ACT For Environment welcomes Cultyvate to its portfolio

India is the world’s 2nd largest sugarcane producer, home to over 500+ sugar mills. But it’s a crop where outdated irrigation practices mean ~2.6% of farmland ends up using nearly a quarter of the nation’s irrigation water. With declining yields, many growers are finding farming unsustainable, leading to income losses, while the low yields are affecting sugar mill operations. Climate change is making matters worse: erratic rainfall patterns are intensifying water stress, threatening both crop productivity and farmer livelihoods. The technology to use water more efficiently already exists. But for most of India’s farmers, 86% of whom are smallholders, precision irrigation remains out of reach due to high costs and limited financing options.

Launched in 2016, Cultyvate is working to change that with low-cost, IoT- and AI/ML-based solutions that enable precise, need-based irrigation. They began with working on their smart irrigation solution for enabling alternate wetting and drying in paddy. Having scaled their solution to 58,000 acres in paddy, Cultyvate is now turning its focus to sugarcane. 

Designed specifically for smallholders, their affordable autonomous irrigation stack for sugarcane integrates soil moisture sensors, automated water controls, and stage-specific advisories based on real-time data. It automates drip irrigation and enables farmers to schedule and manage water use with minimal manual intervention. In partnership with sugar mills, they piloted the technology over 50 acres,  achieving 35% water savings and a 55% increase in crop yields. This year, the pilot is scaling to 700 acres, with a target of reaching 46,000 acres by 2030. At that scale, the potential water savings reach 68 billion litres, alongside farmer income gains of up to 50%. 

Cultyvate plans to deepen its partnerships with sugar mills, both to expand its reach to more farmers and to establish models where farmers aren’t burdened with upfront costs. However, to drive adoption among smallholders at scale, further cost optimisation will be key.

ACT for Environment is supporting Cultyvate in bringing about this cost reduction by optimising both their hardware and software to make the system more robust, accurate, and scalable, while targeting a ~18% reduction in price for the farmers. The upgraded advisory will also integrate new crop and climate parameters to improve precision even further.

By reducing water use while increasing yields, Cultyvate’s solution not only boosts farmer incomes but also strengthens mill operations, creating a win–win for both. We’re excited to back their mission to build a more water-secure Bharat while transforming the livelihoods of farmers.

ACT For Health welcomes Atman to the portfolio through our first Education x Health grant

At ACT, we believe that technology, when paired with contextual innovation and government collaboration, can unlock large-scale impact especially in overlooked areas like adolescent mental health. 

In India, over 197 million people live with mental health disorders, with 50% of all conditions emerging by age 14 and 75% by age 24. Yet, preventive mental health care remains largely absent from the school system. Embedding early intervention at scale presents a powerful opportunity to drive systemic impact and improve long-term outcomes across generations.

Atman is one such organisation driving systemic change in school-based mental health. It focuses on students in grades 9 to 12 in government schools, delivering culturally contextualised support through a hybrid model that engages students, teachers and the broader education ecosystem.

The approach combines interactive smart class content that enables structured, age-appropriate discussions in classrooms, a gamified app that offers short-form media and quizzes to build self-awareness, and access to virtual counsellors for students who need deeper emotional support.

Atman is currently operational in over 400 government schools and has reached more than 3.5 lakh students, with content available in Hindi, English, Telugu and Kannada. Early indicators are very promising: 62% of students report improved emotional well-being and 20% of teachers have observed greater openness among students to discuss their mental health.

Backed by a strong, mission-driven founding team and early results from its work in government schools, Atman is now gearing up to scale its operations and impact. This next phase is not just about reaching more students, it is about proving that mental health care, when timely, relevant and rooted in local context, can be delivered effectively within India’s public systems. ACT will support Atman in this scale-up that will reach 3 million students across 11,000 schools in Haryana and Chhattisgarh. Beyond catalytic funding, ACT will collaborate closely with the Atman team on product development and implementation strategy to help realize this bold, systems-level vision.

By placing mental well-being at the heart of school systems, Atman is helping build a generation of resilient, self-aware young people, and we are proud to be part of this journey. 

ACT For Health doubles down on Wysa to unlock scalable mental health support for 20K adolescent girls in Maharashtra

Mental health remains one of the most invisible and underserved challenges in India, especially for adolescent girls. In a country where stigma is widespread and fewer than 1 trained mental health professional is available per 100,000 people, early intervention is often a distant reality. The barriers are not only socio-cultural but also structural, with limited access to care, predominantly English-language tools and a lack of scalable solutions.

In 2022, ACT For Health partnered with Wysa to explore whether technology could help bridge this critical gap. Our capital catalyzed Wysa, a globally recognized AI-based mental health chatbot, to adapt to Hindi and piloted across underserved communities including adolescent girls, women and blue-collar workers. The goal was to test through pilots whether tech-first solutions could offer meaningful emotional support to those excluded from traditional systems of care.

