Stories of Skilled Women from Tata STRIVE

Tata STRIVE is the CSR initiative of the Tata group which has made a huge impact on the lives of youth by offering scalable and sustainable skill development courses. They believe that for effective development of the youth, the faculty needs to be able to integrate the technical skills with people skills while delivering training. Here are some successful people who have experienced growth in their careers after completing the training programs offered by Tata Strive.

Kajal Sahu, Retail Sales Associate,  Mohali

Kajal Sahu had enrolled at TSSDC Mohali for training as a Retail Sales Associate. She’s from an orthodox family residing in a locality called Maloya in the heart of Chandigarh. She’s the eldest of two and lives in a joint family. Her mother is a homemaker and her father collects & sells scrap on a daily basis. He earns a meagre income and usually spends what they earn, on the same day.

The community at Maloya, mostly comprises of people engaged in daily labour. Children start working at a young age in factories or local food outlets and usually the enrolment ratio in higher education is low (Below 20%). Pursuing higher education or working in a corporate setting is a concept unknown to the people from her community. Convincing her family to get her enrolled into a professional course was an uphill task. She chose to pursue the Retail Sales Associate Programme at Tata Strive as she believed that it would help her to utilize her skills and groom her for a professional career.

Initially, due to her introvert nature and background, she was hesitant to speak and participate in activities. She had low self-esteem and confidence, but put in efforts towards improving the same. Gradually, through the course she started displaying excellent analytical and problem solving skills. Her confidence increased and she started performing well. She always saw things from a different perspective which helped her in developing good interpersonal skills.

Post her training, she got two offers one from Trent (Westside) for their premium outlet at Elante Mall (the biggest in Chandigarh) at a package of 96000 PA and the other as a Customer Service Specialist with Infinity Retail (Croma) at a package of 1.61 LPA. She chose to join the latter and is currently undergoing formal process training in Delhi. Her success also motivated her friends and family to come out of the stereotypical roles and think about sustainable livelihoods.