Davos 2023: Meet five Indians Named as Top Social Innovators by Schwab Foundation

In the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Switzerland’s Davos, the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship – WEF’s sister organisation – awarded 16 organisations from countries like India, Uruguay, El Salvador, Nigeria, USA, France and UAE.

The winners were recognised for their work in fields like education, agriculture, microfinance, environmental projects and women’s empowerment in the informal economy.

Among 25 leaders five of them were Indians – Aniket Doegar, co-founder and CEO of Haqdarshak Empowerment Solutions; Kanika Pal, South Asia Sustainability Head at Unilever; and Punjab Education Collective’s designer Khushboo Awasthi, and co-leaders Rucha Pande and Simranpreet Oberoi. Let’s look at the expertise and contribution of the above mentioned five individuals in our society.

Aniket Doegar:

The Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Haqdarshak Empowerment Solutions Private Limited (HESPL). The organisation works on digitising welfare schemes in India to improve accessibility for low-income rural and urban communities. Mr. Deodar is also a board trustee at the YP Foundation.

According to the Business Today, HESPL has digitised more than 6000 schemes in various local India languages and supported more than 1,20,000 people in rural and urban areas for the last seven years.

Kanika Pal:

Pal is South Asia Sustainability Head at consumer goods group Unilever and founded the Solutions for Clean and Healthy Environment Foundation to influence behaviour change for a cleaner planet.

She is known for her passion to understand the interconnectedness between conserving the environment, enhancing livelihoods and improving the health of people to create sustainable communities.

Khushboo Awasthi:

Co-founder at Mantra4Change, Khushboo Awasthi is designer at the Punjab Education Collective and the Chief Operating Officer of ShikshaLokam, an education leadership mission in India. According to Schwab Foundation, ShikshaLokam catalyses education leadership development programs, orchestrates collective action and builds open-source technology solutions to drive change at scale.

Khushboo co-founded Mantra4Change In 2013, a non-profit driving systemic transformation within the Indian public school system.

Rucha Pande:

She is the co-leader of the Punjab Education Collective and Chief Operating Officer at Mantra4Change, a non-profit driving systematic transformation within the India public school system. Mantra operates in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Karnataka, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh with the objective to ensure that every child reserves an enriching learning experience.

She had earlier been awarded the Genpact Social Impact Fellowship in 2019. A graduate of MA in Education from the Azim Premji University, Rucha is specialised in designing programmes for scale.

Simranpreet Oberoi:

Mr. Oberoi is a co-founder of Sanjhi Sikhiya – an education management company which has headquarters in Fatehgarh Sahib, Punjab. Founded in 2018, Sanjhi Sikhiya specialises in education management. Sanjhisikhiya.org is a privately held company.