The results were compelling. Through strategic partnerships, Wysa’s Hindi application reached over 6,000 users across Bharat, many of whom were accessing mental health support for the first time. The users reported improved emotional well-being and high satisfaction, with a strong percentage returning to use the tool multiple times. The team learned that framing the offering around ‘resilience’ and ‘life skills’ worked better than a clinical lens, leading to a rebrand as Vyasa – Mann ka coach jo badle soch, a refreshed app experience and support for Indian languages beyond Hindi (e.g. Marathi). The pilot also unlocked a promising B2G pathway and validated a hybrid model, combining in-person onboarding with digital engagement, as key to driving adoption.

With promising proof points and a strong, mission-driven founding team committed to building for Bharat, ACT is backing Wysa’s next phase of growth: a scaled pilot reaching 20,000 adolescent girls across Maharashtra through partnerships with the state government and community-based organizations. This phase is not just about scaling usage but about demonstrating that timely, relevant and culturally rooted mental health care can be effectively delivered within public systems. In addition to funding, ACT will support Wysa on product development, implementation strategy and strengthening the ecosystem needed to build trust among users and public health stakeholders. 

This partnership aims to change how mental health support is perceived and delivered across India. By combining the power of localized technology with institutional partnerships, Wysa and ACT are working to ensure that every adolescent girl in Bharat has access to the care she needs when she needs it and in a way that feels safe and accessible. Together, we are taking steps toward a future where mental health is no longer a privilege, but a right for all!

ACT For Health backs eGov to scale CARE’s open-source digital infrastructure and power resilient public healthcare

Recognised by the UN as the world’s 50th Digital Public Good, CARE is an open-source digital platform developed by the Open Health Care Network and backed by ACT For Health since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Designed to help India manage the unprecedented strain on its public health infrastructure, CARE enabled the National Health Mission to coordinate care for over 355,000 patients, including 130,000 ambulance shifts and 200,000 telemedicine calls between March 2020 and May 2022. During the Delta wave, CARE powered the launch of 10BedICU, a smart ICU solution that made it possible to remotely leverage the expertise of critical care specialists nationwide and optimize ICU operations especially in remote geographies. Since then, 10BedICU has served over 100,000 patients across 10+ states.

CARE’s impact has reinforced our belief that open-source digital infrastructure can serve as a powerful foundation for India’s public health systems, but building the technology is only part of the equation. Achieving meaningful, sustainable impact in public health requires an equal focus on implementing such technologies, building the capacity to use them, and integrating them into existing systems to unlock scale. 

To scale across states and benefit more patients, we’re supporting eGov Foundation in scaling CARE’S Hospital Management Information System (HMIS) across 4 states – Karnataka, Assam, Manipur, and Jharkhand – as part of a five-year initiative to drive national adoption. 

Since its inception in 2003, eGov has proven its ability to scale digital infrastructure in close partnership with governments. Its successful implementation of the 10BedICU program has highlighted the effectiveness of CARE’s open-source architecture and  catalyzed interest in extending CARE beyond critical care in public healthcare, towards a comprehensive Health Management Information System (HMIS). Accelerated through a pilot supported by ACT, implemented by eGov and backed by participating state governments, the goal is to build a replicable, scalable model for HMIS deployment and lay the foundation for a responsive, data-driven and inclusive public healthcare system. 

Five years after COVID-19 first tested our public health infrastructure, this grant reflects both how far we have come and our renewed commitment to catalyzing the adoption of digital public goods that can act as the building blocks of India’s digital health stack!

ACT For Health backs Huwel to enable affordable last-mile TB diagnostics in India

India carries 28% of the world’s TB burden and yet, millions with symptoms go undiagnosed and untreated. While testing is free in the public health system and treatment adherence is strong (~89%), early detection remains the weakest link – fueling ongoing transmission, worsening outcomes, and stalling progress. Initiatives like the 100-day campaign and active case finding show intent, but diagnosis still lags, especially in low-resource, peripheral areas. Existing screening tools such as microscopy are often unreliable, inaccessible, or unfit for scale, and frontline workers are overstretched. With the government bearing testing costs, the need for smarter, cost-effective screening solutions has never been more urgent.

This has sparked demand for low-cost, open, and interoperable systems that can leverage the diagnostic infrastructure developed during COVID, to decentralize screening and point of care testing solutions that can fuel last mile, decentralized testing in low resource settings, without driving up costs.

