Exclusive: Meet Prateek Khandelwal Who Is Ramping Up Cities To Make Outdoor Spaces Able Enough For Disabled

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You can reach great heights when you take small steps, one at a time.

It was a decade back, when Prateek was 28, and a doctor had informed him that he would be wheelchair-bound due to his spinal cord injury. Well, he didn't accept what fate had to offer, fought the negativity around his condition, worked toward his recovery, and stood tall.

Within 4 years, not only did he give up his wheelchair but his vivacious young man could stand and walk with the help of crutches. Today, with his impactful personality and hard work he has become the face behind an organization that's trying to create an inclusive world for all.

In an exclusive interview with Boldsky, founder 'Ramp My City', Prateek Khandelwal, shares why there is a need to make outdoor spaces more accessible for the disabled.

Inspiration Behind Ramp My City

Due to a spinal cord injury in 2014, Prateek was paralyzed waist down and a wheelchair became part of his life. 'For three to four years I was doing rigorous rehab. That Time I realized that recovery is probably going to go on for a lifetime and that a wheelchair has to be a part of my life, but why should I stop leading my life even if I am using a wheelchair I wanted to go out and I wanted to pursue a career because I'm a very ambitious person.'

Being a social person, Prateek wanted to travel and meet his friends. 'I'm also a foodie so I wanted to go out and have food. I just wanted to do those things but the only difference was that now I was doing this in a wheelchair. And When I started going out there was a huge problem of accessibility. Starting from the building I was staying at, the public transport, Metro, the Bank...anywhere I went I realized accessibility was an issue.'

It was then, he questioned whether there is any law regarding making public spaces more accessible for disabled people and if the government is actively doing something about it.

'Well, there is a building code, the Rights for Persons with disabilities act 2016, and various other movements by the government like the Accessibility India campaign, the Sustainability Development Goals SDG that talks about the sustainability of the city ...everything is there but too much idealistic and nothing is implemented on the ground,' says Prateek.

However, he found a huge gap between the policy and its implementation at the ground level. 'I found that there is a good opportunity to close this gap and have a start-up that starts providing solutions and that's how Ramp My City was born. A company that wants to do direct on-ground interventions means we don't want to do advocacy at policy level, we want to make changes on the ground.'

Today his organisation is effortlessly towards providing access to people with disabilities and the elderly in wheelchairs. 'The idea is to create an equal world for all, where access to basic facilities is unrestricted, paving the way for self-sustenance and independence for a considerable section of society,' says Prateek.

What's The Biggest Challenge?

The private sector to say is the biggest operational challenge right now because I think as a country we are still learning to be accessible and the private sector players do not have the budgets to become accessible infrastructure-wise. You can talk about corporates, who talk about accessibility on LinkedIn about diversity, equity, and inclusion, but if you talk about how much budget have they allocated towards accessibility audit or even to train their employees or to hire persons with a disability we found that to be very low, tells Prateek to Boldsky.

'Even in the real estate sector we found loopholes in their designs while building structures like housing societies and malls etc. No design innovations anywhere. Even if you go to the government sector to the smart city projects that are coming up or even the Metro stations, airports that are being built, through our accessibility audits we have realised flaws in design in upcoming structures also the core of the problem is that the government in not implementing these strictly,' he adds.

Raising Funds And Finding Accessibility Solution

Soon, Prateek realized that there was no point in going from door to door or business to business and asking them to buy an accessibility solution.

'In fact, if you look at the CSR and Philanthropy market as per Bain & Co. the report that they published says India has a market of 25 to 30 billion dollars in private philanthropy and CSR market and most of this money usually goes to education, health, rural development.' This is where Ramp My City steps in and tells the stakeholders to put this money towards public infrastructure.

Prateek believes that this new pitch is slowly getting a lot of mileage and a lot of attention because it is impactful and very tangible.

'Corporates love the idea of seeing an accessible infrastructure. They think they are contributing to a greater cause of building an accessible nation and that is the model that we have planned to raise the funding from. We raise funds from the corporates and then go to the government to ask for partnership in the form of permissions to ramp up places of importance,' he shares.

In 2021, Prateek got the Universal Design Award 2021 for Building accessible places for persons with disabilities, which was his first award. Next, he received the Savai Award for 'Exemplary Achievement' for a start-up for Social Impact by Rajkumari Gauravi 2022 and the third one was the CNN News 18 Award 2022 for Organisation with Social Impact. The list of his achievements is endless.

Recently, he was also chosen for the International Visitors' Leadership program that is conducted by the US state government where 15 social entrepreneurs from across the world are chosen who are creating an impact in the society.

What's The Biggest Social Impact?

The biggest social impact that Prateek considers is that people have started to believe that 'accessibility is a very plausible thing, it is very doable and this means that 'we have generated hopes through our work in the minds and hearts of people.'

'I remember on LinkedIn there was a bunch of people who started saying 'Prateek hai to mumkin hai' (Prateek can make it possible) and I think that was very overwhelming for us,' he recalls.

Prateek strongly believes that duet to this initiative a person with disability has also started to believe that they don't need to be locked down at home for the entire life because of accessibility, and they can go out to a public place without having to worry whether it will be accessible or not because probably Ramp my city would have taken care of it.

'I think that is a very big mindset change that we are able to bring about in the society and I hope overtime we will be able to multiply and amplify this thought all over India where people will start believing that they can live their lives on their own as any ordinary human being and that they are equal contributors in the role of nation building,' he says.