Global Indianstory Diana AwardeeHow young changemaker Mahira Jain imparts desi culture

How young changemaker Mahira Jain imparts desi culture

Written by: Amrita Priya

(April 5, 2022) She dares to be different. At a time when the spotlight is on stem-based subjects, Mahira Jain prefers to turn the focus on non-stem subjects. Specifically on Indian art, culture, and history. The freshman pursuing bachelor of arts at Duke University launched FunWagon, a social project, in 2019 to promote the significance of non-stem subjects. The young changemaker has been using the platform to introduce youngsters to India’s history, culture, and architecture, which she feels are oft ignored. The 18-year-old received the 2021 Diana Award for her initiatives to promote desi culture.

Young Changemaker | Mahira Jain | Global Indian

Mahira Jain, founder, FunWagon

Making history fun

“FunWagon is a social enterprise that caters to children between the age of six to 16. Our mission is to organise exciting and interactive cultural activities, which promote experiential learning through excursions and experiences,” says the young changemaker, who launched FunWagon while still a student at DPS, RK Puram in Delhi. “We also discuss the importance of non-stem subjects by providing students a platform to emphasise and engage with different forms of humanities – culture, history, sociology,” adds Mahira in a conversation with Global Indian.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by FunWagon By Mahira Jain (@fun.wagon)

While these sessions are conducted both online and offline, the group has conducted various excursions to places like the National Museum, India Gate, and other monuments that celebrate India’s rich history. “We’ve partnered with 11 NGOs. Since the pandemic started, we moved FunWagon’s activities online which helped us to give exposure to many more people,” says the teenager, who wishes to study innovation in entrepreneurship, visual arts, and media studies.

Thinking out of the box

The young changemaker, who was always inclined towards history, sociology, visual arts, piano, photography, and classical music, feels strongly about the lack of importance given to non-stem subjects. “We usually hear people say you should pursue stem and become a doctor, engineer, or scientist. There is hardly any importance given to the prospect of becoming a historian or sociologist. I’ve seen a lot of my friends being pressured into pursuing subjects they didn’t want to,” says Mahira, whose parents encouraged her to follow her interests and, pursued humanities instead. “I think that’s how every parent should be. I realised it is very important to emphasise on non-stem education and its benefits,” she adds.

FunWagon has so far created a successful network of cultural educators who inform youngsters on the full range of humanities learning options available in India. “Apart from excursions, we have been popularising non-stem subjects through panel discussions and expert talks. Our biggest event was an offline conference that I organised in 2019 with speakers from different backgrounds and a live audience of 80,” explains Mahira.

It all started when…

Mahira’s interest in humanities was kindled when she attended a six-month Young Entrepreneurs Academy (YEA) programme in 2017 by businesswoman Namita Thapar. YEA is aimed at transforming middle and high school students into confident entrepreneurs. “I was told to come up with something that I was passionate about. That is how FunWagon was born,” she adds.

“I realised that students too often shied away from humanities since they think it involves rote learning. There has been a lack of enriching recreational activities that make humanities interesting. That’s when I decided to organise events that are specially curated for students to provide them experiential learning outside the confines of the classroom,” adds Mahira whose venture has so far catered to 1,550 children.

Inspirations in the family

Incidentally, Mahira draws her inspiration from her parents, both established entrepreneurs. Her father, Nitesh Jain, the MD of Best Group, has expertise in the areas of manufacturing, EV, education, and high tech. Her mother Swati, on the other hand, is committed to empowering women to get back to the workforce with The Banyan, her chain of childcare centres. Her older sister works with a PR agency in Delhi and her younger brother is in the ninth grade.

Mahira with her family

“While both my parents are my inspiration, I’m also inspired by MS Dhoni. I admire him for his humility and how he carries himself more like an individual than a sports star,” says the youngster, who hopes to become an entrepreneur.

