December 2013 is here. It’s Thanksgiving weekend, and the SocialCops team is in Delhi. Sitting in our cozy, small office, I can’t help marvel over the fact that we’re really here. About 16 months ago, we decided to stop thinking and start doing. We released a Facebook campaign and crowdfunding campaign to launch SocialCops. Honestly, we had no idea how we planned to solve the problems we set out to solve… After a year of sleepless nights and conquering the voices in our head that told us not to do it, we’re really here!
We’re here – building, hacking and taking a shot at solving some of the biggest problems in India! And we’re thankful for the opportunity to dream. We think very few companies get the opportunity to even dream of making women feel safer, helping create a cleaner environment, ensuring better roads, or ensuring better food delivery in government schools. And we’d honestly never have been able to do this without the support of some of the most amazing people we’ve met in our journey.
1. Our awesome advisors
Most importantly, we’re thankful for our board members – Anurag and Bernise – who are an integral part of everything we do at SocialCops, as well as our mentors – Anita and Carol – for always being a call away!
2. Our awesome funders
We’re thankful for organizations like Microsoft, IBM/IEEE Smart Planet Challenge, Global Social Entrepreneurship Competition (UW Foster School of Business), IIM Calcutta, IIT Kharagpur, IIT Kanpur, Singapore International Foundation, Aseanpreneurs, Lee Foundation, and the Nanyang Technopreneurship Center. We’re thankful for everyone out there who organizes student business plan competitions and events to house entrepreneurs. You have no idea how thankful we are for all the hard work you guys put in!
3. Our awesome “seniors”
We’re thankful for some of the older experienced entrepreneurs — especially the folks at Milaap and NextDrop — who’ve answered our incessant questions and given us advice when we really needed it. We owe our environmental-friendly cool office furniture to Goonj – so thank you, Goonj!
4. Our awesome partners
We sometimes wonder how people can doubt the goodness of our society when I work with some of our partners at SocialCops. We’d like to thank some of the amazing filmmakers at Imped Productions, Burp Studios, Digital Stories, and Paper Weight Entertainment for telling our story and our in-house musicians. A huge shout out to our friends at GotStared.At, YouthKiAwaaz, Jagaran, I Lead Ranchi, Veerangana, and PVR Nest for their strong commitment to making the world a better place!
5. Our awesome team
Most importantly, our amazing team members who stay up till 3 a.m. working for SocialCops – you are important to us. For each of you who attended hackathons on our behalf, pitched SocialCops at events, organized volunteer meets, designed posters, created media kits, social impact analyses, financial projections and god knows what, managed our social media, lent us credits, bought our tee shirts, wrote blogs for us… You know who you are. Thank you for being who you are.
Paul Coelho once famously said, “If you really really want something, the whole universe conspires to make it happen.”
Our universe has definitely been conspiring for us. A few days ago, some 10th graders from Veerangana did a door-to-door event to sign up Community Watchers for SAFE. A Cannes film festival awardee made a pro-bono film for us. One of the most popular actresses lent us her name to support one of our campaigns (you’ll see soon, who she is!). You have no idea how empowering it is to know that each of you is supporting us, believing in us and wanting us to succeed. Each of you, in some way – be it sharing our videos on Facebook, liking us, supporting us, referring us, donating to our crowdfunding campaign over a year ago, or just being there – has become part of our journey. THANK YOU!
