our history
OUR HISTORY
Wicked Minds solve Wicked Problems.
When complex problems began to outgrow simplistic solutions, we started asking a different question: not just what needs to change, but how change actually happens.
Socratus was born from this shift.
2020–2022
Seeing the Gap
When people work in silos, even the best efforts fall short. Across sectors - government, civil society, and markets - we saw energy, intent, and expertise. But we also saw fragmentation. This is where our core belief took shape: ecosystems need orchestration.
2022–2023
Building the Approach
We began bringing together people who don’t usually sit at the same table.Through early collaborations, we developed our working lens- connecting Resources, Knowledge, Networks, and Narratives (RKNN). This marked our shift from isolated interventions to ecosystem coordination.
2023–2024
Prototyping in Places
Our ideas came alive on the ground.
Odisha Sandbox
A place-based experiment across 3 landscapes - coastal, rural, and tribal - aligning diverse actors around shared challenges.
Climate Panchayat
Engaged across 147 constituencies, creating spaces where citizens, leaders, and institutions could collectively decide on climate action.
Climate Manifesto
Built through multi-stakeholder consultations, engaging political actors across parties to shape a shared climate narrative.
The strength of this approach is that it brings everyone into the same frame -community, government, and partners- to act together.
Partner Organisation (Odisha Sandbox)
2024–Present
Building capacity at scale
We expanded from experiments to enabling a problem-solving ecosystem.
Climate Champions (ECRICC)
A cohort of 120 young women trained as public problem solvers across 7 coastal landscapes.
Gram Swabhimaan (with Goonj)
Communities mobilised to take action - restoring local ecosystems, rebuilding assets, and strengthening collective ownership. Some of the work we have done includes a 15 km creek rejuvenated through collective effort and transforming underused community spaces to temple परिसर transformed with a shared green vatika.
Village Surveys & Citizen Engagement
Community-led data collection across villages - helping people understand and act on their own realities. Communities are generating and owning their own data. Clear, shared understanding of needs and resources are shifting the reality from earlier invisibility around local issues.
FPO Leadership Cohorts
Engaged ~60 CEOs and Board Members across 6 agro-climatic zones to strengthen rural ecosystem leadership.
Common Results Framework (with CEEW)
A state-level governance tool aligning action on energy transition, circular economy, and nature-based solutions.
Earlier, we waited for solutions. Now, we come together and act on them ourselves.
Community Member, Odisha
What we’re building toward
We are working toward a future where sustainable living becomes the default, not the exception. Where every Place has the capacity to understand its challenges, align its actors, and act collectively. Today, Socratus works across multiple landscapes - rural, coastal, and urban - alongside a growing network of partners. We design spaces, tools, and learning journeys that help ecosystems coordinate, citizens participate, and solutions emerge from within. Where we are going:
Join us in shaping a future where people don’t just adapt to change - they lead it, together.
This story is still being written.
Let’s build what comes next.