A Desi Woman with Soniya Gokhale

Richa drives strategic collaborations and partnerships for Maker's Asylum. She believes that the future of learning is evolving and alternative spaces will be significant in customising people's learning journeys. Maker’s Asylum is a community makerspace focussed on fostering innovation through purpose based learning focussed on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The space houses various labs that are co-located in order facilitate prototyping of ideas that are interdisciplinary in nature. In addition to the space, Maker's Asylum also offers a design and product innovation consultancy arm for corporates, an online retail shop for its own product lines and an edtech platform that focusses on portfolio building for young talents. Nurturing the culture of innovation over the years in the areas of hardware, design and sustainability, Maker's Asylum has built a large community of makers and has been on the forefront of the maker movement in India. Richa is also a graduate from Indian School of Business and in her previous stint worked with Government of Andhra Pradesh to drive Fintech and Blockchain investments into the state. She has been particularly instrumental in forging strategic partnerships with the likes of Monetary Authority of Singapore, Visa, Thomson Reuters and 30+ such partners for Fintech Valley Vizag (a sustainable ecosystem created to support the flourishing Fintech industry in India) in the short period since the initiative took off as a state level strategy. She has also been responsible for creating the brand proposition for Fintech Valley and has travelled to most of the global fintech hubs to learn and incorporate the best practices in Vizag. Richa has also worked in the Indian Telecommunications industry. Her role as the Business Intelligence to the Chief Technology Officer at Idea Cellular involved strategic and analytic support to the leadership of the organisation. She was recognised as the Emerging Professional by the Chairman of the Aditya Birla Group for her contribution during the Telecom Spectrum Auctions held by the Government of India in February 2014 & 2015. Richa and her team at Maker's Asylum launched the M-19 Initiative in March, 2020 when India was hit by COVID-19. Since the pandemic started, the initiative has made millions of face shields, active respirators, rebreathers, sanitizers, and intubation boxes. The M-19 Collective is founded upon the principle of a centralized open source design philosophy with de-centralized manufacturing so that the best minds can gather to solve the pressing challenges of the country and execute with agility. Solving problems requires a multidisciplinary approach, and that's what makes the M-19 Collective so special. Richa was honored as a Vogue India Woman of the Year in 2020. And Maker's Asylum and the M-19 Collective continue to gain global prominence for their innovation, platform, and lifesaving efforts