About

This blog’s goal is to be your primary source of information on social innovation and social entrepreneurship in India. We have a dedicated team of editors who aggregate personal stories, articles, academic works and other relevant bits of information to provide you the reader with the most comprehensive taste of the vibrant social venture landscape in the Indian subcontinent and other efforts that are sprouting up in other parts of the world, focused on India.

The founding editors of the blog are Vinay Ganti and Santhosh Ramdoss. The origins are two-fold. The conceptualization of ThinkChange India can be traced back to conversations over cups of coffee at Think (a popular hangout next to the NYU campus).

However, the true mission and purpose of the blog came from a reading of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed conducted during the ThinkChange’s (a separate organization than this blog) inaugural social entrepreneurship roundtable. The underlying principle is that meaningful change is predicated on reflection coupled with action.

We leave you now with some words from Freire himself, and we hope you enjoy the blog.

An unauthentic word, one which is unable to transform reality, results when dichotomy is imposed upon its constitutive elements. When a word is deprived of its dimension of action, reflection automatically suffers as well; and the word is changed into idle chatter, into verbalism, into an alienated and alienating “blah.” It becomes an empty word, one which cannot denounce the world, for denunciation is impossible without a commitment to transform, and there is no transformation without action.

On the other hand, if action is emphasized exclusively to the detriment of reflection, the word is converted into activism. The latter — action for action’s sake — negates the true praxis and makes dialogue impossible. Either dichotomy, by creating unauthentic forms of existence, creates also unauthentic forms of thought which reinforce the original dichotomy.

Human existence cannot be silent nor can it be nourished by false words, but only by true words, with which men and women transform the world. To exist humanly is to name the world, to change it. Once named, the world in its turn reappears to the namers as a problem and requires of them a new naming. Human beings are not built in silence, but in word, in work, in action-reflection.”

Founding Editors

Vinay Ganti

Vinay is in his second year of a four year JD/MBA program at the New York University School of Law and the Leonard B. Stern School of Business in New York City. Prior to coming to New York, Vinay graduated from Brown University, worked in technology transfer as a consultant and also founded a financial literacy program for underprivileged youth. Currently, Vinay is an InSITE Fellow for Venture Capital and Innovation and an intern at the Clinton Global Initiative’s Energy & Climate Change Working Group.

His primary interests are in the social venture capital investing space and its role in transforming micro-businesses into globally competitive SMEs. After school, Vinay wants to create novel ways to provide clean energy to the world’s poor and lead the charge for a more socio-economically sensitive campaign for sustainable living and development.

Santhosh Ramdoss

Santhosh has a keen interest in enabling economic development and job creation among rural communities in India. He is currently a final year MPA Candidate at the Wagner School of Public Service at New York University. He is also a Catherine B. Reynolds Fellow in Social Entrepreneurship at NYU. Santhosh is the co-founder of Profits for People, a social venture which was one of the winners of the Social Venture track of the 8th Annual Business Plan Competition at the Stern School of Business.

Managing Editors

Prerna Srivastava

Prerna Srivastava graduated from Bryn Mawr College with a BA in Political Science and Education, and worked for two years in corporate law and management upon graduation. Realizing that her passion lay in international development, however, Prerna left her job, and pursued a one year Indicorps Fellowship with SEWA Rural, where she facilitated the formation of self help groups (SHGs) for women and girls in rural Gujarat, India. This grassroots development experience, in combination with her prior work as a sex workers’ rights advocate with Point of View, reaffirmed Prerna’s belief in women’s latent potential to uplift their families and communities from poverty.

With this underlying philosopy in mind, Prerna hopes to one day return to rural India in order to establish social and economic empowerment programs for underprivileged women and girls. For now, however, Prerna is working in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, after which she will begin her Master in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Shital Shah

Shital’s family immigrated from India when she was only four years old, but her heart and soul still remain there. She went on to graduate from Northwestern University and returned to India as an Indicorps fellow. She is now finishing her Master of Public Administration from New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service, specializing in International Development. In the past few years, she has been involved with the IACPA Washington Leadership Program, InSPIRE (a summer program for South Asian youth), and internships with the UN, Oxfam International, the World Bank, and New Visions for Public Schools.