Whether it is education, heritage, environment, or revival, many conscientious citizens are doing their bit to make a positive impact.
Across the city of Bangalore, there is a quiet wave that is having a positive effect – not something that announces itself loudly, but something that is meaningful and impactful.
Giving education a practical twist
Udhyam Learning Foundation was started in 2017 by Mekin Maheshwari, CEO and co-founder of Udhyam Learning Foundation. At Flipkart, he noticed that the people who made the biggest difference were often those who could take ownership, deal with uncertainty, and figure things out on their own. When he started spending time in government schools, he realised that many students weren’t getting opportunities to build those capabilities early on. That gap stayed with him and eventually led to the creation of Udhyam Shiksha. One of the biggest challenges is helping people rethink what entrepreneurial thinking and learning can look like. We’re all used to measuring success through marks and exams, so experiential learning can sometimes feel unfamiliar. But once teachers and students start engaging with it, the impact becomes visible very quickly.
Philanthropy with impact
Kumari Shibulal and S.D. Shibulal founded the Shibulal Family Philanthropic Initiatives (SFPI) in 1999. They started on a very small scale, by sponsoring scholarships for two children from the school where he studied. Initially they were giving about 100 scholarships a year mainly to take care of higher education after 10th grade for meritorious students from economically weaker sections of society. This entails meeting their educational expenses for 5 to 6 years. They not only provide funding, but also actively design, implement, and support initiatives over the long term. Over the years we started their other education programs called Vidyarakshak, Ankur, Shikshalokam and SAATHIYA skilling program.
“My inspiration comes from my own life experiences. Being raised in a middle-class family, I very well grasped how education could change not only the individual’s but the whole family’s future. I was fortunate to receive opportunities that opened the door to my dreams, and I have always been deeply thankful for that. Reflecting with Kumari on ways we could give back to society, we understood that a lot of gifted children never get the opportunity to fully develop their talents due to factors that are out of their control. We encountered students who were not only excellent academically but also in need of financial aid. Young people with career dreams but who hardly had any access to professional training, and students with great spirit but lacking in the ways to flourish. So, our education programs aim at providing children the access to quality education, mentoring, training and a chance to lead a better life,” he says.
Being equal
The AssisTech Foundation (ATF) is an organisation working to make assistive technology more accessible and impactful for persons with disabilities (PwDs). “It was a serendipitous turn of events that brought me to the disability sector. Early on in my career, as a part of my volunteering efforts in the development sector, I was asked to participate in organising the world’s first International T20 Blind Cricket Cup. This experience brought to bear the spirit of the community – the resilience, passion and hope to create a better future for themselves and their community. After what seemed like a lifetime in the corporate world, I decided to explore the world of non-profit, see what contributions I could make. Serving in different NGOs, including my stint in Samarthanam as CEO, I lived the community’s everyday realities and concerns for almost a decade. This, combined with my passion for technology-driven change, has led me to initiate this effort. ATF is a product of this combined passion and experience, and the intention to create a comprehensive, multi-pronged approach towards nurturing an AT ecosystem that incentivises innovation alongside inclusion. I realised that while India had incredible innovators and entrepreneurs working on assistive technology, there was no ecosystem bringing all stakeholders together. Startups were struggling to scale, investors were hesitant, awareness was low, and users often had no idea such solutions existed,” says says Prateek Madhav, CEO & Co-Founder, ATF.
That gap inspired the creation of AssisTech Foundation. They wanted to build a platform that could connect innovation with impact. Rather than creating one product ourselves, they chose to enable an entire ecosystem where multiple innovators could develop solutions for different disabilities and challenges.
Community meets social initiative
Vasudha Rander, a homemaker and an active member of the International Inner Wheel, one of the world’s largest women’s service organisations, is involved in various social initiatives aimed at supporting underprivileged communities and creating a positive impact in society. “This work has become an integral part of my life—it truly completes me as a person. The satisfaction of giving back to society in whatever way I can fills me with a deep sense of gratitude and purpose. It makes me proud to contribute towards the well-being of others and gives me the feeling of living a meaningful and worthy life. I firmly believe that no step is too small. It is often many small steps, taken consistently and with compassion, that come together to create a truly wonderful journey,” she says.
Waste management
The work of Climate KIC, a European climate innovation agency, is about making sure that good ideas for tackling climate change don’t stay as just ideas. They help entrepreneurs and startups turn them into real solutions that cities and communities need.
What makes Bengaluru such an exciting place for this work is that the city is one of the world’s great technology hubs, bursting with entrepreneurial energy and innovation. “The opportunity we saw was this: most of the innovation happening around waste in Bengaluru was focused on managing it after it was created. What was missing was a focus on how to stop so much waste from being produced in the first place and the support, connections and funding to help innovations in this space grow. No single organisation can drive that kind of change alone. It takes startups, businesses, investors, government and workers moving in the same direction – a whole system. Creating the conditions for that to happen in a city like Bengaluru felt like exactly the right challenge to take on,” says Parisa Khoram, Entrepreneurship Programme Manager, Climate KIC.
One example of that collaboration in action is from two businesses, called Reverse and Green Aadhaar. Reverse has built India’s first end-to-end glass bottle reuse ecosystem, collecting nearly 30,000 bottles every day from over 300 hotels, restaurants and cafés across Bengaluru. Before connecting with Green Aadhaar through our programme, their entire operation ran on Excel sheets, WhatsApp messages and Google Forms. After implementing Green Aadhaar’s process intelligence platform, Reverse transformed how it manages its facilities and logistics. Another great example: Bare Necessities, a women-led company producing plastic-free personal care and lifestyle products, now sources products for their hampers from Saving Grains, a company upcycling brewers’ spent grain into nutritious food products.
Read the full story that first appeared in Our Bangalore dated June 20-26, 2026, here:
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