About Us

Sarva Seva Samity Sanstha (4S) was promoted under the guidance of Shri Vijay Mahajan, Founder, BASIX Social Enterprise Group, by few dedicated volunteers from ASSEFA, Gaya in 2003

Our story

Founding Members

Shri Durga Das founded 4S after 25 years of grassroots work with ASSEFA in Gaya under the guidance and inspiration of Shri Vijay Mahajan in 2003 to work with the most vulnerable, marginalized and in unreached areas.

Mr. Vijay Mahajan co-founded 4S by inspiring volunteers from ASSEFA in 2003. He was also the Honorable President of 4S from 2007 to 2018. He is also the Founder of PRADAN and BASIX Social Enterprise Group (BASIX SEG). He is B.Tech from IIT (Delhi), MBA from IIM (Ahmedabad) and the Mid-career Fellow from Princeton University, having 35 years’ works experience in the arena of Social Work, Financial Inclusion and Policy making. He is known as “Outstanding Social Entrepreneur of the world” (by World Economic Forum)

Meet Our Board Members

Prof. Somnath Ghosh

He recently retired as Professor & Founding Dean (Academics) at Indian Institute of Management Kashipur. He is an Industrial Relations, HR, Organization Design and Institutional Development specialist and established the Centre of Excellence in Sustainable Development of which he was the Chair.

A Ph.D. from Jawaharlal Nehru University, he was Visiting Fellow, Cornell University (USA) where he worked with Professor William Foote Whyte, the legendary researcher, scholar and author in Cornell’s Program for Employment and Workplace System (PEWS).

He has held regular faculty positions at three other IIMs: at Lucknow, Bangalore and Indore. He was also Professor at International Management Institute, New Delhi and Administrative Staff College of India, Hyderabad. Before joining IIM Kashipur, he was Professor and Chair of doctoral program at Management Development Institute, Gurgaon. For ten years (2006-16), he was also Visiting Faculty at IIM Ahmedabad, where he taught Organizational Diagnosis & Performance. Post retirement, for a brief period, he was Adjunct Faculty at IIM Sirmaur. His consulting and institutional development experiences are wide and many. Among his over twenty assignments, he has consulted in the areas of compensation management, performance management, organization design and work practice changes with such organizations as NTPC, Coal India, Ester Industries, Union Carbide, Kriti Industries among others. He was World Bank consultant for assignments on institutional strengthening with respect to resettlement and rehabilitation (R&R) of project affected people and cadre management to improve their R&R delivery system. He was also Lead Consultant to Development Commissioner (Handicrafts), Government of India, for “Improving Delivery System for Artisans’ Livelihoods”. For British Government’s Department of International Development (DFID) and Public Health Foundation of India, he did separate studies with respect to the design and delivery of public health system in (undivided) Andhra Pradesh. He was again World Bank consultant for “Strengthening & Transfojydrming Institutions for Management of R&R” for government of Andhra Pradesh. While he was at IIM Kashipur, he was involved in a multi-year World Bank funded and monitored assignment related to Uttar Pradesh Health Systems Strengthening Project.

Currently, he has been engaged by Johns Hopkins University to advise the restructuring of the Directorate of Medical Health of Govt. of Uttar Pradesh. He has authored over 75 articles, chapters, reports and cases. As a reflection of his consulting and institution building roles, he has served on the boards of half a dozen organizations, including Institute of Livelihood Research and Training (ILRT) and Krishna Bhima Samruddhi Local Area Bank Limited.

Mr. Mihir Sahana, secretary cum ED of 4S India, with a basic background of agriculture, has worked for more than 15 years in NGO, INGO, Corporate and Government. He completed his bachelor degree in Agricultural Sciences, MBA in Rural Management from IRMA, MA in development study from University of Manchester. His initial career with PRADAN (Professional Assistance for Development Action) exposed him to the grassroots realities of rural poor. His stint with the Bihar State Dairy (a state government enterprise) and then in Dabur has helped him pick up necessary skills of achieving steep targets, sales and marketing. He finally shifted to the livelihood sector with a mission to promote livelihoods of small and marginal farmers by identifying, developing and promoting appropriate technologies using principles of marketing to achieve scale and sustainability. He is involved in developing a host of innovative products and processes by provisioning of financial services both in the farm and non-farm sector, provisioning of innovative business development services and developing linkage with corporate and technology provider like Pepsico, ITC, ICAR institutions etc and institutional development services in collaboration with various Government Department.