Our Founders

Nestled in the heart of the community, our space welcomes youth to gather, learn, and grow together.

Hrishikesh is the founder and Executive Director of Muhim Foundation. He is an alum of IIT Guwahati and has a decade of experience of working with community collectives on issues of rights and livelihoods. He worked with Kudumbashree NRO for 6 years and spent time in rural areas of Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Bihar. During his time at NRO he worked closely with communities (women groups, youth) to design and implement community-led models in local governance and micro-enterprise development.

After his stint at NRO, he worked with the World Bank for four years. His work focused on building enterprise systems for women entrepreneurs in different states and also setting up a performance tracking system. He went on to initiate Muhim with a belief in the power of youth leadership. His current vision for Muhim is a reflection of his past work with depth of grassroots experience and breadth of system-level engagement—from sitting with women’s groups in villages to influencing state-wide strategies. He is based in Ambikapur in Surguja and holds primary responsibility of setting up Muhim’s ground. He is also responsible for rolling out Muhim’s interventions.

Rameshwar is the co-founder of Muhim. He is an Obama Scholar and APU alum. His leadership journey began with a pivot from a career in engineering to a life committed to civic action and grassroots governance. This transition was sparked by his active participation in the India Against Corruption movement, which gave him first-hand exposure to the power of collective civic action.

He moved on to study M.A in Development from APU, Bangalore and joined Kudumbashree NRO in 2015. As part of NRO he worked in dalit and adivasi areas of Jharkhand, Bihar and Gujarat. He has expansive experience of working with women groups and youth on designing livelihood interventions. Having worked with rural and tribal youth across central India, he mentored young people to build civic literacy, employment skills, and leadership capacity. Many of them have gone on to lead community projects and actively participate in grassroots governance. Rameshwar is based out of Bhopal. At Muhim, he is extending his time for strategic thinking and programme design.