NRI techies master the art of giving to the motherland

Call it the “Art of Giving to the motherland, the techies’ way”.

After building America with their brains and grit, the Indian techies are going all out to leverage technology to enhance social impact on Indians back home, particularly those on the fringe of development. At a gala in Philadelphia recently, Wheels Global Foundation (WGF), a Pan-America body of techies (mostly IITians), entrepreneurs and news making venture capitalists gave a glimpse into some concrete nation building steps for India.

From adopting a village to bringing in micro energy grids, to electrifying local villages, to addressing challenges in rural healthcare of women, to installing clean drinking water plants to encourage the concept of “sevaks” (volunteers) in the villages for addressing local needs, the techies’ meet had in attendance the who’s who of America and the newsmakers in entrepreneurship, philanthropy, academia, health, science and business sectors.

And it touched a few pertinent areas currently India confronts and has no answers to amidst constraints of expertise and funds. One such most striking session through the day-long event was on rare diseases. Social philanthropist Harsha Raja- simha of the Organization for Rare Diseases India (ORDI) has his venture Jeeva Informatics building a Virtual Clinical Trials Platform to take clinical trials to patients’ homes to eliminate or reduce the need for patients travelling to trial sites. Rare Disease Care Coordination Centre, a multidisciplinary centre exclusively dedicated for rare diseases, has been established in Karnataka’s children’s hospital with implementation ongoing in Tamil Nadu, and the proposal has been sent to all 29 states and Union Territories of India. The centre utilises telehealth approach to engage patients nationally with a helpline phone number and hub and spoke model.

Wheels’ own “India Niswarth (WIN) Foundation”, a charitable body set up by a young Indian origin entrepreneur, Chirag Patel, co-CEO and chairman, Amneal Pharmaceuticals and his family, is finding new ways to improve water quality and health outcomes for mothers and children. He has donated $2 million to the cause already. Patel said, “Our vision is that the WIN Foundation will serve as an India based incubator for technology-based ideas that can be tested and put into action to improve the daily lives of people living in un- derdeveloped areas around the world.”

The Foundation’s activities are focused on two tracks: Water and Sanitation (WATSAN) and Maternal and Child Health (MCH) and are housed on the campuses of IIT Gandhinagar (IITGN) and the Indian Institute of Public Health Gandhinagar (IIPHG) respectively.

Besides, even before Pad Man became a hit on Indian silver screens, these Indiaborn techies, who have always remained ahead of the curve, have got into manufacture and distribution of cheap sanitary napkins for young girls and women in rural India. “Under the Kanya project, we had already distributed over 23,000 sanitary napkin packets to 7,500 girls in government schools and about 20,000 women have been taught about menstrual hygiene in Telangana…We are now addressing this issue in other states as well,” said Ambassador Pradeep Kapur of Wheels Global Foundation.

Added Suresh Shenoy, President of Wheels, who is also a venture capitalist and IIT Mumbai alumnus: “A village is covered in every single Kanya Project at a cost of $20,000. By 2020, we are targeting 25 Kanya projects at a cost of $500,000 to address this hygiene issue among girls.”

Making available pure water, cheap and sustainable energy resources and