It was a few weeks after his wedding when the national lockdown was announced. For most newlyweds, the months that followed might have meant a quiet, unconventional start to married life. For Saketh Kothamasu, they meant something else entirely. With around 15 to 20 relatives stranded at his home and vulnerable families in need across the city, Saketh and his team turned their home into an operational center for relief distribution. Funds that came from their wedding were redirected towards emergency response. Volunteers assembled and distributed materials. For months, the work did not stop.
That period during the COVID-19 pandemic was not out of character for Saketh. It was, in many ways, entirely consistent with the path he had been building since his college years. Today, as CEO of Yuvatha Society, a nonprofit working at the intersection of youth empowerment, innovation, and community development, he has spent over a decade creating platforms that enable young people to become, as he puts it, “architects of change.”
A Question Asked in a Village
The origins of Yuvatha lie not in a boardroom or a policy document but in a series of visits to villages around Saketh’s engineering college. During his undergraduate years, he and a group of friends regularly traveled to nearby communities and spent time with the people there. What they observed was not only the range of challenges those communities faced but also something equally striking: the energy and willingness of young people to contribute, with almost no structured platform to channel it.
“We began asking ourselves a simple question,” Saketh recalls. “What if a group of students could come together not just to volunteer occasionally, but to consistently work towards solving real community problems?”
The question led to a student club, which led to something larger. As more young people wanted to participate, the need for a platform that could exist beyond a single campus became clear. In 2011, Yuvatha Society was formally registered, and the organisation began expanding its work across Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
The Decision That Changed Everything
Saketh had, around this time, made a significant personal decision. He had secured admission to pursue an MBA at a University in Australia. But something had shifted. During that period, he became increasingly convinced that his long-term contribution lay in social development.
He was also exposed to professional pathways within the development sector and decided to choose that journey instead. “Looking back,” he says, “it was one of the most important decisions of my life because it allowed me to dedicate my time and energy fully to building Yuvatha and contributing to the larger social impact ecosystem.”
Building Credibility From the Ground Up
The early years were not easy. As a group of young students, Yuvatha faced a familiar challenge: convincing communities, partners, and supporters that a youth-led initiative could deliver something real and sustained.
Speaking to The Logical Indian, Saketh described how the organisation worked through those early constraints. Funding was limited, so rather than approaching supporters only as donors, Yuvatha encouraged them to become volunteers and actively participate in its initiatives. “This approach helped people see the work firsthand, understand the impact being created, and gradually become advocates for the organisation,” he explains. Many of the earliest supporters contributed not just financially but through their time, skills, and networks.
The organisation also focused on designing initiatives differently, making programmes innovative, engaging, and highly visible. This helped attract attention and generate conversations and demonstrated that young people could lead impactful community initiatives.
One milestone from that early period was Mission B, a large-scale youth-led campaign that brought Yuvatha visibility it had not experienced before. It drew in corporate leaders, public figures, and supporters from across sectors, and demonstrated what collective action led by young people could look like at scale.
When the Wedding Funds Became Relief Funds
The COVID-19 pandemic was another defining chapter. Just weeks after his wedding, Saketh found himself coordinating relief efforts from home, with around 15 to 20 relatives also staying with them. For months, his home served as an operational center where volunteers assembled and distributed relief materials for vulnerable families.
Funds that came from his wedding were redirected toward emergency response. The Telangana government later recognized Saketh and his team as COVID warriors, but as he reflects on it, what mattered more was the reminder of why community-led action matters.
What You Learn at 4 a.m. Village Meeting
After completing his postgraduate degree in Rural Development and Governance from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Saketh’s fieldwork took him into some of the most remote and underserved parts of the country. During his time at TISS Hyderabad, he spent time in Araku. His first job after his postgraduation took him to the Maredumilli forest agency areas. He also worked in tribal and Naxal-affected regions across other parts of the country.
He describes attending village meetings at four in the morning because that was the only time community members were available. Walking several kilometres just to make a phone call. Spending days in areas with no internet connectivity and coordinating with team members using sticky notes.
