About Us

The Project

NEEDS was started in 2014 with the aim of addressing the basic needs of children & schools hailing from rural parts of India. Often individuals make material donations to schools and institutions but unfortunately many a time; these materials do not meet the need of the hour for the beneficiaries. NEEDS’s primary objective is to bridge this gap by directly asking children and educational institutions their basic needs and encouraging donors to contribute towards these requirements. The NEEDS team identifies and provides an opportunity to access specific items required by these children on high priority ranging from items related to Nutrition, Education, Empowerment, Developmental Infrastructure as well as Sanitation & Hygiene.

Through a seamless e-commerce platform, Donors from across India are given the option to choose items and make donations whether bigger or small towards this noble cause.

NEEDS conducts a thorough due diligence on every school it associates with and subsequently ensures regular visits to the schools to monitor the use of the donations. While currently only working with 3 schools in the Amravati area, NEEDS has already completed due diligence exercises in 3 more schools in the Amravati area, 2 schools in around Raipur, and 5 schools around Dehra Dun and is working on finalizing operational processes with them. NEEDS hopes to rapidly expand its footprint all over India while ensuring all areas are constantly serviced with donations.

NEEDS has put into place strict reporting guidelines to its donors wherein donors will not only be sent a confirmation with a picture of their donation but also be able to view all their prior donations via an online donation portal. Donors are also sent regular reports with metrics monitoring NEEDS’s impact in each of its schools.

NEEDS is a project of the Venkatesh Trust which is a Public Charitable Trust, set up in 2006 for the purpose of making donations to a variety of causes on a need basis. In the past few years Venkatesh Trust has made donations towards restoration activities in Ratangarh, Rajasthan as well as donations towards medical treatment, education, and livelihood.

The trustee of the Venkatesh trust is Mr. Rajesh Tapuriah, CEO of Akin Chemicals, a petrochemical distributor based in India. His wife, Smita Tapuriah and mother, Indira Devi Tapuriah are Settlors of the trust. All donations made to the trust are eligible for donations under Section 80G of the Income Tax Act, 1961. We are currently not registered with the Foreign Contributions Registration Act and hence not eligible to receive donations from outside India.

The Team

Aakriti Sethi

Co-Founder

Aakriti has a Bachelor’s of Science in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Warwick. She further went on to pursue her passion for the development sector by gaining a Master of Science in NGOs and Development from the London School of Economics. After having volunteered and worked with various NGOs at the field level, Aakriti is now working with the K.C. Mahindra Education Trust for Project Nanhi Kali which is dedicated to provide quality education to the girl child.

Aayush Tapuriah

Co-Founder

Aayush has a Bachelor’s and Master’s in Operations Engineering from Cornell University, USA. He gained experience working at Gotham Consulting Partners, a boutique consulting company in New York City that advises Private Equity Clients before taking up his current job in India at Suminter India Organics, an Organic Ingredient Supplier that works directly with marginal farmers making their produce accessible to global markets. Through this current job Aayush has been able to interact with numerous farmers across India and has seen first-hand the poor state of people living in rural India. These experiences inspired him to set up an organization that can help people in rural India with their basic NEEDS.

Akshaye Rathi

Head Of Operations

Akshaye has an MBA from the SP Jain Institute of Management and Research, Mumbai. He is currently running his family business. Saroj Screens Pvt. Ltd., which owns and manages numerous theatres in tier 2 and 3 cities in India, including ones in Nagpur, Raipur, and Amravati. Using his regional presence and network in these cities, Akshaye was instrumental in identifying schools around these areas and the same network enables him to effectively monitor the schools ensuring donations are being well used. Akshaye is also a board member of the Leap Foundation, a non-profit doing relief work in the flood affected areas of Uttarakhand.

Advisory Board

The NEEDs advisory board is composed of people with vast experience in the fields that NEEDs aim to make an impact in. The board members are themselves involved in numerous other philanthropic activities, enabling NEEDs to benefit from their specific knowledge in creating sustainable impact for those in NEED.

