BITS Of Social Impact Is Released

"Educational institutions of repute don’t just produce engineers, scientists, doctors, and others, but create leaders. Leaders with the intellectual firepower and the moral compass to build a better world", says Dr Kumar Mangalam Birla in his Foreword to the book 'BITS of Social Impact'. He goes on to add that the book "captures the stories of BITSian Founders who have pursued their passion for making a difference in people’s lives. The stories are insightful and full of compassion."

We are delighted to share that the book has been released during BITSAA Global Meet (BGM) at Jaipur on 7th Jan 2023. See the pictures below.

Sharing few pictures with the founders of social ventures taken either during the BGM or while interviewing them for the stories.

"At last, the job is done", seems to be what the authors are saying!

Highlights

The book would be of interest to  entrepreneurs, researchers, students, budding social entrepreneurs, policy makers, civil service organisations, NGOs, educational institutions, investors and the government. It focuses on real-life stories and examples rather than any theoretical inputs. Key contents are as follows:

• A chapter titled 'Social Entrepreneurship 101' with practical examples and tips. It is like a primer on social entrepreneurship.
• Twenty-five real-life stories of founders and co-founders of successful change makers who have made a social impact. It includes the story of one posthumous change maker.
• Eight short stories of 'Emerging Stars' who have displayed empathy and passion for a chosen social cause.

Featured Founders and Co-founders

The book features the following BITS alumni who either founded or co-founded organisations which have made a social impact. There are numerous other BITSians who work in the social sector as CXOs. The rationale of selecting these founders has been explained in the teaser of the book earlier. We thank the founders for sharing their inspiring journey with us.

PART I: HEALTHCARE

1. Making Genomic Medicines a Reality - Vijay Chandru (Strand Life Sciences)

2. Creating the World’s First Braille Self-Learning Device - Aman Srivastava, 

Sanskriti Dawle, Dilip Ramesh and Saif Shaikh (Thinkerbell Labs; Annie)

3. Making Healthcare Accessible and Affordable for All - Chetan Anand, Anurag Prasad, Shashvat Tripathi and Vaibhav Singh (Visit Health)

4. Making 1.7 Billion People Free from Muscle and Joint Pain - Ashutosh Ajay

Mundhada (Your Physio)

PART II: EDUCATION

5. World-Class Education for Every Child in their Own Language - Aniruddh

Mishra (ApniClass)

6. Empowering the Underprivileged to make India Rise! - Mayur Patnala (Nirmaan)

7. Improving the Quality of Education in Government Schools through Systemic Reform - Madhukar Reddy Banuri (Leadership For Equity)

8. Making Education Accessible to Students from the Lesser Privileged Community - Naveen Bannur (Educait)

9. Caring for the Children of Migrant Labourers - Saraswathi Padmanabhan (Diya Ghar)

10. Computer Literacy for Under-Served Communities - Rakesh Suri (Computer Shiksha)

11. Management for a Just, Equitable, Humane, Sustainable World - Gaurav Shah (ISDM)

12. Towards Creating a Future, Where Passion and Profession Intersect - Surabhi Dewra (Career Guide)

13. Empowering the Rural Youth of India - Ajay Chaturvedi (Kautilya Fellowship Network)

PART III: ENVIRONMENT

14. Waste to Energy - Devendar Kumar Ahuja (Ahuja Engineering)

15. Recharging the Belly of Mother Earth - Vijay K Kedia (Kedia Rainwater Harvesting)

16. Giving Back to Nature - Raghavendra Suryavanshi and Akshat Tyagi (Sustainable Biosolutions)

17. Saving Tons of CO2 - Vinod Agarwal and Kapil Kathpalia (Applied Solar Technologies)

18. Alleviating Water Scarcity in Rural Communities - Bhagwati P Agrawal (Sustainable Innovations)

19. An Innovator Who Overcame All Odds - Bhag Chand Jain (Posthumous) and Ankur Jain (Ankur Scientific)

PART IV: ART AND CULTURE

20. A Polymath Propagating Vedic Knowledge Globally - Dushyanth Sridhar (Desika Daya)

21. Giving Wings through Arts - Vinita Sud Belani (EnActe Arts)

PART V: COMMUNITY TRANSFORMATION

22. Creating Rural Entrepreneurs - Raju Reddy and Phanindra Sama (Kakatiya Sandbox)

23. Transforming the Lives of Communities Around One’s Alma Mater - Sunil Nanda (PARC)

24. The Transformation of Urban India - Ramesh Ramanathan (Jana Group)

25. Supporting the Support System - Raghu Rajagopal (Punarjanm)

EMERGING STARS

1. Ensuring Children Don’t Drop Out of School - Antara Sarkar (Sunday Class)
2. Creating Assistive Technology for The Disabled - Mohit Patil and Parth Shah (Abilitare, USA)
3. Helping the Marginal Farmers with Residue-free Cultivation Practices - Keerthi Priya (Koh! Foods)
4. Women Empowerment, Hunger and Education - Advik Singh (Chhalaang  Foundation)
5. Inculcating Social Leadership in Youth - Akarsh Shroff (YuvaSpark)
6. Making Mental Health Resources Accessible to the Young - Anagha Rajesh (Yours Mindfully)
7. Countering Hate in the Society - Pratyush Rawal (Sadbhavna)
8. Bridging the Gap between Law and Action - Tarun Cherukuri (Indus Action)

