Himanshu Nitnaware

Bengaluru fisherman Arokiyaswamy Shamanna built an innovative machine out of an old ambassador car engine to remove water hyacinth choking the Hebbal Lake. And it's already helping 100 families

Malik Aadil from Bandipora in Jammu & Kashmir quit his job in Bengaluru to launch Groxery, the Valley's first online store, which can deliver products to one's doorsteps within 70 minutes

Raj Seelam from Hyderabad founded Sresta Natural Bioproducts to encourage farmers to grow organic food, which he sells under the brand 24 Mantra to help customers lead more sustainable lives

Mukesh and Chandramouli Pandey from Uttar Pradesh formed the Navchetna Agro Centre Producer Company Limited to convert cattle waste across 21 villages into vermicompost, which they export to countries including Maldives, Sri Lanka, and Nepal

Medhavi Keerti, Range Forest Officer posted in Uttarakhand’s Badrigaad Range launched Dhatree, an initiative to train women in making and selling organic soaps, cutlery, rhododendron juice, and other such products. They now earn up to Rs 1 lakh

Sewaram, a farmer from Uttar Pradesh, started growing strawberries alongside his usual sugarcane farming by dividing his 1-acre land, and now earns upto Rs 20,000 a month

Brought together by agriculturist Varanashi Subraya Bhat, Areca nut farmers formed Campco in 1973 in Mangaluru, Karnataka, to protect themselves and cocoa growers from fluctuating market prices and exploitation at the hands of giant multinationals

Villagers of Vadner Bhairav, located near Nashik, banded together to save their village from a water shortage by building ponds and barrages, growing grapes, and incorporating sustainable methods of farming to mitigate the crisis

Prabhat Saxena from Uttar Pradesh started his NGO, Srijan Ek Soch, in 2015 to help underprivileged students seek the same quality education and holistic development that one finds in schools in urban areas

Sagar Pradhan from Odisha is an author and software engineer, who has been using the royalty money he has earned from his written work to plant thousands of trees and revive ponds