It was not a cakewalk

While FunWagon has managed to find its moment in the sun, the journey from inception was an uphill task. Getting parents to involve their kids in humanities outside the classroom was no mean feat. Building logistics and trust for the excursions too took a great deal of effort. Her father supported her financially and logistics wise, while her mother’s belief kept her going.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by FunWagon By Mahira Jain (@fun.wagon)

The high point came when Mahira was able to convince 11 NGOs to partner with her cause. She also went on to publish a paper “Why the arts matter: an aesthetic exploration of India’s cultural diversity” in the International Journal of Social Science and Economic Research.

All set for future

“I hadn’t been very actively organising FunWagon activities since I moved to the US last August for my studies at Duke University. But I will soon begin working towards it from here,” says the youngster, who is currently enjoying her new innings as she explores new avenues and experiences.

Follow Mahira Jain on LinkedIn and Instagram

Name*

Email*

Name*

Email*

0 Comments

Inline Feedbacks

View all comments

Published on 05, Apr 2022

Share with

ALSO READ

How Indian teen scientist Snehadeep K started the world’s first student-run space org & scientific journal

(March 12, 2022) At the age of 17, as most kids struggle with board exams, Indian teen scientist Snehadeep Kumar founded and continues to run The Aurora Academic Journal, a platform for students to publish. In October 2021, he founded the Nebula Space Organisation, the world's first space organisation run by students. It's an ambitious project, one that involves creating a floating settlement on Mars and caught the attention of Harvard University, resulting in a collaboration. He now has high aspirations of building the world’s smallest space telescope too. As he juggles his projects with his own research, the budding young Indian scientist is busy trying to decide at which University he can begin his scientific career. [caption id="attachment_12384" align="aligncenter" width="400"] Snehadeep Kumar[/caption] How a journal became the crux of knowledge When he said he wanted to reach out to the world’s top scientists to support The Aurora Academic Journal, Snehadeep was met with skepticism from friends and peers. He gave it a go anyway, dashing off emails to Bill Gates, astronaut Buzz Aldrin, Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Peter Ratcliff, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine, Fields Medal Winner Edward Witten, the

ld’s top scientists to support The Aurora Academic Journal, Snehadeep was met with skepticism from friends and peers. He gave it a go anyway, dashing off emails to Bill Gates, astronaut Buzz Aldrin, Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Peter Ratcliff, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine, Fields Medal Winner Edward Witten, the legendary anthropologist and primatologist Jane Goodall and Nobel Prize winner Dr Akira Yoshino, who developed the first commercially viable lithium-ion battery.

The initial response was as they feared – lukewarm. “We weren’t getting replies,” recalls the Indian teen scientist. In the end, persistence won the day. “I kept at it, I sent emails every day, telling them about our journal and what we hoped to do. One day, the responses began to arrive,” says Snehadeep Kumar in an interview with Global Indian. The celebrity testimonials are on display at the bottom of their website.

The Aurora Academic Journal takes entries from all over the world, across disciplines. Snehadeep stresses on the latter - there is more than just science. The website gets 500 hits a day, with interviews with Dr. Robert Lefkowitz, Nobel laureate in chemistry and Dr. Tom Welton, president of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

When science caught his fancy

Snehadeep's talent for science surfaced early - by the age of eight, in fact. His parents, keen to stoke his curiosity, subscribed to several student newspapers like Times NIE, which he read cover to cover. “I would read about science and scientific experiments and be completely fascinated by it all, also films like Interstellar and Inception, and Christopher Nolan’s Tenet inspired me,” says the Indian teen scientist. His father works at SAIL, and his mother is a homemaker.

In third grade, an astute science teacher at his school DAV Model School, Durgapur, Soma Ghosh, noticed Snehadeep’s inclinations and took it upon herself to encourage him. “She asked me to participate in a science competition - Intel IRIS,” says the lad who grew up in Durgapur, Bengal. With her help, he built a functioning electromagnetic circuit, connected to a bell. “She taught me how to conduct a project, and write about it,” he adds. In Class 9, another mentor, Sushmita Chandra, a science teacher, cemented his knowledge – he worked on three projects with her.

