Our Trustees
Prarthana Kaul
Co-Founder and Managing Trustee
Mrs. Prarthana Prateek Kaul Prarthana Prateek Kaul, as Co-Founder of GiftAbled, a renowned social enterprise dedicated to fostering an inclusive society, has significantly impacted the lives of thousands of Individuals with Disabilities and the under privileged across India. Through initiatives such as Supply Chain Diversity,LearnAbled, EmployAblitlity, Audits, Meaningful Employee Engagements,Immersive Tranings, she has facilitated sustainable livelihoods for numerous individuals. With a background in companies like IBM and iVolunteer, Prarthana brings a wealth of experience in cause marketing, motivational training, and disability inclusion consulting to multinational organizations.
She has conducted extensive sensitization workshops Globally on topics including Disability Inclusion, Sign Language, Braille, Volunteer Management, and Meaningful Employee Engagement, engaging with over 30,000 volunteers and hundreds of non-profits. Prarthana is a sought-after speaker at prestigious institutions like IIT Chennai, TISS Mumbai, NMIMS, IIM Bangalore, where she shares insights on inclusion and volunteering.
Her dedication to empowering People with Disabilities has earned her numerous accolades, including Social Entrepreneur of the Year by Namma Bengaluru Foundation (2016), Community Service Award by Rotary Bangalore Centennial(2017), Best Social Entrepreneur Award by Hand in Hand (2018), Top 3 social enterprise in the country by IIM Calcutta Innovation Park as part of Tata Social Enterprise Challenge (2019). She has also been honored with the Social Innovation Leadership Award at the National CSR Leadership Congress & Award by World CSR Day (2021 & 2023).
Additionally, Prarthana has contributed her expertise as a board member of non-profit organizations like Om Ashram and as a life skills trainer for students at Cheshire Homes. She has led workshops for corporate giants like Accenture,Amadeus, Capgemini, Cisco, Fujitsu, Google, IBM, Intuit, Intel, LinkedIn, Microsoft,Morgan Stanley, Pfizer, Shell, Telstra, UBS, Visa, Vijaya Bank and Walmart to name a few, advocating for diversity and inclusion in the workplace.
Prateek Kaul
Co-Founder and Trustee
Prateek Kaul is Supplier Diversity and Accessibility Evangelist. He is co-founder of GiftAbled, a leading social enterprise in the space of Disability & Inclusion. The focus of his work in recent years has been around livelihood sustenance of People with Disability–engagement of millions of People with Disability productively through self-employment. Prateek believes that empowering the physically and the intellectually challenged to work from their own sheltered environment, irrespective of an urban or rural setting is the way to achieve economic inclusion. GiftAbled, shares and supports best practices in corporate houses to implement inclusive procurement.
The other area of interest is providing a platform to organizations to become Accessible – in terms of products, infrastructure and services provided via Website/App. This is not only to meet compliance standards but, most importantly, to reach out to millions of potential customers, candidates, suppliers, employees who stand for Inclusion. Prateek has varied corporate experience of decade and a half and has worked in Idea Cellular, Tech Mahindra, Birlasoft and Target India. He has been a volunteer supporting various causes for more than a decade. He pursues a vision of a world evolving in to an Inclusive one. His efforts and contribution towards the empowerment of People with Disabilities, has won him various awards and accolades, including:
Ravi Valdiya
Trustee
“Ravi Valdiya is a freelance Photographer with an engineering education and experience of more than a decade in the corporate sector. During his job, he started volunteering for various causes with different NGOs in Bangalore. At that time, Ravi realized the effectiveness of photography to raise social awareness and thus started using his hobby of Photography to capture stories conveying social issues.
At Present Ravi has volunteering experience close to 12 years with around 15+ organizations working for different causes. Ravi is also a Photography trainer and has been conducting Photography workshops for students with Hearing Impairment, he is also one of the trainers at Eka educational and charitable trust teaching photography to the kids with learning and developmental delays.”
Asha Shetty
Trustee
Asha Shetty is a business planning analyst working at IBM with experience of over 15 years. She started volunteering 15 years ago at different NGOs in Bangalore working for various causes specially visual impairment. She has also worked on Kannada translations for different NGOs and fund raising campaigns. She has 10 years of international experience working in Singapore and comes with a rich knowledge on the social sector there.
Mrinal Kumar
Trustee
Mrinal Kumar is the Chief Executive Officer of Sri Sapthagiri PU College, Tumkur. After graduating in Telecommunication Engg, he worked for 3 multinational IT companies over 9 years but with an intention to better guide the upcoming generation and innovate better education models, he resigned and shifted to Tumkur and joined Sapthagiri college as it's Management. Mrinal and his wife, Archana have truly re-engineered and revolutionized PU education in the last 8 years. Joining this college when it was at the brink of closure, today, Sapthagiri is the most respectable college in the district and is even producing multiple State Ranks year-on-year.