Students at NIIT have been some of the most socially aware and charged that I’ve seen in the youth in recent times. In a recent Startup Insiders event held earlier in the month, we had students come on stage and pitch startup ideas that they wanted to execute - over 70% of all of the ideas presented were social innovation ideas!

A group of students from NIIT also took the initiative to start the NIIT Social Entrepreneurship Club under which they are running a number of initiatives. Their flagship initiative is Environment Buddy - a venture based around recycling.

They provide and set up recycling bins in an area, educate the people in that area on the importance of recycling (see the attached flier), and also manage pickup and management of those bins. What is more interesting is that they have also found a way to sell the recycled trash and make enough money to make all the operations self-sustainable and make money on top of it.

Even though they have said that they will be using any income from this on other social projects or initiatives, I personally wouldnt even mind them making a profit - its a good service, someone is willing to pay for it (not the consumers), so win-win-win?

Their project has so far been piloted successfully at the NIIT campus itself, but from there Brightspyre has offered to help them expand their services to the ETC IT Software Park in Islamabad, and from what I hear some telecos and large NGOs have also offered to partner with them to scale this up.

Their success in wonderful to hear about - good job guys and keep them coming!

Share This