This Design Enterprise Upskills Marginalized Women To Help Them Achieve Financial Independence

Sep 10

When Deepa decided to leave her 13-year long career in the apparel industry, she knew she wanted to do something with a greater purpose. Through her business, SVATANYA, she’s found that purpose in upskilling underprivileged women and empowering them with the financial independence.

SVATANYA is a Delhi-based social enterprise that trains women to make handcrafted toys, corporate merchandise, gifting products, accessories and apparel for women & children which are sold under the company’s brands, Amaryn and Amaryn Kids . In addition to helping women find dignified livelihoods and independence, SVATANYA is committed to minimizing its carbon footprint by using upcycled waste or recycled raw materials. To make up for lean production periods, SVATANYA started AmarynCare, an initiative to train women to make soft toys which are then donated to underprivileged children, who are differently abled, battling terminal illness, or living in slums.

SVATANYA currently engages 45 women and to date has upskilled over 600 women in stitching, knitting, and crocheting. “If you want to bring a change,” goes SVATANYA’s motto, “bring it through the women. Empower them and see the magic! Because when a woman grows, her children grow, her family goes and so does the society.”

SVATANYA recently completed Upaya’s virtual 2020 Accelerator Program that equips early-stage entrepreneurs with tools to grow their companies and have a meaningful impact through job creation. We’re pleased to introduce the Founder of SVATANYA, Deepa through our Q&A.

Q. What are the key problems your company aims to address?

Our business model hinges on solving several societal challenges. 1) the inability of underprivileged women to work in traditional work setups due to family and household commitments; 2) the lack of financial independence leading to lack of confidence and empowerment; 3) the heavy detrimental demands of fast fashion on climate; 4) the decline of interest in pursuing traditional crafts due to reduced financial viability; and 5) the unfulfilled basic needs of a personal toy for underprivileged children due to economic background.

Q. How did you become so passionate about this problem?

If I look back and reflect on the journey, interestingly it wasn’t all of these problems together right from start, and the beginning was more exploratory.

I began interacting with the women and understanding their stories and challenges. With my experience of working in the fashion industry, I knew about its detrimental effects on the environment and was also aware of the problem of declining traditional crafts.

Slowly I was able to build SVATANYA as a platform that could create a social impact by creating eco-conscious products while reviving traditional crafts.

Only during the course of our journey, when we started to prove our mettle time and again in executing challenging orders while bringing about a positive change in the women’s lives, did we realized the real potential of SVATANYA, and there hasn’t been any looking back ever since.

Q. What inspired you or gave you the idea to start your company?

With an artistic bent of mind, a solid foundation that NIFT and 13-year of industry experience provided me, and being a creative person at heart, I was always passionate about creating products. Once I realized that there was a gap in the market for beautiful and conscious product choices and a huge pool of women willing to get trained and eager to work in their spare time, I just had to work on creating an operating model around the nuances of working with this unique workforce.

Q. What has been your greatest accomplishment to date?

It has been a very fulfilling journey full of ups and downs and while there are many an instance, Feb-Mar of 2020, just before the lockdown, was full of action and excitement and brought in a sense of huge satisfaction. Not only were we executing a large order for a global multinational that had to be shipped to 40 locations across India, we managed to execute multiple other orders in parallel and delivered everything before the COVID-19 scenario. It was not just the sheer volume of the order but also the short and stringent timelines with only the month of February in between, and on top of that, the growing challenges posed by the Coronavirus.

Q. What has been your biggest learning so far?

There is beauty in working towards collective growth – and our journey has been nothing less than magical. How else can one explain an unconventional business model with an unconventional work force making beautiful unconventional products, delivering on time, every time, while also simultaneously growing in numbers and creating a wider and far reaching impact?

Q. What is your vision for your company?

Having successfully piloted the model to train and engage homemakers in creating beautiful handcrafted products, our vision is to expand our footprint across India to engage and benefit as many women as possible. We want to make them confident and empower them.

We envision a socially and environmentally responsible society where women are financially independent and empowered to live with dignity by contributing as equal partners.

Q. What has been your experience in working with the artisans and their community?

The women that have been engaged with SVATANYA even once have carried the imprint of what they have learned here. And at the same time, we have witnessed that, in all the women who have come to us, there is a sense of pride. They will only engage in work which has dignity. They are open to experimenting and are willing to be challenged on the creative front. And they are ready to stretch significantly for the sake of upholding their commitments.

Q. What key insights have you gained after working in this sector?

Contrary to popular belief, people in the underprivileged community are not purely driven by monetary considerations. If that were to be the case, there would not have been instances of women contributing cloth for making toys for underprivileged children or some of them volunteering to not get paid to make the toys that were for donating to cancer-fighting children. It requires some convincing from our side to explain that the basis of making the toys is to help both women and children.

Q. What would be your top three pieces of advice for other entrepreneurs entering the space?

Perseverance – Any business has challenges but, when one decides to undertake a social venture, then one has anyways chosen to take a path of solving large existing lacunae in the society, and hence one must be prepared for a rocky roller coaster ride. Tracking typical business metrics initially may not be very heartening.
Celebrate success however small or big – Even impact takes time to start reflecting. The initial journey will seem even more uphill and progress slow. Having said that, every small positive change must be recognized and celebrated as it becomes your fuel to go on.
Impact with a clear focus on the bottom-line – While the focus should never get diluted or deviated from the mission and the impact for which the venture was started. But, just like any other business, to continue to be self-sustaining one must not lose sight of the bottom line and have a tight control on working capital. It’s a learning that helped us sustain the shocks of Demonetization, GST and Covid