No woman should have to
figure everything out alone.
साथ, जब ज़रूरत हो
Her language • Her context • Her choices
Technology + trust. Awareness + real-world support.
Her first month, in ten frames
She arrived with a bag, a plan and a head full of hopes.
Find a job, send money home, repay the loan and slowly build a life. The plan sounds simple enough, until the first month begins to unfold.
A missed day at work, an unexpected expense, a little good luck, a difficult choice… because when you are starting over, even the smallest moment can change the month.
Step into her story and see what happens next
Three numbers describe the gap she fell into. Each one is a door that is shut. Sakhi is built to open that exact door, so here is the number, and here is what we do about it.
One woman’s bad month is a story. Twenty-three million of them is a system. Sakhi is small on purpose: teach her the one thing that changes today, and give her a roof to stand under while she does it.
The whole method, in four moves
Most services hand her a menu she has to understand before she can use it. Sakhi starts with something that already happened to her and moves in four steps, and the fourth one is the point. Everything before it is practice; the last step is the thing that actually gets done.
This is what Lakshmi’s first weeks in the city actually felt like.
She didn’t know if the delivery app would still pay her for the day her scooter broke down. She didn’t know which of the three forms at the PF office was hers, or what happened if she picked wrong. Most nights she did the same rent maths in her head, twelve thousand rupees moved between four boxes, again and again, because there was no one nearby to ask and no time to find out the slow way. It wasn’t any single thing. It was not knowing, over and over, with money and a deadline attached each time. That is the gap Sakhi is built for.
Ready to be built, with you
So there is one more piece. It is the piece we want more hands on, because it is the one that gets built fastest when it is not built alone.
The shell, the cost, the land, the water and who keeps it clean at eleven at night. Every one of those is still open, and every one of them is an invitation. Here is what would move it tomorrow.
Every press is counted. If you press it, say what you can bring on the board below.
On the pathway outside an apartment gate first, because that is where she waits longest. Then metro gates, markets, hospitals and pickup points. Always where she already stands.
About the size of a small shop. Shipped flat, bolted together in a day, and lifted and moved if the street changes.
Green to build and green to keep. Recycled steel and low-carbon panels, made to be repaired instead of replaced. Solar for the lights, fan, Wi-Fi and charging. Rainwater collected, washwater reused, waste sorted on site.
A woman from the same street, paid properly, never volunteering. Paid for by all of us together: the city, the platforms she earns on, the homes she works in, and the rest of us who walk past her every day.
Who is building this
Together, we bring 25 years in learning and education, 15 years building products and understanding what makes people use them, and 16 years working with blue-collar and gig workers and connecting them to meaningful work.
Each perspective brings something different to Sakhi. Together, we understand what she needs to learn, how she will use it, what might hold her back, and how learning can open the door to better opportunities.
Program Director
Will it get used?
Fifteen years spent on the gap between a product being built and a person actually using it.
Turn overFifteen years on the distance between a product being shipped and a person actually using it.
Why her for Sakhi. A product for entry-level phones and low-trust users lives or dies on whether anyone opens it twice. Activation, week-four retention, where people drop out of a situation: those are the numbers Sakhi will be judged by, and the ones she has run her career on.
Director of Curriculum & Training
Will it teach her anything?
Twenty-five years designing the ten minutes that change what someone does on Monday.
Turn overIndependent education and student development consultant, instructional designer and trainer.
Why her for Sakhi. Sakhi is built around a simple idea — that a few minutes of the right kind of learning can change what someone does next. Dhanya brings the experience to turn complex ideas into clear, engaging experiences that people can understand, explore and use in their everyday lives.
Director of Operations
Will it end in a job?
Sixteen years putting blue-collar and gig workers into paid work, and the ground network to keep doing it.
Turn overChief Executive Officer of the Satyagopal Foundation, which works on livelihoods for blue-collar and gig workers.
Why him for Sakhi. Sakhi can teach her what to do and get her to open it twice. It cannot hand her a job. He places workers, links them to the schemes they are owed, and has the network on the ground, the part that turns a finished lesson into paid work.
What glues the three of them
Ananya and Dhanya come at Sakhi from two halves of the same problem: how a person actually learns, and whether a person ever opens the thing twice. Sudheer comes at it from the end that everyone forgets, the day the learning has to turn into paid work. Between the three of them: the lesson, the app, and the job at the other side of it.
Being a woman, a working professional, a mother, a daughter in a family that expects you to show up, and the person who hires, trains, pays and leans on domestic workers is not background detail on a CV. It is fieldwork. Between Ananya and Dhanya that is twenty years of it: what she is paid against what she is worth, why she leaves without notice, what she was never taught and still got blamed for not knowing. Sudheer has spent sixteen years on the other side of that door, on the street, where the placement either happens or it does not. Sakhi is built from both.
Where this goes
Sakhi
A skill that speaks your language
Where we want to take her
Open WhatsApp, message Sakhi, and say hi. Sakhi replies in her language and sets her up from there.
Works on any phone that can send a message. The web app and the Android app come after.
No forms, no 30-minute call
If this moved you even a little, say so. One line is enough. These notes are what we carry into every room where Sakhi gets decided, so a stranger’s sentence has genuinely changed what we build.
Skip it and your note goes up signed “Anonymous”.
Your note appears on the board and is also emailed to the Sakhi team.
The “A” is a roofline. Under it two women stand eye to eye, sheltered by it. Shelter, guidance and opportunity are built into the letter itself, so the mark says what the thing does before anyone reads a word.
PANTONE 19-2436
A grounded, confident wine magenta. It carries warmth and authority at once, which is the colour of a mentor rather than a megaphone. It is deep enough to be taken seriously and warm enough to be approached, and it holds the coral and the rising sun of the mark steady without ever shouting over them.
