Prashant Gade is an Indian entrepreneur, philanthropist, author and speaker. He is the founder of Inali Foundation, an NGO that provides prosthetic limbs to the poor free of charge and at low cost.
Wiki/Biography
Prashant Gade was born in Khandwa, Madhya Pradesh in 1995 (25 years old in 2020). He went to St. Asylum School in Khandwa. He dropped out of electronics engineering in his third year. Later, he joined a six-month FAB training course in Pune. He then took a distance learning course in robotics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
appearance
Height (approximate): 5′ 8″
Eye color: Black
Hair color: Black
relation
He named his prosthetic invention after his girlfriend, Inali Wahane. In an interview, he said of his girlfriend:
After I dropped out of school and FAB, there was a time when even my parents lost faith in me. I went through a lot of struggles and obstacles. She always supported me.”
Profession
After dropping out of college, he found a job in Pune with an annual salary of Rs 5,000. While studying in Pune, he met Nicolas Huchet, a Bionico craftsman who had lost a hand in an accident and made a bionic arm for himself. Later, he met a seven-year-old girl, Shreya, who was born without an arm, but found out that a prosthetic arm would cost more than Rs 24 lakh. So he decided to do something in this field and make prosthetic arms available at a low price.
Prashant Gade and Nicolas Hutchet
Initially, he found it difficult to raise funds but his idea impressed the technical secretary of the Jaipur Foot Foundation (a foundation dedicated to supporting people with disabilities), who soon helped him design seven prosthetic limbs. In 2016, he started Innovation New Abilities (INALI) to manufacture prosthetic limbs at affordable prices. He has worked as a researcher with various organizations including FAB Lab and Enable Foundation. In 2016, a retired professor from the United States contacted him and provided him with ten machines to manufacture prosthetic limbs. He named his invention Inali, which is one of the most affordable bionic arms for people with disabilities. By 2019, he had designed more than 700 prosthetic limbs and distributed them free of charge to the needy, and more than 300 prosthetic limbs have been sold across the country. In an interview, he talked about his foundation and he said,
Our mission is to go to the remotest villages in India and organize monthly camps for the distribution of free electronic arms. We keep Inali going by selling prosthetic limbs at a nominal price to those who can afford them. But there are so many people out there who don’t have the funds or the opportunity. We at Inali want to help them rebuild their lives.”
Work address
Inari Foundation, 2nd Floor, Civil Lines, H-50, Sarvoday Khandwa, Madhya Pradesh – 450001
Facts/Trivia
- He was very close to his grandfather, who passed away when Prashant was very young. After his grandfather’s last rites, Prashant asked his mother:
Why were Grandpa’s clothes taken off and he didn’t take anything with him?”
His mother’s answer inspired him to do something for society. She said,
When we die, we leave behind everything in this world and take nothing with us; even the richest people cannot take their money with them.”
- While in college, he founded the Curiosity Lab, which teaches how to make projects needed for engineering.
- In an interview, he revealed that his parents were not very supportive of his decision to give up engineering, saying,
Many people said I was stupid for giving up the comfortable life that engineering promised. My parents didn’t believe it either. They thought it was too early to work for social change. My father advised me to work on myself first before working for others, so he made me take another computer science course. But I would not give up. I kept working and tried to get funding from various sources. Although I didn’t get any funding at first, my idea impressed the technical secretary of the Jaipur Foot Department, and he soon gave me a seed fund to design seven such hands. ”
- He has been a guest speaker at TEDx NMINS Shirpur and INK in 2019 and 2020.
TEDx Talk by Prashant Gade
- In 2019, he was awarded the REX Karmaveer Global Scholarship and the Karmaveer Chakra Award, both by iCONGO in partnership with the United Nations.
Prashant Gade’s Karmaveer Chakra Award
- In 2021, he was seen in the Karamveer special episode of ‘Kaun Banega Crorepati 12’.
Categories: Biography
Source: HIS Education