Girish Mehta

Mehta spent his childhood in an orphanage and had to leave it on turning eighteen, under the rules governing residential care institutions in India. He subsequently found work at the child helpline 1098 in Jaipur.

During the Covid-19 pandemic Mehta began helping other careleavers out of a monthly income of about Rs 8,000, working through a WhatsApp group that grew to around eighty members. In 2021 he brought together a team of careleavers to register the Careleavers Inner Circle Forum as a formal organisation, run, in its own phrase, by careleavers for careleavers. The social impact platform Josh.Community became its first corporate mentor and sponsor.

UNICEF began supporting the organisation in 2022, when CLiC set up an office in Jaipur and started connecting with child care homes across Rajasthan to trace careleavers and build a verified database. Anisha Sharma, also a careleaver, joined as co-founder that year and later became chief executive. By 2023 the organisation had connected with more than eighty child care homes and 750 careleavers in Rajasthan, and it joined the Nudge incubation cohort in Bengaluru.

In 2024, following a meeting with the Union Minister for Women and Child Development, Smriti Irani, the central government issued an order directing states to develop verified databases of careleavers and to provide aftercare services. CLiC issues a digital 'CLiC ID' which careleavers who lack official documents can use when applying for government programmes. Its supporters have included UNICEF, the Azim Premji Foundation and state government bodies.

Mehta spoke as a careleaver representative at the SOS Children's Villages general assembly in Austria in 2023.

Mehta was named, with Anisha Sharma, in the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list for social impact in 2026 and in the Forbes India 30 Under 30 list for 2026.[2][3][4][5]