That year, he began looking into trapping excess water from the soil. “Roots don’t absorb all the water, so where does the rest go? Can we save it? I placed a device that comprised a filtration tank, and a containment tank - water goes into the container, then into the filter for purifying,” says the Indian teen scientist, of the filtration tank which contained moringa seeds, a natural purifier. “We tested the water, and it was fit to drink. SRM University funded the project. I also began thinking of publishing this in a journal,” he adds. Another project involved creating electricity out of carbon monoxide released from cars – creating a rechargeable hybrid battery. He wants to work on it more but being an expensive process – he hopes to continue it at university..

[caption id="attachment_12393" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Snehadeep with the project that started it all[/caption]

When experiments need publishing

Getting published is tough, the Indian teen scientist found out. He approached Nature.com and Scientific American, and was turned down. “I also learned that we need to pay to have our articles published. Besides, journals like Scientific American accept submissions only from PhD candidates, or people with undergraduate degrees,” the Indian teen scientist says.

By this time, Snehadeep was already in communication with some of the world’s top scientists - Dr Tom Welton, president of the Royal Society of Chemistry, London and the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Gerard ‘t Hooft, who, “likes to chat with students. He would send me practice papers to solve,” smiles the Indian teen scientist, adding, “I have always been interacting with scientists, Nobel Laureates, to discuss problems in maths and physics. I spoke to Dr Welton about studying abroad and my prospects at the Imperial College, London too.”

The venerable halls of Cambridge, Oxford and the Imperial College, London, are his deepest desire but “there are financial issues,” he admits. Even Ludwig Max Institute of Technology in Germany, known for its physics research in the fields of atomics and astrophysics, is on his coveted list.

When research led to discoveries

In 2021, Snehadeep met other scientifically inclined children through his favourite social media platform, Discord. “I decided to start my own journal to help brilliant kids with original research who cannot afford to pay for publishing, get a fillip,” explains the Indian teen scientist. Reaching out to friends across the globe through Discord, soon he had a team in place. The Aurora Academic Journal, an interdisciplinary online magazine for students to publish research, was born. “We have 63 members in all, and 10 on the executive team,” he smiles.

[caption id="attachment_12394" align="aligncenter" width="680"] The Moon, August 13, 2021. Shot by Jasa Rebula for the Nebula Space Organisation[/caption]

In October 2021, Snehadeep co-founded the Nebula Space Organisation, the first space organisation run entirely by students. “We would like to build the world’s smallest, functional space telescope. If all goes well, we would like to launch it by 2023-24,” says the Indian teen scientist. The team is also studying the Milankovitch Cycles (changes in climate caused by the Earth’s movements), and hopes to apply its principles on Mars. “We’re looking into what it will take to create a floating settlement on Mars,” he explains. The Nebula Space Organisation is now collaborating with Harvard University, working with students and faculty from various departments.

Always on the lookout for new programmes to do, new things to learn, normal teen activities are much too passe for him. “I received an acceptance from the Oxford summer programme but won't be able to attend because of dates,” he mulls. The Indian teen scientist is also part of the Asteroid Search by Nasa’s Astronomers Without Borders, an initiative through which citizen scientists get the chance to make original astronomical discoveries.

Teen-tastic achievements

Received a Rs 56 lakh scholarship from Lifology, to pursue a bachelor’s degree from select universities across the world.
Top 10 from India by Environcentre Foundation in 2021, for his project “Coagulated water filter and purifier.”
Silver medal in the SRM University Mission Invention. The country's biggest science fair
A Young Fellow of Harvard’s CYES. The Harvard's Entrepreneurship Society, with a very selective procedure
Immerse Education Cambridge Summer Camp in 2020 and Oxford Summer Camp in 2022
A young member of the prestigious New York Academy of Sciences, which selects 1,000 students from over 2 million entries.

