With her Mann Deshi bank and foundation, Chetna Sinha has turned sleepy, rural Mhaswad into a seat of entrepreneurial aspirations for women
Images: Mexy Xavier
Forbes India Leadership Award 2017: Entrepreneur With Social Impact
Vanita Pise’s single-storeyed house just off the village centre in Mhaswad, in Maharashtra’s Satara district, is abuzz on the eve of Diwali. Pise is on her feet delivering instructions and inspecting how a consignment of wheat has been packaged by a cluster of villagers milling around. Once done, she retires to an adjacent room and settles down in front of a machine into which she nimbly feeds sheets of paper, seven to a batch, to be cut and chiselled into plates. Sets of finished bundles are arranged in ceiling-high stacks around the room, perhaps dwarfed only by her entrepreneurial ambitions.
(This story appears in the 24 November, 2017 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)