Acknowledgements

We are thankful to the following people for their contribution and support during various stages of the book:

1. Dr Kumar Mangalam Birla, Chancellor, BITS Pilani for the Foreword.

2. Dr Archana Pillai of IIM Bangalore and Dr Ranjan Banerjee of BITSoM, for brainstorming the project.

3. Kailash Gupta, K. Srikanth and the BGM-23 team for supporting the idea  behind this book.

4. J.A. Ramamoorty, Nishank Varshney, Anagha Rajesh, Kaushik P.S., Nidhi  Upadhyay and Neeti Pokharna, for research and editing-related support.

5. Akarsh Shroff, for suggesting the book title and winning the title contest.

6. ICFAI Business School (IBS), Centre for Social Initiative and Management (CSIM), Byrraju Foundation and Vishwa Vishwani Institute of Systems and Management (VVISM), all at Hyderabad, for providing the platform for  teaching and fieldwork for the courses and supervising more than 100 field projects on social entrepreneurship over the last twenty years.

7. All the students of Harsh Bhargava, the first author, who undertook projects and internships in the social sector, and thus, enriched the knowledge base with real-life  examples.

8. BITS Pilani, for nurturing and sensitizing its students to the needs of society.

9. Rakesh Chander, Pooja Sanyal, and the team at HarperCollins for rowing the boat together against the tide of time.

10. Haitenlo Semy of HarperCollins for designing the cover.

We seek the pardon of those whom we may have missed out listing here.

Lastly, we are both ever-grateful to our spouses for allowing the ubiquitous laptops to take our place during the last six months!

As a humble gesture from our side, we have pledged the entire royalty from the sale of this book to BITS Pilani.

To encourage the teenaged entrepreneurs at Young Entrepreneurs' Bootcamp (YEB) held at BITS Pilani Hyderabad campus (BPHC) recently, our book was given as Book Prize for best Team Pitch. Readers may browse the YEB story here. Sharing two pictures of the recipients of the Book Prize with Dr G Sundar, Director BPHC. Pictures courtesy DOPY, BPHC.

The book is available on Amazon- both hard copy and Kindle versions.

We hope you enjoy reading the book. We look forward to your feedback either as comments on this blog or on mail ID hbindia@gmail.com .

Postscript, 15th Jan 2023: "The 25 inspiring stories in the book embellished with visuals wherever required and also a few blurbs highlighting the core activities of these social entrepreneurship companies, is a valuable collection of material for those who aspire to be entrepreneurs on similar lines. The language is very easy to comprehend and would surely give the reader a great feel of how India's professional lot are working to make a real difference in elevating the society and mitigating its disparities", wrote Naresh Kumar in his review of our book in Hans India. Readers may browse the epaper for the complete book review.

Thanks for browsing.

   -  Harsh Bhargava with Sai Prameela Konduru/ 8th Jan 2023/ Jaipur 

#socialentrepreneurship #socialimpact #bitsianfounders #socialventures #bitsalumni #bitspailani #bitsaaglobalmeet #bgm2023 #bookrelease #bitsofsocialimpact #saiprameelakonduru #bitsaa #ghumakkadharsh #ghumakkadhb #kumarmangalambirla #reallifestories #volunteering #nep2020

BITS of Success gets featured in The Economic Times

_________________ BITS of Success in ET, 16th May 2014 _______________

Hi Friends of Ghumakkad,

We are happy to share that our book 'BITS of Success' has been featured in The Economic Times.

Extract of the story which appeared in today's ET is given below.
________________________________________________

BITS Pilani: College that connects the creators of Hotmail, MapmyIndia, Onida

By PTI | 16 May, 2014, 09.18AM IST

NEW DELHI: They all graduated from BITS Pilani as did Maharashtra Chief Prithviraj Chavan, founder of SQL Star International LtdBSE 3.85 % Ashok Kumar Agarwal and filmmaker Mani Shankar.

A new book, "BITS of Success: Inspiring Stories of BITS Pilani Alumni," by the institute's alumni Harsh Bhargava, Kinnera Murthy and Anu Khendry takes the reader through the journeys of 50 individuals who realised their dreams through perseverance and determination, be it as entrepreneurs, techno .. 