Founded by Dr. Rachana Tripathi and Dr. Shesheer Kumar, seasoned molecular biologists with deep expertise in affordable RT-PCR and POC diagnostics, Huwel is a next-gen molecular diagnostics company deploying a dual-platform strategy to make TB detection faster, easier, and accessible at the last mile. With over two decades of combined experience and a track record of building indigenous diagnostic solutions, the founders are spearheading efforts to bridge the gap between lab-grade accuracy and field-ready accessibility. Huwel’s approach aims to strengthen early case detection, reduce diagnostic delays, and support India’s goal of TB elimination by 2025.

QuantiPlus is Huwel’s ICMR-validated, extraction-free molecular test that runs on any RT-PCR device and delivers rapid, sample-agnostic results. UniAmp is the portable, fully integrated device built for point-of-care use that detects TB from any sample without lab dependency. Together, the two allow TB to be tested for and identified within an hour. Both the solutions have been validated by ICMR and recommended for national use by the Central TB Division. With a proven track record in infectious disease diagnostics like HCV and COVID-19, Huwel brings deep molecular biology expertise and products designed to scale across both public health programs and decentralized field settings. 

ACT’s grant to Huwel will support a pilot across four high-burden states – Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Mizoram, and Uttarakhand – to evaluate the feasibility of decentralized TB screening in real-world public health settings. This effort brings together Huwel’s diagnostic innovation with CHRI’s field implementation expertise and strong government partnerships. The grant will enable comprehensive training and handholding for ASHAs, PHC staff, and other frontline workers to integrate the solution into daily workflows. CHRI will lead field operations, ensure quality delivery, track outcomes, and liaise with state and district health systems. With per-test costs up to 80–90% lower than existing solutions, this pilot has the potential to dramatically improve affordability for low-income states, expand TB screening reach, and build the case for integrating decentralized tools into the National TB Elimination Programme.

ACT For Health is proud to back Huwel’s high-impact innovation and support this collaboration with CHRI and the pilot states – combining scientific innovation with implementation excellence to strengthen India’s TB response where it’s needed most!

 

ACT For Health welcomes KHPT: A game-changing innovation for TB awareness and prevention

For more than 2.6 million people across India, a persistent cough or fever is more than just a passing ailment—it’s a looming threat, a warning sign of a disease that claims thousands of lives each year. Tuberculosis (TB) remains one of India’s most pressing public health challenges, disproportionately affecting the country’s most vulnerable populations.

The government’s National Tuberculosis Elimination Programme (NTEP) has made notable progress, but critical gaps remain. Millions still go undiagnosed or do not complete treatment due to social stigma, lack of awareness, and weak frontline support. Frontline workers, responsible for over 22 diseases, are stretched thin, making it difficult to provide personalized care to TB patients

To address this, Karnataka Health Promotion Trust (KHPT), a leader in public health interventions, has developed Sangaati—a voice-based digital companion designed to enhance TB awareness and treatment adherence. By utilizing vernacular voice technology, Sangaati overcomes language and literacy barriers, ensuring critical TB-related information is accessible to the most vulnerable populations. With a validated knowledge base of over 3,000 questions from NTEP, Sangaati equips frontline workers, caregivers, and persons with TB (PwTB) with critical information to improve health outcomes. 

KHPT has piloted Sangaati in 17 districts, gathering user feedback and refine this voice-based digital companion. With a phased approach, gradually expanding to high-burden states, the goal is national integration, ensuring that the tool becomes a key component of India’s TB response strategy.  The app’s usability, impact on treatment adherence, and user engagement are being measured through longitudinal health outcomes such as improvement in adherence rate, TB literacy improvement, and user satisfaction resulting from reduced stigma and ultimately overcoming information asymmetry.

Founded in 2003, KHPT has tackled public health challenges among marginalised populations across India in areas like HIV/AIDS, TB, MNCH, Adolescent Health and Primary Health care with a focus on social determinants of health. Over two decades, it has expanded to 20 states, impacting over 15 million people through evidence-based and community-centric programs. Now, with Sangaati, KHPT is making its first foray into digital transformation, harnessing technology to accelerate and deepen the impact of its public health expertise, strong government collaborations, and a commitment to empowering and reaching the unreached communities. 

ACT For Health is now supporting KHPT to scale Sangaati by driving widespread adoption in Karnataka – which shoulders 3-4% of the national TB burden (80k-100k) -, generating robust evidence from its deployment, and rigorously testing its scalability for expansion into new languages and states. This partnership also marks a pivotal shift in KHPT’s journey—one that could open new pathways for integrating tech-driven public health solutions across its broader portfolio.

At ACT For Health, we are excited to support KHPT’s mission to empower patients, caregivers, and health workers to enhance TB prevention and treatment for India’s most underserved communities through a tech-enabled approach!

