Inspired by two generations of family, Arjun Venkatraman decided to carry on the family tradition of sorts by being an entrepreneur as well, and went on to receive the prestigious Ashoka Fellowship in 2014. Arjun’s grandfather was the founder of a non-profit organisation for the development of tribals. This helped Arjun to learn from the challenges faced by the family from a very young age. The unique stream chosen by his grandfather was an early inspiration.
Arjun learnt the ways of running an enterprise as a teenager when his parents set up a mushroom farm. After his engineering, he joined Atlantis Computing, a technology startup. Applying all his learnings, Arjun transformed the startup into a million dollar company, based in Silicon Valley.
His mother- Smita Choudhary and stepfather- Shubhranshu started CGNetSwara, a non-profit in India that helped the tribal people in Chhattisgarh to send local news out to the social activists. Arjun observed the setup closely, and on hearing the reports that were being passed, he grew highly frustrated. There were innumerous cases of human rights violations taking place without any counter action. This inspired Arjun to move to India to extend the non-profit to not only listen to their grievances, but also take action against them.
Arjun has spent a lot of time and efforts amidst the rural people of India, Afghanistan, Nepal, Myanmar, Cambodia, and Indonesia. He has been connecting the isolated communities to human communication using cheap technology. He started HackerGram to identify communities and help them to be functional and self-sustainable.