WHEELS India Niswarth Foundation

WIN Foundation is a non-profit organization, established in US and with main operations in India. WIN Foundation funds, supports and facilitates innovation in the areas of (i) Water and Sanitation (WatSan) and (ii) Maternal and Child Health (MCH), primarily in India and apply it in empowering and improving the lives of underprivileged sections in a sustainable manner. Its primary operating unit is located at Research Park, IIT Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India. WIN Foundation also supports startups with solutions in these and related domains through funding, market access and market validation. In its first year, it has funded (i) field projects with NGO's (like ACT, Saath and VIKSAT), (ii) field and technology projects at premier Institutions (IIT Gandhinagar, IIT Bombay and IIT Kharagpur) and (iii) also select technology startups.

Our Vision

Initiate, support and spread the adoption of innovative ideas to improve the daily lives of people and communities in underdeveloped areas, in a sustainable manner and scalable manner.

Our Mission

Support and facilitate research and innovation. Improve quality and availability of clean water and sanitation by technology driven solutions. Improve Maternal and Child health through management and system solutions, among marginalised population.
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Core Objectives and Strategy

Support premier Institutions for technology and process development to find innovative solutions for pressing problems in these domains

Support reputed NGO partners for innovative community services to reach the communities with innovative solutions and empower local communities, with technical, managerial and financial skills, to ensure adoption of these solutions with long term sustainability.

Support Startups with Innovative technologies and Business Models in our domains to drive scalability across larger geographies and maximize the social impact.

Evidence based advocacy for policy influencing and wider support and collaboration among industry, public and other stakeholders, based on results of above initiatives to mainstream innovations and best practices developed.

WIN Water and Sanitation (WATSAN)

The UN Sustainable Development Goal 6 and their targets mention the challenges facing the world in the area of Water (see https://www.globalgoals.org/6-clean-water-and-sanitation for more).

WIN water and Sanitation (WATSAN)

India too has existing and emerging challenges of (i) availability of enough quantity and quality of water for various uses and (ii) Sanitation to fulfil the increasing demands in various parts of the country.  The WATSAN Centre of WIN Foundation will champion and lead in developing technology driven solutions that are novel, unique and affordable, with minimal or most effective use of energy.

This requires a need to facilitate innovations and their widespread adoption in water and sanitation domain, which include rural and urban water supply, water harvesting, drinking water treatment, toilets, optimum water usage in agriculture, waste-water handling/recycling, solid waste handling, elimination of manual scavenging, as well as water related hygiene promotion.

For above we must also tackle following major execution challenges for sustainable and scalable solutions:

  1. The scale of the need for safe water, sanitation and hygiene.
  2. The variability of water and sanitation problems and consequently the variability of solutions from place to place and from time to time.
  3. How to best sustain essential WASH services over the long term.
  4. How to ensure equity in water and sanitation services, and particularly reach people most in need.
  5. The integration of water, sanitation and hygiene for health.
  6.  How to train local community based persons to provide products and services for above to local communities on a self-sustainable basis.
Click Here for Watsan Projects

WIN – Maternal and Child Health (MCH)

WIN MCH aims to work on several challenge areas in Maternal and Child Health. They closely relate to the UN Sustainable Development Goals 2 and 3, and their corresponding targets. (See https://www.globalgoals.org/2-zero-hunger and https://www.globalgoals.org/3-good-health-and-well- being for more information.)

Some of the problem areas in India corresponding to these goals:

  • 50% of pregnant women are anaemic
  • 38.4 of children aged under 5 are stunted
  • 38% of children in age group 1 to 2 are not fully immunized.
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WIN MCH will address some of the following areas:

  • Addressing maternal and child malnutrition to reduce maternal mortality and infant mortality through interventions for better food habits and supplements.
  • Ensuring fast and cost-effective diagnostics, preferably at local level through local health workers, point of care devices, tele-medicine etc., to ensure subsequent timely medical care.
  • Ensuring mothers avail quality antenatal care services with all the components to detect pregnancy complications in time.
  • Ensuring post-natal care at the community level for mothers and babies to prevent deaths and morbidity.
  • Follow up and referral of low birth weight babies and preterm babies at the community level to reduce neonatal mortality
  • Upgrading knowledge, skills and tools with local health worker to enable them to support local communities, particularly mothers, by providing basic health and hygiene guidance, basic diagnostics services, and timely referral to higher level medical care.
Click Here for MCH Projects