Leadership Network member synthesises spirituality with social entrepreneurship

Vinny was born in an army camp in India. With a dad in the army, Vinny’s childhood was spent bouncing between different military bases — making friends with all the other military kids, playing with unmanned tanks on the expansive base grounds.

But in India, even moving one hour away is no small feat. “People think you’re just moving within India, but no, you’re basically moving to a different country each time. Every 300 km, the language changes'', he explains.

Army life wasn’t for the faint of heart — but Vinny felt at home amidst the chaos. With grenades and AK-47s, terrorist attacks, and major India-Pakistan escalations all being features of his everyday, “I felt it was a giant adventure”, he reflects. And each time they moved, “I didn’t look at it as ‘oh you have to move’, I looked at it as ‘yes, we’re going somewhere new’”.

He brought that same philosophy to the fore when his dad decided to move the family to New Zealand in 2002. In Vinny’s words, “the story goes, when he was first flying into the country, he decided before the plane had even landed that he was going to move his family here”. And if even an aerial view of Auckland International Airport could inspire that feeling, he had certainly made the right choice.

14 years old, Vinny didn’t struggle with the move. He just saw it as yet another adventure. In fact, he found the major point of difference between life in India and life in New Zealand was, “it was just that people were a bit whiter”, he says.

A recently graduated Avondale College high school student, an 18-year-old Vinny decided to attend the University of Auckland. “I studied robotics — I wanted to study philosophy but my parents talked me out of it”, he says.

Vinny had big dreams for university. He reflects, "I thought university was where I’d get to meet artists, philosophers, poets, mathematicians, but I was significantly disappointed”. He was let down by the individualistic nature of university life — the shallow avenues for meaningful connection.

Promotional photos for Vinny’s health food company: Elemental

It wasn’t until his third year of engineering, where he found out about a competition Microsoft was running, that things started to turn around. “I was really excited to channel my energy to something practical outside university”, he says.

Vinny struck big. He and his co-founder came third in the world biggest technology competition, Imagine Cup, with their data communications company: OneBeep. Beating 300,000+ students from 69 other countries, OneBeep aimed to address the problem of illiteracy by using radio waves to connect computers in regions without access to internet.

Two core beliefs led Vinny to develop his technology. One: educational inequity was apparent to him from day one. Two: he knew computers were the future. “Someone who doesn’t know how to use a computer is becoming the same as someone who doesn’t know how to read and write”, he says. 

Crucially, OneBeep built on the existing work of other people in the space. Vinny takes the ego out of entrepreneurship. In his own words, “I’ve always been somebody who wants to add value to what’s going on — instead of just inventing something new for the sake of it”.

Off the back of a personal letter from John Key, coverage from CNN, and a personal house invitation from Bill Gates, Vinny decided to move back to India and try his hand at expanding OneBeep there.

21 years old and back in India, he found it incredibly difficult to get people to take him seriously. “I was bounced from one department to another — it was a bureaucratic nightmare”. 

Vinny and the team at Elemental promoting their nutrition foods

After two and a half years of pouring his heart and soul into OneBeep, he accepted things weren’t working. It was a good lesson in the harsh realities of working in social entrepreneurship. If you have a clear solution to a clear problem and it still isn’t getting picked up, it’s time to go back to the drawing board.

Vinny eventually open sourced OneBeep and it was used for immediate good all around the world. A highlight was when he helped the authorities in Haiti use the technology to communicate emergency information after the 2010 earthquake. “I gave the code to everyone who came to me”, he says.

With the lessons learnt from OneBeep front and centre, Vinny started getting involved in other social impact initiatives across India. One standout was OneBuzz — a technology that helped optimise the stockpiling, transportation, and deployment of anti-malarial measures like vaccines, nets, and insecticide sprays.

He also worked on Reva — India’s largest festival for underprivileged children. Reva involved bringing 600 kids living on the street or in very low-income households and spending two days nurturing their creativity — through things like painting, performance, poetry, and dance.

Through projects like this, Vinny became increasingly passionate about a longstanding focus of his: the interdependency between internal transformation and societal transformation.

As the years ticked by in India, he embarked on a search for spirituality. He met with psychologists, intellectuals, and spent weeks at a time in monasteries. He was indiscriminate about religion too — learning from Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, you name it.

Eventually, the switch flipped — “the brain is a self-healing mechanism if you just give it the time and create inner space — like a wound on the body”, he says. He now understood that the work of social transformation must first start smaller — one turbulent mind at a time.

Back in New Zealand after eight years in India in order to support his dad through his cancer journey, Vinny breathed life into this philosophy. He got involved in Take2— an initiative working with prisoners to teach them coding and meditation skills.

”I thought, if I can use meditation to help the most traumatised members of society, these practices and techniques can work on anyone”, he reflects. “It’s probably the most fulfilling work I’ve ever done”.

Vinny speaks of the initial distrust he experienced from the prisoners — as your archetypical untrustworthy authority figure. But over time, trust was earnt and vulnerability became the resounding felt experience.

After Take2, he found himself pulled more and more into the realm of integrative health. He started two health companies: Mother India and Elemental Food — both designed to increase holistic health through things like herbal medicine and nutritional powder blends.

High quality herbs are almost impossible to get a hold of”, he says, so Mother India brings potent and scientifically verified herbs to NZ shores from India.

Along this wild ride, a major pillar of support for Vinny has been his membership in the Leadership Network. Having been a member for over a decade, he has had some incredible experiences and been on some life changing offshore hui: from Malaysia, to South Korea, to Washington DC.

He found true community in the network. “What I was searching for in university, I got in the Foundation," he reflects.

Even though he has now settled back into life in New Zealand, Vinny wants to continue to act as a bridge — both between Aotearoa and Asia, and between mental and spiritual health.

Though currently operating in the space of natural health, it is really anyone’s guess what avenue for social good this exceptionally talented, jack of all trades will embark on next.

The Asia New Zealand Foundation Leadership Network equips the next generation of Kiwi leaders to thrive in Asia. We provide members with the connections, knowledge and confidence to lead New Zealand’s future relationship with the region.