“Crowdfunding: The Story of People,” Project Nile, Banze, R., & Bashir, I. (2020) ISBN- 978-93-5426-611-9 Description: ‘Crowdfunding: The Story of People’ uses a data-driven storytelling approach to capture the impact and potential of crowdfunding in a world governed by inequality. The book takes into account both the micro and macro perspectives of collective giving, social collaboration, and financial inclusion through robust data and in-depth research.
University of Massachusetts, Amherst | (August 2022 - Present)
- Masters in Data Analytics and Computational Social Sciences
Mumbai School of Economics and Public Policy |(January 2019 - April 2020)
Majors: Healthcare Analytics & Public Policy Analytics
Post Graduate Diploma in Analytics
St.Xavier’s College | (June 2013 - June 2016)
Bachelor of Arts
Majors: Sociology and Anthropology; Minor: Economics
Co-founder and CEO, CrowdHive | (December 2020- December 2022)
Built CrowdHive, a reward-based crowdfunding platform catering to social impact startups and small businesses
Overlook strategy, partnerships, research, community building, hiring, and management functions at CrowdHive
Co-founder and CEO, Project Nile | (December 2020- December 2022)
- Co-founded and built Project Nile, a bootstrapped startup that provides research and crowdfunding consulting to nonprofits and social impact startups
Conceptualizing and developing curriculum for Project Nile’s crowdfunding fellowship that has trained 200 fellows in nonprofit fundraising
Advised over 50 NGOs on their volunteering, fundraising, and digital transformation strategies - Created ProjectNile’s YouTube channel for data-driven content that has registered 100,000+ views
Lead multi-stakeholder collaborations between local governments, educational institutes, and corporates for various NGO programs
Supervising research initiatives at Project Nile and training the research team.
Spearheading primary and secondary research initiatives for clients like Times Group (TSW- The Ed-tech wing) and Global Parli.
Consulting nonprofits on implementing digital strategies for fundraising, tracking campaign performance, and risk mitigation.
Automating data collection methods and creating resource depositories for research interns.
Implementing data-driven storytelling strategies for digital marketing campaigns of clients. - Interviewing, hiring and onboarding of the tech and research team at Project Nile.
Developing the company’s strategy for adopting technological resources like AI and Deep Learning.
Created a comprehensive five-year growth plan for Project Nile, including potential future verticals. Primary Data Analyst (Consultant), SEWA (March 2021-August 2021)
Delivering a comprehensive Data Strategy Framework by conducting a need Assessment through qualitative research to understand the data flow and process mechanisms of the organisation.
Upgrading and redesigning existing digital and mobile tools used for data collection.
Cleaning, pre-processing, tagging, and categorizing data on a central database to improve machine- and user-readability.
Performing exploratory and descriptive analysis in combination with robust data visualization.
Identifying key trends and correlations in the data using tools like R, Stata and Python.
Deploying machine learning algorithms to perform predictive analytics and insight generation from agriculture data.
Preparing consumable data analysis report with useful insights in interactive html using D3.js
Volunteer Manager, Art Paathshaala | (September 2018-November 2018)
- Organized a volunteering program with multi-stakeholder participation across 180 government schools, benefitting 10,000+ children by educating them about the environment through the deployment of 600 volunteers
Summer Intern, Pratham NGO | (May 2015-June 2015)
- Collected Data from government schools in Maharashtra on administration, teaching staff and operations.
- Drafted proposals and program implementation reports.
- Monitored and documented the pilot summer school program at Pratham schools across the state of Maharashtra.
Summer Intern, Akanksha NGO | (April 2014-May 2014)
- Recruited, screened, and conducted preliminary interviews of teachers for ‘Akanksha’ & ’Teach for India’schools.
- Held various workshops for the workforce of Akanksha.
- Graduate certificate program in public policy from The Takshashila Institution, Bengaluru (completed a Policy Brief on Adoption of Electric Vehicles & Hybrid Vehicles in India)
- Completed the certification course held by UNICEF and University of Pennsylvania on Social Norms and Social Changes (part 1 and 2)
- Completed courses on Computational Social Science Methods, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and Ethics and Social Network Analysis offered by UC Davis and Coursera.
- Diplôme d’études en langue française (DELF) A1 & A2 in 2016