Prerana Langa has made a career of beginnings the messy, uncertain stage when an idea exists before the systems, structures and institutions needed to carry it forward. For much of her career, she has chosen the blank page, building two corporate foundations, creating a major youth social-action movement and working across government, civil society, business and communities.
Today, at the Aga Khan Agency for Habitat India, her focus is climate resilience. But the underlying question remains: How do you take something that works and make it work for many more people?
The Instinct to Build
When Prerana entered the social impact sector, Corporate Social Responsibility in India was still evolving. At ICICI Foundation, she was part of the early team that helped build the institution from the ground up, working under the vision of Dr. Nachiket Mor. The approach was distinctive: wherever there was a critical gap in the development ecosystem, the answer was not simply to fund a programme, but to build an institution capable of addressing it.
Prerana came to see social impact as a combination of institution-building and systems change. In health and education, the Foundation worked with the governments of Jharkhand and Bihar to strengthen ASHAs, maternal and child health, nutrition and efforts to reduce infant mortality.
In Chhattisgarh, the Foundation strengthened the education system through SCERTs and DIETs, brought in education experts and supported the implementation of the Right to Education Act. In financial inclusion, the focus was on strengthening last-mile access to finance through institutions and platforms that built research, knowledge and delivery capacity.
It also strengthened environmental systems and supported civil society organisations. For Prerana, this became an early lesson that stayed with her: when a critical gap exists, build the institution and capability needed to address it sustainably.
When Young People Became the Change
At YES BANK, Langa established YES FOUNDATION from the ground up and became its CEO. Here, she began asking a different question: Could a corporate foundation become a platform for young people to participate in creating change? The answer was YES! i am the CHANGE an experiential programme built around a simple premise: if you want young people to engage, give them a challenge, not a lecture.
In partnership with Madhusudan Agarwal of MAM Movies, Langa launched the 101-Hour Filmmaking Challenge, turning that idea into action. On Independence Day, young participants received surprise topics centred on an everyday hero, nonprofit or act of kindness. They then had four days to research, shoot, edit and complete a film.
But the film was never the end goal. It was the excuse. The ambition was to create what Prerana described as “positive accidents” unexpected encounters that exposed young people to nonprofits, social causes and everyday heroes they might otherwise never encounter.
Under her leadership, the initiative grew into one of the world’s largest youth-led social movements, engaging more than 20 lakh young people across 2,500 cities and towns in India in just four years. For Prerana, it was about agency the shift from being a spectator to becoming a participant. Young people developed connections with social causes, raised funds, and many went on to launch social enterprises.
From Changing People to Changing Systems
he next chapter brought Prerana closer to climate change. At the Aga Khan Agency for Habitat India, her work focuses on what climate resilience means where people actually live. For a family in a heat-vulnerable home, resilience can mean sleeping comfortably; for a worker, it can mean continuing a livelihood safely; for a child, staying able to learn during extreme temperatures; and for a city, anticipating risks rather than responding after disaster strikes.
This is the nuance of Prerana’s approach: climate resilience is not simply an environmental agenda it is about quality of life, equity and the ability of communities and cities to adapt.
When Home Becomes a Heat Trap
The urgency becomes stark in Chandrapur, where summer temperatures can reach around 46°C. In informal settlements, tin roofs, small homes and poor ventilation can push indoor temperatures to 45–50°C, affecting health, livelihoods and productivity. The Municipal Commissioner reported around 30% absenteeism during periods of extreme heat.
For Prerana, there is something fundamentally unjust about this. A home is supposed to be a place of refuge a place that protects people from the elements and helps them withstand disasters. It is deeply unfair that someone should have to live in a home that reaches 45–50°C.
From Cooling Homes to Changing Cities
AKAH has demonstrated practical heat-resilience measures such as reflective roofs, insulation and improved ventilation, with programmes recording indoor temperature reductions of 2°C to 8°C. But the bigger question is simpler: Can an affordable solution improve everyday life, work in the homes people already live in, and generate the evidence needed to help cities take climate action to scale?
At Nav Yuwan Housing Society in Mira-Bhayandar, green retrofitting achieved 41% energy savings, 35% water savings and 59% material efficiency, demonstrating how existing buildings can be transformed rather than replaced. The project went on to become the first building in Asia to receive World Bank-IFC EDGE certification, offering a practical example of how sustainability can be integrated into existing urban housing.
From Evidence to Policy
AKAH seeks to use evidence from the ground to influence cities, governments and public policy. Its heat-resilience work in Hyderabad demonstrated approximately 4°C reductions in indoor temperatures and contributed to Telangana’s Cool Roof Policy.
In Maharashtra, AKAH developed the Mira-Bhayandar City Climate Action Plan, providing a roadmap towards net-zero emissions by 2047 while integrating mitigation and adaptation into climate governance and resilience.
This is where Prerana’s career comes full circle: at ICICI Foundation, she built institutions; at YES Foundation, she demonstrated mass participation; and through climate resilience at AKAH, she is showing how community-level evidence can influence systems and policy. resilience, she is showing how community evidence can
influence systems.
The Logical Indian’s Perspective
The settings have changed over the years, but Prerana’s instinct has remained the same. From corporate philanthropy to youth engagement, and now from community-level climate solutions to urban resilience, the thread is consistent: start with people, create something that works, generate evidence and ask how it can scale further.
Prerana does not simply ask whether something can work. She asks whether it can work for many more people.
A successful intervention matters, but its potential lies in what comes next: whether communities can adopt it, institutions can replicate it, policymakers can act on the evidence, and capital can help take it to scale.
That is the mindset of an early starter: begin before there is a blueprint, build, learn, create evidence and bring people together. And when you find what works, the real challenge is to take it further to build the partnerships, systems and pathways that can turn local solutions into large-scale change.
If you’d like us to feature your story, please write to us at csr@5w1h.media
Also Read: People Of Purpose: The ₹20 Question that Took Khurram Naayaab from Grassroots Work to Vedanta CSR
