Anshu Gupta (A21 Young Leader, Tokyo 2008) has been awarded the 2012 India Social Entrepreneur of the Year award by the Schwab Foundation, which is a complementary foundation of the World Economic Forum that aims to promote social entrepreneurship and innovation.

Starting as a freelance journalist, Anshu left a corporate job in 1998 and founded GOONJ with a mission to make clothing a matter of concern and to bring it among the list of subjects for the development sector. An Ashoka Fellow and the Global Ambassador of Ashoka, Anshu is creating a mass movement for recycling and reuse of tons of waste material by channeling it from the cities to the villages, as a resource for rural development. Anshu addresses many national and international forums to bring clothing on the development agenda and to motivate the youth to take action. He is a regular speaker in many parts of the world on innovation, leadership, village development, power of youths and social entrepreneurship.

Listed in ‘Forbes’ as one of the India’s most powerful entrepreneurs, Anshu’s organization, GOONJ has won many prestigious awards including the Innovation for India award, Lien i3 challenge, CNN-IBN Real Hero’s Award, India NGO of the Year Award, Changemakers Innovation Awards and Development Market Place Award from the World Bank. GOONJ has also been chosen as a ‘Game Changing Innovation’ by NASA & US State dept. in a worldwide search & selection.

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