Dr. Mahesh Balsekar

Dr. Balsekar is a consultant pediatrician at some of Mumbai’s finest hospitals including Breach Candy, Sir Hurkisondas Hospital and Saifee Hospital. Dr. Balsekar is on the Medical Advisory Board of St. Jude.

Dr. Minakshi Sethi

Mr. Anurag Sangal

B Com (Hons), FCA, B Ed

Chartered Accountant, Teacher, Educational Consultant, NABET Quality School Examiner

Co-Founder - LEAP Quality Education Practices – www.leapqualityeducation.com

Founder- Anurag Sangal & Co., Chartered Accountants, Dehra Dun in 1984. Founder Member of the Managing Committee and Former Chairman of the Dehra Dun Branch of Institute of Chartered Accountants of India; a sabbatical in academics in 2001 has become a life-long passion and a full time occupation.

Formerly – Principal of Chinmaya International Residential School (CIRS), Coimbatore- offering the CBSE from Class V through XII and the IB Diploma Progra & Chairman, South Asia International Baccalaureate Schools Association; Teacher of Economics, Business Studies, Theory of Knowledge and General Studies; International Examiner for Economics in the IB Diploma Examinations; Master Trainer for Staff and Students and acknowledged expert in Quality School Operations.

Identified in 2007 by the Education World Magazine as one of the `25 Principals changing the face of education in India’ and credited with having the unique blend of ‘academic vision with organisation and management skills’; Serves on the Board/Trustee of many Schools and philanthropic organizations.

Founding Principles

  • Donate What People Actually NEED

    What’s the point of giving a book to a child who can’t read? What’s the point of sending clothes to a child who first needs medicine to cure his/her illness? Every day thousands of donations are made with good intentions but are unfortunately not the need of the hour and are therefore wasted. The main founding principle of NEEDS is to give people what they NEED. Our team directly reaches out to schools in need of donations and finds out what they need the most. Based on their feedback, we give donors an array of goods that can be purchased for these schools through our e-commerce website giving donors the opportunity to donate towards only those items which the schools need the most.


  • Donate To Those Who NEED It The Most

    The majority of donors are based in urban areas and the majority of people who need donations are based in rural areas. Most donors donate to institutions geographically close to them mainly because it is convenient to do so. But this leaves institutions in remote areas devoid of basic resources. Our aim is to bridge this geographical divide and make it easy for donors around the world to reach these remote areas and help them.


  • Make Donations Easy

    We understand that often people do not have the time to volunteer or the resources to send and monitor donations to far off areas where donations are needed the most. We want to make donations as simple as online shopping – donors can browse the NEEDS of schools on an easy to use e-commerce website and then use a variety of payment methods to donate items, following which their receipt will be sent to them via email for tax deductions. Also donors can access a portal with details of their past donations.


  • Even The Smallest Of Donations Makes A Massive Impact

    No donation is too small. By servicing a variety of NEEDs we are able to provide our donors with a range of donation amounts. Also using our unique part donation facility, wherein we allow for donors to choose number of classes they would like to donate to, small donations can be pooled together to contribute to bigger goals.


  • Transparency & Reporting

    We want to make every effort possible to be completely transparent with our donors. Our trust deed, agreements with the schools, and the school registration certificates, are all available on this very site. We will send pictures/letters confirming delivery of ordered items to donors. We encourage donors to contact/visit the schools themselves to see first-hand the impact their donations are making.

    We ensure that each school is visited by our field representatives at least once a week to ensure that donations are being used only for the betterment of the students of the school. We also measure the impact of donations through monitoring how basic metrics such as attendance, enrollment, learning levels, basic hygiene habits, community perception towards education, etc. are changing on a half yearly basis at each school. The results of these surveys are shared with our donors through half yearly reports for each school