One day while on a train journey, I was reading I Too Had a Dream by Verghese Kurien, the founder of Amul, while passing through Gujarat, where Amul began, when the pantry handed me an Amul ice cream. In the book, his words on rural transformation moved me, and somewhere in that moment, I decided to work in the rural development space. (full-width)
I moved to Toranpada, a small tribal village in Palghar and spent a month there. Living with the families there changed the way I understood “community.” Life there was rooted in collective care: food was grown to be shared, land was cared for together, there was no “this is mine” and “that is yours” and sustainability was practiced without being named.
It stood in quiet contrast to everything I had seen in cities and towns. That’s also when I heard about BAIF and their work in rural development and through a series of coincidences, connections, and conversations, I found my way there.
Started as a District MIS Officer
I started behind a desk, preparing weekly reports for funders, monitoring data quality, and analyzing field developments. It wasn’t the work I imagined when I first joined, but it taught me something important: impact only lasts when the systems behind it are strong. Without data, structure, and accountability, even the best ideas fade.
Became the Project Manager for Digital Sakhi Project
My next role brought me closer to the community. I managed L&T Finance’s Digital Sakhi Project in South Gujarat, where I worked with 50 women from border villages and trained them to become local champions of digital and financial inclusion for tribal communities. Mobilizing these women, understanding their constraints, making them digitally and financially literate, training them, and building their confidence taught me the difference between managing and leading.
Creating Impact as The Enterprise Executive
In this role, our goal was to work with 41,718 tribal women and help them move from informal, small-scale production to running structured and sustainable enterprises. While many of them already had strong skills, they lacked access to markets, systems, and institutional support. My role was to bridge this gap through training, handholding, and by creating strong enterprise ecosystems where their efforts could consistently translate into income.
Here’s how I did it:
- Helped women organize themselves into Producer Groups (PGs) and move from individual production and selling to collective enterprise models.
- Worked closely with the Sahyari Sakhi Federation that became the main trading and support body, effectively replacing local traders and improving price realization.
- Supporting the full journey of an enterprise by training, handholding, and connecting women to markets through fairs (melas) and B2B buyers.
- Introduced small but meaningful innovations like better packaging to improve quality and shelf life, and simple machines to reduce manual effort and increase production output.
- Coordinating with foundations and government bodies to make sure available support actually reached the women on the ground.
- Studied local crop patterns and applied innovations to promote high-value, sustainable enterprises that enhanced livelihoods.
Working with these women taught me how entrepreneurship can strengthen communities, especially women who have limited opportunities.
A Story That Stays With Me
One story that stays with me is of a young beekeeper named Manisha ben. She was 23 years old, a mother of 2, and genuinely gifted at her work. She wasn’t formally educated, but her curiosity and confidence made her stand out from the other women we were working with, and we onboarded her as a field facilitator.
But a few weeks after joining and delivering amazing work, she abruptly stopped showing up to our meetings. Later, I came to know through the other women in the village that her husband had forced her to stop attending the training sessions we offered.
I talked to the husband, but he seemed very suspicious and controlling. I hoped she would show up the next day, but she didn’t. A few days later, my team brought me a handwritten note from her. It listed the month-wise process of beekeeping, something I had asked her about during my first visit.
That note breaks my heart a little every time I think of it. It’s a glimpse of who she could have become if only her husband had been able to put his ego aside and see her grow.
This phase of my journey taught me to see the unseen potential in people and understand that empowerment is simply amplifying the voice people already have.
If you’d like a detailed overview of my experience, skills, and achievements, feel free to take a look at my résumé.