IIT alumni launch collaboration forum to boost education, livelihood skills, and healthcare sectors

Speaking at the launch in Mumbai, Kartik Kilachand, Founder & Global Convener of IIT-IIT said, “There are thousands of NGOs in the country doing excellent work, but for all these organizations, creating scale, which is critical to generating impact, is the biggest challenge. These social impact NGOs need a strong platform which will act as an advocate, help open new market places, facilitate co-operation between NGOs, work collaboratively with Government and enable access to talent and capital. We will be this entity.”

The IIT-IIT.org’s mission is to accelerate successful social impact projects that have a strong government participation. 

Dr Ganesh Natarajan, Chairman of 5F World and co-founder of IIT-IIT said, “Similar to the stellar work done by NASSCOM for IT and BPM firms in the country, we intend to take great success stories in the social sector which have had local impact and help scale them nationally. We are in the process of evaluating such programs and are in discussions with the governments of various cities and states to help cross-pollinate ideas and create sustainable change.”

“Our primary goal is to provide a platform to harness intellectual capital, enable engagement across the eco-system and accelerate nation building” said co-founder Joseph Fernandes. India’s largest social impact entity in education (Pratham) has an annual outlay of $ 40 million while Bangladesh and Kenya’s largest NGOs have budgets greater than $100 million. There is tremendous scaling possible and IIT-IIT will be a catalytic force for that scaling,” said Natarajan.

The IIT-IIT organisation has started with a core advisory group of nine members and is enrolling founding members from the IIT alumni community.

Discussions are already in place to scale the Pune model of skilling centres to other parts of the country.  They can be reached on www.iit-iit.org