In conversation with The Logical Indian, Saketh reflected on what those experiences taught him. “Spending time with people, listening to their stories, and understanding their aspirations taught me that communities are not defined by their challenges alone. They possess immense resilience, knowledge, and problem-solving abilities.” Those experiences, he says, changed the way he looks at society and development, and reinforced the importance of listening before acting.
What Yuvatha Does Today
More than a decade on from that student club, Yuvatha works across thematic areas including youth leadership, innovation, entrepreneurship, employability, civic participation, and life skills. The organisation partners with governments, educational institutions, CSR partners, UNICEF, and innovation ecosystems. Its core leadership team is elected every year, and decisions about programme priorities are made collectively, guided by community needs, field insights, and available evidence.
“Scale should never come at the cost of relevance,” Saketh says. “We continuously engage with communities, young people, educators, and local stakeholders to understand their evolving needs and realities.”
His own role, formally titled CEO & General Secretary, is in practice about much more than the designation suggests. “The title is largely a formal designation. My work is driven more by the organization’s needs than by a specific position,” he says.
Beyond the Headcount
One of the most consistent threads running through Saketh’s work is a carefully evolving understanding of what impact means. Early on, he measured it in outputs: the number of volunteers engaged, events conducted, people reached, or activities completed. Over time, that shifted.
“Real impact is not just about what an organization delivers but about what continues to happen after the organization steps away,” he says. “If a young person gains the confidence to solve problems in their community, if a teacher adopts a new way of engaging students, or if a government institution integrates an approach into its own systems, the impact extends far beyond a single project or intervention.”
Today, Yuvatha’s measure of success is not the number of programmes launched but the degree to which communities, institutions, and young people themselves take ownership of the change they are part of. “Impact today is not measured only by the number of people reached but by the number of people empowered to continue creating change long after a programme has ended,” Saketh says.
What Good Work Actually Requires
Saketh speaks candidly about the wider gaps he sees in the social development landscape. Fragmentation is one. Many organisations working towards similar goals often operate in parallel, with significant fragmentation in how efforts are designed and implemented, which limits the efficiency and scale of what they can achieve together.
He also raises a pointed observation about the growth in the number of nonprofits in India. “I recently came across a report suggesting that the number of NGOs in India now exceeds the number of schools in the country. While this reflects a strong desire to contribute to social change, it also raises an important question: how many of these interventions are truly sustainable and creating long-term value?”
He is equally direct about how the social sector is perceived. “Even today, many people view nonprofit work primarily through the lens of charity or volunteering, rather than as a professional field that requires expertise, innovation, management, and long-term commitment.” Development professionals, he argues, work on complex challenges, manage large programmes, engage with governments and communities, and deliver measurable outcomes under difficult conditions. “Investing in nonprofit talent, leadership, systems, and organisational growth should not be viewed as an overhead but as a necessary investment for achieving sustainable impact,” he adds.
The Thing That Keeps Him Going
When asked what sustains his motivation in work where change is often slow and rarely linear, Saketh’s answer is grounded and specific. It is not grand outcomes that keep him going, but smaller, accumulating shifts.
“What keeps me motivated is seeing the small shifts that eventually lead to larger transformations—a young person gaining confidence, a volunteer emerging as a leader, a community taking ownership of an issue, or an idea growing into a sustainable initiative,” he says.
Yuvatha’s purpose, as Saketh defines it in a single line, has not changed much from the question first asked in those early village visits: turning young people from participants in society into architects of change. The organization has grown, its methods have matured, and its partnerships now extend across state governments and international bodies. But the original instinct, that young people need not just encouragement but genuine platforms and genuine responsibility, remains at the core of everything Yuvatha does.
The Logical Indian’s Perspective
Youth are often seen as the leaders of tomorrow, but Saketh Kothamasu believes they can lead today. At The Logical Indian, we value stories like Yuvatha Society’s that showcase the transformative power of youth-led initiatives in building stronger, more inclusive communities.
If you’d like us to feature your story, please write to us at csr@5w1h.media
