1. Role of Corporates in
Promoting Women
Empowerment through SHG
Jayanta Chakraborti
8427288699
jaychk699@gmail.com
www.jayantachakraborti.com
Presented by :
Associate Professor
ICFAI University Tripura

2. Research Methodology
Research Objective
A Study to understand the role played by corporates in
promoting Women Empowerment through SHG.
Research Design
Descriptive Research using Secondary Data.
Sample Size
50 Private Corporate Groups operating in India involved in
running SHG for Women Empowerment.
Data Analysis
Hypothesis testing using Case Study Analysis

3. Introduction to Women Empowerment
 60% of chronically hungry people are women.
 Women constitute half of World Population.
 Two-thirds of illiterate people in the World are Women.
 Most of the Women working in rural areas are engaged
in seasonal, part-time and low wage jobs.
 Women are vulnerable to crime including domestic
violence.
 Women are vulnerable to climatic changes and regional
conflicts.
 Women Empowerment is the need of the hour.

4. Introduction to Self Help Group (SHG)
 NABARD defines SHGs as “small, economically homogenous
affinity groups of rural poor, voluntarily formed to save and
mutually contribute to a common fund to be lent to its
members as per the group members’ decision”.
Source : NABARD

5. Source : NABARD
Introduction to Self Help Group (SHG)

6. Introduction to SHG
 Started with 225 groups in
1992.
 SHG Movement started in
India in 1992.
 Presently, there are
16,18,456 SHG that have
accessed bank loans.
 Around 25 million members
of SHG are women.

7. Corporate Role in promoting women
empowerment through SHG
 ITC Hindustan Unilever Limited
 Amul
 Tata Group
 SEWA
 Shri Mahila Grihaudyog Limited
 Coca Cola
 Reliance Industries Limited
 ICICI Bank

8. Hindustan Unilever Limited --- Project Shakti
 Objective was to distribute
products to inaccessible rural areas.
 Started in the Year 2000.
 Started in the Nalgonda district of
Andhra Pradesh in November 2000
with 50 SHGs in 50 villages with 1000
to 2,000 inhabitants participating.
 Today, Project Shakti provides
livelihood enhancing opportunities to
nearly 70,000 Shakti Entrepreneurs
who distribute products to 4 million
rural households in 162,000 villages.

9. ITC Women Empowerment
 ITC is also working towards making agriculture more inclusive by enabling
marginal women farmers to enhance their knowledge and skills in modern
agricultural practices
 ITC’s Women’s Empowerment Programme aims to provide them with
sustainable economic livelihood opportunities through financial assistance as
well as skills training.
 ITC has encouraged women to act collectively, form solid waste
management groups that undertake door-to-door garbage collection,
segregation of waste as well as making and selling organic manure.
 One of ITC’s interventions targets ultra-poor women with the objective of
mainstreaming them socio-economically over a period of time.
 ITC assists these women with productive income generating assets,
supported with intensive handholding, counseling, on-job assistance,
training and local level facilitation with the objective of bringing them into
the financial mainstream. Over 12,750 ultra poor women have benefitted till
date.

10. ICICI Self Help Groups
 ICICI Bank, India's largest private sector bank, recently crossed a milestone
of supporting one million women beneficiaries through its programme for Self
Help Groups (SHG) which aims at empowering less privileged women to
become self-reliant.
 Over the next one year, the bank intends to double their reach and
support over two million women with cumulative loan disbursements of Rs
2,500 Crore.
 In the last 30 months, ICICI Bank has helped over 70,000 SHGs across 164
districts of seven states. The Bank runs the programme through a dedicated
pool of 550 employees who look after servicing SHGs spread across
Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka
and Kerala.
 The Bank provides an integrated savings-cum-loan product to SHGs
engaged in income generating activities like cattle & goat rearing, making and
selling household food items, running small tea / snack counters, agarbatti
making, pattal dona making, tailoring, jewellery making, handicrafts and bee
keeping among others.

11. Tata Power --- Project Vartika
 Project Vartika has been introduced by Tata Power in the region of Kutch.
 This is a special programme designed to endorse value-added traditional
embroidery crafts and develop market linkages for women to increase their
earnings and livelihood profitability.
 This project is aimed at womenfolk of Kutch who tend to their houses,
look after cattle and are dependent on men with almost no access to
improving their income.
 Through the enhancement of these skills, Tata Power aims to make women
economically independent and enable them to take independent decisions
for their families. This programme aims to position women at the same level
as men and empower them with self-respect by allowing them to be an
earning member of the family, thereby doing away with gender prejudices.

12. Shri Mahila Griha Udyog --- Lijjat Papad
 Started in 1959 with a seed capital of
Rs 80/- and seven women joining hands
to start an organization.
 Lijjat is a case study of women
empowerment through the formation of
SHG.
 Lijjat has an annual turnover of Rs 6.5
billion and provides employment to
43,000 people.
 Today Lijjat helps create women
empowerment by organizing computer
literacy classes for women, and doing
orientation courses in typing, cooking,
sewing, knitting and toy making.

13. Inferences from Case Study
 When aligned with business goals, Corporates have played
a key role in women empowerment though formation of SHG
(Project Shakti).
 Corporates have played a key role in women
empowerment through SHG as an CSR initiative (Tata
Power).
 Corporates that owe their origin to the SHG movement
have played a key role in promoting women empowerment
through SHG (Lijjat Papad).
 Corporates have contributed to women empowerment
through SHG as a mission for inclusive growth (ITC).
 Corporates have taken up women empowerment through
SHG with dual objective of expanding their business (ICICI
Bank)

14. Recommendations
1. Motivating Corporates to get involved in formation of SHG
for Women Empowerment.
2. Analyzing and Exploring avenues where Corporates and
SHG can work as partners for mutually beneficial goals and
women empowerment.
3. Understanding and removing bottlenecks that hinder the
partnership between Corporates and SHG.

15. Bibliography
1. FAO, 2011. “The State of Food and Agriculture: Women in
Agriculture, Closing the Gender Gap for Development” .
2. http://www.fidafrique.net/article1784.html
3.http://www.unwomen.org/en/news/in-focus/commission-
on-the-status-of-women-2012/facts-and-
figures#sthash.xP2Ya2Te.dpuf
4. Purna Chandra Parida and Anushree Sinha, “Performance
and Sustainability of Self-Help Groups in India: A Gender
Perspective, Asian Development Review, vol. 27, no. 1, pp.
80–103
5. https://www.nabard.org

16. Thank You