Our Team
Help Your Heroes did not begin with an idea. It began with a family.
— Sartaj, Founder, Help Your Heroes
Sartaj
Founder, Help Your Heroes
Biography
Sartaj's great-grandfather, Subedar Vir Singh, served in the First World War. Wounded by a mortar shell, he lived with a fragment embedded in his skull. Doctors gave him under twelve months. He lived another fifteen years.
His grandfather, Brigadier Apar Singh, Member of the Order of the British Empire (M.B.E.), Gallantry, served with the Corps of Signals in the British Indian Army and later the Indian Army, and fought in the Second World War. His maternal grandfather, Major M.S. Dhillon, served with the Indian Army Ordnance Corps under both the British Indian Army and Indian Army, and also fought in the Second World War.
His father, Air Commodore Manbir Singh, Vir Chakra, Vayu Sena Medal (Gallantry), served in the Indian Air Force through multiple conflicts, including the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971. In Sartaj's generation, cousins sharing the same paternal grandfather went on to serve in the Indian Army.
Service was the ordinary condition of family life, along with the injuries, interrupted careers and years that followed the uniform. As the son of an Air Force officer, Sartaj attended fourteen schools in twelve years, spending close to three years in Iraq during the eight-year Iran-Iraq War.
What Shaped The Mission
But the understanding behind Help Your Heroes came closer to home.
Sartaj's maternal grandfather lost a leg when a speeding car struck his motorcycle and spent the next forty-five years on crutches. Sartaj watched not the injury, but everything that followed it. [Placeholder: real remembered detail to follow] A man who had once commanded soldiers learning how to cross a room. Rehabilitation that came in stages, then less often, then stopped. Equipment that wore out, was replaced, and wore out again.
The difficulty was not one dramatic moment. It was spread across thousands of ordinary days, making it both invisible and exhausting.
Over time, one thing became clear: the injury is an event. Everything after it is a system. Where that system holds, life can continue largely intact. Where it thins out, people are left to build the scaffolding themselves, without always having the means, family or years to do it.
Why Help Your Heroes Exists
That understanding became more specific when Sartaj spent time inside a military hospital system during his father's four-month admission. The medical commitment was exceptional. What was missing was continuity: long-term prosthetic support, rehabilitation and structured follow-through after immediate treatment ended.
Help Your Heroes was established to close that gap. Not to replace what the armed forces provide, but to strengthen it.
Our Board of Advisors
Meet the distinguished individuals who guide our mission with their expertise and commitment.
Vineet Sehgal
Board Member
Vineet Sehgal is a senior business, marketing and strategy leader with extensive experience across technology, consumer, banking, consulting and FMCG sectors. He currently serves as Chief Marketing Officer at Quikr and has previously held leadership roles with Nokia India, HSBC Bank, Cadbury, Accenture and Nestlé. His background spans new business development, start-up operations, mobile businesses, commercial strategy, marketing and channel development. He is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta and the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. Vineet's association with the Indian Armed Forces comes through his father-in-law, a retired Brigadier from the Indian Army. This close family connection has given him first-hand appreciation of the discipline, sacrifice and service culture of India's defence community. His decision to associate with Hearts For Heroes Foundation is therefore rooted not only in professional commitment to social impact, but also in a personal understanding of the needs and dignity of armed forces personnel, veterans and their families.
Nikhil Chinapa
Board Member
Nikhil Chinapa is one of India's most recognised media, music and youth-culture personalities. A DJ, television host, festival curator and entrepreneur, he has been associated with MTV India since the late 1990s and is widely credited with helping popularise electronic dance music and DJ culture in India. He has hosted and appeared on several leading television shows, including MTV Roadies, Splitsvilla and India's Got Talent, and has played an influential role in building major music platforms including Submerge, Sunburn and Vh1 Supersonic. Nikhil is also the son of a retired Indian Army Para Commando Officer. This gives him a deep-rooted personal association with India's armed forces and a natural connection with the mission of Hearts For Heroes Foundation. Through his public profile, cultural influence and personal defence-family background, Nikhil brings visibility, credibility and strong emotional alignment to the Foundation's work supporting armed forces personnel, veterans and their families.