The business world is gradually opening up its doors to people with disabilities which is bringing diversity to the workplace and bringing a class of people into the mainstream. Recently, we have covered a similar story where we have mentioned how job fair for people with disabilities is about to held in Chennai. The fair is conducted mostly on an yearly basis by Ability Foundation. When we look at the census of 2011, around 2 percent of the population in India is having some form of disability.
People with disabilities are a pool of talent that largely remains untapped due to numerous reasons – including lack of awareness about possibilities, inherent biases, doubt regarding delivery capability of the concerned talent pool, as well as lack of structural as well as cultural readiness of workplaces to accommodate talent with disabilities. There are many such cases where startups and businesses have offered jobs on various roles to people with disabilities.
Here’s a brief look at the companies providing such opportunities:
Lemon Tree Hotels
At Lemon Tree Hotels, an India-based hotel chain, around 22 percent of the staff are from among those who are opportunity deprived because of some disability. It includes people with autism, down syndrome, speech and hearing impairment. The hotel chain operates around 78 hotels in 46 destinations, employing around 8000 people. The company is looking forward to hire 40 percent of employees with disabilities by 2025.
Lemon Tree has a structured process to induct people with disabilities into its entire hotels across India. These talent are trained and deployed across different operational areas of the hotels e.g. Housekeeping, Kitchen Stewarding and Food & Beverage Service.
Vindhya e-Infomedia
Vindhya e-Infomedia is an Impact Sourcing Service Provider based in Bangalore and Hyderabad since 2006. They are working on a vision of bringing business and philanthropy together for a social cause. They adopt the mechanism of mainstreaming jobs for people with disabilities. Through this, Vindhya has been successful in bringing financial independence, self respect and dignity into the lives of such people who have been deprived of all that.
Vindhya have been working with top clients like Airtel India, IBM, SAP AG and many other Indian companies providing services like Data entry, Claims processing, Customer onboarding, Payroll and Data management processes. In 13 years Vindhya has carved a niche in the BPO industry by offering high-quality and cost effective Contact Center and Data Solutions.
As per Pavithra YS, co-founder of Vindhya, who has won business from Accenture, Yahoo and SAP, has said to FT: “Our customers are now coming forward and employing people with disabilities. It’s a chain reaction, where everyone starts to look at them as a potential resource.”
KFC
KFC – India is the American fast food chain is also in the front row in terms of hiring people with disabilities. 70 percent of the staff in 20 KFC outlets are speech and hearing impaired. All KFC leaders are trained in sign language to enable easy communication. KFC entered India in 2003 operating 380 stores in the country.
Mirchi and Mime
Mirchi and Mime is a Mumbai based restaurant serving modern-Indian cuisine. The restaurant is served exclusively by speech & hearing-impaired service staff. As captured from the company profile – ” Two first generation entrepreneur-investors who believe in promoting entrepreneurship conceived the idea and took upon themselves the plan to provide gainful, sustainable and respectful employment to 500 speech and hearing impaired, through a chain of restaurants across India and beyond. ”
Mirchi and Mime is looking to expand in India and beyond through a chain of restaurants. The restaurant’s tag line runs ‘Good food served quietly.’ The first restaurant was opened in 2015.
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