In a small village called Takli, not far from the temple town of Pandharpur in Maharashtra, there is a home where children who were once abandoned because of their HIV status now find food, medicine, education, and something even rarer — love without fear. The home is called Palawi, and it was founded in 2001 by Mangal Shah, affectionately known as Mangaltai, a social worker who could not look away from children rejected by their own families.
Her journey began in the most unlikely of places: a cowshed, where two young sisters infected with HIV had been left to die. Mangaltai rescued them, and from that single act of courage grew an organization that has, over more than two decades, supported over a thousand children living with HIV. Today, Palawi runs under the aegis of the non-profit Prabha Hira Pratishthan and provides full-time residential care to between 125 and 150 children and young adults, ranging in age from four to twenty-one.
Life at Palawi revolves around dignity and care. The children receive lifesaving medical treatment, careful management of antiretroviral therapy, and specialized nutritional support. They go to school, because the goal is not merely survival but self-sufficiency — a future where they can stand on their own. Beyond its walls, Palawi's community meal initiative, Shree Naivaidyam Seva, serves tens of thousands of nutritious meals every year to residents and others affected by the disease. Every rupee and every meal is aimed at one purpose: giving these children a stigma-free, nurturing environment in which to grow.
For those who wish to support this work, the route has changed in a quietly revolutionary way, thanks to an Indian social enterprise called Donatekart. Founded in 2016 by three NIT graduates — Anil Kumar Reddy, Sandeep Sharma, and Sarang Bobade — Donatekart, headquartered at T-Hub in Hyderabad, has reimagined charity by replacing cash donations with in-kind giving. The idea is simple: instead of sending money to an NGO and hoping it is well spent, donors buy the exact products the organization needs.
The process works like a bridge between generosity and need. An NGO such as Palawi lists a campaign specifying precisely what it requires — medical kits, grocery packs, construction materials, perhaps even an ambulance. Donors then browse these campaigns, select the items and quantities they wish to fund, and check out using ordinary online payment methods. Once a campaign is fully funded, Donatekart procures the items from its vendor network and delivers them directly to the NGO. Donors are not left wondering where their money went; they receive delivery updates, photographs, and video verification of the exact items being handed over to the beneficiaries.
This model was built to solve one of philanthropy's oldest problems: trust. Donatekart hosts campaigns only for legally registered, vetted non-profit partners, so contributors can be confident their support reaches genuine operations. Donations made on the platform qualify for tax exemption under Section 80G of Indian law, with PAN details collected automatically to issue tax certificates. The platform also addresses a nagging inefficiency in traditional charity, where as much as 40 to 50 percent of cash donations can be swallowed by administrative and marketing costs; by tracking every rupee right up to the moment it becomes a physical good in a child's hands, Donatekart aims to ensure that nothing leaks away in between.
Public response has been largely warm. Users on forums like Quora generally describe Donatekart as a transparent and genuine concept for social giving, though a handful of donors have noted that after making one contribution they received frequent promotional follow-ups across multiple platforms — a small blemish on an otherwise well-regarded record. The scale of the enterprise speaks for itself: more than one million unique donors have channelled over ₹400 crore through the platform, earning it the NASSCOM Social Innovation Award and recognition in Forbes's 30 Under 30 honors.
In the end, the story comes full circle in Takli village. A child who might once have been left in a cowshed now receives medicine, meals, schooling, and affection — and the person who makes that possible may be a stranger hundreds of kilometers away, who bought a sack of groceries or a medical kit online and watched it arrive. That, in essence, is what Mangaltai built and what Donatekart made reachable: charity you can see, and love that refuses to discriminate.
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*Associate professor (retired), NIRD, Hyderabad
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