Follow Snehadeep Kumar on LinkedIn

Reading Time: 6 min

Rhodes Scholar Swathi Srinivasan: Cancer survivor and health equity advocate

(October 1, 2024) "Find out what you care about and then see what questions you can ask about it." Rhodes scholar Swathi Srinivasan is a great believer in pursuing the things one is truly passionate about - that's why she's able to put so much on her plate. She had a patent by the time she finished high school, did a double major at Harvard University and was selected as a Rhodes Scholar 2021. Swathi also has a slew of recognition to her credit - she is a 2016 Melvyn Scholar, a Science Day alumna and an AJAS scholar too. Ever since she began her research work in high school, Swathi has gone on to work for UNAIDS in Geneva to understand the work being done to address HIV at an international level. She is part of the policy programme at the Harvard Kennedy School and has travelled the world for research on global healthcare for HIV/ AIDS, the opioid crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic and has also worked with the government of Massachusetts. Swathi was raised in an exceptionally well-educated and accomplished household. Her mother, Rekha, arrived in the US over two decades ago, after her wedding to Swathi's

wedding to Swathi's dad. She earned a PhD in the US and began teaching organic chemistry. Rekha is also a Fulbright scholar - in 2019 and 2020, she came to India and Nepal to offer STEM workshops across the two countries. Swathi's dad, a biomedical engineer, is credited with creating an improved incubator, among other paediatric devices.

[caption id="attachment_39659" align="aligncenter" width="251"] Rhodes scholar Swathi Srinivasan[/caption]

Battling the emperor of maladies

It's the sort of atmosphere, one imagines, that would have given the young Swathi a leg-up like no other. The accomplished Rhodes scholar, however, has faced more than her fair share of challenges. In late 2019, she was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a fairly aggressive cancer that attacks the lymph nodes and immune system. "I would ride my bike to chemotherapy everyday," she says, recalling her daily six-mile trip to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. She would ride in sunshine, rain and snow, despite having lost her hair. She managed all this without missing a single class.

Instead of lamenting her lot in life, Swathi used even this time to ponder the struggles of global healthcare, especially among the marginalised. "I was thinking of the side effects of chemotherapy, which is a really big issue too and matter differently to different people. I'm in school, I can take a day off when I feel nauseous but a single parent can't do that, can they? They have to show up at work no matter what." She could ride her bike to the hospital but wondered "how other people do it, if they live further away from the hospital and don't have a car. I was back to the question of inequality and this time around, I was a lot more connected to it." It inspired her to go back to the lab, to work on a form of chemotherapy that reduces side effects.

A low-cost incubator

Growing up, Swathi was always encouraged to pursue her interests, which were quite varied. When she wanted to be a fashion designer, her mom bought her a sewing machine. When she wanted to make jewellery, her mother helped her buy gemstones online. If she wanted to conduct an experiment, her mother would bring home the ingredients she needed. As for Swathi, she gives full credit to her parents and her mentors and its eager, she says, "to pay it forward." Her mother would take her to the lab when she was still a toddler and she had observed her father working. And when she still in high school, she had devised her own incubator.

"I burnt my hand on a resistor in the Physics lab one day," Swathi said. "And I was like, this device is pretty cool. So I created a grid of resistors and made a heating pad." She was inspired by her father's work but the incubators he created were very expensive, Swathi wanted accessibility. She discovered the MIT Think initiative for high school students and applied, even though she wasn't affiliated with a lab at the time. "I had no mentors or a lab to support me but I needed the money and said so. They said 'sure'," she recalls. "They brought me to MIT and I met all these crazy scientists doing amazing work. I even met a scientist I had cited in my bibliography." Her prototype involves a secondary heating mechanism embedded into a gel-based incubator, which keeps the gel hot for more than 30 hours.

