About SOS Global Indians

SOS Global Indians is run by Michael and Maneesha Khanna, who between them have spent their working lives building brands and audiences for some of the biggest names in media and consumer business — Michael at Star TV, Sony Entertainment and Thomas Cook; Maneesha in advertising with the IPG group and then on the client side at Nokia and PepsiCo, where she helped build a global media organisation spanning five markets and was named among the Top 100 WonderWomen in Marketing. They have also lived the journey this platform is written for — years in India, years in the United States, from Mumbai and Delhi to Dallas and New York, with all the paperwork, distance and quiet logistics that come with both.

That combination is why SOSGI exists in the shape it does. In March 2020, with his mother stranded in the US as borders closed, Michael started a WhatsApp group for families in the same position; when it grew too large for WhatsApp, it moved to Facebook — where 270 people joined in the first thirty minutes. Within weeks it was campaigning for repatriation flights under #ApnoKoGharLao, filing petitions and being quoted in national press. It became SOS Global Indians — close to 300,000 members, selected for Meta's Community Accelerator, and credited with reaching around two million people in its first year.

And no honest telling of this story stops at two names — or reduces them to builders. Michael has stood inside the community every day since that first week: moderating it to this day, chasing down answers members needed, and taking families' cases to the authorities who could act when it mattered. Around that work stood an army of volunteer moderators — unpaid, across time zones — who kept hundreds of thousands of members safe, civil and scam-free through years of round-the-clock crisis posts, verifying before rumours could spread and answering at the hours that mattered most.

And the members themselves were never an audience. They tracked repatriation flights for strangers, decoded ever-changing rules at midnight, delivered help across India, and sat with people they had never met so no one faced a crisis alone. The founders built the platform and stood behind it; the moderators kept it safe; the members made it matter — and this site carries all three of those inheritances.

Six years on, the instinct is unchanged and the method is professional: define the audience precisely, check the source, publish, and stand behind it. It is why every guide here carries its sources and an editorial standard rather than an opinion — and why the longer answers live in From The Drivers' Seat.