In June 2006, at the age of 22, Pavithra decided to start a new venture which would redefine the way philanthropy is perceived. She started Vindhya, a BPO organization in Bangalore with a mission of bringing “Business & Philanthropy” together for a successful cause.
Vindhya a socio-economic venture
started by her is the India’s first & only and arguably world’s first &
only for profit organization whose employee base majorly consists people with
disabilities (PWD’s) as its production staff. Its production staff comprises
mainly of physically challenged Hearing Impaired, socially disadvantaged women
& Border cases of Autistic, it also focuses on women from BPL families to
complement the rest of the workforce.
Starting as a first generation
entrepreneur she has been able to grow the company from 5 PWD’s to close to
1300 employees. Her vision is to employ 5000 PWD’s by 2020. Vindhya serves
customers who are one of the top 3 in their respective domains.
Lessons from life at Vindhya for
her is “Known is a drop and unknown is an ocean” what’s accomplished has no significance
compared to what’s discovered as the possibilities that can be done.
For me when i started the
entrepreneurial journey the knowledge was nil and expectation was zero. For
very long Vindhya did not even know that it will someday be recognized as a
Social Enterprise. This laid the foundation to the belief that whatever is
happening is positive and tomorrow is surely going to be better than today and
believe in a saying “Tomorrow is Mine”.
But, this was at a time when
there was very less to no confidence in the Ability of a Person with DisAbility”
and here was Vindhya trying to prove with not just one but with group of them.
Corporate world looked at Vindhya
both in admiration as well as puzzled with the workforce that it boasted of and reluctantly as well as
willingly to test the waters.
The biggest success for Vindhya
was that the corporate that started working with Vindhya and very soon realised
the potential of the hidden talent that was never bothered to be mined and
helped them to impose faith in them. The corporate not only increased their
work load to Vindhya but went ahead and relooked into their hiring policy and
made Inclusion as not just a Corporate Social Responsibility but actually
opening up the workplace to people who valued and needed the opportunity.
Our accomplishments come true by an array of actions that includes
·
Awareness campaigns throughout villages on how
PWD’s can lead a normal life.
·
Providing food & accommodation at a
subsidized rate.
·
Counseling them on how to win their dreams. Our employee counselling platform “Dhwani”
has won NHRD award for best HR practices for PWD’s.
·
Activating a stipend model from the day-1 till
the end of training giving them a sense of self-sufficiency.
·
Enabling visually impaired individuals through
technology interventions and providing them with Brailled manuals .
·
Sponsoring one child education of our employees
children.
·
Ensuring that they fulfill their dreams, helping
them sustain, gain self-respect and a career progression charter helping them
reach upto Managerial level & an eco-system that they love to be in.
And today they earn equal opportunity at workplace, great amount of
dignity in society for their capabilities, able to come out of their debts and
some of them own their dream homes!
The Vision is to build not only India’s Largest but also World’s
largest social enterprise in the ITES space which provides mainstream jobs for
Persons with Disabilities.
Amongst many, Some of the
recognitions received are:
·
Shell-Helen Keller Award By NCPEDP
·
TATA-TiE Stree Shakthi Award 2009”.
·
“Young Achiever Award 2010” from Brigade
Group & Rotary.
·
NDTV Profit business leadership Award-Social
Enterprise.
·
Special recognition by NASSCOM for Gender
Inclusivity successfully for 2 years in a row.
·
Recipient of Loreal- Femina Business Woman
of the Year Award for 2014.
·
Bangalorean of the Year 2013 by Namma
Bengaluru Foundation.
·
Karnataka State Award from the Disability
Dept. of Govt. of Karnataka
·
Best Employer Award for employing PWDs by
Government of Karnataka in the year 2011.
·
Suvarna Mahile Award 2014 from Suvarna
News24*7
·
DFID Samrudhi-Sankalp Recognition for Women
Empowerment Enterprise
·
Rotary BSE-SME National Award for Excellence
·
KSMBOA Award for most Inspirational Women
Entrepreneur of the year 2015
·
Women Achiever of the year 2015 by
Vidyaranya.
·
Rotarian HR Prathibha Award-Woman of
Distinctive Vocation
·
International Award for the “Best Employee
Engagement Award” from Global Sourcing Council ,New York.
·
Has also been selected as “one of the 25
leaders of tomorrow” by Times of India a leading National Daily in India.
She is a commerce graduate from Bangalore University
and was pursuing her Chartered Accountancy at the time of founding
Vindhya. She has done her Executive
General Management Program from IIM-Bangalore.