Harvard calling

Unsurprisingly, Swathi graduated from high school and went to Harvard University with stars in her eyes, intent on becoming a neurosurgeon, with a special interest in the prevalence and treatment of Alzheimer's Disease. As she sat in class, she wondered - say there was a breakthrough in a cure. Would everyone with the disease have access to treatment? The answer was simple: no. Swathi found herself more intrigued by this question than the one she had intended to ask in the laboratory. She switched her major to public health, studying a double major in Economics, Sociology, Philosophy and History.

Here, Swathi's focus remained on studying public health epidemics and her thesis was on the impact of inequality on HIV/AIDS and the Covid-19 pandemic. She also did a minor in chemistry, which she uses to formulate her chemotherapy research. She was in an atmosphere where her talent and academic rigour were matched by her peers. "Some of my peers were featured in Forbes 30 Under 30," Swathi remarked. "They have published multiple papers, were ballet dancers in national companies... this naturally gets in your head and requires some adjusting."

The Rhodes scholarship

A highly-rigorous selection process precedes the Rhodes scholarship. For Swathi, it involved eight letters of recommendation and a letter of endorsement from her university, which put her against 125 applicants. Harvard selected 45 and she was among them, going on to become one of the 32 scholars selected from the United States. Every year, 100 students are selected to join the world's academic elite at Oxford Universiy, as the Rhodes Scholars for the year. In her personal essay, she talked about her own life and her roots, and how she saw poverty in India. "I actually woke up one morning and it showed up on my Facebook feed on US News, Yahoo and AP," she said in an interview.

Now at Oxford University, the Global Indian's purpose has not changed, she lives by the same lessons she earned from hermother. "We have gotten to where we are because so many people have lifted us up," she said. "Therefore, it's our job to lift up others."

Follow Swathi, a Rhodes scholar on LinkedIn

From being called low-functioning to creating history, Hari Srinivasan has come a long way

(June 20, 2022) When he was first diagnosed with regressive autism, scholar Hari Srinivasan was only three years old. From being a very active and social child, Hari suddenly became a crying, fussy baby, who did not want to be around other kids. To ensure that her child gets all the support that is required, Hari's mother left a blooming career in IT and started to navigate the messy maze of services and therapies. He had difficulty in speaking and even recognising his own parents. While initially the doctors and behavioral experts called him low-functioning, Hari and his parents didn't lose hope. After about two decades, Hari created history, as University of California, Berkeley's first non-speaking graduate with autism. And that is not all. With a 4.0 GPA, a major in psychology and minor in disability studies, Hari was also awarded the prestigious P.D. Soros Fellowship. The young graduate is now headed to Vanderbilt University for his PhD in neuroscience. [caption id="attachment_18247" align="aligncenter" width="693"] Hari Srinivasan[/caption] "Let me first describe my disabilities," says the youngster, during an interview with Global Indian, adding, "I have limited speaking due to oral motor apraxia, autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). I also have movement

ibe my disabilities," says the youngster, during an interview with Global Indian, adding, "I have limited speaking due to oral motor apraxia, autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). I also have movement issues, fine motor challenges, body schema challenges, sensory dysregulation and anxiety. Who would have thought I would go anywhere near a college when I was in special education school stacking blocks." smiles the scholar.

He adds, "There were several issues that I and my family faced due to my medical condition during the initial years. However, with the support of my family I was able to break several stereotypes. Later, my faculty and peers at UC Berkeley helped me a lot on my journey."

A rough start

Hari's parents - a native of Chennai - had shifted to San Francisco, California in 1993. Five years later, in 1998, the couple welcomed a happy boy, who was very intelligent and loved to read. "My grandma recollects how when I was about 16 months old, I would bring my favorite Dr Seuss book for her to read, while i sat on her lap. However, when she was leaving for India about six months later, I had lost all interest in books," shares Hari.

Since not much information was available about autism at the time, Hari's parents thought that like other kids he too will move on to different things. "But it was my other grandmother who noticed that I had even stopped responding to my name. My parents took me specialists to check if my hearing was impaired. When, we were in India for a vacation, my parents took me to a child psychiatric in Chennai. There I lined up all the 50 toys in the room. Even though lining up things is one of the obsessive autism behaviours, the doctor didn't diagnose me as autistic," shares the scholar.

