What the Institute is
The Institute of Goodness is a not-for-profit initiative founded by Ravi Sharma, with offices in New Delhi and Dehradun. Its purpose is to institutionalize goodness and redefine success: to make goodness something a society teaches, practises, measures, recognises and celebrates.
It works through three connected programmes: Personal Social Responsibility (PSR), the Goodness Curriculum from school to university; the Goodness Index™, a framework for measuring goodness in individuals, organisations and societies; and Seeds of Goodness (formerly Mission Chetna), which finds, connects and recognises people who quietly improve the lives of others. Its public tool, the Goodness Score™, lets anyone see how consistently they practise the five foundations of goodness.
Governance
- Founder and Chairman: Ravi Sharma.
- Board and advisory group: Arun Seth, Uday Chatterjee, Sunil Pahilajani, Vinay Nangia, Sanjay Nagi and Gauri Kumar.
- Academic and knowledge partners: IIIT Hyderabad, IIT Hyderabad, TISS Mumbai, IIM Nagpur and the Heartfulness Institute.
- Fixed scoring. Every Goodness Score™ comes from a published rubric applied the same way to everyone. AI may word a question to fit a person's life; it never decides a score.
Funding
Financial figures will be published in a later edition of this report. Two rules apply to all of the Institute's work: there is no advertising on any Institute property, and personal data is never sold.
Programme figures
| Figure | Value | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Lives touched through the work of partner organisations | 10 million+ | Reported by partner organisations, added together |
| Partner social organisations | 70+ | Across 11 Indian states |
| Academic and knowledge partners | 5 | Listed under Governance |
| Academic credit course on goodness | IIT Hyderabad, 2026 | One-credit elective LA2270; more than 140 students opted, as reported in October 2026 |
| Founder's columns in Business India | 9 | April to September 2026 |
| Goodness Score question bank | 70 questions | 14 for each of the five foundations |
Milestones
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| August 2023 | Ravi Sharma appointed to chair IIIT Una, reported by ELE Times |
| April–September 2026 | Nine columns in Business India on goodness, measurement, character and Viksit Bharat |
| October 2026 | IIT Hyderabad launches India's first academic credit course on goodness, proposed by the Institute and taught by Ravi Sharma |
| November 2026 | The Goodness Score™ moves to personal accounts stored in India, with a privacy declaration accepted before anything is saved |
The work ahead moves in four stages: Build, Validate, Demonstrate and Scale. Targets for each stage will be published here once they are confirmed.
What we cannot yet claim
- That the Goodness Index™ predicts behaviour over time. That needs long-term study, which has not yet been done.
- That scores mean exactly the same in every Indian language. Testing across languages is still to come.
- That the figures on the Goodness Report dashboard are real. The dashboard shows illustrative data and says so.
- That the Goodness Score question bank has been independently validated. It is under review by the Institute.
Data practice
The Goodness Score™ saves each person's results to their own account, on servers in Mumbai, India, and only after they accept the privacy declaration. Only they can see their answers, and they can download or delete everything at any time. To fit questions to someone's life, AI sees only their profession, area and age group, never their name, email or answers. The full statement is on the Privacy & data practice page.
