Nidhi Pant, co-founder of Science For Society Techno Services Pvt. Ltd., known as S4S Technologies, has been named the recipient of the 17th Social Entrepreneur of the Year (SEOY) Award India 2026, presented jointly by the Jubilant Bhartia Foundation and the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, a sister organisation of the World Economic Forum. The award was presented at a ceremony in New Delhi on August 21, 2026, in the presence of N K Singh, former member of the Rajya Sabha and former chairman of India's 15th Finance Commission, who attended as chief guest.
Pant was recognised for developing sustainable biotechnology solutions that convert agricultural waste into bio-based products and eco-friendly farm inputs, built around a patented, electricity-free solar-powered food dehydration system that lets smallholder farmers preserve produce for up to a year without chemicals. The technology directly targets two of Indian agriculture's most persistent problems: post-harvest food loss and the income insecurity of farmers who often have no choice but to sell surplus produce cheaply before it spoils. S4S trains landless and smallholder women in particular to become agri-entrepreneurs, or “Micro Entrepreneurs,” equipping them with the equipment, financing access and market linkages needed to process and sell dehydrated food ingredients to industry buyers rather than watching crops rot in the field.
Founded by Pant and Vaibhav Tidke after a 2013 drought devastated her home region in Uttarakhand and forced her own family to migrate, S4S has since scaled its network to work with several thousand farmers across India and internationally in countries including Kenya and Nepal. The company's dehydrated food ingredients now supply more than 700 food-industry clients, and Pant has previously been recognised internationally, including as a 2021 WE Empower Awardee and a 2023 Earthshot Prize winner in the “Build a Waste-Free World” category, which came with £1 million in scale-up funding.
Pant was selected from a shortlist of five finalists chosen from a national applicant pool, alongside Dr. Neha Verma of Intelehealth, recognised for open-source AI-enabled telemedicine expanding healthcare access in underserved communities, and Nuneseno Chase of Nagaland-based YouthNet, honoured for youth-led development work spanning education, livelihoods and environmental sustainability across the northeast. Since its inception in 2009, the SEOY India award has established itself as one of the country's most prestigious social entrepreneurship platforms, with this year's finalist cohort spanning climate technology, healthcare, agriculture technology and inclusion — a mix organisers say reflects the growing role of artificial intelligence and digital platforms in addressing India's development challenges.
The award sits within the Jubilant Bhartia Foundation's broader push to institutionalise support for India's social entrepreneurship sector: the foundation's BHARAT IMPACT incubation programme, run in partnership with IIM-Ahmedabad Ventures as strategic partner and the Schwab Foundation as global outreach partner, has separately set a target of incubating 200 social and environmental startups by 2030, offering grants of up to Rs 5 lakh, pilot opportunities with established organisations, and access to the wider Jubilant Bhartia Group's industrial infrastructure and mentorship network.
As the SEOY India 2026 winner, Pant joins the Schwab Foundation's global community of social innovators, gaining access to an international network of impact investors, policymakers and fellow social entrepreneurs built over nearly three decades. For a sector where CSR funding is often the only capital available to ventures not yet profitable enough to attract mainstream investors, recognition of this scale is intended to do more than honour past work — it is designed to open doors to the partnerships and capital S4S and ventures like it need to scale their impact well beyond the smallholder farmers they currently serve.
