In 2026, Divaa Uthkarsha was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list in the Social Impact category, the youngest honouree in that category this year. She is 17, is reportedly set to begin studying industrial engineering in the US, and has spent the last four years running a non-profit she started at 13. That timeline alone makes her worth a decode, but the more interesting story is what Project Surya actually does, and how it got funded and scaled without a founder old enough to drive.

The Gap

Type 1 diabetes is different from the type most people picture when they hear "diabetes." It is an autoimmune condition, it shows up young, and it requires lifelong insulin, not lifestyle changes. In India, that creates a specific financial problem: publicly available estimates suggest that managing Type 1 diabetes can consume close to a fifth of a middle-class family's income, and a large majority of affected families do not have access to government subsidies or adequate insurance. Awareness campaigns and healthcare infrastructure are built around Type 2 diabetes, which is far more common. Type 1 patients, especially in low-income and rural households, get left out of that conversation entirely.

How She Started

In 2021, Divaa's younger brother was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. Overnight, insulin became something the family had to think about every single day, not as a medicine, but as something his life depended on. Her family went through the adjustment that comes with it, new diet, new routines, and the financial and mental load of managing a chronic condition. That experience is what pushed her to look at how other families without her family's resources were coping, and the answer was often that they weren't.

She joined 1M1B's Future Leaders Program, which gave her a structure to turn that concern into an actual plan, starting with around 30 stakeholder interviews with doctors, dieticians and diabetic children, plus over 500 surveys with teenagers and ASHA workers. Her age became an immediate hurdle. Stakeholders she pitched to initially didn't take her seriously, assuming a 13-year-old's project would fold within weeks. Project Surya launched in June 2021 anyway, initially focused on Karnataka.

Funding Model

As a non-profit, Project Surya relies on crowdfunding, corporate contributions, grants, and international partnerships rather than a traditional revenue model. One of its largest fundraising initiatives was a Midnight Walkathon that reportedly drew more than 10,000 attendees and roughly 8,000 runners, run in collaboration with Karnataka's former Deputy Chief Minister. The organisation has reportedly raised over ₹20 lakh through grants, partnerships, and community fundraising, and was also selected at the 1M1B Summit at the United Nations to receive funding from the International We Serve Foundation.

Awareness & Outreach

The distribution model is built around ASHA workers, India's community health workers, each typically serving around 1,000 families. Project Surya has reportedly trained more than 200 of them, using that existing trust network to spread Type 1 diabetes awareness rather than building a new one from scratch. Alongside that, the team runs school sessions and rallies directly, reaching students and teachers in government schools in addition to families already dealing with a diagnosis. According to publicly reported figures, Project Surya has reached over 4 lakh individuals, with 3,190 children with Type 1 diabetes directly supported.

By the Numbers

Timeline

Risks and Challenges

The obvious one is durability: youth-led non-profits often lean heavily on the founder's personal network and energy, and Divaa is reportedly headed to college in the US. Its next phase will likely depend on whether fundraising systems can operate independently of the founder. While recognition such as Forbes 30 Under 30 may help address early credibility challenges, the deeper structural challenge, running a volunteer-heavy organisation with donation-based funding, remains. Insulin access is also a recurring-cost problem, not a one-time fix, which means the funding model has to keep working indefinitely, not just get the org off the ground.

The TEP Take

Most youth "changemaker" stories get told as inspiration pieces and stop there. What's actually notable about Project Surya is the distribution choice: instead of building an awareness campaign from zero, it plugged into India's existing ASHA worker network, a system that already had the trust and reach the org needed. That's a founder thinking like an operator, not just a cause advocate. The next test will be whether that infrastructure continues to scale once its founder begins college abroad.

Sources: LinkedIn (Project Surya, Divaa Uthkarsha), Forbes, The Hans India, Global Indian

Disclaimer: This article is based on publicly available information as of July 2026. The Entrepreneur Post has not conducted a direct interview with Divaa Uthkarsha or Project Surya for this piece. Reported figures (funds raised, walkathon attendance, education plans) should be verified against the latest public source or Project Surya's official communications before final publication.