 

V-All: Making volunteering a habit through gamification

Introducing our next grant as a part of a recent pilot experiment that aims to bridge the funding gap on building bold ideas into scalable solutions!   

Founded by Bindi Dharia, V-All is reimagining volunteering as a lifelong journey through its civic action platform. India faces a $21 billion funding gap to achieve its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), yet only 1% of Indians actively engage in giving in any form – time, skills or money. On the other hand, nonprofits across the country face persistent challenges in attracting skilled volunteers who can provide time and expertise to advance their missions.

By building meaningful connections between individuals and social causes, V-All is helping create a culture of giving in India by making it engaging and aspirational. With early traction from partnerships with schools, colleges, and community organizations, V-All is well-positioned to transform India’s volunteering landscape.

V-All’s gamified platform makes volunteering accessible and rewarding. Volunteers can discover opportunities that match their skills, interests, and availability. Personalized quests allow users to track their impact, build a giving portfolio, and develop a lifelong habit of civic engagement. Simultaneously, nonprofits gain access to skilled volunteers, helping them deliver programs more effectively.

With ACT’s pre-MVP grant, V-All will:

  • Develop key platform features, including gamified user journeys
  • Build AI-powered matching to connect volunteers with nonprofits
  • Create a marketplace for rewards and recognition to encourage sustained engagement

In addition to funding, ACT will provide technical advisory and strategic mentorship on business model development and fundraising to support V-All in scaling their MVP effectively.

By connecting socially conscious individuals with nonprofits in need of critical skills, V-All aims to democratize philanthropy and engage over 2 million volunteers by 2027. We’re excited to support V-All as they work to build a more engaged, empowered, and socially conscious India.

Sakshm AI: Empowering college students with AI-powered skilling

At ACT, we believe technology can unlock scalable solutions to some of the world’s most pressing social and environmental challenges. Over the past three years, we’ve seen firsthand how tech-driven innovations can create lasting impact when paired with sustainable business models.

However, one critical gap is the lack of early-stage capital for tech-first innovators to build their idea into reality, and the absence of funding at the build stage often creates a talent gap during the early stages. As a part of a recent pilot experiment, ACT decided to help plug this gap and is partnering with aspiring social entrepreneurs to turn bold ideas into scalable solutions. 

Sakshm AI is one such organisation that’s addressing the need for market-ready skilling for India’s graduates. India produces over 1 million engineering graduates each year, yet nearly 44% remain unemployable due to gaps in both technical and soft skills. This challenge is particularly pronounced in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, where students often lack access to high-quality skilling resources and placement support.

Founded in 2024 by Apurv Mehra, Sanchit Sharma, and Kashish Mittal — all former researchers at Microsoft Research — Sakshm AI is building Disha AI, an AI-powered Socratic tutor that tailors personalized learning journeys to specific tech job roles. By mapping industry requirements and fine-tuning AI models with expert insights, Sakshm AI ensures students are equipped with relevant soft skills and hard skills, practical exposure, and accurate knowledge to thrive in the workforce.

With their deep technical expertise and understanding of Bharat’s emerging workforce, the Sakshm AI team is uniquely positioned to address this pressing need. By offering skilling solutions at the ‘price of a chai,’ they are committed to democratizing access to career-building resources for students across India.

We’re excited to welcome Sakshm AI into the ACT For Education portfolio and aim for our pre-MVP grant to help them: 

  • Build and refine their AI-driven assessments
  • Enhance their AI models to improve learning outcomes
  • Pilot their product with government and non-government partners

In addition to funding, ACT will provide technical advisory and strategic mentorship on business model development and fundraising to help Sakshm AI scale effectively.

With the ambitious goal of making 1 million students employable in the coming years by equipping graduates with job-ready skills, Sakshm AI aims to significantly improve placement outcomes and expand career opportunities for students across Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. We’re excited to support Sakshm AI on this journey and look forward to seeing their impact unfold as they empower the next generation of India’s workforce.

 

Inviting aspiring tech-first social entrepreneurs to build for Bharat with ACT!

At ACT, we believe that technology has a role to play in solving some of the most complex social and environmental challenges we face today. Over the last three years, we’ve had the privilege of interacting with 1500+ social entrepreneurs and supporting 50+ organizations through a combination of grant capital and access to network connections and collaborative platforms. We’ve helped founders identify growth pathways, unearthing business models that serve as proof points that technology can enable high quality, sustainable social impact at scale.

At the same time, we know we need many more passionate and talented founders to solve these systemic, complex problem statements. But building tech-first and impact-first is tough. One critical gap is the lack of early-stage capital for innovators to build and test contextual solutions, and the absence of build funding means founders also struggle to attract high quality tech talent during the early stages.