It was only when he was three years old, that a child neurologist diagnosed him in mere five minutes. "There was no support for kids like me back in the day. So, while the doctor diagnosed me, he asked my parents to visit him again after six months. My parents later found that there was a parent support group and they connected with them," Hari says, adding that after meeting other people his parents put him special education classrooms.

Fighting for a better future

While he was enrolled into a classroom, Hari wasn't happy with his education there. Hari was regarded as a "difficult" case and was moved many classrooms which was hardly conducive for a young child. "I felt like a kid outside a candy store looking longingly at the candy inside. My nondisabled peers were getting to learn all this cool science but my fifth-grade class was still working on the same lessons that I was doing from kindergarten , like spelling c-a-t. I was sad and frustrated and did not see how my situation would change. Perhaps over time I would have reached a state of apathy that I see in other disabled adults around me," shares the scholar, who struggled a lot during those days.

[caption id="attachment_18244" align="aligncenter" width="681"] Hari, during the UC Berkeley graduation ceremony[/caption]

A fork on road was discovering a mode of communication with use of alternative augmentative device (AAC), which took Hari out of the school district and into a charter school. The scholar shares, "The school's first psych-ed assessment placed me at XII grade for math and college level for English. All of a sudden, I started studying algebra, biology and Shakespeare and loved all of it. The very first essay I wrote in class went onto winning a National Scholastic Gold Medal which I received at Carnegie Hall in New York."

Intellectually stimulated, Hari did a ton of creative writing, including several poems and short stories, which won him several awards at state and national level. "Then Viji Dilip who ran a nonprofit asked if I wanted to be editor for a free braille mag and that kind of how I got a foot into advocacy," shares Hari, who is a human rights activist as well.

Shaping his dreams

Having denied studying at a regular school for several years, Hari took his education very seriously. However, while he dreamed of earning degrees someday, he realised that he will have to take one step at a time to achieve his goals. "My parents and I have never taken my next education steps for granted. After all I still have a ton of disability challenges. Frankly, at one point it did not look like I would even get a high school diploma. It was only after I finished my high school that we started looking for a college for me," Hari shares, adding that it was his therapist, who informed the family about community colleges.

The scholar soon joined the San Jose City College, but that wasn't enough for him. "I had applied to several colleges. When I learnt that UC Berkeley accepted my application, I was super thrilled. After all its the birthplace of disability rights movement in this country," he says. While getting into UC Berkeley was one thing, getting immense support from his faculty and peers. "Berkeley has been transformational truly," shares Hari, adding, "I had supportive faculty, non-judgmental peers and also a nudge to literally go out and be part of the change you want to see in the world. No one said no. Which makes a world of difference and also gave me courage to try out different opportunities."

[caption id="attachment_18245" align="aligncenter" width="642"] Hari along with the Haas Scholar cohort[/caption]

Hari's honors research was on the emotion of awe in autistics and how it diverged from how that emotion is felt and understood in the non-typical population. Apart from his academics, Hari was involved in several clubs and other extracurricular activities like writing for the student-run The Daily Californian, getting involved in Spectrum at the University and also running the autism class. Slowly, Hari started taking part in activities outside the University campus as well. "I was one of the three students highlighted on President Obama's Instagram on the 30th anniversary of Americans with Disabilities Act. In fact, I am al the University Medal finalist (top 5 in graduating class of 11000 students) and winner of the Psychology Department citation award," shares the scholar who has been honored by some of the most prestigious societies in USA, including Psi Chi and Phi Beta Kappa.

Recently, the youngsters, who is also a published poet, received the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans. "I do have some time to come with an exact research topic for PhD," shares Hari, who plans to do his research work at Vanderbilt University. "My work will focus around the human nervous/sensory system. However, I am yet to narrow it down."

