India awakens to a new dawn. Led by the north east. As we move away from charity and donations to wealth creation and venture capital – we change the paradigm.
During the foundation day celebrations to mark 75 years of the IIT ecosystem – the IIt Kharagpur Director had forcefully stated that he was not looking for charity and donations from alumni – instead he sought opportunity and monetisation for the Institute and its technologies.
The young and popular Director had suddenly flipped the narrative. He was not talking of giving back or going with a begging bowl. He was discussing partnerships and risk capital. Once the narrative changed, everything changed. Now it was a technology powerhouse seeking its rightful place on the sun. And demanding the cooperation of its alumni.
Swami Suryanil 🙏🏻 has done the same to community work. He doesn’t seek subsidies or charity for the underserved communities he has been living with for over a decade. He seeks wealth creation opportunities. And the funds to go monetise those opportunities.
And we find, state after state, country after country line up to participate in what is by far the greatest micro entrepreneurship drive on the planet. This is not something that was thought of in a hurry. It has been a fourteen year van stay that has brought about this realisation.
Swamijis journey started way back in 1989 when he was among the first Indians to be awarded a PhD in artificial intelligence at the University of Alberta. He did his post doctoral studies in Germany and then worked in leadership roles in the corporate sector. He then decided to pursue social work in 2012
In his fourteen year journey he has helped thousands of rural folk to pursue micro entrepreneurship. He held district and tehsil level training programs to help train able and disabled youth to pursue entrepreneurship.
Swamiji then took up a role in the Ramkrishna mission to pivot their educational and other establishments into training and enablement centres for population scale entrepreneurship. Working in the poorest of poor districts across Orissa, Bengal, Jharkhand, UP, MP, Chattisgarh, Uttaranchal, Jammu & Kashmir and the seven north eastern states – Swamiji developed an ai resilient sustainable model of development based on micro entrepreneurship.
The final frontier was not just to provide livelihood but to facilitate the creation of wealth at an unprecedented scale.
The model in the form of the co Cred fund is now ready to roll at a massive scale. Not just to pull the downtrodden out of poverty but to help them create wealth for themselves. And for the nation.
This is no longer an experiment but a strategy with tens of thousands of proven pilots – from mushroom growing for the blind to fruit orchards for marginal farmers.
The IIT Alumni Social Fund is proud to back this initiative with upto a billion dollars in risk capital. And is delighted to see the support of various governmental organisations for the same.
