Dolly Rateshwar

Co-founder

Dolly Rateshwar is the co-founder of The Dharavi Dream Project (2013)[1], an Indian non-profit working on arts & culture and education from Mumbai.

Dolly Rateshwar is an Indian social entrepreneur who co-founded The Dharavi Dream Project in Mumbai in December 2013 with Samir Bangara and members of two of the city's hip-hop crews. The organisation runs the After School of Hip Hop, which gives young people in Dharavi free training in rap, beatboxing, breaking, graffiti and music production. She is its chief executive and executive director.

Career

Before turning to social work Rateshwar worked at Google, LinkedIn and MySpace as one of their early team members in India. She was a founding team member of Qyuki, the digital media company started by Shekhar Kapur, A. R. Rahman and Samir Bangara, and led new avenues and operations at the MIT Media Lab India Initiative. She was also a co-founder of Tesseract Imaging, a spin-off from that initiative which was later acquired by Reliance Industries.

The Dharavi Dream Project opened its first community centre in a Dharavi shanty in May 2014, and was formally launched in January 2015 with Universal Music Group as a corporate social responsibility partner and with A. R. Rahman and Shekhar Kapur present. During the COVID-19 pandemic the school moved online and reached students in several countries. In June 2023 it opened TDDP Studios, a recording facility in Dharavi, which released the anthem 'Hindustan ki Awaaz' in August 2023.

Recognition

The Dharavi Dream Project won the TSS Women Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award at the 2021 TiE Sustainability Summit; the award was presented to Rateshwar.[2][3][4][5]

The Dharavi Dream Project

The Dharavi Dream Project (legally registered as Voice of Street Music Education and Learning Foundation) has run India's first 'AfterSchool of Hip-Hop' since 2014, based in Dharavi, one of Asia's largest informal settlements. It mentors young people through hip-hop culture, dance, music, and the arts, with its site reporting more than 150 students taught by 8 instructors across 5 disciplines, and documented festival performances in Arunachal Pradesh, Bangalore, and Delhi.

The Dharavi Dream Project reports the following, on its own site: