SRFD bridges grassroots fieldwork with digital innovation — delivering evidence-based social research, M&E, digital solutions, and livelihood programs for governments, NGOs, and CSR bodies across Maharashtra and beyond.
Every service is field-tested across Maharashtra and backed by ICAI-grade documentation, digital tools, and measurable community outcomes.
End-to-end primary and secondary research across rural and urban communities — from survey design through final report. We capture the ground truth that policy requires.
We help government bodies, NGOs, and CSR wings design, monitor, and evaluate social programmes with rigour — turning field data into actionable intelligence.
Custom-built digital tools that put real-time field data at your fingertips — from mobile data collection to live dashboards and community management portals.
Structured capacity building that goes beyond training rooms — equipping field workers, community leaders, and youth with skills that translate into real employment and income.
Sustainable livelihood models designed from the ground up — connecting beneficiaries to schemes, markets, and opportunities through targeted facilitation and follow-through.
Translating raw research into publication-ready knowledge products that influence policy, inform academia, and give implementing agencies the evidence they need.
A window into our ground-level work — surveys, community workshops, skill camps, and programme activities across Maharashtra.
Social Research Foundation and Development (SRFD) is a registered sole proprietorship based in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar (Aurangabad), Maharashtra — rooted in the heartland of the Marathwada region and serving communities across India.
Our core strength lies in combining rigorous social science methodology with modern digital tools. Where most research organisations stop at data, we continue through to action — building systems, training communities, facilitating schemes, and publishing findings that genuinely move the needle on social outcomes.
We work with Central and State Government departments, UN agencies, international and domestic NGOs, academic institutions, and corporate CSR teams who need credible, field-verified social intelligence and implementation support.
SRFD is led by a multidisciplinary team combining entrepreneurial vision, medical community intelligence, and deep anthropological field expertise.
Balaji Chakrawar is the founding force behind SRFD — the vision, the drive, and the operational backbone of everything the organisation does. As Promoter, he identified the critical gap between raw grassroots data and actionable social policy, and built SRFD to bridge it.
His entrepreneurial instinct shapes SRFD's ability to move fast in the field — commissioning surveys, mobilising field teams, forging partnerships with government departments and NGOs, and translating community intelligence into programmes that work. He brings to the organisation an on-the-ground understanding of Marathwada's social landscape that no textbook can replicate.
Under his leadership, SRFD has grown from a local research initiative into a credible multi-district research and development organisation serving government, NGO, and CSR clients across Maharashtra.
Dr Mithilesh Varma holds a Bachelor of Ayurvedic Medicine and Surgery (BAMS) — a five-and-a-half year professional degree that combines classical Ayurvedic science with modern biomedical training including anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmacology, and clinical practice. He also holds a Master of Public Health (MPH), which strengthens his ability to translate clinical insight into practical public health research and programme design.
This dual grounding — in traditional Indian systems of medicine and in evidence-based clinical assessment — gives Dr Varma a uniquely integrative lens for community health work. He understands how rural and peri-urban populations in Maharashtra access, experience, and interpret healthcare, and how formal health schemes interact (or fail to interact) with existing traditional health practices.
At SRFD, Dr Varma leads health-sector research, ensuring that studies on nutrition, maternal health, ICDS, and primary healthcare are designed with clinical precision and interpreted with genuine field sensitivity. He brings the practitioner's perspective to survey instruments, FGD guides, and policy briefs — bridging the gap between data and lived health realities.
Dr P. Swarup holds a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Population Studies — one of the most rigorous qualitative social science disciplines, encompassing social structures, ethnography, kinship systems, and the study of human societies across time and context.
Anthropology as a discipline trains its practitioners to go beyond numbers: to embed in communities, understand belief systems, decode social hierarchies, and surface the unspoken factors that determine whether a programme succeeds or fails. Dr Swarup brings exactly this depth to SRFD's research portfolio.
His expertise shapes the organisation's qualitative methodology — FGD design, ethnographic observation, community mapping, and the interpretation of socio-cultural data that purely quantitative methods would miss. He ensures that SRFD's research is not just statistically valid but anthropologically honest — reflecting the actual complexity of the communities it serves. He also provides academic rigour to publications, policy briefs, and knowledge products, lending SRFD's work credibility with universities, think tanks, and government research bodies.
Dr Akash Wankhede is a population scientist with over 25 years of experience in social-demographic studies, survey design, and longitudinal research. He has led large-scale demographic surveys and contributed to policy-facing research that informs health and social programmes.
Whether you're a government department, NGO, CSR team, or academic institution — reach out directly to our Promoter to discuss how SRFD can support your research and community development goals.
