Category: The Most Admired Women Leaders in Business 2022_Profile

Even a few decades ago, Asian financial markets were frowned upon as they were a bit hard to access. In order to provide the perfect conduit for global families to come and invest in Asia, Access Alts Asia was born. The organization was founded by a pioneer in Asian investments Aradhna Dayal, who also serves as the CEO of the company. She is a proud global citizen who believes that Asia with its rapid transformation, innovation, and multi-culturalism, holds the key to the global economy. She is always passionate about people and connecting them as global communities.

Aradhna explains, “For as long as I can remember, my biggest joy has been traveling the world, eating at local haunts, chatting with cabbies, exploring cultural nuances, and understanding what makes people who they are.”

Aradhna’s other passion is social justice and societal global challenges that threaten humanity’s future; she has devoted her life to harnessing the power of people to solve them. “In many ways, AccessAlts is my way to create an interconnected community of remarkable people from all around the world who are passionate about making a difference and protecting our future,” explains Aradhna.

Early Career

During the late 1990’s Aradhna moved to Hong Kong and started her family investment office. Hong Kong provided her with the best seats to witness the transformation in Asian financial markets. Soon she witnessed the transformation of countries like China, Indonesia, Vietnam, and India. With many Asian countries becoming economic powerhouses, the potential for global investors to come in grew by quite a few folds.

However, Asia was always frowned upon as opaque and hard to access. So, Aradhna saw this niche and leveraged her wide global network to bridge this gap. She believes that business families are inherently entrepreneurial and they like looking at new geographies. However, they prefer coming through a trusted network. Aradhna provided the perfect conduit for global families to come and invest in Asia, which eventually led to the birth of Access Alts Asia.

Bringing Global Investors to Asia

AccessAlts Asia is a Hong Kong-based platform that brings different global investors and ground-breaking technology to Asia. As we all know Asia is transforming, and it needs ideas and capital.

However, before Aradhna started AccessAlts, Asia was seen as a market that is opaque and hard to access. Aradhna understood the importance of this niche and leveraged her wide global network to bridge this gap. Started as a simple idea-sharing platform in Hong Kong six years back, Aradhna has led AccessAlts’ exponential growth into an influential, global “members-only” investment club with over 350 members, channelizing smart capital into transformative companies.

Aradhna’s unique business idea and vision are the main reason for Access Alts Asia’s growth. Launched at the right time and at the right place. Through AccessAlts, Aradhna inadvertently created the first East-West investment bridge that tied global family offices together. It was also the time when Asia was creating the largest number of Unicorns in areas like transportation, financial services, deep technology, and e-commerce.

Amidst this, Access Alts pioneered the concept of discreet, intimate Member Meets in key financial centers: New York, Dubai, London, Washington, San Francisco, Hong Kong, and Shanghai, giving the club a global footprint very quickly.

When the Pandemic Wreaked Havoc

According to Aradhna, Covid was disastrous for her organization, which relies on physical meets to bring its members together. The business stopped for three months. However, the organization soon leveraged the opportunity to pivot into a Digital Consultancy on Business Preservation and Impact Investing;

• The club started providing 360-degree consultancy to family businesses, from digitalizing their operations to entering new markets and verticals.
• The club also incubated multiple start-ups in Asia. The start-ups serve in areas like e-payments, electric vehicle batteries, e-education, etc.
• Also the club has done many landmark deals with companies like SpaceX and Beyond Meat during the pandemic.
• It used various innovative techniques to begin hosting Virtual Meets to replace physical meets, creating an online network of investors and experts from around the world. This led to a more powerful community than ever.

 

Preparing for the Future

Having created a formidable network, Aradhna wants to leverage it to empower women business leaders and entrepreneurs. “I have always been passionate about creating a just and diverse society that provides equal opportunities to all,” said Aradhna. “Covid has allowed me to take a pause and think about the legacy I want to leave behind.”

“We want to fund women-led businesses and create a formidable ‘she-economy.” We also want to nurture female talent and have launched a Women on Boards initiative that handholds talented young women for corporate boardrooms roles.”

