TEJ KOHLI FOUNDATION

Under the guidance of Wendy and Tej Kohli since 2005, today the Tej Kohli Foundation has become a global hub for interdisciplinary innovation as part of a global mission to eliminate needless corneal blindness worldwide by 2035.  The Tej Kohli Foundation focuses on developing new and novel solutions to major global health challenges by funding and incubating the new technological and scientific innovations of the future, whilst simultaneously making direct interventions to improve individual li... ves today. The World Health Organisation says that 14 million of the 39 million people on the planet who are blind live in India.  12.7 million people worldwide are currently waiting for a cornea transplant, and 6 million of them are in India. In 2010 the Tej Kohli Foundation funded its first donor cornea implants at Niramaya Hospital.  Tej Kohli was present when a 50-year-old patient had his bandages and saw his wife and grown up children for the first time.  Wendy and Tej Kohli immediately decided that eliminating poverty-drive corneal blindness would be their calling.   After funding corneal transplants at Niramaya Hospital for many years, in 2015 the Tej Kohli Foundation substantially expanded its efforts to tackle the corneal blindness treatment gap in poor and underserved communities with the ambitious launch the Tej Kohli Cornea Institute.  Between January 2016 and November 2019 the Tej Kohli Cornea Institute welcomed more than 223,404 outpatients and completed more than 43,255 surgical procedures, mostly for free.  The high costs and complications of relying on surgical interventions and corneal transplants to eliminate poverty-driven corneal blindness mean that for many years Tej Kohli and the Tej Kohli Foundation been advocating for and supporting research toward a ‘universal treatment’ that is accessible, affordable and scalable into poor communities. The Tej Kohli Foundation’ has been pursuing this ‘universal treatment’ for corneal blindness through it’s ‘Applied Research’ program, a longstanding scientific collaboration between researchers in Montreal Canada, and Moorfields Eye Hospital, UK.  Early efforts of the Tej Kohli Foundation Applied Research program focused on synthesising synthetic cornea, first from yeast and then from peptides.  Then in January 2020 the ‘Applied Research’ program announced that it had moved one step closer in its mission to invest an affordable, accessible and scalable universal cure for corneal blindness through the regeneration of corneal tissue using an innovative proprietary technology. In 2019 Tej Kohli also made an initial donation of $2m to fund the Tej Kohli Cornea Program at Massachusetts Eye And Ear in Boston, a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, to accelerate innovative and collaborative research to achieve new breakthroughs in corneal disease.   Tej Kohli is a strong believer in the power of technology to improve human life, and in late 2019 he was proud to launch the Tej Kohli Foundation’s UK-based project: the ‘Future Bionics’ program.  The program funds the purchase and fitting of 3D-printed bionic ‘Hero Arms’ for young people with limb difference in the UK; and highlights how technology can substantially improve the lives and confidence of younger people living with disabilities.    The programme launched in late 2019 at the Open Bionics headquarters in Bristol, United Kingdom, where Wendy and Tej Kohli met with 14-year-old Open Bionics ambassador and motivational speaker Tilly Lockey alongside the first two recipients of the program.  TeJ Kohli instigated the Future Bionics program as it epitomises that the Tej Kohli Foundation is about: using technological innovations to improve individual lives and prospects.More