“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives……. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
―Carl SaganPale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
The middle Road platform is making a splash globally. The start-up Middle Road OPC Pvt Ltd (The middle Road) is a one-person company incorporated and headed by Nishant Malhotra. Recently, Startup Pill ranked The middle Road among the top 15 global Civic Tech start-ups in 2020. For a company just over a year old, the news is a shot in the arm. The platform, a global thought leader, synergies all actors within the development sector and focuses on e-publication & online media, e-learning, and consulting & advisory. Leading social enablers have appeared as a guest for informative and insightful conversations, primarily focusing on the social and development sector. Guests include Anu Aga (ex-chair Thermax Limited & Co-founder Teach For India), Ramanan Ramanathan (Mission Director, Atal Innovation Mission, Niti Aayog- flagship thank tank of Government of India), Ruchi Mathur (CEO Non-profit: Pune City Connect), Manoj Kumar (Founder, Social Alpha), Ronald Abraham ( Founding Partner, IDinsight), etc. The start-up features an ongoing e-learning initiative that includes comprehensive tutorials on Macroeconomics, Impact Evaluation & Statistics, Valuation, Sustainable Finance, etc. The platform is fast emerging for its thought-provoking research-backed publications, articles, podcast, and videos. The tutorial section is a deep dive on concepts related to finance & economics, statistics & impact evaluation, investment analysis & portfolio management, etc., followed up with detailed practice questions to aid in the conceptualization of material covered in the modules. Educational videos foster an application honing mindset, laying down a paradigm of applying theoretical framework within selected domains. Tutorials are buttered with data-specific examples to make the knowledge more practical and palatable, structured to impart knowledge among everyone. The start-up focuses on providing consulting and advisory solutions to multiple actors within the global development ecosystem backed with bespoke educational training. The platform catalyzes a vibrant online community for making social change and impact within the society and regularly invites social change enablers to post their thoughts work on the social impact sector. The platform values creativity, originality, simplistic elegance, courage, transparency, and research-focused content for a measured impact within the sustainable industry. It prides itself on being ahead of the curve in enunciating themes complemented with data analysis. The platform focuses on knowledge-driven impact among its content for a well-rounded audience experience.
The startup is driving a radical change in defining social impact and promoting integrating multiple dimensions and facets within the sustainable ecosystem. The startup brings a refreshing take on how we perceive social impact imbibing themes like science, technology, art, culture, and wellbeing as overarching ideas driving our very existence within the fabric of our known cosmos. Unknown to us, these themes permeate our consciousness defining our idiosyncrasy and thought process setting up the foundation of our way of living. We have come a long way from our new ways, discovering and understanding the use of the wheel to moon travel and back all within 1 percent of our known existence. And yet our understanding of the Universe and the world around us is in words borrowed from Carl Sagan’s epic book Pale Blue Dot, a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. This darkness is exponentially growing with time. The middle Road endeavors to decipher and highlight awareness of issues that blanket our understanding of the processes that intertwine the body of social change and impact. The journey is long and hard, yet The middle Road dares to take steps which looking back at eons of time, are baby steps.
However, these baby steps are truly worth a dime for they are measured, forward-looking, and full of substance and more often than not, they rhyme.
To repeat words of a great man Abraham Lincoln, I might be a slow walker but I never walk back. But if it’s an oncoming train at the end of a long tunnel, I dive into my sports shoes and run back which will make Usain Bolt proud. Just kidding, the venture gives a lot of thrust to sense of humor.