Nudge Lifeskills Foundation (The/Nudge) is a section 8 non-profit and was started in 2015 by Atul Satija after spending 17 years scaling businesses in the corporate sector with InMobi, Google, Samsung etc. Our purpose is poverty alleviation, sustainably and scalably.

The/Nudge Gurukul - The/Nudge Foundation’s flagship “program in life management” began with the support of Mr Nandan Nilekani and Mphasis, the first CSR partner of The/Nudge. The project called “The/Nudge Gurukul” is a 360-degree, 90-day, fully residential foundational skill development program aimed at job and more importantly, life-readiness of underprivileged youth in the age group of 18-25 yrs. The program is built with a strong emphasis on extensive experiential learning through habit-building and repetition and focuses on three main foundations - economic foundation - the job skill required to be gainfully employed; learning foundation - basics of numeracy, workplace communication and digital literacy skills required in day-to-day job; life foundation - basic skills required to continue and grow in the job. It includes financial literacy, personality development, career, and health management.

The youth are currently offered 7 job skills to choose from. These include plumbing, electrical works, domestic BPO, retail sales, delivery partners, driving and beauticians. The choice of the job skill is a carefully curated function of youth aspiration, market absorption, growth prospects/potential for upward mobility, trainability in 3 months, scalability and high job density.

Over the last 3 years, more than ~3500 youth from 7 different states have already been trained on this model with 100% placements and 75% engagement on the life/guard platform.

Rural Livelihoods- The/Nudge, is implementing an integrated rural livelihoods program called the “Ultra Poor Program” (UP)based on the graduation approach.This is an evidence based program proven to reduce extreme poverty globally. The/Nudge has done extensive research and initiated this project in Jharkhand (districts of Gumla, Latehar and Lohardaga) in partnership with Jharkhand State Livelihood Promotion Society. The goal is to sustainably pull1,00,000 families from extreme poverty in the next 10 years in Jharkhand.

 Special Features of the Organization

1. Collective of India’s successful entrepreneurs, leaders and changemakers
2. Top talent from the corporate and social sector (ISB, IIT, BITS Pilani, NIT, Pratham, Teach for India, Mckinsey, Google)
3. Strong focus on sustainability and gender inclusion; 45% of our beneficiaries are women 
4. Seed grants from Nandan Nilekani and Tata Trusts for capacity building followed by Rockefeller Foundation and 18 other corporates in India as part of their CSR initiatives.
5. Operations in 7 states – Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Delhi and Odisha