Hence, we’re piloting a different approach to our business as usual – we are looking to partner with aspiring social entrepreneurs to translate innovative ideas into scalable solutions. 

  1. You must be a full-time founder with a legally incorporated entity in India.
  2. You must be impact first and aim to create measurable impact across one of the below areas:
    1. Focus on Bharat as target audience: Solutions targeting underserved communities (households with monthly incomes below INR 25,000) to boost education, livelihood, health or gender outcomes.
    2. Focus on decarbonisation and/or water security: Solutions aimed at enabling India’s progress across both these goals by addressing the issue at source for outsized environmental impact.
    3. Focus on enabling the social impact ecosystem: Technology-driven initiatives that enable and build the capacity of social enterprises, NGOs, and other impact-first organizations, thereby strengthening the broader ecosystem for social change.
  3. You should have a clear problem statement based on user research and a tech-first approach as a solution to the problem statement.
  4. You should have a clear roadmap to develop software technology (standalone or integrated within a hardware product). We are not looking for deployment ready solutions here.

If this is you, please reach out to us with some details by filling out this form, and if there is alignment, ACT will provide support in the form of: 

  1. Capital for technology build: Up to INR 30 lakh grant support over a 6-month period
  2. Tech guidance: Dedicated tech advisory aligned to your journey towards building a minimum viable prototype (MVP)
  3. Fundraising and business model refinement: Targeted mentor connections on fundraising and business model strategy 

UnHerd with Shreyasi Singh: Empowering women to lead and succeed

Hosted by ACT, UnHerd brings you the unheard stories of individuals who are challenging conventional principles to disrupt the social impact landscape. From social entrepreneurs to venture philanthropists, dive into real-world conversations on what they’ve experienced and learned about changing the status quo.

Our latest episode of UnHerd features Shreyasi Singh (Founder, Harappa – now acquired by UpGrad), in conversation with Anupama Kashyap (Manager, ACT For Women). Shreyasi shares her journey from journalism to entrepreneurship, building Harappa into a leading online learning platform and her mission to empower more women leaders in India’s startup ecosystem and beyond.

Tune in on Spotify or watch the episode on YouTube to learn how Shreyasi is driving meaningful change in workplaces and breaking barriers for women in leadership.

Anupama: Hello folks, and welcome to the next episode of UnHerd – a podcast hosted by ACT. We bring to you the stories of extraordinary individuals disrupting India’s social impact & startup landscape by challenging conventional principles.

This episode is about a topic that is very close to our hearts at ACT; more women leaders within and beyond India’s startups. Highly resonant with my own professional goals, which is why I’m very excited to be joined today by someone who I’ve looked up to, and who truly embodies the spirit of breaking barriers. From journalism to entrepreneurship, an author and a passionate advocate for women in the workplace, our guest has led with purpose. She’s built a leading online learning platform – Harappa – which has redefined how Indian professionals hone their skills for success and growth in workplaces.

Welcome to UnHerd, Shreyasi!

Shreyasi: Thank you so much, Anupama. And thank you to the ACT team, who of course I love, for having me on UnHerd.

Anupama: Shreyasi, to give our audience a quick (insight) into you and your journey – we know that it has spanned from journalism to founding one of India’s most innovative learning platforms. And I think we all have these pivotal moments in our career that prompt that switch. I’m really curious to know about your story. Tell us more about that.

The spark that lit the fire: Of career pivots and crucible moments 

Shreyasi: Yes, I think my career really confuses people. I think we all have, in our lives and our careers, these crucible moments that set the direction of our next 10 years, next 15 years. And for me, that was the last stint that I had in journalism. 

Inc is an iconic American magazine on entrepreneurship and I was the editor of the India edition for four years. This was 2011 to 2015 and this is really when the startup boom was beginning to happen in India. It almost felt like doing a PhD in entrepreneurship because every month you’re bringing out 90 pages of a magazine. So from co-founder dynamics to how do you create a brand to what’s a great incentive structure for employees, how do you do performance management. Towards the end, you meet amazing entrepreneurs and founders who have this special conviction, right? Like there is this special ring in their voice, they bring this special energy to what they do and how they talk about their work. And more and more, I think I was feeling like, maybe I could do this too. I actually find great similarities between the skills that I learned as a journalist, and especially how well those skills were deployed. As a journalist, you’re very good at asking a set of structured, smart questions. 

As a founder, you also need to do that. You don’t know everything about everything, even in the company that you’re building. But I think there’s a very efficient way of (asking) a set of questions that gets you to that answer. Second, I feel like journalists come with a great deadline orientation. The magazine doesn’t wait for you to print it. It has to come out on the same day. But third and most importantly, and I didn’t know this six, seven years back when I started Harappa, there is an urge to create, you know? You start with a conversation and an empty word draft, and something emerges out of it. So I think these three skills really, I think, transferred very well and really helped me. But most importantly, it was the inspiration that I got from covering entrepreneurs and just entrepreneurship in general that let me think that I should aspire to do this and maybe I could do it too.