Read more at:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/et-cetera/bits-pilani-college-that-connects-the-creators-of-hotmail-mapmyindia-onida/articleshow/35189848.cms

_____________________________________________________ 

Those of you missed the earlier preview, here are the links:

http://ghumakkadhb.blogspot.in/2014/01/bits-of-success-is-released.html 

and 

http://ghumakkadhb.blogspot.in/2013/12/bits-of-success.html

As we had announced earlier, entire royalty from the book has been pledged by us to BITSAA, Hyderabad.

Thanks for your support and happy reading.

---- Harsh the Ghumakkad with Kinnera Murthy and Anu Khendry

Secunderabad/ 16th May 2014

____________________________________________________________________________ 

BITS of Success

_________________ BITS of Success: Our next Book _____________________

In a world besieged with Facebook, LinkedIn, smartphones, WhatsApp, Kindle, iPad and the like—who reads a book? Even the cranky toddlers of today are given an iPad by their mothers to remain busy! Then, why write a book when print media is threatened with oblivion? We still chose to do it—for two reasons. Firstly our alma mater BITS Pilani celebrates its Golden Jubilee this year (1964-2014) and secondly we wanted to showcase BITS alumni achievers of this period. Further brainstorming led us to ‘BITS50@50’ signifying 50 achievers from BITS during last 50 years. Setting the target was the simpler part.

The real challenge was to identify and select 50 achievers to be included in the book. Read the book to know how was the selection done. But as it turned out, majority of the achievers took the challenging path of entrepreneurship. They all had the proverbial ‘fire in their belly’ and toiled to realise their dreams.

This book is about passion, about dreaming and about the ability to realise the dreams. It is about building teams and succeeding against all odds. It is about falling down and bouncing back. It is about humility. It is also about making a difference in the lives of others. It chronicles the inspiring stories of 50 achievers. It includes the frustrations encountered by the individuals. The achievers also share how they achieved or could not achieve the balance between their work and personal lives. But one thing which was common in all the stories—all the achievers credited BITS for being where they are. 

We were pained to exclude many other achievers for want of timely information and/or space. Few other achievers did not want to be in print/limelight. Besides the 50 achievers who are featured in this book, there are countless other BITS alumni who deserve to be showcased. 

Perhaps, the authors of the next volume during Diamond Jubilee of BITS (1964-2024) can include many more of such achievers.

We chose the social media/crowd sourcing seeking suggestions for title of the book and for selecting the best title. Within just three days of posting, more than 50 suggestions were made which were assessed on-line by more than 500 BITSians. The title ‘BITS of Success’ was an outright winner. It was suggested by Jatin Chuglani an alumnus of BITS Hyderabad campus. We thank Jatin for his creativity and spontaneity.

We are grateful to Dr Kumar Mangalam Birla, Chancellor BITS Pilani and Chairman Aditya Birla Group of Industries and Dr K Kasturirangan Former Chairman ISRO and Member Planning Commission for writing the Forewords.

A project of this magnitude could not have been completed without active support of so many people. We have acknowledged them in the book. Omissions if any, may please be excused.

Here is the back cover:

-         

The book will be of interest to Entrepreneurs, Business professionals, Students, Faculty, Educational Institutions, Researchers, Start-ups and anybody having a question 'How do I succeed?' Of course for BITSian readers, the book will result in reactions like 'Look he was my wingie at BITS!'

The book has been published by the Universities Press Hyderabad and has an ISBN Number: 978-81-7371-914-1. It is an initiative of BITSAA Hyderabad.

If you are coming to BITSAA Global Meet (BGM-14), you will get a free copy. If not then you may order it on-line using the link http://universitiespress.com/display.asp?categoryID=0&isbn=978-81-7371-914-1 

We wish to thank our families for believing us every time when we said ‘just coming’ and took another two hours thereafter! Here is the team in action:

Who are these crazy authors-cum-editors? 

Well, all three are BITS alumni and all of them live in Hyderabad.

Anu- an IT professional, Agile Computing expert; 

Kinnera- former Dean ASCI Hyderabad and a social activist and lastly 

Harsh- former Commodore Indian Navy, Adjunct Professor in a B-school, volunteer wellness coach and a learning-lensman! His previous books include 'Virtual Leadership'.

We would like to mention that we have pledged the royalty from this book to BITS Alumni Association Hyderabad.

Hope you enjoy reading the book as much as we enjoyed putting it together.

Postscript: Those who would like a sneak-peak at the book may like to browse the next part of this picture story at http://ghumakkadhb.blogspot.in/2014/01/bits-of-success-is-released.html 

We would welcome your feedback at bitsofsuccess@gmail.com.

   - Ghumakkad Harsh with Kinnera and Anu 

Secunderabad

December 2013 

____________________ End of BITS of Success ______________________