By Mansi Chandra, Associate – Pink Belt Mission & Founder – Ta.Ra Innovations
I started my entrepreneurial journey around 6 years ago with the motive to make myself completely financially independent. I decided to set up my own business and started out with renting a small space to start a shoe factory in Agra called Ta.Ra Innovations. Eventually, my grit and determination bore fruit. I built my own factory in 2 years time and crossed the 100 crore mark in my turnover by the fourth year. For my professional achievements, I have been honoured by FICCI as the Outstanding Women Corporate Director and Canara Bank as the Best Women Entrepreneur.
During these years, I would closely interact with my female employees and local women. These interactions brought about a sea change in the core reason for my desire to do business. Their victimisation in the patriarchal society, the glaring gender inequality perturbed me endlessly. I realised that a lack of vocational education for women was the fountainhead of this problem.
This made me realise that emancipated, empowered and active women, with a sense of self-worth, can change the fabric of society. I always believed that one of the most important ways we can empower women is by helping them achieve financial independence and emotional stability.
When I met Aparna Rajawat who started Pink Belt Mission in 2016, I was pleasantly surprised by her vision and thoughts on empowering women. Though we believed and wanted to contribute towards the same ideology, our thoughts and directions were different. Affected by the rising levels of physical crimes against women, she believed in the 5 dimensions of empowering women, i.e. through physical strength, mental health, legal-rights awareness, digital awareness and emotional support, all together along with the knowledge of self-defence.
Aparna has a dynamic history in the field of sports and has won numerous titles on national and international levels in Martial Arts, Karate and Kickboxing. Our collaborative thoughts on multiple facets worked like magic and have defined what Pink Belt Mission is today.
We aim to strengthen every Indian woman by providing them health awareness, safety techniques, legal rights, cybercrime, self-defence, computer literacy, financial independence and vocational training to prevent sexual and domestic abuse. Along with closely working with underprivileged children’s development and education.
Together, Aparna and I have been not only helping empowering women and children for their individual requirements but have also been organizing free of cost self-defence workshops for girls and women, as an initiative to train to protect themselves and stay prepared in times of any assault. To make women more financially independent, we believe that receiving skill-based training of any industry will help make them more employable and also aid them to become economically stable.
This year in February, our shared vision towards women’s safety and empowerment created a global impact that furthered our cause. We were awarded the Guinness World Record for the largest self-defence session with 7,401 female participants. For us, this is only the beginning, we have a long way to go.
