Shilpika is an India born, global living, world record breaking adventurer for purpose.
Shilpika Gautam is an India born, global living, world record breaking adventurer for Purpose. Having swapped her corporate life of Banking and consulting for the pursuit of ‘adventurous activism’, she is a passionate advocate for ‘doing good better’, the environment and the empowerment of women.
Shilpika is now working on a number of international projects to channel her finance, technology and entrepreneurial experience to create businesses for social and environmental impact.
The idea was first conceived by Shilpika Gautam (Shilps) in late 2015 – a deep desire to reconnect with her roots in India, a propensity for following through on slightly mad adventurous instincts and wanting to combine the novelty of the SUP sport with the purpose of raising an imminent and serious environmental issue led to the birth of Gangessup. Ironically at this point, Shilps had only SUP’ed for a few hours.
The issue of water pollution is certainly not unique to the Ganges alone – in fact, as one of the greatest rivers in the world which supports well over 500 million people, the Ganges symbolizes the scale and urgency with which we must all be engaged in saving our water bodies – be it ponds, canals, rivers or oceans. Conversely what is unique to the river is the vast chasm between its essence and its physical form – the fact that the river which is sacred and holy and a goddess to hundreds of millions are suffering at the very hands of those it nurtures.
The media often use negative examples to describe the ongoing efforts to clean our water bodies – we, however, wanted to highlight the positive stories from this river-of-life, of the challenges that the least connected and underprivileged living along its banks face on a daily basis, and how public/private efforts are transforming their quality of life, one village at a time.
