The Story of Anshu Gupta (Ashoka Fellow)

Popularly known as the Clothing Man, Anshu has done his Mass communications twice and masters in Economics. Starting as a freelance journalist, Anshu left a corporate job in 1998 and founded GOONJ with a mission to make clothing a matter of concern and to bring it among the list of subjects for the development sector. An Ashoka Fellow and the Global Ambassador of Ashoka, Anshu is creating a mass movement for recycling and reuse of tonnes of waste material by channelising it from the cities to the villages, as a resource for rural development. 

At IIMC Anshu was instantly in luck. His classmate was a vivacious girl, Meenakshi Trakroo. He wooed her, she responded and they married later. But that did not cause either of them to shut the door on the world and indulge themselves. They were both seeking a cause worth living for.

Anshu was freelancing for magazines even as a student. A series of experiences that didn't quite connect then, eventually led him and Meenakshi to commit themselves to their current mission.

When earthquakes shook Uttarkashi in 1991, Anshu went over with his camera. "Relief work was in full swing but it was not very sensitively done," he says. "The hill people are poor but they are proud. They were aghast at bundles of clothes dumped from moving trucks, literally on their heads. They withdrew and chose to wrap themselves in potato sacking cloth." Charity without dignity is an insult.

In Delhi's streets he once found a young man lie dead. There was an empty bottle of liquor and a full plate of uneaten food. "He died drinking to keep warm", whispered people who stood around. He had food to eat but not clothes to shield against the cold. Anshu met many young men who skipped job interviews because they did not have presentable clothes.

Listed in ‘Forbes’ as one of the India’s most powerful entrepreneurs, Anshu’s organization, GOONJ has won many prestigious awards including the Innovation for India award, Lien i3 challenge, CNN-IBN Real Hero’s Award, India NGO of the Year Award, Changemakers Innovation Awards and Development Market Place Award from the World Bank.

Anshu’s efforts to bring wider attention to the most ignored basic need of human i.e. clothing and its various aspects right from dignity, deaths in winters, to the most taboo subject of sanitary pads are getting wider acceptance across the world and many organizations have started replicating GOONJ’s various initiatives.

GOONJ is considered one of the leading social enterprises in India, the largest non monetary resource agency and people also call it one of the largest civic participation movements!!

Anshu is a passionate photographer and travels primarily to remote parts of the country to understand people, their behavior and need!