THE BACKGROUND:

It was another regular weekday for me.  I checked my WhatsApp and saw a message from my colleague Nitin Naik from Goa Engineering College. His messages are usually interesting – he is a successful businessman who is a talented wildlife photographer, a cyclist, lives close to the beach and posts spectacular pics of food, animals and his travels. 

This message was different.  It was a press clipping from the Times of India written by a journalist named Diana Sahu, which talked about the amazing achievement of a Tribal girl in Odisha who had cracked the NEET, got a seat in a medical college, but was “financially” not in a position to afford the fees to become a doctor.

Pic: This is the news article I got on my WhatsApp

As I read through the story by the journalist Diana Sahu ( I did call Diana and thank her for the wonderful article as it really made an impact on me)  I was struck by the enormity of her achievement and realised that as a doctor she would become a beacon of hope for thousands of tribals as many youngsters will see her as a role mode and as someone who showed them that “anything is possible”. As a doctor, she would heal and touch the lives of thousands of people too. The college she has got admission into is located in South Odisha and caters to the massive tribal belts there.

I asked Nitin if he had any contact details, and in 3 minutes he sent me her contact details, which he got from a post on X. Long story short – decided I must help her and what better way than to crowdfund this.

Two of my colleagues and I then started the process of speaking to Kabita and putting together this story. 

Kindly read Kabita’s story, appreciate what she has already achieved and fund this campaign generously. It will help her in her journey to become a doctor and she will surely impact the lives of thousands.

Together, let's make her story a beacon of hope for an entire community.

KABITA HIKAKA’S STORY :

In Sahada, a small village in Odisha's Rayagada district ( located in South Odisha, it's known for its rich tribal heritage, scenic hills, and mineral wealth), Kabita Hikaka grew up watching her father leave home every morning for a wage that rarely crossed INR 300 a day. Her dad Laba Hikaka is an unskilled daily labourer. When I spoke to her she said he works from 8 am to 4 am as a coolie and earns INR 250- 300 a day; her mother Kamala runs the household on what little that wage stretches to and they have a bigha of land where they grow basic crops and vegetable. There was never a family tradition of aspiring to be highly educated, and certainly no one before her, in her Kondha tribal community, had ever cracked a NEET medical entrance exam.

Pic: Kabita grew up in a simple home and speaks Odia, Hindi and English.

Pic: Kabita and family grow basic crops and some vegetables in the bigha of land that they have.

Kabita decided early that she wanted to change that. She studied in her village before moving to Odisha Adarsha Vidyalaya (OAV) in Bhaleri ( a village in the Bissamcuttack Tehsil of Rayagada district), where she scored 90.8% in Class 10, a result strong enough to earn her a place at a residential coaching institute in Bhubaneswar (the capital city) for Class 11 and 12.

She finished Class 12 in 2024 with 77%, and then came the real test and the final frontier: the NEET exam.

Pic: Her Class 12 mark sheet.

Her first attempt did not go her way. Neither did her second. Many students would have stopped there. Kabita went home to Sahada and kept going, studying seven to eight hours a day (alongside her regular classes) and, when formal coaching became too expensive to sustain, turning to free NEET preparation content on social media instead.

Pic : Kabita put in a lot of hard work studying 7-8 hours a day after regular schooling.

Arranging a smartphone and a stable enough connection was itself a struggle for her father; the family also travelled to Bhubaneswar roughly once a month so she could get in-person guidance. On her third attempt, it finally happened. Kabita secured an ST-category rank of 137 and a state rank of 4187 in NEET-UG, becoming the first tribal girl from the Bissamcuttack assembly constituency to clear the exam and get a medical college seat.

But alas, reality hit them as they just did not know how to fund her Medical college expenses for the next 4.5 years .

Pic: The first tribal girl from Bissamcuttack constituency to clear the NEET exam!

She has been allotted an MBBS seat at the prestigious SLN (Saheed Laxman Nayak) Medical College & Hospital, Koraput, a government institution built specifically to serve the tribal population of southern Odisha.

INFO ABOUT THE COLLEGE KABITA HAS GOT INTO !

Pic: The SLN Medical College is a very prestigious govt college.

College Overview

• Type: Co-educational Government Medical Institution.
• Location: Janiguda, Koraput, Odisha - 764020
• Affiliation: Affiliated with the Odisha University of Health Sciences.

Academic Programs

• MBBS intake: 125 undergraduate seats for its 5.5-year program ( includes a 4.5-year degree + 1-year rotating internship).
• Postgraduate options: Offers MD/MS diploma and degree specialisations in selected fields.

Admission Process

• Entrance exam: Admissions are strictly based on merit ranks - NEET-UG and NEET-PG.
• Seat distribution:
  • 15% Seats: Allocated via the All India Quota (AIQ).
  • 85% Seats: Allocated via the Odisha State Quota.

Hospital Infrastructure

• Bed capacity: 650-bed teaching hospital, inaugurated recently to cater to patients across tribal and neighbouring districts.
• Clinical exposure: The high patient influx provides extensive, real-world clinical experience for students.

Pic: The allotment letter confirming her seat. Scan the QR code to get her rank and details.

Pic: The NEET mark-sheet. Scan the QR code to get her details.

ABOUT KABITA’S TRIBAL COMMUNITY - ”DESIA KONDH”:

Pic : Women from the Desia Kondh tribe

Kabita belongs to the Desia Kondh, one of the principal clans of the Kondh, one of India's largest tribal communities and among the most numerous tribal groups in Odisha. While their cousins, the Dongria Kondh of the Niyamgiri hills and the hill-dwelling Kutia Kondh, still live deep in forested, high-altitude terrain, the Desia Kondh are described in literature as "plain dwellers", a community that, generations ago, moved down from the hills to settle in the plains and valleys of the undivided Koraput–Rayagada region.

THE ESTIMATED EXPENSES:

 
The full 4.5-year MBBS course, including tuition, hostel, mess and books, is expected to cost close to INR 5 lakh. It’s a govt college and the fees are luckily subsidised. After 4.5 years she gets to be an intern and gets paid a stipend.

Ideally, we would like to raise INR 6-7 L, as with miscellaneous other costs, inflation etc she will need that much.

This is not just about paying one girl's college fees. KABITA HIKAKA is on track to become the first doctor her community has ever produced. Every rupee raised here doesn't just get her through medical school; it helps her become a doctor who understands her community's needs and issues and will help her provide a lifetime of medical care to thousands of patients.

IN THE NEWS:

Pic: The TOI online article

PIC : The ETV Bharat online article.

ABOUT ME:

My name is Ranganath Thota, and I am the founder of Fueladream, India's crowdfunding platform. This campaign began with a newspaper clipping. A friend of mine from Goa Engineering College, Nitin Naik, shared the Times of India story on Kabita with me, and it stopped me in my tracks. Here was a girl who had done everything asked of her: she studied without proper coaching, found her own resources when her family could not afford them, and cleared one of the country's toughest exams on her third attempt, from a community that has never sent anyone to medical college before.

Our ability to help her is not just about making her a doctor. It is about giving hope to thousands of brilliant, hard-working young students like her, in villages like Sahada, who are fighting the same odds right now. When Kabita succeeds, she becomes living proof to every one of them that the odds can be beaten.

And one day, as a doctor she will come back to treat the very community that raised her.

LOCATION MAP (Her village and the college):

Together let's make KABITA HIKAKA'S dream come true!