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About
A true disciple of the Late Shri Balasaheb Bharade alias Dada (Great Gandhian Thinker and former Speaker of Maharashtra Assembly), Ravi Ghate, a Pune based Social Worker, has always focused his entire activities for the empowerment and upliftment of rural and deprived class of the society using Information Communication Technologies for a larger impact.
With a tagline of "From Zero-For Zeros", Ravi Ghate has been thriving to empower the masses using ICT-based platforms for the last 25 years. He is the recipient of the National Youth Award 2005-06, the apex award for Youth Social Workers in the country, at the auspicious hands of then President Dr A P J Abdul Kalam for his outstanding work in spreading Computer Literacy across the state of Maharashtra, especially in rural, tribal and backward areas.
He is the innovator of the "Local SMS Community Newsletter", which won many awards and accolades including the Manthan Award, NASSCOM Social Innovation Honor, Clinton Global Initiatives YES Fund Award. This idea stood among the TOP 15 PUBLICLY VOTED "Mobile 4 Empowerment" ideas in the WORLD. SMSONE was ranked among HOT 5 start-ups in 2010 by Forbes India Magazine & FastCompany, USA.
His innovative project eduVARTA won the prestigious "Mobile for Good" Award of Vodafone India Foundation worth Rs.10 Lakhs. He used this money to alert & update 1,20,000 Schedules cast/Scheduled Tribes/Nomad Tribes students.
His efforts of helping drought-affected using Social Media ranked among the Top 5 Social Media Projects in the country. A group of 100 Empowerment Catalysts worked towards reducing the pains in drought-affected areas. A direct giving model was set which bypassed NGOs and middlemen and because of this Rs. 85 Lakh worth of works were reported whose government valuation is over Rs. 2 Cr. Facebook published a story on Drought Help Group to celebrate its 100 Million user base in India!
Social Peace Force, a youth group on Facebook was formed to tackle disturbing posts about honorable leaders, social icons, and religions. The motive of this group was to avoid violence that erupts after such posts on social media. Digital attacks should be tackled digitally only, not on roads, which was the theme behind this group, which won many accolades and appreciation from various sectors of society.
His other projects include Digital Community for Mehtar – Walmiki’s (4500 families), Mobile for Minority Empowerment (15,500 families), Urban to Rural Student Mentoring (25,000 + students), mVillage enriches villagers with vital rural information through SMS.
In order to promote Innovation, Entrepreneurship & StartUps amongst the students, he has conducted many seminars, workshops in colleges, universities across Maharashtra. He has developed Student StartUp & Entrepreneurship Support System under CoBiz.
He initiated and successfully completed Smart City! Smart StartUps! Pune & Pimpri-Chinchwad. India’s First Crowd-sourced Entrepreneurship Development Program! Govt of India, through its program “StartUp India”, taking great measures to encourage citizens for entrepreneurial careers. Seldom have few opted to choose this career because of high risk and non-supportive family culture. To overcome this mentality and encourage participation, with help from two political personalities, Shri Amol Balwadkar & Shri Amit Gorkhe launched a program named “Smart City! Smart StartUps!” in Smart City Pune. It was focused on promoting new StartUps, starting new businesses, or supporting their existing businesses amongst the enthusiasts. They were offered FREE Incubation support for 100 days… Like the Startup Accelerator Program.
Identifying the desiring need of unemployed youths, he has initiated a project called Co-operative & Collaborative Business - CoBiz. CoBiz influx cooperative thought process among like-minded youths to come together and start some entrepreneurial project or business. An online platform on Facebook Private Group called BOSS - Business Opportunities Showcase & Services has been initiated to facilitate youths with many business opportunities, from which they can select which suits them best. More than 30,000 youth have been enrolled through Google Forms and Facebook Groups.
Many research students published papers on his innovation. To name a few, Oxford University, Stanford University, IIM-A, IIT-B, UNESCO, FICCI etc. Washington Post, Fast Company, Tech-Crunch and many other national-international media houses published his stories.
He holds a degree in Mass Communication and journalism. His life mission is “Information for Transformation” using ICTs, especially for down-trodden and vulnerable communities, which is in line with MANTRA given by his Guru Shri Balasaheb Bharade…. “उपेक्षितांचा प्रतिनिधी हो !” “Become the leader of deprived’ !”