From raising funds for gender reassignment surgeries to a firm that promotes biomimicry: Top SocialStories this week

Diving deep into sustainability, impact investment and social service, this week’s top social stories explored a wide range of interesting topics.

SocialStory caught up with Mann Chavan of TALMS (Trans: Alms) Charity Foundation, to understand the reality of how transgender people are often deprived of getting reassignment surgeries due to lack of funds.

We also spoke to Arvind Agarwal, CEO and Co-founder of C4D Partners about the company's plan to invest in India.

Here's what SocialStory covered this week:

[Pride Month] This organisation is helping raise funds for gender reassignment surgeries

In 2020, the Government of India framed the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Rules, which stated that transgender persons could get gender reassignment surgeries free at state-run hospitals. The rules made it mandatory for each state to have at least one government hospital to provide gender-affirming or sex reassignment surgeries (SRS) at no cost to the individual. 

State hospitals are also required to offer free counselling, hormone replacement therapy (HRT), and state medical insurance to cover the cost of the procedure, including counselling, in private hospitals. While these initiatives are welcome in a country where there are over two million transgender people, many still find it difficult to find access to surgeries and even basic healthcare. 

“Of all of these factors, finding the funds needed to have their surgeries is one of the biggest burdens, considering the average cost of these surgeries. Additionally, most people do not want to help fund trans people’s surgeries,” says Mann Chavan, Founder and Director of TALMS (Trans: Alms) Charity Foundation, an India-based charity foundation that helps transgender people across the globe get grants for surgeries through personal and corporate funding.

Mann is a transgender man who founded TALMS in May 2021 to "create a brighter and easier tomorrow for trans people across the globe." 

C4D Partners goes ‘traditional’ with India fund

Impact investor C4D Partners is raising $50 million for its maiden India fund as it seeks out “mostly traditional types of companies” to back. It has a green-shoe option to raise an additional $25 million for the new fund.

The firm, which is backed by Dutch nonprofit ICCO Cooperation, already has an Asia Fund of $30 million, of which it has deployed nearly $25 million across 11 companies in India, including Arohan Foods and Ananya Finance. Other investments have been made in Indonesia, the Philippines, Nepal, and Cambodia.

"A key criteria for our investment thesis is livelihood impact for the bottom-of-the-pyramid population, which is mostly traditional types of companies,” Arvind Agarwal, CEO and Co-founder of C4D Partners, told SocialStory.

Meet Gunasundari, a small-town girl from Tamil Nadu who coded her way to success

Gunasundari comes from a humble family in Thanjavur city in Tamil Nadu. A topper in both school and college, she always wanted to learn coding and explore more about emerging technologies.

Her father, who runs a vegetable shop along with his brother, supported Gunasundari to pursue engineering to ensure an enriching career.

Despite being one of the largest cities in Tamil Nadu, Thanjavur has limited opportunities in IT. A first-generation learner from her family, Gunasundari pursued BTech in Electronics and Communications Engineering at the Government College of Engineering, Thanjavur.

She cracked her first perfect code during her first class with TechSaksham, and thus began her journey in the tech space. She also managed to excel at web designing, one among the three courses offered at TechSaksham.

This Bengaluru couple is inspiring students and corporates to look to nature for innovation

On May 21, 1997, a book called Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature by Janine Benyus first hit bookshelves across the world. The book detailed an emerging trend that was as simple as it was radical–emulating nature to innovate solutions for humans. 

There were already several examples of such innovations–wind turbines inspired by whale fins, solar panels inspired by butterfly wings, and Japan’s Shinkansen inspired by the elongated beak of the kingfisher. However, while these examples existed, large-scale adoption of biomimicry is still not widespread.

In simple terms, biomimicry is defined as an "empathetic, interconnected understanding of how life works and ultimately where we fit in." 

Bringing the concept of biomimicry to India is Bengaluru-based architect couple Seema Anand and Prashant Dhawan. They are the Co-founders and Directors of Biomimicry India, an organisation that aims to promote design that can be realigned to be in sync with nature.