2022 Cohort

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

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. Through the program, we are able to provide customised, innovative support to a group of entrepreneurs who share our mission of creating jobs for people in extreme poverty.

YellowBag: Building a Better Future, One Bag at a Time

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. Gowri RG and Krishnan Subramanian were inspired to find a way to make a difference after they became parents. It was impossible for them to ignore the impact something as small as a plastic bag might have on their child's future.

reThela: Helping Street Vendors Get Organized

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. Before becoming an entrepreneur, Sunil worked with Uniliever selling chocolates on the streets of Mumbai. Now he is helping the fragmented street vendor market get organized.

Gramshree Kisan: Empowering Farmers, Aggregating Technology, Creating Livelihood

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. Through this platform, not only were they able to build a following, but also earn enough to build upon a training facility.

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

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. In 2014 Krishnaiah did the unthinkable. He sold parts of his farmland to become an entrepreneur, despite the concerns of his family. He had a vision and the drive to start a business that could help smallholder farmers improve their profits.

FarmDidi: Sisters Empowering Sisters

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. Their work is helping Farmer Didis (sisters) to become successful and compliant food entrepreneurs through services like food testing, compliance, packaging solutions, and training.

Bharat Krushi Seva: Helping Farmers Become Self-dependent

Bharat Krushi Seva: Helping Farmers Become Self-dependent

How can technology help to make the lives of farmers easier and allow them to become more self-dependent? This is the question Sharayu and Hemant sought to answer when they founded Bharat Krushi Seva. Hailing from farmer families, Sharayu and Hemant were better equipped than most to help find innovative solutions for the agricultural industry.

Anuprerna: Supporting Handmade Textiles and the Artisans Who Make Them

Anuprerna: Supporting Handmade Textiles and the Artisans Who Make Them

West Bengal is historically famous for its textile industry, but who are the artisans behind these beautiful fabrics? Entrepreneur Amit Singha’s father worked closely with these skilled craftsmen and women and encouraged Amit to pursue work to support these communities.

Upaya Social Ventures and Yunus Social Business Join Forces for the 2022 Accelerator Program to Support Early-Stage Businesses in India

Upaya Social Ventures (Upaya) and Yunus Social Business Fund Bengaluru (YSB) today announced the launch of their 2022 Accelerator Program to help small and growing businesses in India scale and create jobs to lift people out of extreme poverty.