24 hours ‘Learnathon’ held at Bangalore
The Bangalore based non-profit The Nudge Foundation on Sunday successfully concluded its first ever Learnathon, at their Gurukul campus at Whitefield.
The 24 hour learning marathon, titled “Empowered Lives” was held to encourage innovation, entrepreneurship and creativity for over 50 youngsters from disadvantaged communities in these fully residential Gurukuls, receiving a 4 month long education in life, literacy and livelihoods training.
The teams worked for 24 hours non-stop, creating, designing and developing business plans with the power to empower lives.
Special guest and judge at the event was Alok Goel, Managing Director at SAIF Partners. “I was incredibly impressed to see the ideas coming out of these youngsters. They have an incredible amount of energy and drive. I will not be surprised to see at least a few of them take their own enterprise to success” says Goel.
Selected as winners among the competitors were a computer training and browsing center business and a beauty salon business, both of which focused on the larger issue of uprooting poverty by creating sustainable business opportunities.
The Nudge Foundation recently received US$ 200,000 as funding from Nandan Nilekani, former CEO of Infosys and also the chairman of Unique Identification Authority of India. Also Godrej and Mphasis have partnered with Nudge for projects.