About AVI

Founded in 2016, the Association of Vapers India (AVI) is now in its second decade as India's leading consumer advocacy voice for tobacco harm reduction (THR) — founded by former smokers who quit through vaping, and working for the right of India's tobacco users to access lower-risk alternatives to combustible tobacco. Our focus has expanded to include smokeless nicotine products — nicotine pouches and snus — given that an estimated 200 million Indians use smokeless tobacco, roughly twice the number who smoke.

Over ten years, AVI has built a track record few consumer bodies anywhere in the Global South can match: it has organised and fought litigation across more Indian courts than any other THR advocacy group, built a citizen movement that has taken its case directly to government and the public, and helped carry India's experience — good and bad — onto the international stage, where restrictive, Western-designed tobacco-control models are too often exported to lower-income countries without regard for local reality. See ourlitigation andpress coverage for the documented record of this work, and our testimonials page for accounts from the Indians this work has been for all along.

AVI was founded by Samrat Chowdhery, who continues to direct the organisation. Samrat is the past president of the International Network of Nicotine Consumer Organisations (INNCO), which represents advocacy bodies across dozens of countries with UN observer status, and has represented Indian and Global South consumers at international forums including the Global Forum on Nicotine and the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control conferences — work that has repeatedly put Indian THR advocacy, rather than only Western experience, in front of global policymakers.

What we do

AVI's work over the past decade has centred on three activities: organising and fighting legal challenges to state and national bans on safer nicotine products, public correction of misinformation in media coverage of vaping and THR, and building an accessible evidence library on tobacco harm reduction for policymakers, journalists and the public. See our litigation andpress coverage for the record of this work.

How AVI is funded and governed

AVI itself is not a registered legal entity. Domestic contributions in support of AVI's advocacy work are received and accounted for throughHarm Reduction Policy & Research Pvt. Ltd. (HRPR), a private limited company registered with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, of which Samrat Chowdhery is director. This arrangement keeps contributions on the books of an audited, taxed entity rather than a personal account.

AVI does not accept funding from tobacco or nicotine product manufacturers. Overseas support for specific research or policy work is considered only as contracted, invoiced project work — seeContribute for what this means in practice.