BENGALURU: It takes a leap of faith to start a new business and some support always goes a long way. Just ask the entrepreneurs behind these two city-based organisations – Suicide Prevention India Foundation and Thinkerbell Labs. They have been selected for US-based networking platform Bumble’s Community Grant Program and are among the 13 winners across the country who won `1 lakh each for their service to society.
Thinkerbell Labs, co-founded by Sanskriti Dawle, has developed Annie, a digitised self-learning Braille device that has helped several visually-impaired students. News of her win has come as a breath of fresh air during these unprecedented times. “Our manufacturing unit has been down due to the lockdown. But this news has made us all happy inside,” says Dawle, who got to know about the programme from one of her team members.
Dawle co-founded Thinkerbell Labs four years ago when she was fresh out of college from BITS Pilani. She says, “Braille education across the world is still negligible due to the lack of a proper education system. I wanted to make a difference there,” says the 26-years-old. Right now, the device is available in English, Kannada, Hindi, Marathi and Telugu, with more languages in the pipeline.
The other organisation from Bengaluru that made it to the top 13 is Suicide Prevention India Foundation. They have been training people and creating a community that can work towards the cause. “During this lockdown, the number of people that have reached out to us has increased 3-4 times. We are getting almost 100 hits per day on our website,” says Nelson Vinod Moses, founder of the organisation. Moses started this organisation two-and-a-half-years ago after his best friend committed suicide. Currently the organisation has two employees and 20 instructors who attend to the people who reach out to them. “The grant will help us train more people who can further this work,” Moses adds.
Bumble launched the grant programme in March this year and as part of the initiative, they offered `1 lakh to winners across 11 countries – US, UK, Russia, Germany, Australia, India, France, Canada, Mexico, Ireland, and New Zealand. Over 2,000 SMEs from India and 20,000 from across the world had applied for it. Winners were selected across categories like fashion and lifestyle, healthcare, education, etc.