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It takes guts to stand in front of a college principal, with just 37% marks in the SSC board exams and ask for admission, especially when the college is considered the Oxford of the East. It takes guts to stand in front of Dr PC Shejwalkar, Pune's management guru, with 46% marks as a BCom student and say, 'I want to study business administration in your institute.' That too, when you haven’t passed the group discussion and the viva since you don't know English well.

It takes guts to stand in front of F T Khorakiwala and tell him you want to launch Moniginis cake shop in Pune, especially when Khorakiwala explains that he will take all your money as advance, since cakes are perishable goods.

Pradeep Lokhande, founder and CEO of Rural Relations, always had guts in abundance.

"There was nothing else that I had," he says as he sits in his 2, sq feet flat in Ghorpadi.

Pradeep lokhande biography of barack obama Will you be interested for your library project? Dear sir i am teacher from new english school of bhamathan shrirampur tahesil and district of ahmednagar. I am reading in news paper of your donation about books and computer. I am sending you request for school has been needed some books and old computer. Monday, November 15, Mr.

From his village in Wai taluka of Satara, to his plush house in the Pune suburb, Lokhande has come a long way.

Alwyn Tofler in his book Future Shock has detailed how multinationals and superstores in the US use the database of their consumers to make them buy certain things. Lokhande did something similar — he created the database of rural consumers in 41, villages in Maharashtra.

"My wife and father wrote 20, postcards to school teachers, sarpanchs and postmasters in 4, villages.

We wanted to know when the weekly bazaar happened," says Lokhande, explaning that these villages were critical for FMCG companies as they would sell their products to these rural consumers.

The first attempt yielded only 15 responses asking why he needed the information. He sent another lot and this time all  47 responses demanded to know who the hell he thought he was.

"Diwali was around the corner so we sent the last round of postcards to them, wishing them and their family.

Eight hundred people wished me back. I learnt my mistake — I asked them questions, but wasn't bothered about their lives."

The next three years, Lokhande travelled to as many as villages in Maharashtra, believing that the information he gathered was worth at least Rs5 lakh.

Pradeep lokhande biography of barack gas About us. Some dreams are big. Only mine was a far simpler one and yet a mission of sorts. I quite simply wanted to reach out to rural India and contribute to its developmen t. I set out on this mission 15 years back.

So, it came as a rude shock when Tata Tea offered him only Rs 25, "I had sold everything and now couldn’t even face my grocer because of my bills!" He took up Tata Tea’s offer believing it would see him through six months.

It didn't end there: Tata Tea sought his help to decode the information. “I gave them a whole new plan.

I showed them the possibilities of  wet sampling in villages. By the end of that week, I had a Rs lakh project from Tata Tea.” FMCG companies, realising the value of his data, upped the ante.  P&G offered him  over Rs 1 crore.

Pradeep lokhande biography of barack trump

Lokhande, who helps develop villages across Maharashtra and several other states, kept in touch with his people through the simple communication tool — the postcard. Yes, believe it or faint, the postcard still exists. And they reached because of the sheer volume of traffic! In , he took on the onerous task of setting up libraries in secondary schools in rural Maharashtra. Be it, your own child, all school children, your domestic help or even the rickshaw driver, if all of us pick up a book to read, our lives will change.

“In six months, I reached where I had dreamt I would be," he says.

It was at this point Lokhande took another bold decision. He completely changed tracks — from using his database as consumer reference, he used the same to bring about the social change. Kids in the village in Satara, where he came from, didn't have computers in schools.

“I appealed  to friends and corporates to give me their used ones. Today, 20, schools in Maharashtra have computers given away through this scheme," Lokhande says.

At some point, he realised  people weren’t  reading.

Pradeep lokhande biography of barack He knows the habits of 41, villages in Maharashtra and is pursued by conglomerates for this information. And yet, there's more to Pradeep Lokhande than his data gathering skills. Deepak Lokhande meets. It takes guts to stand in front of F T Khorakiwala and tell him you want to launch Moniginis cake shop in Pune, especially when Khorakiwala explains that he will take all your money as advance, since cakes are perishable goods. From his village in Wai taluka of Satara, to his plush house in the Pune suburb, Lokhande has come a long way.

“I named my new project Gyan Key Vachanalaya. The scheme is simple — you donate Rs5,, we buy books that will interest secondary school students." In the last days, Lokhande has found 1, donors and wants to set up 2, by the end of this year.

Lokhande has a very simple mantra to change India. “All you need is work on your secondary school students.

Change their mindsets and India will change in five years."