Pavithra Y.S.
A young entrepreneur who prefers action to words, Pavithra Y.S. (27) is the managing director of Vindhya E-Infomedia Pvt. Ltd, Bangalore — a business process outsourcing company offering IT and IT-enabled services — which gives employment preference to differently-abled people (orthopaedically challen-ged, hearing impaired and dyslexics). A commerce graduate of the garden city’s KLE College, since promoting Vindhya E-Infomedia in 2006 with a workforce of five differently-abled people, Pavithra has grown the company’s workforce to 200.
http://www.vindhyainfo.com/
Vindhya E-Infomedia was launched with an initial investment of Rs.500,000 which Pavithra sourced from family and through personal loans. “With the support of my family and husband Ashok Giri who quit his job in Trivium Inc — an Intel-funded company — we have combined operational excellence with lending a helping hand to the differently-abled who are often regarded as a burden by their families, especially in socio-economically backward sections of society. However I believe that if placed in appropriate jobs, differently-abled people with basic education can be more productive than abled workers because they are determined to succeed. Despite initial hiccups, my belief in the determination of the differently-abled has been vindicated. Now we service clients who are among the top in their respective domains — Wipro, Mindtree and Infosys, to name a few,” says Pavithra with evident satisfaction.
Born into a middle class family headed by her late banker father Sundareshan Y.V. and mother Dr. Radhika Sundareshan, a general physician, Pavithra became conscious of the widespread societal and official neglect of challenged and differently-abled people from a young age as she witnessed a stream of them visiting her mother who usually treated them free of charge. “Most differently-abled people have minor disabilities and are able to work quite effectively in a wide variety of fields. Despite this, they suffer severe job discrimination. I was determined to prove that the differently-abled don’t need charity and pity but suitable jobs in which they can be as productive as anyone else,” says Pavithra.
Despite the success of Vindhya E-Infomedia, Pavithra is not content to rest on her laurels. “We are working towards increasing our headcount to 5,000 differently-abled employees by 2015. And now that I have proved the poten-tial of this minority, my dream is to promote an inclusive vocational school. I intend to prove that together we can rise to greater heights,” she says.