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Meet our Founder

About Arbind Singh

About Arbind Singh

MEET OUR FOUNDER

The Social Entrepreneur – Arbind Singh

Arbind Singh spent his early years in Katihar, a district in India’s north-eastern state of Bihar, which is a hub of first-generation migrants who travel to the area in search of work. As a child, he was perplexed by the routine eviction of neighborhood vendors. After studying sociology in New Delhi, Singh returned to Bihar in the early 1990s to work with vendors and has been active in the development sector for 25 years. He started NIDAN to support poor men and women and their children involved in the informal economy.

An activist and a social entrepreneur, he has been empowering informal workers by getting new laws ,polices and programs and  by securing their access to markets, financial services and technology Organizing the  informal workers across India has been his forte along with building collaborations to set up new models of development of informal workers . He played a pioneer role in getting a Street Vendors Act in India which empowers millions of street vendors against eviction and harassment. He was elected as Ashoka and Eisenhower Fellow in 2007. He was awarded the Social Entrepreneur of the Year 2008 by the Schwab Foundation at World Economic Forum. He was also awarded at the first innovation forum set up by the Govt of Bihar in 2007.  In 2012, Skoll Foundation awarded him with Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship. Besides, he has been awarded many times at various levels. He has been on board of many  Govt and Non Govt Committees at national and state level .He is  the   National Coordinator of National Association of Street Vendors of India (NASVI) and  Co- Chairperson  of Self Workers Global ,an International federation of Street Vendors based in Madrid . He holds a Bachelor and Master’s degree in Sociology from the Delhi University.