Aradhna, along with her children, Pradyumn and Pankhuri Dayal, also runs the aid platform Move4Migrants to integrate migrant and minority communities into mainstream society.

Finally, through Access Alts, Aradhna wants to direct capital and resources towards technology that creates a fairer world. “As I head towards my 50s, I have become cognizant of the importance of focusing on social ROI rather than financial ROI,” explains Aradhna.

Quote: “Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts.”

Company Name: Access Alts Asia

Management: Aradhna Dayal, CEO, and Founder

URL: accessalts.com

Imagine an individual applying for a job, not for the required position but the CEO of the company, and gets the job. It is highly strange to witness such an instance, but never implausible. This incredible excerpt of life belongs to Marika Gederte, Founder of the International College of Cosmetology. It requires strong determination and belief in oneself, to take a risk and pursue one’s desire. These are the traits of a true entrepreneur, and Marika remarkably portrayed the spirit of entrepreneurship. Her risk-taking ability and perseverance often assisted her in grasping various opportunities in her professional journey. Even while applying for the job, she made an alliance with her courage and proved the fact that no dream is unrealistic. “Looking back, I would say that I am not afraid of safe and completely opposite solutions,” she proudly mentions.

Marika belongs to a small but extremely beautiful country with less than two million inhabitants—Latvia. From a very young age, she desired to attain financial independence and was determined to put efforts to engender it. She firmly believes that being open to learning new things is the key factor that helps an individual to grow. She has completed 25 years as an entrepreneur still she studies hard to educate herself with new things. “At the moment I call myself an eternal student,” she adds. “The more I study, the more I realize that I know so little and that this eternal engine makes me achieve higher and higher goals in my business as well.”

She founded International College of Cosmetology almost 20 years ago; currently, she co-owns it and prepares specialists in cosmetology and therapeutic massage within two and three years. Her clients at the college are students or people who purposefully want to take up the profession and work in beauty or health care. She has spent many years building her impeccable reputation and developing credibility in her work. It is significantly important to her as she wants to be a good example and inspire others through her work. Moreover, receiving the first international prestigious award from UK, from the Confederation of International Beauty Therapy and Cosmetology, as the best new school, she began to believe that her work is making a difference. Her company also received an award for diversity management.

“Such recognitions are incredibly motivating to continue the great work with even more passion,” she says with relief. She believes that she and her team are setting benchmarks for education in beauty and wellness. In 2019, as the only educational institution and company in Latvia her company also received an international award – EFQM Committed to Excellence Certificate and Sustainability Silver Award. Meanwhile, she has received the Human Development Award given by the Civic Alliance in Latvia together with the American Chamber of Commerce and the U.S. Embassy in Latvia in the category of Social Responsibility for organizing various charity events. She earned these recognitions by overcoming all the obstacles. The main challenge she generally faces is to build a loyal team that believes in her ideology and has the same “drive” to be better. She claims herself an incorrigible optimist individual who constantly expands the comfort zone of her and her team. “But not everyone is into force. I am also inspired by the staff and individuals and it creates mutual synergy,” she adds.

Changing the whole world is very difficult, so Marika’s recommendation for the industry is to focus on one thing and to do it well, at least within the organization. She exemplifies that they must start with respecting equal employment opportunities, the right to education and training. “Unequal career and educational opportunities, constrained by pregnancy, maternity and childcare responsibilities, and the increased risk of poverty associated with unemployment, especially for women of pre-retirement and retirement age, are having a negative impact on the situation of women in the labor market. Age, disability, and ethnicity are additional aspects that can affect women’s and men’s opportunities in the labor market and thus their quality of life in general,” she adds.

She suggests everyone must discover a new life balance as pandemic has not only disrupted business but also created new business models. Thus, one must dwell towards adaptation and provide new solutions to sustain in the market. On contrary, she also believes that pandemic in-a-way helped individuals to re-focus on their approach and set new ambitions and goals. Being a passionate creator of companies and projects, she feels very inspired by new things. For prospect, she wants to focus more on mentoring, traveling and blogging, real estate, and investing. “I don’t want to take on such a huge emotional responsibility anymore, but think more about myself, about my health, sports discipline, and new goals,” she quotes.

