Profile : Anshu Gupta, Founder,

GOONJ..

Anshu Gupta is the Founder Director of

Goonj, an award winning pan India non profit
organization. Popularly called the Clothing
Man Anshu is the recipient of 2015 Ramon
Magsaysay Award for his work on
transforming the culture of giving in India.
Having studied mass communication
and economics, Anshu started as a freelance
journalist and went on to a corporate career
which he eventually left to start Goonj in
1998. Goonj was founded with a mission to
make clothing a matter of concern and to bring
it among the list of subjects to work on in the development sector.
Starting with 67 personal clothes, today Goonj channelises about 2000
tons of material every year including disaster relief and rehab. works and
has 11 offices with about 300 full time people as a formal team.
Under Anshus leadership and vision Goonj has taken the menacing
growth of urban waste and used it efficiently as a tool to trigger large
scale development work in rural India. By creating a barter between two
new currencies; labor of the the person in the villages and the old
material of cities, Goonj has built the genesis of a ' parallel economy
which is not cash based but trash based' . Anshu brings to the table an
instinctive empathy and connect with people by dignifying the act of
giving. In the macro picture he has identified some basic needs outside
the radar screen of the governments, business and development sector
by structuring some imaginative solutions using urban waste.
At a time when cloth was not even considered an issue and thus
attracted no organized funding or support Anshu decided to take the
unconventional and risky approach of making the urban and rural masses
his stakeholders and supporters. His work and initiatives are deeply
rooted in respecting and valuing the wisdom of the people he works with.
This in turn has helped evolve two of Goonjs flagship initiatives Cloth
for Work and Not Just a Piece of cloth. An entrepreneur at heart
who loves to support young professionals committed to tackling societys
problems through social enterprises and initiatives Anshu dedicates a lot
of his time to efforts by the youths. A keen observer, avid traveler and
photographer, Anshu believes in passionately following the 'keeda in our
mind' irrespective of what the world says.. He believes in action more
than thoughts and often says- " Enough of thinkers and talkers now you

need doers, actions and initiatives !! " Thats why his message to the
world is Lagey raho...
Anshu is known as one of the leading social entrepreneur and is an
Ashoka and Schwab Fellow apart from being a member of the
Humanitarian Crisis Council of the World Economic Forum and has been
listed by the Forbes magazine as one of Indias most powerful rural
entrepreneurs.