Jugaad Enthusiast - A Professional Bio
Nikhil is an ardent proponent of employing ethnographic research and radical innovation in the development of both for-profit and not-for-profit ventures. He spent the past 4 years implementing user-centered design strategies to increase the adoption of new products and services in development sector.
He started his career with a grassroots NGO and worked on a project (funded by World Bank) to develop a value chain of products from the Babool plant. Here he researched nutrient feed development, collaborated with local entrepreneurs, and worked on tech transfer.
Nikhil has focused primarily on water issues, working on Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) projects, funded by European Union, and Wells for India. By collecting case studies and interviews, he lead the research team to design information content, educational tools, and games that helped increase the adoption of water harvesting techniques and the adoption of good sanitary practices in villages.
An empathizer with excellent interpersonal skills, Nikhil has a unique capability to get down straight to the nerve of problem and find solutions mutually acceptable to both providers and clients. He has also worked at WELLO, a US based startup, managing its India operations and working on the launch and validation of WaterWheel, their flagship product, conducting user research and product demonstrations, designing novel interaction activities to trigger the involvement of rural folks, and selling WaterWheels.
Working at the bottom of pyramid has helped him understand the problems at ground level first-hand. He had also conducted impact surveys at village level, analyzed gaps, and synthesized recommendations on the implementation of JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) funded Biodiversity projects in Rajasthan. Lately, Nikhil has been a consultant to startups in the agriculture, travel, and real estate domains, helping them with their design research and operations strategies.
Nikhil also been an entrepreneur, launching a venture called Cattle Mettle to provide low cost animal feed to cattle owners. Cattle Mettle was a runner up at ISB Hyderabad’s Social Entrepreneurship Competition called “iDiya”. His idea at scale could save the lives of thousands of cattle that die due to lack of nutrition and could generate numerous jobs for rural women in raw material collection and processing of Babool pods.
Nikhil holds an engineering degree in Biotechnology from VIT University where he founded and operated Center for Social Entrepreneurship and Development. He is currently a Vihara Innovation Fellow at Bihar Innovation Lab, funded by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and working on his startup idea in healthcare while he helps fellow scholars in design research, brainstorming, and prototyping.
Found Nikhil interesting? You can catch up with him on any major social media at /nikbohra88.