, India and he moved to United States for his education and gain industry experience. He graduated from Purdue University with a Bachelor’s Degree in the Computer Science and has a certificate in Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Further, he studied Business and Management at Stanford Graduate School of Business, USA.

After graduation, he worked as a Senior Software Engineer for approximately 2 years at Qualcomm Inc. in San Diego, USA, where he led his project team in collaboration with IBM. Then, he moved on to work at a private equity backed network and mobile security company in the Silicon Valley called, Pulse Secure.

Ankit has worked on diverse large-scale projects in the industry and has a wide range of experience on leadership and technical issues. He achieved numerous milestones in a very short span of time at Qualcomm. He is extremely enthusiastic about his work and a passionate problem solver. While working at Qualcomm, the idea of an entrepreneurship school in India came to his mind. The learning through interactions in different environments and culture, helped shape his idea. Consequently, he established his company in Silicon Valley, USA and moved to India to grow it further.

Ankit has chosen to facilitate India by providing an ecosystem for the young and aspiring minds of the future with the help of skills he acquired through his education and work experience. His mission is to change India’s entrepreneurial ecosystem by contributing to existing education systems and encouraging entrepreneurship as a viable profession for the students. He wants to empower the talented youth to pursue an idea, build on it and inspire others to do the same. He aspires to provide innovative tools and support to enable students, to thrive in their entrepreneurial journeys and build start-ups, to meet the world’s growing demands through entrepreneurial school, incubation and different events. His venture would not only boost employment in the country but also help with wealth creation. He has chosen India over all other countries, not only because it is home, but because India has started emerging as the fastest growing start-up hub in the world. He believes that the growing minds of our country, if guided well, can emerge as the best future entrepreneurs, who can provide solutions to all problems of mankind.