{"id":15364,"date":"2025-04-09T10:44:14","date_gmt":"2025-04-09T14:44:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/innovate\/?p=15364"},"modified":"2025-04-10T13:25:32","modified_gmt":"2025-04-10T17:25:32","slug":"udayaa-platform-transforms-student-social-entrepreneurship-in-india","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/innovate\/udayaa-platform-transforms-student-social-entrepreneurship-in-india\/","title":{"rendered":"Udayaa Platform Transforms Student Social Entrepreneurship in India."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/K6cnJ2-mrqI?si=mZqj0BCKKBXSsuXn\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/innovate\/profile\/tanya-shizan\/\">Tanya Shizan<\/a> (Questrom&#8217;26) was in high school, she witnessed firsthand the challenges students face when trying to create sustainable social impact. After successfully raising $600 to build a primary school for children in a tribal village near a tiger reserve, Tanya recognized that many student-led projects struggle due to limited resources, funding barriers, and lack of strategic support.<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8220;Over 250,000 students in India today face these exact same challenges,&#8221; Tanya explains. &#8220;They don&#8217;t have funding or strategic resources or mentorship.&#8221;<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This realization led to the creation of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/innovate\/profile\/udayaa\/\">Udayaa<\/a>, India&#8217;s first student-led crowdfunding platform designed specifically for young social entrepreneurs. As a finalist in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/innovate\/programs-competitions\/new-venture-competition\/\">New Venture Competition<\/a>, Udayaa is poised to transform how students engage with service learning and social impact initiatives.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Traditional crowdfunding platforms often present significant obstacles for high school students. &#8220;There was so much red tape,&#8221; Tanya recalls of her own experiences. &#8220;There were so many things that I didn&#8217;t have, like bank paperwork or NGO paperwork.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Udayaa eliminates these barriers by providing a comprehensive platform tailored to students&#8217; needs. Beyond simply facilitating fundraising, the platform offers project planning resources, connects students with experienced mentors, and provides frameworks for measuring and reporting impact.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8220;We help students understand the benefits of measuring and quantifying the impact they&#8217;re creating in their primary communities,&#8221; Tanya says. This approach enables young changemakers to create more sustainable and scalable projects while effectively communicating their impact to donors.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Udayaa&#8217;s growth has been supported through Boston University&#8217;s innovation ecosystem. The venture is currently in the Fly stage of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/innovate\/programs-competitions\/innovation-pathway\/\">Innovation Pathway<\/a> program and participated in the 2024 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/innovate\/programs-competitions\/summer-accelerator\/\">Summer Accelerator<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8220;The Summer Accelerator was one of the first opportunities for Udayaa to be part of a cohort where other students were also working intensively on their projects,&#8221; Tanya shares. &#8220;It really inspired us to keep going and pushed us to think deeply about our idea.&#8221;<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Through these programs, Udayaa has connected with valuable mentors including Nana Young, who has extensive experience with global nonprofits, and Andre, a professor at Questrom School of Business who has advised on platform strategy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The stipend provided by the Summer Accelerator allowed the team to work on Udayaa full-time, developing their skills and creating materials they continue to use today. &#8220;It gave us kind of permission and the resources to work further on a project that was so dear to us,&#8221; Tanya explains.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the short term, Udayaa is focused on assembling marketing and sales teams while refining their platform. They aim to expand their reach beyond high schools to metropolitan cities throughout India.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Their long-term vision extends globally. &#8220;There&#8217;s also a really great opportunity for Udayaa to not only expand geographically within India, but as someone who has grown up in so many different developing countries, Manila is a place that&#8217;s close to my heart,&#8221; Tanya shares.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The team envisions Udayaa becoming integrated into international school curriculums, allowing students worldwide to explore social entrepreneurship, find collaboration opportunities, and create meaningful impact. Their goal is to build a platform that connects donors across the globe with student innovators in India, the Philippines, and eventually throughout the global South.<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8220;Every student will have the opportunity to explore Udayaa and be inspired by the work that other people are doing,&#8221; Tanya says.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8220;In the long term, we definitely hope that Udayaa will be something that people think of immediately when they think of student service learning or social impact.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When Tanya Shizan (Questrom&#8217;26) was in high school, she witnessed firsthand the challenges students face when trying to create sustainable social impact. After successfully raising $600 to build a primary school for children in a tribal village near a tiger reserve, Tanya recognized that many student-led projects struggle due to limited resources, funding barriers, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20921,"featured_media":15367,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[365,106,17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/innovate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15364"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/innovate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/innovate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/innovate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20921"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/innovate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15364"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/innovate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15368,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/innovate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15364\/revisions\/15368"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/innovate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/innovate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/innovate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/innovate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}