Saarathee-A Firm that Chose the Path of Inclusion, Completes 5 Years

Saarathee CRM was founded in 2018 by Richa Bansal and Arjun Vishwanathan with the objective of delivering positive business outcomes via employing and enabling Persons with Disabilities. Saarathee has trained and hired more than 350 people. More than 90% of its workforce is represented by people with disabilities.

Saarathee was not started for social work; but to build an organization that would be equitable and set the course for others within industry to follow. What started as a 5 member team has, in the last 5 years, employed or generated employment for more than 350 people with different disabilities across the country. For people at the organisation it was their first job ever or first job after being disabled - not only have they stayed with Saarathee, but grown leaps and bounds breaking all barriers of imagination and expectations.

Saarathee has not only managed to hire persons with disabilities, it has also given them a career path by giving them cross functional roles helping them find both vertical and horizontal growth through regular training and upskilling interventions. Today Saarathee is its best case study when it comes to delivering inclusion as a business case. Saarathee has operated on an attrition rate of less than 10% which has resulted in cost efficiencies for the organisation and its clients.

Saarathee is in the process of creating a unique Inclusion Transformation Platform which will converge technology and human capital to transform disability inclusion. They hope to help corporates navigate their inclusion journeys by helping them understand their current state of maturity on inclusion, offer them advisory support to help position and build the right internal narrative, sensitise internal stakeholders, enable accessible environments, and provide job ready resources to deploy across relevant job roles.

Their vision and mission is to build intent and action across corporates & PwDs to drive equal opportunities for professionals with disabilities, thereby bridging the gap of inclusion by making them contributing members of society. And to transform, persons with disabilities into proffessionld with disabilities by converging EdTech, hiring and change management such that corporates can truly unleash the potential of PwD.

On the occasion of completing a milestone of 5 years, Ms. Richa Bansal, Founder and Managing Director of Saarathee shares her thoughts, "The decision to consciously nurture persons with disabilities towards senior positions came as a result of belief and confidence shown by our young team. We identified potential, enabled opportunities, a sustained learning path and nurtured them in roles across Operations, HR, IT, Accounts, Training and Marketing. While it gave confidence and hope to our people, it gave us a showcase for industry. Our team began to service clients independently, work on customized IT integration, drive pro-active data analysis, create HR engagement programs, drive digital engagements and build a community etc. As Saarathee we were on a path to building an organisation and a showcase where 90% of our people were persons with different disabilities (70% being People with Vision Impairment), 70% working from home seamlessly across 13 different states."

As we move forward today and having navigated the threshold of being a pilot project in building a business case of inclusion, our logical question was - why this could not be translated across other progressive organisations. We observed many organisations inclusion ready, but struggling to make it a success because they were not able to piece it all together. They continue to struggle with recruitment, training, growth plans, internal readiness, sensitisation and more! That is when Saarathee decided to anchor their journey of inclusion. We have since assisted many DeI leaders in helping them build their internal inclusion narrative, conducted awareness sessions, helps drive recruitment, train and upskill PwD.'

Saarathee is a visionary company which aims to deliver business & social impact by operationalising inclusion of Persons with Disabilities within the corporate workforce. Saarathee's premise is built on the foundation of enabling sustainable change by offering a seamless connect between Persons with Disabilities (PwDs), Corporates and Inclusion Enablers by bridging the gaps of learning, collaboration, and deployment.