Meet GES Delegate: Ketan Deshpande
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Country of Origin: India
Organization Name: Friends Union for Energizing Lives (FUEL)
Organization Website: www.studentsfuel.com
Backround of Organization: FUEL — Friends Union for Energizing Lives, a credible non-profit organization focused on connecting underprivileged students to education and career opportunities across 11 states in India for over 7 years.
FUEL has been successfully leveraging technological platforms to provide online career-counseling and personality development support to over 9,00,000 students across 3000 schools, and partners with over 15 leadings banks/PSU, MNC’s and philanthropic and CSR foundations like Swades Foundation, Hero Moto Corp, BPCL, Amdocs, Lupin, IDBI, Deshpande foundation, Bharat Petroleum, IDBI Bank, Astrac, and others.
FUEL has received many awards. Ashoka India is one of them.
My inspiration to start this organization: Lack of information about career and scholarship opportunities leads students to miss out of life- changing opportunities. During my studies I realized that I wanted to be an entrepreneur, but had not studied the appropriate subjects to position me to do so. Frustrated with my personal experience, I knew that every student in India suffered from similar issues, and started FUEL. I mobilized students from my class, using their collective experiences to compile information, first about colleges and popular courses in Pune, then expanding to cities in the state.
Next big step i hope to help my organization reach: I plan to bring my programs to students across the country. In the coming academic year I am launching a talent search Olympiad that will identify exceptional students from grades 4 through 10 and award scholarships to particularly high-achieving students from rural public schools.
Also, I am planning to create a web-based server to store Data of all students counseled. This will be centrally available and updatable from all locations. Different data sources such as school details, student OMR responses, suggested career path, etc. will be also be available here
My biggest obstacle as an entrepreneur: As an social entrepreneur I face the Scaling & then maintaining required quality as a major challenge during my discussions. The organization has skilled counselors although; I think the system should be process-driven and not human-driven. To build process-driven Bottom of Pyramid solutions is difficult.
Another issue is quality human resource development. To get passionate co-workers and retain the passion is a big challenge. The main challenge I feel is that of Technology. As technology penetration is less in rural areas, our scope to interact with young students decreases.
My advice to other emerging entrepreneurs: My best advice to entrepreneurs is this: forget about making mistakes, just do it. The opportunities that everyone cannot see are the real opportunities. Just get out & do something, stop talking about it, planning it & waiting, start something today. Your attitude determines your altitude.
