4 min readPuneJan 13, 2024 07:50 AM IST
First published on: Jan 12, 2024 at 06:14 PM IST
Kalpana Mali, 37, from Maharashtra’s Gondavale has been running a cold-pressed oil business for the last four years. She procures all the raw materials from farmers, whom she trains in organic farming. At her home, Mali creates over 11 varieties of oil. Another entrepreneur, Jyoti from Satara, started her bakery business around six years ago. Earlier, she made biscuits only with maida but then switched to wheat, millets, and multigrain and is now trying to increase the percentage of white millets in her products.
Mali and Jyoti are among the 9,50,000 women associated with the Mann Deshi Foundation, an organisation dedicated to empowering rural women and making them financially independent. The foundation has been running business schools for over two decades across Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Gujarat. Women of the Foundation are successfully running businesses across sectors like food, agriculture, textile, and so on.
Chetana is a yale world fellow. As an alumni she has been in touch with students from the university. Informal dialogues resulted in a visit from the students over break who had strong interest in learning more about India and the work Mann deshi is doing.
The students are now working closely with these rural entrepreneurs to create a rating tool to determine the green score of their businesses. After three months of online interactions, the students are in India and visiting Mhaswad, Satara, Pune, and Mumbai to discuss the project with all the stakeholders.
Sinha says, “A lot of women in rural India run businesses in a traditional way, which are already green. With this project, we are creating a green score for them to reach out to climate-conscious consumers.”
“All our businesses have evolved with time, like a tailoring course now includes a module on how to recycle and upcycle fabric. Since climate change is a burning issue, now we are trying to bring in more comprehensive ways to move towards greener businesses,” says Anagha Kamath, director of Impact and Innovation, Mann Deshi.
Both the Mann Deshi Foundation and Yale students have decided to narrow the project down to the textile industry first because it is one of the most polluting industries.
Vanita Shinde, COO, Mann Deshi, says that over 20,000 women from the organisation are engaged in textile businesses.
“A lot of women are not using any kind of water in their processes; they’re not using dyes. So many of them are just using the waste fabric or the leftover fabric that is there. But our focus is also upcycling old sarees to make dresses, table mats, and cushion covers and they already have these. So, they’re already green in so many ways, but they’re just not branding it as green,” says Kamath.
Talking about the progress of the rating project, Kamath says, “They are researching the formal existing certification processes to create a framework to understand where the business is at the moment to help women understand how green they are and how they can be greener… We planned an entire itinerary with them to meet women, and to meet different stakeholders. Our women entrepreneurs, our fashion designing course trainers, the customers of women entrepreneurs, and some of our partners as well, because they also have a perspective in terms of what they would like to support going forward.”
A final report will tentatively be ready by the end of March based on which recommendations will be drafted.
Learning about Mann Deshi’s work, students of Yale University got in touch with the founder of the organisation, Chetana Sinha, who has been a Yale World Fellow herself. 
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