Follow Hari Srinivasan on Twitter, Instagram and Blog

Reading Time: 8 mins

Meet Rajat Bhageria, serial entrepreneur and budding VC

(July 06, 2023) At 26, Rajat Bhageria is already well on his way to establishing himself as a socially-conscious serial entrepreneur and an astute investor. Born in India Rajat has lived in four countries, speaks four languages and works, according to his LinkedIn bio, "to build lasting 100-year businesses around 10x solutions to the world's most pressing problems, while simultaneously empowering fellow entrepreneurs to do the same." Currently, he heads Chef Robotics a venture that landed him in the Forbes USA 30 Under 30 list and is the Founder and Managing Partner at Prototype Capital, a distributed $5MM fund investing in 10x comanies around the world. He's also a prolific author, writing his first book soon after high school - What High School Didn't Teach me: A Recent Graduate's Perspective on High Schools are Killing Creativity. His columns have also appeared in TechCrunch, Forbes and HuffPost. The first attempt at entrepreneurship In 2013, Rajat Bhageria founded what he calls his "first ever real startup." CafeMocha was a platform for writers to share their creative work. He was still in high school then, preparing for university. Rajat and his friends had spent their weekend studying for the SATs, memorising terms and

what he calls his "first ever real startup." CafeMocha was a platform for writers to share their creative work. He was still in high school then, preparing for university. Rajat and his friends had spent their weekend studying for the SATs, memorising terms and taking mock exams. It was something they had to do, certainly not something they enjoyed. It got Rajat thinking: "Schools are truly killing creativity. High School basically shuns them from taking risks and rather teaches them to follow a set formula." That made people afraid of their own creative spirit and the few who still expressed it, at least as writers, poets, essayists and researchers, had limited means to share their work.

As a writer himself, he felt the pinch. Blogging was definitely a way but came with a one-in-a-million chance of getting noticed. Tumblr was not academic whatsoever. He decided to create CafeMocha, the "only social-network that is truly aimed at high school students." What LinkedIn is to job seekers, Flickr to photographers and Spotify and Soundcloud to musicians, CafeMocha was to budding teen writers. In just a month after it was founded, the platform had about 30,000 page views and hundreds of unique visitors. "I learned then that one person really can make a difference," he explained.

Life at PennState

The Global Indian headed to Pennsylvania State University as an undergraduate and although he didn’t know then, met two people with whom he would go on to collaborate - Ben Sandler and Joe Cappadona. "I can personally say with a lot of certainty that my classes were by no means worth 60k/year," he wrote, in Huff Post. "But I can also say that the act of simply being in college taught me more than any class ever has." When he first arrived, he was struck with the idea that hundreds of young people had come before him and hundreds more would follow. How could he stand out? Could he leave a mark? It was the start of an "existential crisis" in which he discovered "the real power of college: it forces you to find yourself and ask yourself what you want to accomplish not only in the next four years but also in life."

https://youtu.be/I3biPTHVjeM

A weekend hackathon with Sandler and Cappadona resulted in the team building a prototype to help the visually-impaired recognise objects. They chose the non-invasive method, joining giants like IBM and Apple in those early days of wearable technologies. Rajat Bhageria joined, both fellow computer science undergrads and together, they built the prototype in a weekend hackathon. Their model was a hit and even landed them on the cover of UPenn newspaper.

Challenges

"I had no background building an intuitive product," he writes, in Forbes. And commercialising the product, it turned out, was another story entirely. First, they had to test the market: Was their product worth the effort in the first place? Is it something that the blind actually needed? The team cold-emailed organisations in and around Philadelphia. They received only two responses, out of which only one turned into a viable lead.

It meant reaching out to a wide circle of people, from CEOs to investors to NGOs. "I was able to learn from venture capitalists who had funded Fortune 500 companies, founders who had IPOed their companies, and CEOs leading massive 500+ person companies," he wrote.

It wasn't so much about the advice that he received but the insight it gave him into the minds of extremely successful people. How did they grow? What did they prioritise?

