Prateek and Prarthana’s journeys from the corporate world and volunteerism have converged at GiftAbled, where they are working to create more inclusive opportunities in education, livelihood and health for persons with disabilities.
For Prateek and Prarthana, the journey into the social sector did not begin with a conventional plan to build an organisation. Their paths emerged through years of corporate experience, volunteering and close engagement with communities.
Over time, both realised that disability remained deeply underserved and that meaningful inclusion required more than awareness. It needed sustained work across education, healthcare, skilling, livelihoods and employment.
Today, as co-founders of GiftAbled, they are working across several regions in India to create opportunities for persons with disabilities while also reaching marginalised communities in some of the country’s aspirational districts.
Prateek: From Corporate Technology To Social Impact
Prateek spent around 15 years working in the corporate technology space before moving into the development sector. His first engagement with social work began through weekend volunteering, where he also met Prathana.
The experience gradually made him realise that he wanted to move beyond volunteering and undertake deeper, cause-driven work. However, financial commitments meant that the transition could not happen immediately.
After being involved with GiftAbled part-time, Prateek eventually joined the organisation full-time in 2017. GiftAbled’s early work focused on persons with disabilities and how their skills could be connected with wider markets. One of its first projects was conceived as an e-commerce marketplace where products made by people with disabilities could reach customers more effectively.
The idea was to bring together different non-profits while providing support in areas such as supply chains, technology, product design and marketing.
But as the organisation gained more experience, Prateek says its understanding of the challenges on the ground also evolved.
The focus gradually expanded beyond products and marketplaces towards a broader approach to inclusion, covering education, livelihood, health and employability.
Prarthana: From Volunteering To A Life In The Social Sector
Prarthana’s transition into the social sector was also shaped by years of community engagement. She spent around two decades in the social sector and had opportunities to work with thousands of volunteers and hundreds of NGOs. During that period, she also met Prateek and developed a deeper understanding of how disability often remained at the bottom of social priorities.
Her own experience of learning sign language helped her recognise how disconnected society could be from people with disabilities.
She recalls that when she would introduce herself in sign language to a deaf person, one of the first questions she would often hear was whether she herself was deaf or had someone in her family who was deaf.
For Prarthana, that response reflected a wider divide between people with disabilities and the rest of society.
The journey that began with creating awareness gradually moved towards building more inclusive communities and opportunities.
Today, GiftAbled works across health, education and livelihood, with a particular focus on persons with disabilities and communities that have historically had limited access to opportunities.
From Awareness To Opportunity
GiftAbled currently reaches around 2,000 to 3,000 beneficiaries every year through its different programmes.
Its work spans four broad areas: inclusive education, early intervention, livelihood and vocational training, and employability.
The organisation provides vocational training and skilling opportunities for young adults with disabilities who may not have completed formal education.
For those who have completed their education, including graduation or at least Class 12, GiftAbled works on employability and upskilling for technology and non-technology roles.
The organisation also works in early intervention and inclusive education, bringing together different aspects of support rather than treating disability as a single-issue concern.
Its work currently extends across Bengaluru and Hosur in the South and Gurgaon in the North. It also has a major presence in four aspirational districts of Uttar Pradesh: Bahraich, Shravasti, Sitapur and Balrampur.
Why Livelihood Needs To Go Beyond Training
For Prateek, one of the biggest lessons from working in aspirational districts has been that training alone cannot guarantee sustainable livelihoods.
He points to vocational programmes involving skills such as stitching, bag making and soft-toy production. While training can provide people with skills, the absence of market linkages can prevent those skills from translating into stable livelihoods. This led GiftAbled to consider a different approach.
Instead of stopping at training, the organisation began exploring production units that could create employment opportunities for the people it trained.
The model is not restricted to persons with disabilities. People from marginalised communities, including those from disadvantaged social backgrounds, also participate in training and production.
In aspirational districts, Prateek says, livelihood opportunities can be limited even for people without disabilities. Creating local opportunities, therefore, becomes important for communities as a whole.
For GiftAbled, inclusion is consequently not only about helping individuals access training. It is also about creating the economic ecosystem required for those skills to have lasting value.
Reaching Communities Where Opportunities Are Limited
GiftAbled’s work in Uttar Pradesh’s aspirational districts reflects its attempt to take social-sector interventions beyond major urban centres.
Prateek believes that organisations need to engage more deeply with places where socioeconomic indicators remain low rather than concentrating only on large cities, where interventions can sometimes generate large numbers without necessarily changing the realities of underserved communities. For GiftAbled, the next phase is therefore not about rapidly expanding its geographical footprint.
Instead, the organisation plans to deepen its work within the regions where it is already present over the next two to three years.
The focus is on making existing interventions more meaningful and strengthening their impact across education, livelihood and health.
When Children With Disabilities Are Left At Home
Prarthana’s experience has also brought her face-to-face with the realities confronting families of children with disabilities in rural and underserved communities.
She describes situations where parents, particularly those dependent on farming and daily livelihood activities, struggle to care for children with disabilities while also earning an income.
In some cases, children have been tied with ropes and left at home while parents go out to work. GiftAbled has identified hundreds of such children who have subsequently come to its centres.
For Prarthana, these experiences reinforce why disability cannot be addressed only through awareness campaigns. Families need practical support, children need access to learning and intervention, and communities need opportunities to become more inclusive.
The Challenge Of Building Inclusion
The work also raises a larger question about how disability is perceived within society. Prarthana’s journey with sign language showed her how people often divide society into “their” world and “our” world, separating persons with disabilities from the mainstream.
GiftAbled’s work attempts to challenge that separation by creating spaces where inclusion becomes part of everyday life.
Whether through education, vocational training, employment or community engagement, the organisation’s approach is to create opportunities that allow people with disabilities to participate rather than remain on the margins.
From One Marketplace To A Wider Inclusion Ecosystem
GiftAbled’s journey has evolved considerably from its initial idea of creating a marketplace for products made by people with disabilities.
Today, its programmes span inclusive education, early intervention, vocational training, employability and health across multiple regions.
Yet Prateek and Prarthana’s focus remains on deepening this work rather than simply increasing the number of locations.
Their experience has shown them that meaningful social change cannot always be measured only through the number of people reached. It also depends on whether people gain access to sustainable opportunities and whether systems around them become more inclusive.
For GiftAbled, that means connecting training with livelihoods, education with inclusion and awareness with meaningful participation.
The Logical Indian Perspective
Prateek and Prarthana arrived at the social sector through different routes. Prateek moved from a long corporate career in technology into full-time social impact work, while Prarthana’s journey grew through years of volunteering and engagement with communities and NGOs.
Their experiences eventually converged around a shared understanding: inclusion cannot remain an idea discussed only in policy rooms or awareness campaigns. It has to reach classrooms, workplaces, families and communities.
Through GiftAbled, their work is centred on creating opportunities for persons with disabilities while also addressing the wider socioeconomic challenges faced by marginalised communities.
Their journey is a reminder that inclusion is not simply about giving people access to services. It is about creating the conditions in which people can learn, work, earn and participate with dignity. And sometimes, meaningful change begins by asking a simple question:
What would it take to ensure that disability never determines the opportunities a person can access?
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