Start of The Journey

Entrepreurship is being encouraged across school students now days, it is being included as a subject as well. One such organisation that influenced and motivated 12 year old Nakshh Kohli, of The Shri Ram School Moulsari Gurugram in 2016, was the YEA  (Young Entrepreneurs Academy) program. He was a part of the founding batch in India and under the mentorship of Mrs Namita Thapar and excellent team of YEA, he and his peer ranked first at the YEA business pitch competition also winning the prize money of Rs 50,000 from Mrs Radhika Aggarwal, founder of Shopclues, who was the entrepreneur jury.

Ethnique Mojo

Picking all the learning’s from there, Nakshh started Ethnique Mojo in 2017 with the prize/seed money he received from Mrs Radhika Aggarwal, under the valuable guidance from his mentors at YEA and school TSRS.

Ethnique Mojo started as an e-commerce portal selling handcrafted products (soaps and pocket squares) made by the underprivileged community of a specifically identified location (where many migrants don’t even have an aadhar card yet) – Bhatti mines. Since then it has moved on to becoming a social partnership wherein the artisans use Ethnique Mojo website to sell quality product, access worldwide audience at no extra hassles, cost and burden of any sorts. Ethnique Mojo takes care of all legal and tax procedures along with all associated costs of access to market via marketing and via existing customer base. All this at no profit and margin, while the artisans get the ability to sell their products. Thereby providing accessibility to ones who cant afford to start, maintain a website or have an online presence. 

Currently collaborating with the “Didi’s” who earlier helped make Ethnique Mojo’s  first product (handmade soaps), Nakshh has launched something new  – handmade crocheted unique household and personal items. They are not only helping the Didi’s learn the craft and apply it creatively, but are also giving them a platform to showcase and sell the products.

Happiness Project

In 2018 Nakshh also co-founded a social initiative Happiness Project, a Not-for-Profit organization set up to address issues concerning mental health.. The project team aims to work with children belonging to disadvantaged categories, with no access to counsellors or trained medical practitioners. Through a greater awareness of mental health issues and general social support for such children, the Happiness Project aims to achieve effective prevention and assistance, as safeguarding adolescent mental health begins with schools and teachers.

The project was very well received, managing to conduct surveys across Delhi schools, collaborating with NDMC and presenting detailed reports on the happiness quotient of middle and senior school kids. The project was also awarded a) The Pramerica Award (Bronze), b) The Youth Harmony Award (Runner up ) conducted by TGELF in 2018, and afforded Nakshh the opportunity to be a speaker at The National conference of social and emotional learning held at Nagpur by Dr Vikas Mahatme (Hon member of parliament and Rajya Sabha)

Due to ongoing pandemic situation the project could not be undertaken physically at the government schools, hence was automated, with surveys conducted via links online and anonymously. Individual schools can adopt the program across their school, wherein students can fill form anonymously from their homes and the school can get to know what red flags they are facing especially on mental hygiene during the unprecedented lockdown times.

Fabric of entrepreurship

Apart from this Nakshh has recently stared a new initiative with other like minded and passionate teenagers to inculcate entrepreurship in students – titled as Project Mauka. The idea is to encourage students to pitch ideas and learn the ropes of entrepreneurship through online lessons and interactive videos, many of which are already uploaded online for good initial receptivity and success. They recently finished their first successful batch online.

Nakshh carries the passion to be able to utilise the technical, business and entrepreneurship capabilities with his passion to especially help areas sections issues or people where access to such opportunities or livelihood or other resources is scarce. That is the common thread running through Ethnique Mojo , Happiness Project and Project Mauka. About 130 families / livelihood partially or substantially impacted via the efforts and the objective is to stay agile to deepen the initiatives as also suitably keep tweaking and seek help from mainstream to be able to compound the impact. 

“ It seems fulfilling to see entrepreneurship drive get married to social objectives. World needs to be far more saner and better.” Nakshh Kohli