In Solidarity with Waste Pickers
Saamuhika Shakti is a collective impact initiative, the first of its kind in India, where multiple implementing organisations have joined forces to enable informal waste pickers in Bengaluru to have greater agency to lead secure and dignified lives, with a specific focus on gender and equity. This project is initiated and supported by the H&M Foundation, and Sattva Consulting serves as the backbone.
With Saamuhika Shakti, Udhyam will work with the ~200 entrepreneurs created during Phase 1 from among the waste pickers. As the first step, the team will delve deep into the lives of these entrepreneurs to identify bottlenecks they face in running their enterprises. The team will then, jointly with the entrepreneur’s ecosystem, ideate to create solutions to the identified problems as well as unlock growth opportunities, thus setting them up for greater profitability, scale and efficiency. The key outcomes targeted are two-fold:
- Uplift in incomes, as a result of business model improvement of nano-entrepreneurs
- Mindset shift to entrepreneurial mind-sets
Udhyam Vyapaar is one of two verticals of Udhyam Learning Foundation, and aims to bring alive its mission “Making Bharat Entrepreneurial'' among the nano-entrepreneurs. Udhyam Vyapaar works with existing entrepreneurs (Vyapaaris) who are essentially necessity entrepreneurs, earning on an average less than INR 25000 a month. Udhyam Vyapaar helps these Vyapaaris scale their businesses, make them successful in life, and move them towards their highest human potential.
Udhyam Vyapaar’s long term vision is to make nano-entrepreneurship a profitable and respectable profession, and thus providing an avenue for people to become proud job-creators instead of job-seekers.
Udhyam Vyapaar currently works with entrepreneurs in urban and rural areas, across multiple business segments like ironing vendors, food street vendors, home based food businesses, tailors, small cloth shops, and many more. While working with entrepreneurs of each business segment, a unique business-specific solution matrix is created across sourcing, market linkage, product and processes. This ever-evolving solution matrix accelerates the process of solution identification when working with other entrepreneurs from the same business segment.