Divya Agarwal
Bengaluru (Karnataka) [India], July 2: Mekin Maheshwari, Founder and CEO of Udhyam Learning Foundation, has been elected as a Senior Ashoka Fellow, joining a global community of leading changemakers recognized for their exceptional contribution to social innovation and systemic transformation.
This recognition by Ashoka, the world’s largest network of social entrepreneurs (founded by Bill Drayton in 1980 and headquartered in Washington, D.C.), affirms Mekin’s visionary leadership and pioneering work through Udhyam in building entrepreneurial mindsets and 21st-century skills among underserved youth and micro-entrepreneurs across India. Established in 2017, Udhyam runs two core programs – Shiksha and Vyapaar, partnering with governments, institutions, and ecosystem partners to drive large-scale, replicable, systemic change. Udhyam Shiksha integrates mandatory entrepreneurship education among grade 9-12 students in government schools, leveraging tech and teacher training, reaching over 3.9M learners through 40K educators across 9K+ schools/ITIs in 12 states. Udhyam Vyapaar supports 6,100+ nano/micro-entrepreneurs through mentorship (over 15,000 hours of training), enabling a $3.3 million income uplift.
What is the Ashoka Senior Fellowship?
Ashoka is the world’s largest network of social entrepreneurs, advancing the vision that everyone can be a changemaker. For over four decades, Ashoka has identified and supported leading social innovators whose ideas create system-changing impact. With a presence in over 90 countries, Ashoka Fellows work across sectors to solve some of the world’s most pressing challenges. Senior Fellows are seen as role models who bridge sectors and inspire the next generation of leaders. Through its fellowship, collaborative platforms, and youth programs, Ashoka empowers individuals and institutions to drive lasting social change.
Dr. Shruti Nair, Diamond Leader, Ashoka Innovators for the Public, India, shared “At Ashoka, we believe that in today’s rapidly changing world, it’s not enough to prepare young people for the jobs that exist — we must empower them to create the solutions the world needs. Mekin’s impact through Udhyam has already helped shift the mindset at a huge scale around the importance of young people growing up with an entrepreneurial outlook. He is one of roughly 20 social entrepreneurs elected as Senior Ashoka Fellows in India over the last few decades. We are thrilled to welcome Mekin into the Ashoka community. His values and co-leadership are critical to advancing our shared vision of India as an ‘Everyone a Changemaker’ society.”
“Given the right environment, anyone can be a changemaker” – Mekin Maheshwari
Mekin Maheshwari, an early Flipkart leader – India’s largest homegrown ecommerce brand that rivals Amazon, played diverse and critical roles, including Head of Technology and later Chief People Officer, where he helped shape the company’s culture and scale its team of 350,000 employees.Despite his success, he felt unfulfilled and concerned about India’s education system lagging behind its economic growth. Realizing that job creation couldn’t match population growth, he identified the need for a mindset shift toward self-reliance. Taking a gap year, he traveled across India, meeting social innovators to deeply understand the challenge.
Developing an entrepreneurial mindset builds personal agency and critical life skills, yet remains underutilized—especially for youth in developing economies. Mekin Maheshwari observed that while India has a demographic advantage with 67% of its population in working age, unemployment and lack of opportunities keep low- to middle-income families in cycles of poverty. He realized that entrepreneurship education—rooted in experiential learning and problem-solving—could transform how young people make decisions for personal and societal progress. Notably, this mindset had never been introduced at scale in school systems serving underprivileged communities. To address this, Mekin founded Udhyam with the goal of embedding entrepreneurial thinking into mainstream education. By partnering with public education systems, Udhyam aims to make this approach scalable, relevant, and essential to growing up in India.
Udhyam is not only enabling a shift in young people’s mindsets, but also influencing how adults from low- to middle-income communities in India view their futures—moving from job-seeking to job-creating. Through practical skilling and mentoring, the initiative empowers individuals to navigate uncertainty and build livelihoods on their own terms. This approach is helping youth develop agency early in life, while also supporting adults to grow sustainable micro-enterprises. Together, these efforts are building a culture of self-reliance, economic participation, and local problem-solving within communities often excluded from traditional opportunity pathways.
“We believe that every individual has the potential to thrive, if we create enabling environments. This fellowship is not just a personal honour but a recognition of the collective will at Udhyam to reimagine education, livelihoods, and dignity for all,” said Mekin Maheshwari.
This recognition of over 8 years of grassroots work by an ex-corporate leader is rare, most corporate leaders tend to transition into philanthropy or take on advisory roles with think tanks. Through this milestone, Ashoka and Udhyam aim to spark a broader dialogue: What if more corporate leaders brought their scale-oriented thinking to address the root causes of social challenges? Mekin’s journey offers a powerful blueprint.
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