USA based engineer Bala Reddy Indurti honoured with Sankara Ratna award.
Padma Bhushan awardee Dr. S.S. Badrinath founded Sankara Nethralaya (SN) in 1978 with the sole objective of providing world class eye care for free to the poor and at an affordable price to others.
For the last 46 years, SN restored the vision of Millions of poor patients. Sankara Nethralaya's goal is to eradicate preventable blindness from India. To help accomplish this goal, Sankara Nethralaya USA (SN USA) was established in 1988 by Mr.S.V. Acharya to raise the funds from Non Resident Indians living in the USA.
Mr. Bala Reddy Indurti, a well known person in Telugu community in the USA was approached by SN USA to join as a Trustee and help the noble cause of restoring the vision of poor patients in India. As the cause is noble, he accepted to join the organization as a Trustee in 2017.
He has vast experience in leading local and national organizations like TAMA (Telugu Atlanta of Metro Atlanta), APNA (Andhra Pradesh Physicians and Professionals of North America Foundation), NATA (North America Telugu Association) in various roles and knows many people. In those organizations also, he raised funds and organized many SEVA activities.
As a Trustee, he started making significant contributions for SN USA. Seeing the potential, he was asked to lead the organization by becoming President of the SN USA in 2019.
After becoming President, Bala was very instrumental in bringing in a lot of Trustees, Volunteers from various cities in the USA. He expanded SN USA chapters that were in 7 cities to 21 cities and brought in hundreds of people that he knows to serve this cause as Volunteers.
He reached out to several prominent community leaders across the US, India and started raising awareness and funds. Until he became President, there were two MESUs (Mobile Eye Surgical Units) - one based in Chennai and the other one is based in Jharkhand.
Under his leadership, 3rd MESU was established based off of Hyderabad. Each MESU serves an area that comes under 500 kilometers radius. As the goal is to spread the MESU footprint to the entire India, two more MESUs are work in progress. Each MESU costs about 3.25 Crores as Capital Expense and about 1.8 Crores per year as Operational Expense.
To raise this kind of funds on a regular basis, one needs to have a lot of commitment to serve and a vast network. Bala has both these attributes and these are helping SN USA noble cause tremendously by restoring the vision of thousands of poor patients.
Based on his contributions, Sankara Nethralaya honoured U.S. based Engineer and Philanthropist Mr.Bala Reddy Indurti with the Sankara Ratna Award for the year 2023. This award was presented by Chief Guest Mr. Gagandeep Singh Bedi, IAS Additional Chief Secretary, Health and Family Welfare Department, Government of Tamil Nadu at Sankara Nethralaya Chennai main hospital.
Mr. Ambati Rayudu, former Indian cricketer graced the occasion as Guest of Honour. Dr.T.S. Surendran, Chairman, Sankara Nethralaya; G.Ramachandran, Secretary, Medical Research Foundation; and Dr.Girish Rao, President, Medical Research Foundation were also present at the event on May 25th, 2024.
Mr. Indurti, in his acceptance speech recounted his journey with Sankara Nethralaya and said “In the last six years after I became president, we changed the bylaws and took our footprint of Sankara Nethralaya in the U.S. from seven chapters to 21. There is great respect for Sankara Nethralaya in the U.S. because of Dr. Badrinath’s vision.”
Prominent people that have received the Sankara Ratna award so far are:
- Sri. V. Shankar, Chairman, South Indian Education Society, Mumbai
- Sri. Ratan Tata, Chairman, Tata Sons
- Sri. A.M. Naik, Chairman & Managing Director, Larsen & Toubro Ltd
- Sri. S.V. Acharya, Founder and President Emeritus of Sankara Nethralaya USA
- Dr. Madhavan Nair, Chairman, ISRO
- Sri. Hanuman Prasad, Agarwal, Industrialist, Kolkata
- Sri. S.P. Muthuraman, Veteran Film Director and Literary Figure
- Dr. T.V. Subramanian & Sri. M.S. Jayaraman, Eminent Quality Management Gurus
- Sri. V.V. Ranganathan, Co-Founder, Director and Chairman of the Board of Compassites
- Sri. Deepak S. Parekh, Chairman, HDFC Ltd
Mr. Bala Reddy Indurti, son of a School teacher hails from Dindi Chintapally village in Vangoor Mandal of Nagar Kurnool District. He is currently in India to oversee the 10 day MESU eye camp being conducted in his native village from May 20th to 29th, 2024. This is the 4th camp being held by Sankara Nethralaya MESU based off of Hyderabad.
He is the youngest brother of R&B Engineer in Chief Mr.Indurti Ganapathi Reddy who is helping in organizing MESU camps in Telangana state. Mr.Narayana Reddy Indurthi serving as Trustee from Houston, TX is also actively participating in the camp.
Sankara Nethralaya USA got the highest ranking of 4 stars by Charity Navigator for its transparency and using the funds raised for the stated cause.
For more information about this noble cause and donate generously, please visit https://SankaraNethralayaUSA.org
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