I actually had two pit stops between being the editor of Inc and finally being the founder of Harappa. And those pit stops were, I spent a year writing a book, which was a business non-fiction called The Wealth Wallahs. It was on the happy eventuality of entrepreneurial success for which I interviewed over a hundred people and spent a year, year and a half working on that book. And then after, working as a part of the founding team on an 18 month women’s only MBA program. And that was my first introduction to higher education and especially alternative higher education – how different models and formats (work), especially in a country like India where there has to be almost an insatiable appetite and need and demand for learning. I think that is when it first got kindled. So I think if these two (pitstops) hadn’t happened, maybe Harappa also wouldn’t happen. I also do want to give a lot of credit to my co-founder at Harappa, who’s a pioneering educationist of his own, Pramath (Raj Sinha). And I think he said that we should really work together.

And that’s really how Harappa happened. Harappa was incorporated in March 2018, which is just six and a half years back. But Harappa has just been on this ridiculous accelerated condensed kind of cycle that I think none of us imagined. Most startups don’t work, right? So you don’t take these questions so seriously. Because you’re almost like, let me try this for six months a year. We’ll see how it goes. We raised two rounds of funding from James Murdoch’s family office. And then of course in July 2022, we were acquired by UpGrad. And as of six to eight weeks back, I’ve also exited UpGrad and Harappa has fully merged into UpGrad. 

So I think it has been the most intense six years of living the entire life cycle of a business – from conceptualizing an idea, raising funds for it, building products, going through an acquisition and then finally merging that company.

First principle lens: Lessons as a first-time founder

Anupama: Sounds like such an invigorating journey over the last six years. Kudos to you for building something so amazing! I think for ACT also, we’ve come across Harappa mostly from the sense of working with women in the startup ecosystem and how we can set them up for success? Shreyasi, I know Harappa in the last six years has done a lot of intentional work with women – in supporting them and also building workplaces that work for them, right? I’d love to understand from you, how did that come to be? What was your vision, to be able to enable something like that?

Shreyasi: So very quickly, Harappa is essentially, as we used to describe it, a learning institution. And first we used to say an online learning institution, but then of course we also did blended programs. So we used to just say a learning institution that focused on cognitive, social, and behavioral skills for working professionals, right? Because the belief is that you could be a computer scientist, a public policy person, an HR manager and the fact is that these cognitive, social, and behavioral skills are critical in each of these roles, right? They transcend industry, they transcend companies, they transcend specializations.

So there was a school for managers and we had a series of programs for managers, first time managers, high impact managers, high performing managers. It had a school for CXOs where we would do a lot of programs for CXOs. But over the last three, four years across 100 plus companies and enterprises, we’ve probably trained the most number of women professionals.

I feel like this conversation has reached a crescendo sometimes. I feel like people think that we’ve talked about it so much and we’re so talked out that it seems like things would have actually changed on the ground. But in most companies, I would say, things actually change very, very slowly. Some of us might be bored of this conversation but many of us, I know, need to keep talking and need to keep speaking and need to keep doing. And I think that as a woman leader, that conviction was very personal. The cause or the calling is to leave the world of work for women better than I found it. Whether it’s Harappa or whatever, it’s going to be a thread across everything that I do in life. And one of the things that I always say is that when given a chance, make the change.  

So, I take that very seriously, that I was given a chance for whatever little change that I could make at that moment. And actually through the delivery of those programs and through us meeting women professionals from across IT, finance, manufacturing across the country, my conviction that this is necessary and needed actually kept deepening. Because honestly Anupama, the sad fact is that things are even worse. The situation is still very dire.

Traversing tough roads: Women’s careers as the greatest obstacle course in history

Anupama: I couldn’t agree more. I think having worked in this space for a while as well, the challenges, I mean, we can have a whole other podcast on what they are. What would you say are some key barriers that are holding women back?

Shreyasi: I’ll speak about both threads, my personal observations and personal experiences but also some of the things that we saw, not only through observation of our learners but we started to do a lot of research around this at Harappa.

