Our Story: The beginning, the Journey, and the aspiration …
The SEED foundation brings together a highly competent team whose members have excelled in their academic and professional careers. The story began when five friends with a vibrant spirit of giving back to society came together and decided to do “something good” daily in their lives despite being extremely busy in their prosperous and flourishing careers. These friends had one thing in common. They spent their four years of youth together in the same hostel (H7) in IIT Bombay in the 1990s. From the IIT, they departed and continued their journey of life on the successful path and achieved their milestones in chosen fields. They met again in silicon valley in 2009. The spark of living beyond the narrow confines of material successes ignited their minds and melted their hearts. This paradigm shift in their minds gave birth to the idea of a conscious organized effort for empowering the marginalized, and paving the way towards building sustainable communities for peaceful coexistence. Their common key areas of interest were environmental sustainability, education, organic farming and biodiversity, and an improvement in the quality of life of underserved people.
Dr.Ravikant
Ravikant is an associate professor and atmospheric scientist in the department of Chemistry & Molecular Biology, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Ravikant’s life journey is very inspiring. He belongs to a farmer’s family in a remote village of Hamirpur district in Uttar Pradesh, India. Through his hard work, brilliance, and ability to rise against all odds, he cleared the prestigious IIT admission test in 1994. He pursued his Bachelors and Masters in Technology, in chemical engineering from IIT Mumbai. Thereafter, he did his PhD from Hong Kong University, and subsequently Post Doc from Carnegie Mellon University in USA. While working as a Post Doc in CMU in USA, he became inspired from the life of Gandhi and started to work for several social causes in India. In order to unite like-minded people towards social and sustainability issues, Ravikant founded a Sustainability Innovations and Knowledge Center (Bharat Uday Karmayogi Ashram) and laid a foundation for a residential school (Bharat Uday Gurukul) for under-served communities in rural India. Ravikant has worked tirelessly to develop an economic model for rural sustainable development with focus on organic farming. Through his efforts, Ravi’s eventual aim is to create vibrant, self-reliant, prosperous and harmonious rural communities. Ravikant is an inspiring personality as a combination of a scientist and a social reformer. People with such a deep devotion to the nation are rare and they are a great inspiration to many others. India needs such young, educated, visionary and devoted social workers to take the country to newer heights and bring a true transformation at the grassroots. Ravikant also writes poetry, short stories and novels in Hindi. His writings depict social, cultural, environmental and political circumstances, personal emotional experiences, sufferings, moods and aspirations for truth, compassion and spiritual realizations by a common man. Ravi is currently serving in the Board of Directors of SEED Foundation.
Gaurav Shrivastav
Neeraj Kumar
Neeraj Kumar is an IIT Bombay graduate (B.Tech.) in Chemical Engineering and a Post Graduate in Business Administration from IIM Bangalore. Currently, he lives with his family in Houston, Texas, USA. He is a management professional and works as an Industry Principal. Besides work, Neeraj is passionate about sports, music and cooking. He believes in contributing to social and humanitarian causes specifically for sustainable rural transformation with focus on organic farming, education and for a better environment for our future generations. Neeraj is currently serving in SEED foundation’s Executive Board as a Secretary.