You must least ‘Try’   

She recommends both men and women aspiring entrepreneurs to ‘try’. One is not aware of his or her destiny, but one must try tirelessly for his/her ambition. Further, she states, “once as a mentor, I tried to tell young entrepreneurs about my mistakes, but then I realized that the path is different for each of us and the best teacher has his own mistakes.” She believes, though good education is necessary it is not the sole deciding factor of attaining success in entrepreneurship. Moreover, she feels important to believe in what you are doing, to find a way of doing business that helps consumers solve their problems, be in the right place at the right time and take risks. “As we say, those who do not take risks do not drink champagne,” she concludes.

Women empowerment has always been a key aspect while updating plans and policies for the growth and development of any nation. In India, NGOs have remarkably contributed to facilitating the process of empowerment among women. In this issue, we take pride in featuring an exceptional female leader who has worked tirelessly over the course of the last 10 years to develop programs that would meet the challenge of domestic violence and sex trafficking in India, by serving women in India by working for their education and empowerment and ensuring that they are given the choice to live a life free from abuse, violence and exploitation.

Meet Elca Grobler, the Founder of My Choices Foundation, an MBA graduate from South Africa, who feels compassionate about justice and giving back to the community by empowering women. After completing 15 years in the Financial Services sector, she decided to utilize her skills and experience to empower developing communities, joining Opportunity International Australia—a world leader in micro-finance in the developing world. She spent 3 years with the organization and shifted to India in the year 2011. There she met many women across India to understand their situations and needs. With every passing-by story and experience, she realized that she was stepping towards the greater good, hence she laid the foundation of My Choices Foundation. The first initiative taken by the foundation was

Operation Peacemaker. This initiative focuses its efforts on counseling, and resolving violence through mediation (counselling) and including every member of the family, including the perpetrator, in the process of establishing peace. Since its inception, My Choices Foundation has grown and established Operation Red Alert, addressing sex trafficking and the exploitation of women and girls in India. It commissioned an 18-month research paper (that won the ESOMAR Best Paper of the Year Award 2015-16), doing landscape analysis and studying the behavioral aspects on both the supply and demand side of sex trafficking.

My Choice Foundation 

My Choices Foundation is a non-profit organization based in India that aims to witness a transformation of the nation into a safe, peaceful, and flourishing place for women and girls, by empowering them with the awareness, education, and support they need to become their change agents. It addresses two of the most pervasive and intractable human rights abuses, domestic violence and anti-sex trafficking, through their two initiatives – Operation PeaceMaker and Operation Red Alert.

Operation PeaceMaker aims to stop domestic violence while promoting gender equality through sustainable grassroots programs that empower girls and women while addressing the issue of domestic violence by providing free counseling, legal and safe home services through their 5 counseling centres and 11 regional partners across India. Customized awareness programs are also conducted based on the demographics to be addressed.

Operation Red Alert created the Safe Village Program that aims at sensitizing at-risk community members about human trafficking risk factors, creating awareness about ways to prevent sex trafficking, sustaining the awareness, and empowering the community through Rakshaks, Nodal Teachers, and Gram Mitra concepts. Focused on rural India, this program includes innovative tools such as comic books and a national helpline. It is tailor-made with special messaging for each of the stakeholders to speak to their particular situation and provide powerfully relevant information and motivation to be safe. Moreover, The Safe Village Program uses an innovative technology called the Village Mapping Tool that helps identify villages that are at high risk for being on the radar of traffickers.

Moreover, My Choices Foundation is an 80% women-led organization and has a 100% women-led board. Equalizing any industry and making it more balanced, as it believes in empowering women and offering them the chances that they deserve.

Desire to Speak for the Oppressed 

Elca’s deep desire to speak for those that are most oppressed and for those that cannot speak for themselves was fueled by her experiences working in micro-finance. This desire for social justice, specifically for women and girls, acted as a seed that had grown in her heart for many years which eventually paved the path for the foundation. My Choices Foundation helps all women, children, and families get a life free from abuse and exploitation. It firmly believes that people will only attend counseling or awareness sessions if they trust the organization. “The leadership that they employ ensures that a culture of trust is instilled in the rest of the team and through this, they build their faith with the clients that they meet,” Elca adds.