Only 7% of the women that we polled said that they felt any kind of equitable proportion of seeing women in their management teams or super senior positions. Just 7%. I call women’s careers the greatest obstacle course in history. Because one of the things that we found is there are three almost super clear stages and cusps where fall off starts to happen. The first cliff happens at what I call the broken rung, which is the 28 to 32 year old (segment) – there’s almost a 37% drop. Then it happens just before the glass ceiling. And then over the last three or four years, another phenomenon that’s been seen is what they call the glass cliff, that even for women who make it to the top, [they] are actually leaving the workforce or are being almost ejected slash evicted from their roles or are set up for roles in which success was impossible, at twice the rates at which super senior male professionals are. So, almost at no point, can you take your continued success for granted, right? And this is happening when actually from an education, graduation outcomes perspective over the last seven to eight years, India has done so well – some streams graduate more women than men and most of those women graduate with better CGPAs. So while of course, education is a big leveler, certainly for women in India, educational outcomes have absolutely not correlated to income outcomes or career outcomes. You know, there is certainly something that we are missing there. In fact, workforce participation, especially in high value work in urban settings, has actually gone down after COVID in many aspects. 

I think the most upset and angry that I’ve been was with this data point. We actually found that the greatest pay gap between male professionals and women professionals was at the CXO and CXO minus one level. I think it was Rs. 74 to Rs. 100. I was like, my god, how much more do you need to prove yourself? This can’t be about merit and skill because you are a CXO or a CXO minus one. But at the time when you felt like, my gosh, I have made it, I am a part of the senior most whatever but actually you’re possibly confronted with the greatest pay gap. 

In fact, another thing that we found in the What Women Feel report, and this is my personal experience as well, especially over the last two years and my naive imagination or my naive assumption was that the more senior you get, you’re insulated from the petty biases and microaggressions. We’ve actually not found that. Tenure isn’t a sunblock against bias.

I personally experienced that as well. I think in a way it is sometimes a woman with power and influence who pisses off the world much more than somebody who doesn’t yet have that influence. In fact, we saw that early managers, first-time managers who were women faced the most biases because maybe their newfound status and power made others around them very uncomfortable.

Anupama: I think the greatest obstacle course in history is such an apt way of describing the problem statement we’re speaking about. And I can so well resonate with this. I did my engineering. I couldn’t see a career there mostly because of the dearth of women I saw in roles of leadership or influence. And I know it’s just one part of the huge pile of challenges women have to face. But Shreyasi, a lot of times when we speak about this with people, it becomes a very ‘inclusion and fairness’ conversation. But I know it’s so much beyond it. Research after research shows that gender diverse teams actually have a great impact on business outcomes in terms of employee culture, NPS, and investors having more faith in organizations, right? But what has your viewpoint been on this, being a founder yourself, but also being an advocate for having more women in the workplace? Why do you think gender diversity is important in workplaces for organizations?  

Shreyasi: You know, both with gender as well as in gender, if we talk about women. And I think race. To me, those are the two fault lines where it’s immediately apparent who you are. The minute you walk into a room, or the minute you speak on the phone, right, or even your email ID, people know that you’re a woman.

So I think it’s so immediate, it’s so tangible. It’s also half the world, right? In many populations, it’s 51-52% of the world. What are you going to be able to achieve with half the world locked out, it’s not 5%, 6%, 8%, right? It’s half the world. How does the world progress with half the world’s talent unvalued, half the world’s talent unlocked, half the world’s talent being unfair, half the world’s talent not being given opportunities for their potential. It’s an almost unfair or unreasonable expectation to imagine that with half the world not happily, fruitfully engaged in work that has value or is valued, where they are actually engaged.  

Think about having a world where that larger number is disenfranchised in such critical ways. And that’s why it’s important. It’s not a ‘nice to have’ (conversation). I think the orientation has to be to create that, especially when it comes to women and women’s agency.

Anupama:  Even at ACT, our whole thesis also focuses on the fact that having more women in roles of leadership or roles of influence, as we like to call it, shows so much more impact in terms of organizations, policies, culture, programs that are rolled out and has an impact throughout the pipeline. In your own experience, you’re a women founder and you’ve seen women in roles of leadership. How does it change? 

Shreyasi: So immediate downstream impact, it’s very tough to establish that right? And which is why people will disbelieve it, because it’s such a longitudinal impact. It takes, like I said, decades for businesses to really say, what this will become. But I’ll tell you the immediate and clear impact I think it has.

Even when you are running the business, right? I’d like to think that the fact that I was there and doing all of these uber cool startup things like raising funding and getting acquired – I do feel like it certainly added a set of confidence to many of my women colleagues. In fact, probably the best compliment that I feel like I’ve ever got as a CEO was this young – I think she’s a computer science engineer and she used to work in our product team – very smart young woman who had seven, eight years of work experience and then she was with us for two, two and a half years. And she was wearing this stunning sari and bright red lipstick. And she said, you know, this is the first time as somebody part of the product or engineering team that I can be dressed like this, yet go to a SCRUM meeting and give directions to engineers. She said, never before in my career as part of product and engineering teams would I have dared to be so feminine, yet be doing probably some of the best quality work that I’m doing in my career. I got goosebumps.

