Apurva Bhandari is the founder (and CEO) of SankalpTaru Foundation—an IT-enabled environmental NGO that seeks to combine technology, community welfare, and ecological restoration.

Growing up amidst the Himalayan landscapes of Uttarakhand, with a plant-pathologist father and a deep personal affinity for nature, he returned from a stint in the corporate world to channel his love for the environment into concrete action.

Before starting SankalpTaru, Bhandari worked in sectors such as oil and gas and in IT consultancy—but his lasting ambition was to build a scalable platform to restore India’s green cover and help rural communities through sustainable livelihoods.

Under his leadership since 2012, SankalpTaru has planted over 3.5 million trees across India, transforming degraded lands, deserts, flood-hit regions, and barren patches into orchards, community forests, and green belts—while aiding tens of thousands of farmers to earn stable income through agroforestry.

What distinguishes Bhandari’s approach is the union of technology and ecology: SankalpTaru leverages a web/mobile-based platform so that individuals and corporate donors can “plant trees with a click,” while every individual tree is geo-tagged, tracked, and its growth documented—bringing transparency and accountability to plantation initiatives across diverse and challenging terrains.

Beyond plantation, he has shaped SankalpTaru’s mission to go beyond trees, emphasizing rural livelihoods, sustainable agroforestry, water conservation, community engagement, and eco-restoration. Under his stewardship the organization has also ventured into ambitious ecosystem-level projects—for instance, a large mangrove restoration initiative in the Sundarbans in partnership with a major corporate foundation.

Over the years, Bhandari’s work has drawn recognition: notably the Mahindra Rise Sustainability Champion Award (2022) for Clean Air and a place among the “Top 20 NGOs” in the Indian CSR Awards (2022)—testament to his sustained contribution in environmental restoration and social upliftment.

In sum, Apurva Bhandari stands out as a social entrepreneur and environmental visionary—someone who turned a childhood love for forests into a nationwide platform that marries technology, community welfare, and ecological regeneration.