Mother’s Day: Meet the mothers and children who are working to create social impact
On the occasion of Mother’s Day, SocialStory spotlights a few ventures where mother and child have teamed up to make a difference and create an impact.
Abe Lincoln famously said: “All that I am, or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.”
Mothers and children have a special bond, one that can’t be explained or dissected, no matter how hard you try. From childhood and teenage to adulthood, mothers and children make a winning team. Aware of this, a large number of mums have partnered with their children to start a venture of their own.
Be it Mumbai-based Harsh Mandavia, who has been supporting his mother’s tiffin service, or Delhi-based Kritika Sondhi, who has been encouraging her grandmother Asha Puri to make knitted products and empowering the underprivileged artisans.
On the occasion of Mother’s Day, SocialStory spotlights a few mother-and-child ventures that are making a difference in society.
Harsh and Heena Mandavia
Heena and Harsh Mandavia
Since May 2020, when the crisis was at its peak, 26-year-old Harsh Mandavia, and his mother Heena Mandavia, 49, have been selflessly distributing food at their eatery to homeless people and unprivileged of the society.
The mother-son duo, who run Harsh Thali and Parathas tiffin service, started feeding people for free after one of their regular customers inspired them. Heena has been running her tiffin service since 1999 in the suburbs of Kandivali. In 2015, Harsh took over the business, and together they run the business with the tagline ‘Mom makes, son sells’.
Asha Puri, Neeru Sondhi, and Kritika Sondhi
Asha, Neeru, and Kritika
Founded in 2018, With Love, From Granny (W.L.F.G.) is a women-led social enterprise that was started by three generations of women — Asha Puri (the grandmother), Neeru Sondhi (Asha’s daughter), and Kritika Sondhi (Asha’s granddaughter).
With Love, From Granny is a team of more than 30 full-time and part-time artisans from Delhi-NCR, which delivers hand-knit crochet products across India through the D2C channel — its website and Instagram page. The enterprise has been empowering these artisans to become financially independent.
Kavita Gupta and Akriti Gupta
Akriti Gupta and Kavita Gupta, Co-founders of Canfem
After her husband was diagnosed with cancer, social worker Kavita Gupta and her daughter, Akriti, met many breast cancer patients during the hospital visits, who were looking for suitable prosthetics. Soon after, the duo started Canfem, a for-profit social enterprise that offers affordable and quality breast prosthesis and mastectomy bras for breast cancer patients and survivors in India.
Rachana and Sonika Agarwal
Sonika and Rachana Agarwal
Rachana Agarwal and her daughter, Sonika Agarwal, started storydip.com, which curates stories with female protagonists for children. Inspired by scientist Grace Hopper’s story, the duo aims to grow it into a platform that can reach young girls and help them with their struggles by offering relatable stories. Rachana compiles the stories, while Sonika handles the technical aspects of the website. The duo is now aiming to get more users and work on scaling the website further.
Edited by Teja Lele