In 2018, having learned the many struggles of entrepreneurship, Rajat Bhageria decided he wanted to empower others like himself. He went on to found Prototype Capital, which is in existence still. According to the company website, Prototype Capital "believes in getting down in the trenches and being there right alongside the most ambitious founders in the world as together, we fund and found lasting 100-year businesses around products that change the status quo by 10x."

Chef Robotics

From wearable technology, Rajat moved on to Robotics and AI. It was a timely start- months before the pandemic struck. This time, he addressed assembly line cooks, "an extremely dull and dangerous job," as the website describes it, "leading to massive turnover rates as people try unsuccessfully to find more fulfilling work." Food companies remained woefully understaffed, in some cases by up to 25 percent.

Rajat's solution: Put robots in assembly lines instead. The idea was also inspire the next generation of founders, engineers and investors to design intelligent robots.

You can follow Rajat's work on his website

Reading Time: 6 mins

Sri Nihal Tammana’s Recycle My Battery helps rid the world of hazardous waste

(September 17, 2024) When Sri Nihal Tammana, founder of Recycle My Battery, turned 10, his father sat him down and told him about the world in which they lived. "It was my birthday and my dad said I had to be more concerned about what was going on around the world," says the US-based Nihal who is now 13 and has been running his non-profit, Recycle my Battery for three years. The Edison teen is the winner of the prestigious CNN Heroes Young Wonder Award, for his work in making sure that batteries don't end up in landfills or in the water supply. After that fateful conversation with his father on his tenth birthday, Nihal began watching the news. One day, he learned that a waste disposal plant had caught fire. He found that the cause was a lithium-ion battery that had been thrown into the trash, where it exploded. "I remember watching the chaos and it was super scary," he said. Nihal thought of his favourite toy - his drone, which also runs on batteries. "I asked my dad if anyone could do something about the problem and he said yes but they aren't trying to fix the problem.

Importance of Battery Recycling

"Batteries power nearly all our devices and we are going to be using them more and more," Nihal explained. "I realised that the problem wasn't with batteries themselves but with what we do with them after they run out of juice." The answer, he knew, wasn't in banning them altogether but simply in disposing of them correctly. "I'm a realist," he remarks. "I can't imagine not using my battery-powered devices, not even for a day. The battery isn't going away and it won't help us to stop using them either. The answer is recycling."

For over a year, Nihal studied the impact of batteries on the planet. Then, he looked at solutions for the disposal process. He went door-to-door, talking to everyone who would listen about the issue. He also visited local businesses to make sure they were recycling properly. His cousin soon joined him and in 2019, they founded their own non-profit, Recycle My Batter. "We talked to everyone at school and around the neighbourhood. Many people decided to come and help out. Changing the way people think and act as a community is the most important thing we can do today."

School children in New Jersey rallied to his cause. Recycle My Battery then began setting up battery bins in offices, schools, public libraries and other locations, also working with Call2Recycle, the largest organisation of its kind in the US and Canada. A little over three years after it was founded, Recycle My Battery now functions with a team of 300 school kids, who spread awareness and install free-to-use battery bins in schools and other public locations. The organisation has collected over 225,000 used batteries, successfully keeping them out of landfills and ensuring that they recycled. "People have been very supportive," he remarks, adding that his efforts at school have earned him a new nickname - Battery Boy.

Nihal is also an active proponent of spreading awareness, which he does through conferences, webinars, email campaigns and going door-to-door. These efforts have helped them reach out to millions of people around the world. In 2020, over 20 school superintendents signed up for the installation of the battery bins on their premises. "That's more than 200 schools and over 200,000 students," Nihal says.

In December 2022, as Nihal received the CNN Heroes Young Wonder award, attending the ceremony at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. "The earth has done so much for us," Nihal said. "We should do something back. I hope that other people have an epiphany too and make a change, even if it's a small one."

Follow Recycle My Battery on Instagram
Discover more fascinating Stories