Engineer Skips Job Placements, Builds Platform Helping Millions

When Sarang Bobade was in eighth grade, his father shared a story that would change his life. Social reformer Baba Amte once injected himself with leprosy bacilli to prove the disease wasn't highly contagious and to understand what patients truly experienced.

"My father told me that Baba Amte believed you can't find a solution to a problem unless you see it up close," Sarang remembers. Growing up in Chandrapur, Maharashtra, he witnessed both rural poverty and the changemakers working to address it.

Years later, as an engineering student at the Institute of Chemical Technology in Mumbai, Sarang made an unusual choice. He skipped campus job placements entirely, telling his vice chancellor he'd rather coordinate placements for other students to learn how industry worked.

During that time, he read a story in The Better India that led him to meet his future co-founders. The three would go on to create something that addressed a gap Sarang noticed during the 2015 Chennai floods.

Donations poured in during that disaster, but there was a massive disconnect between what people gave and what communities actually needed. "Need-based giving was missing," Sarang explains.

That insight became Donatekart, a platform where donors fund specific, verified needs instead of making open-ended contributions. Instead of guessing what a shelter home needs, donors can see exactly what's required and send those items directly.

The platform works with grassroots organizations whose stories often go untold. Over the past decade, Donatekart has filmed nearly 4,000 changemakers across India, from taxi drivers running orphanages to rural healthcare workers.

Why This Inspires

Sarang's journey shows how one person's decision to step off the conventional path can create systems that amplify kindness. By choosing empathy over a corporate salary, he built infrastructure that helps others act on their good intentions.

The platform has partnered with over 10,000 NGOs and recorded 25 lakh donor transactions. Trust remains central to the model through transparency, verification, and storytelling that connects people to real needs.

"Profit should be the outcome of the purpose we serve," Sarang says. His father's story about Baba Amte taught him that solving problems requires getting close to them, and that lesson continues to guide Donatekart's work helping millions across India.