I think we were 50% or more women. But not only that, twice a year, I would write an email to the team to say that these are the six bands that we have. This is the percentage gap or not between women professionals in our company. So sometimes it would be like, wow, women associate directors are actually getting paid more than male associate directors and I’m hoping that that becomes a way that others also do it.

Anupama: What I’m hearing you say is that you’ve seen and witnessed a shift in terms of having a good role model, building that culture of inclusion. To a lot of people who ask why gender diversity is important within organizations, I think that’s just bang on. Just switching gears a little bit, Harappa I know has worked with both big corporate clients and startups. Our research on WISER (Women in India’s Startup Ecosystem Report) shows that in representation of women, startups are doing really well. There’s a long way to go, but it’s definitely better than where corporate India is currently at. So if I were to ask you, what are some broad trends you’ve observed, especially in the startup ecosystem in terms of what’s going well or what needs more focus on, what would you say they are?

Shreyasi: So here I have to be honest that I was really surprised when I saw the first WISER report in terms of the startups doing much better than established companies. I have to say that we actually found it much easier. Most of our, I would say 90% of our revenue from the women-focused programs actually went to some of India’s and the world’s largest companies. What I’m seeing in startups, one is of course that there’s just greater entrepreneurial activity. And many women, women across all tenures, are trying to be entrepreneurial, setting up businesses. I just feel like the overall culture and attitude to risk taking, to being on your own, to being a person with multiple skills if you’re starting out even a small business. I think it’s really overall good for women professionals because that will transcend. And it creates many more opportunities within the constraints of their societal structures for them to be able to create wealth.

I think the other thing that startups are really useful for is there’s no place to hide, right? Everybody, especially if you’re under a sub hundred people team, certainly there’s no place to hide. Everybody needs to pull their weight. So I think startups, if you find the right startup at the right time, I think startups can really script rewarding careers. Larger companies are still much more resistant to unconventional CVs, right? Startups are that way much more like, listen, you can do the job. If you can get the job done, come and do it, it doesn’t matter what you’ve done before. 

Future forward: Making workplaces work for women

Anupama: Shreyasi, that actually brings me to a very important question. Why should organizations focus on building workplaces that work for women? What is in it for them in terms of building gender diverse teams, why should they focus on it? Where do they start?

Shreyasi: It’s so tough to get good people, right? As an employer, as a manager, as a boss, all you want is good people to build products, sell products, manage people, manage teams, manage projects, all of that, right? The fact is that you want to look in every segment of the population to be able to get the skills. I say this sometimes, it’s controversial, I actually do believe that our companies and our employers are ahead of our homes and our societies when it comes to giving women an equitable (standing). I feel like most of us, many of us, including me, could face very different realities at home, or in our extended families, or in social situations than we actually do at the workplace. 

I place a lot of faith in companies and organizations being able to keep furthering that and hopefully society will catch up. I think professionals and certainly women professionals really need to be publicly praised for their contributions.

Public recognition doesn’t mean a town hall with 10,000 people CCed. They’re very small things. So one tip, and I used to say this, calendar it, right? Once a week, I would send an email highlighting or acknowledging other women peers. And I think we have to create some of these very large societal things into mini tasks that each one of us can do without any help from anybody else. Second is manager sponsorship. I feel like that the manager relationship is really one of the most critical relationships to get right. You don’t have to change the world for all the women you meet all the time, pick one. 

Over the last three or four or five years, I’ve used my role models really well, and really opportunistically, and I encourage all women professionals to do that. Role models are a guide to your future, who you will be in the next 10 years. I have Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie as one of my five women role models. I find her incredible – her luminosity and her ability. She’s a great public intellectual, talks a lot about feminism, but her ability to talk about a lot of tough things with a smile. Particularly as a founder, I found those skills so useful. Because you need to wear, sometimes you do need in many contexts and situations, you need to wear your activism lightly for that activism to be impactful, right? So my homework for all of your listeners who are listening to me and actually, all professionals can do this, not just women professionals, is having a role model mood board. You are here, this is where you want to be in five years, 10 years, who are the people who you think are viable and for what skill? 

The last thing I always tell women, colleagues and professionals is you know when you say don’t talk behind people’s back? I said flip it. You must talk about a woman peer or colleague when she’s not in the room, but say good things. 

Anupama: Shreyasi, it’s been so lovely chatting with you thank you so much for your time and being on our podcast. 

This brings us to the end of our (season finale) episode of UnHerd. We’ll be back with season 2 in March 2025. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to our Spotify and YouTube channels where we’ll bring you more unheard stories of people who are passionate about creating impact at scale in different ways. People who truly stand apart from the herd. Follow us, like, subscribe and share.

 

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