Yet, the work done at My choices Foundation is difficult as the work deals with immense pain & suffering. “In the process hearts are repeatedly broken with grief that sits deep in the souls,” Elca states. But investing one’s energy in such work also makes one attain courage and the amazing thing about courage is that it is contagious. Elca believes that courage can change families and communities and villages and cities. For example, the courage of a 14-year old that phones the helpline, stating that her parent is forcing her into a child marriage, and can we please help her. It is this type of courage, resilience and beauty of these girls that inspires Elca and her team to get up every morning to stand up for them, especially when they can’t do it for themselves. “To transform themselves, but also those around themselves,” she continues.

Elca Grobler and her team have been given the privilege to step into thousands of families’ lives and help them slowly repair the broken pieces, and replace violence with peace. She states that most women do not have a choice to live a life without abuse and exploitation. They have to go back to their homes for the sake of the children and that displays true courage. The spirit of the human soul that does not give up can be reflected in the schoolgirl’s absolute commitment and courage to look after one another and not make the same mistake that their mothers made. “In most cases, this is not the mistake of the mothers, since they were born in this situation,” she states. “But to think about a girl who dreams of a better life and is willing to learn and sit by candlelight only to have a better future and be educated.”

Future Endeavours

My choices foundation has successfully completed 10 years and is currently operating in 10 states. Further, she desires to deepen and expand the work of their two national helplines dealing with domestic violence and prevention of sex trafficking respectively.

Furthermore, she and her team envision giving women and children the choice to live lives free from abuse, violence, and exploitation. Their work has been impacting many lives thus, they are determined to grow in the next 10 years and ensure to make India free of inhuman activities. “Overcoming abuse doesn’t just happen, it takes positive steps every day. Let today be the day you start to move forward,” she concludes.

“We have to be willing to do uncomfortable things, to do inconvenient things—that’s when the world changes,” Bryan Stevenson

Awards & Accolades: 

• 2015, eNGO Jury Special Mention for Women Empowerment. Awarded for online campaigning against gender-based violence.
• 2016, Social Media for Empowerment Award Grand Jury Award for Women Empowerment. Awarded for the #Respect2Protect campaign.
• 2016, ESOMAR Paper of the Year Award for excellence in Market Research. Awarded for the Red Alert Research Paper exploring the determinants of male behavior perpetuating sex trafficking.
• 2017, 50 Most Impactful Social Innovators Award
• 2017, AGSM Alumni Award for Social Impact and Public Policy
• 2017, Notes to My Father, the world’s 1st VR documentary on sex-trafficking created in partnership with Oculus and Facebook made its world premier as an Official Selection at SXSW Film Festival.
• 2017 Grassroots Justice Prize for The #WalkTogether Prize for Courage
• 2018, Operation PeaceMaker chosen one of the top 5 ideas globally in the BridgeBuilder Challenge, organised by GHR Foundation
• 2018, Global title of one of the 100 Sparks of Hope, The Elders
• 2018, Elca Grobler was recognised as of the 100 most impactful CSR Leaders, by World CSR and World sustainability congress and World federation of CSR Professionals
• 2019, Elca Grobler was recognised as of the 100 most impactful CSR Leaders, by World CSR and World sustainability congress and World federation of CSR Professionals
• 2019, Winner of the Eastern Bhoomika 2019 Hyderabad edition for excellence in social work.
• 2020, Elca Grobler was recognised as one of the 101 Impactful Global CSR Leaders, by World CSR and World sustainability congress and World federation of CSR Professionals
• 2021, My Choices Foundation was awarded the 2021 Global Choice Award Certificate of Excellence for the Most Trusted NGO for Women Rights and Education
• 2021, Elca Grobler was awarded the International Achievers’ Award in Recognition of Outstanding Professional Achievement & Contribution in Nation Building by Indian Achievers’ Forum & CSR Tim

Please visit My Choices Foundation’s website for more information: https://mychoicesfoundation.org/