Inventor-techie Vinod Chandrashekar to help increase NGO efficiency

Vinod Chandrashekar was all of 14 years, when he thought of inventing a key-less bicycle locking system that would automatically lock the cycle after the stand is put. He acted on it, by inventing the same. This earned him a Kishore Vaigyanik Protsahan Yojana fellowship (by the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India) while doing mechanical engineering at the National Institute of Technology , Surat.

The 27-year-old now works as a data analytics consultant with global ecommerce company Souq.com, commonly referred to as the Amazon of the Middle East. "I met my first venture capitalist at the age of 17, but it fell apart as I was told that the cycle lock did not have a bigger margin," he says, of his first invention. "So I decided to make innovations in the internet space, as it is not space-bound and can reach a larger audience," Chandrashekar offers.

His first campus job was at Tata Motors, where he was among the initial batch of engineers working on the Nano car project. He was inspired by Ratan Tata's vision to create a product that would help reduce road accidents. He went on to form VinCi Labs, a commercial startup in the internet and mobile space in 2012. Developing apps over the weekends after fulfilling day job commitments, he created Mishapp, which intimates family and friends with location information in the event of an accident. It is officially endorsed by the Bangalore Traffic Police.

He now also heads the city chapter of DataKind, a New York-based non-profit that brings together professionals from global technology firms like Google, Microsoft, IBM; startups and research labs to help non-profits manage their data efficiently . "NGOs cannot hire data scientists, but need to use data efficiently as it helps them achieve their goals smartly ," Chandrashekar says. Keeping this in mind, him and other like-minded team of professionals now work in areas like literacy, healthcare, urban development and civic sectors.

Says Sylvia Veeraraghavan of Janaagraha, who has worked with Chandrashekar on their portal 'I Change My City' for reporting civic issues, "Vinod and his team have fulltime jobs. But they work with us on weekends, on a volunteer basis. Their approach to data mining and consolidation has given us a good sense of areas that need focus and investment."

Apart from the non-monetised Mishapp that has around 1,000 takers in Bengaluru and his work for DataKind, Chandrashekar has also developed `KitnaDetiHai' for democratising salary information across companies and sectors, which he plans to monetise soon.