Maharashtra

Kiran Bavadekar from Kolhapur contracted polio at 3 but still went on to pursue wrestling and bodybuilding professionally. Today, he is a fitness trainer, where 300 of his students have joined the Indian Army or police force.

Shashank Moddhia from Mumbai launched The Renal Project in 2019 to offer affordable treatment for patients of kidney disease in Tier II and Tier III cities

Indumaty Barve, Usha Manerika, Jayashree Samant and Shubhada Kothawale came together in 1991 to form the Shramik Mahila Vikas Sangh to help underprivileged women and single mothers become financially independent

Yogendra Kainthola, the founder of Thane-based BatteryLife2 has found a chemical-free solution to revive and double the life of lead-acid batteries in India.

Aamir Khan, Anurag Kashyap, Zoya Akhtar, and other eminent names in Bollywood saw Malegaon Ka Superman, which catapulted the success of Mollywood, the film industry of the small town of Malegaon, Maharashtra.

M I Siddiqui from Muzaffarnagar, Bihar, went to Mumbai and started Cosmus, a bag manufacturing company. Today, the company sells products like duffel bags, school bags, and laptop bags that are about 30 per cent cheaper than many in the market

Dr Sujata and Ashutosh Kelkar, an elderly couple from Jalgaon in Maharashtra, went viral for their rendition of Kya Yahi Pyaar Hai from Rocky (1981) on the harmonica.

Maqbul Shaikh from Nilanga village in Latur, Maharashtra, has built a 10 Hp bullet tractor that can be used for sowing, weeding, spraying pesticides and ploughing, reducing the dependency on labour, and costs Rs 1.6 lakh. The vehicle is also fuel-efficient

In a bid to help her uncle, who is battling Parkinson's disease, 14-year-old Jui Keskar from Pune has developed the JTremor-3D device, which helps measure tremors in patients and sends the data to the doctors through a Cloud database. This in turn helps the latter prescribe adequate medication. She has won accolades for this endeavor, including the Broadcom-IRIS Grand Award 2020-21 from the Central government

Today, Rajshekhar Patil, who hails from Nipani village in Osmanabad, is a successful bamboo farmer. But his story was not always the same. Over 23 years, he worked hard to remove himself from crushing debt left behind by a paralysed father and today, earns around Rs 1 crore by growing around 50 varieties of bamboo on his farm. He has also worked to make his village drought-free