In May 2018, Harsha Atmakuri pulled the cord on a thriving medical career in pursuit of activism from his dingy one-room-kitchen home in Navi Mumbai's Kopar Khairane. But after working behind the scenes for a few months, the 29-year-old vegan realised it was time to take the cause to the next level. "I would talk to people on the streets, encouraging them to turn vegan; I also created educational videos and shared them on social media. But that was not enough," he says. So, in February 2019, Atmakuri launched the initiative, Vegans of India, on Facebook. And, within four months, the page today has close to 4,000 followers.

Atmakuri's journey to embracing veganism, after being a vegetarian for almost nine years, dates back to 2016. "I was a non-vegetarian and would eat fish, chicken and beef. But around 2009, I watched a video of a fast food joint preparing meat. The cruelty shown towards animals broke my heart, and I turned into a vegetarian overnight," recalls Atmakuri, an MBBS doctor.