Sunil Khandbahale

Sunil Shivaji Khandbahale सुनील शिवाजी खांडबहाले (born June 1, 1978) is a MIT Sloan Fellow, Innovator and Entrepreneur from Nashik, India. He is best known as a founder and CEO of KHANDBAHALE.COM, a free multilingual digital dictionary and translation platform for 23 languages in 16 domains with an extensive vocabulary of 10 million words and phrases.^[2][3] The platform is being used by over a hundred million users worldwide.

He has also founded KHANDBAHALE.ORG an organization which develops language-related projects such as Global Language Networking, Global Language Heritage, Global Language Friendship, Global Language Environment. He is a founder and secretary of the Global Prosperity Foundation, an NGO that focused on education, health and environment. Public confers him with the honorary title of 'Dictionary Man' and 'Wordsmith'.^[4] and a Youth Icon^[5] by Times Group. He was recognized by the President of India for his contribution to research and development of Indian languages.

On 27 December 2013, he co-founded Kumbhathon with MIT Professor Ramesh Raskar, an innovation platform to spot problems and probe solutions in Nashik. The platform has now grown to stimulate impact ventures that empower newly digital citizens in non-metro Tier II cities.^[6][7][8]

Early life and education

He went to school in his native language Marathi until of his age 16. He faced language challenge when he entered in engineering school. A dictionary saved him from being school drop-out. He compiled his first dictionary as a college student. He shared his dictionary as photocopies among his peer students. He thought of publishing booklet dictionary but had no money to support the cost. Later he realized that digital dictionary could be more effective.

Career

He could not afford to join computer training institute at that time so, he borrow books and computer of his friend. He locked himself in small room for six months and learned computer programming through self-learning. His popular INK talk : Breaking Language Barrier describes his journey. He developed a dictionary search engine program^[9] for Marathi language. He continued compiling dictionaries and in 2005 he set up an online dictionary portal, khandbahale.com. for local languages of India^[10][11] He is Sloan Fellow and earned a masters in business management MBA degree at MIT Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

His family runs a local school Global Discovery School for rural communities and doorsteps bus-school project The Education on Wheels The idea is to take school to the remote students who are not able to reach to school.

Additional activities

He developed talking software Text-To-Speech for blind and visually challenged people. He developed Software for pathology and hospital management and industry automation. In collaboration with Linguist and Domain experts at various universities and educational institutes, he compiled digital dictionaries in multiple languages, which is being used by over a hundred million users worldwide as standalone offline computer software(s), mobile and tablet apps, online web services^[12] and over SMS^[13] platform.^[14]

He wrote program Marathi language talking dictionary software.^[15] Then he compiled various dictionaries in multiple languages. The world’s first Indic languages Mobile Dictionaries were produced by him.^[16] In 2011 He added Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Gujarati languages to his Internet and mobile dictionary.^[17][18]

And at the end of the same year 2012, he launched 12 Language Dictionary on 12 December 2012 at 12 hours, 12 minutes and 12 seconds.^[19] which creates (Limca Book of World Record)^[20][21][22] In early 2013 Khandbahale launched his twelve-languages dictionary on SMS platform.^[23] His Languages Apps are also available on the Android platform.

In 2014 he started developing an English to Sanskrit thesaurus which will be accessible by mobile phone.^[24] He has been instrumental in pulling entrepreneurship ecosystem together with Kumbhathon for tech and non-tech innovations for Kumbhamela by local human capital to foster entrepreneurship in collaboration with MIT Media Lab.^[25][26][27]

Personal life

In 2000, Khandbahale married 'Sunanda', who is an electronics engineer and she works with him. one son and one daughter. His elder brother 'Vilas' is a judicial magistrate and younger brother 'Dnyaneshwar' is a professor of botany. He lives on a farm in the village of Mahiravani with an extended family of 14 members. He listens to music, and participates in biking and painting.

Professional life

In May 2014, he was selected for Trailblazers INK Fellow US tour, in which he visited Google HQ, Facebook, Intel HQ, Nike HQ, NASDAQ, EBay, Autodesk, PayPal, Stanford University, Harvard University, White House, World Trade Center, Christie's, Pentagon, World Bank HQ, United Nations ^[28]

Awards

• Best Entrepreneur of the year "Yashokirti Award" by Computer Society of India (CSI)
• Best Local Language Website Award by Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI)
• International "mBillionth Award" by Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF)
• International "Manthan Award" by United Nation’s World Summit on Information Society (WSIS)
• Recognized as "Industry Leader" in Indian language Dictionaries by Microsoft
• Recognized "Best Local Language Apps" by Nokia
• "Young IT Achiever" Award by Dr. Munje Institute (DMI)
• "Youth Icon" Award by Times Group^[5]
• National ICT VASVIK Industrial Research Award
• MasterCard Fellow, Legatum Fellowship Award ^[29]

References

External links

• Facebook : Facebook Page
• Linkedin : Linked in Profile
• News : Press Media Coverage
• "About Page of KHANDBAHALE.COM". KHANDBAHALE.COM. 
• "About Page of GPF". Global Prosperity Foundation. 
• "Android Apps by KHANDBAHALE". Google.com in association with KHANDBAHALE.COM. Retrieved 5 August 2013. 
• "Dictionary on SMS by KHANDBAHALE". 
• TEDx Talk : Breaking the language barrier