Aditi Das 8/26/22 Aditi Das 8/26/22

Pasidi Panta: Helping Small Farmers Grow a “Golden Harvest”

Krishnaiah is the founder of Pasidi Panta, a company working with spice growers. Coming from an agricultural family, he has firsthand experience with the difficulties smallholder farmers face

Upaya 7/19/22 Upaya 7/19/22

Upaya Social Ventures Announces Investment In Coconut Processor Freshnet Farms

Upaya Social Ventures (Upaya) today announced its investment in FreshNet Farms, an agribusiness based in Tamil Nadu whose founder, Senthil Kumar, has a vision to improve what he calls “the village economy” by creating efficiencies in the disorganized coconut value chain

Rachna Chandrashekhar 7/6/22 Rachna Chandrashekhar 7/6/22

How Our Accelerator Program Continues To Evolve To Best Serve Early-Stage Entrepreneurs

Upaya’s annual accelerator program is a key component of our mission to support early-stage social enterprises.

Kate Cochran 7/6/22 Kate Cochran 7/6/22

Giving Money Back To Donors

Upaya has done something novel in the past few weeks – novel for us, at least – we’ve written checks to our donors… and it feels great.

Aditi Das 6/24/22 Aditi Das 6/24/22

YellowBag: Building A Better Future, One Bag At A Time

YellowBag is a family run business that focuses on sustainability and livelihoods by working with women to make cloth bags as an alternative to plastic bags.

Aditi Das 6/9/22 Aditi Das 6/9/22

ReThela: Helping Street Vendors Get Organized

Sunil Kumar is the founder of reThela, a social venture that aims to build an organized retail market infrastructure for fragmented and unorganized street vendors.

Aditi Das 5/25/22 Aditi Das 5/25/22

FreshNet Farms: Investing In The Village Economy

Senthil Kumar spent 15 years in the corporate sector, but felt like he was wasting his time. So he pledged all of his assets to focus on self-fulfillment and his vision to improve what he calls “the village economy.”

Shruti Goel 5/9/22 Shruti Goel 5/9/22

This Mother’s Day We Wish For Dignified Jobs For All Mothers At Work

This Mother’s Day, as two working mothers at Upaya, we reflected on what it would take to create dignified jobs for mothers from extremely poor households. Despite their hardships, these women have the strength and ability to address the difficult battle of being a worker, a woman, and a mother, but they can’t do it alone

Aditi Das 5/5/22 Aditi Das 5/5/22

Gramshree Kisan: Empowering Farmers, Aggregating Technology, Creating Livelihood

When Aastha and a small team of four began building Gramshree Kisan they started with very little funding, but found an audience on YouTube

Shrishti Puri 4/29/22 Shrishti Puri 4/29/22

How Resham Sutra Is Weaving Its Theory Of Change To Empower Rural Artisans

Upaya’s portfolio company Resham Sutra embarked on their journey to create a Theory of Change Framework recently.

Upaya 4/22/22 Upaya 4/22/22

Upaya Social Ventures Funds Its Latest Investments From A Recoverable Grant Pool

Upaya Social Ventures announced the completion of its $2M campaign to double the nonprofit’s investment reach within five years

Aditi Das 4/16/22 Aditi Das 4/16/22

FarmDidi: Sisters Empowering Sisters

Manjari and Asmita are the founders of FarmDidi where they are on a mission to provide healthy, natural, and authentic food products by empowering over one million rural women

AB Chakravarthy 4/8/22 AB Chakravarthy 4/8/22

How Dignified Jobs Build Resilience For The Extreme Poor

Globally, research has shown that the extreme poor are greatly affected by the cause and effects of climate change. Air, water, and other sources of pollution are often the causes of climate change while extreme weather events such as heatwaves, drought, floods and hurricanes are the effects – both of which wreak havoc in the lives of the poor, often posing a threat to their livelihoods, health, and infrastructure. The poor are especially vulnerable as they lack coping mechanisms which are neither accessible nor affordable.