A proud early riser since she was 10, Sanchita Jalan never felt the need to set an alarm to wake up. Sparrows and parrots chirruping at the windowsill of her Juhu apartment is the sound that nudged her out of sleep. But that began to change three years ago, when the problem of the dwindling bird population in Mumbai hit home.

"It felt like there were no birds left in Juhu," recalls Jalan, 17, a 12th grader at Dhirubhai Ambani International School. Not one to be a mute spectator, she took it upon herself to bring the birds back to her windowsill. "What started with a single bird feeder in our balcony, eventually translated into 500 feeders in the JVPD area," she says, adding how with her aunt Nita Shah's help, she began selling bird feeders priced at '100 from door to door.