As Ravi Agarwal first entered a roadless tribal village near Udaipur, he saw women trekking kilometres for water, with no mobile networks or state presence in sight. “There I closely saw the crises of water, health, education, livelihood, almost everything was in crisis,” he recalls of those early years in tribal areas of  Rajasthan, where he lived and worked for nearly three years.

In that isolation, the idea that communities must themselves design and drive their development first took root for him.

From Ranchi To Rural India

Ravi’s journey into social impact did not begin with a grand plan but with circumstance. Ranchi, where he grew up and started his career, had few job opportunities, and the development space was dominated by NGOs long before CSR became a buzzword. He says it was “not a matter of choice but chance” that he entered the prestigious Xavier Institute for a social work course, a step that would anchor the next 22 years of his life in rural India.

His first posting took him to rural Rajasthan, into tribal hamlets far from Udaipur that government programmes struggled to even physically reach in 2003. There were no proper roads, almost no basic facilities, and certainly no mobile connectivity, forcing frontline workers like Ravi to understand problems at their hardest edge. “Then I entered the industry and realised the importance of this sector “, Ravi tells The Logical  Indian. Working with local people, he helped form people-led institutions where communities themselves would sit together, contribute, debate and decide on their own development priorities.

Seeing The World, Questioning India

Over the next two decades, Ravi worked with several national and International organisations, moving steadily into leadership roles in livelihoods and micro-enterprise development. His work also took him to multiple European countries, including the Netherlands, where he met ministers and observed how policy and participation intersect. He was struck by the presence of many young parliamentarians, and especially the visible role of women in government systems, a contrast he carries back as an aspiration for India.

Another key difference he noticed was how corporate participate in development dialogues in Europe. Any major developmental issue is often discussed in special committees that bring together government, corporate leaders, NGOs and civil society, with no single entity assuming it can take all the decisions alone. In India, he still sees very few such structured committees with corporate representation and has made it a personal mission to push for deeper corporate engagement in social issues.

Building FAME: A CSR Arm With Purpose

Today, Ravi heads FAME – the Foundation for Advancement of Micro Enterprises, the CSR arm of Aye Finance, which works to build the capabilities of unorganised micro entrepreneurs across India. Under his leadership, FAME runs cluster-based programmes in sectors such as sports goods and savouries in Meerut,  footwear in Agra and Dairy development across various geographies, with a sharp focus on women’s income generation.

Each year, the organisation plans to reach at least one lakh beneficiaries, designing models where women can be trained and earn within or near their homes, without having to navigate unsafe or unfamiliar workplaces.

The approach is anchored in a simple belief: “if women are properly trained in income-generating skills, the impact radiates across the entire family”, says Ravi. Many women in these clusters now earn between 4,000 and 5,000 rupees a month, and some manage 10,000 to 12,000, but Ravi is clear that the minimum target is for each woman to secure at least 4,000 rupees from home-based work.

He often connects this target to his own early memories of how difficult and yet how transformative an extra 4,000–5,000 rupees could be for a struggling household.

Women, Footwear, And A Crore-Rupee Turnaround

One of FAME’s most striking stories comes from outskirts of Agra, where a footwear training initiative with Muslim women started just three years ago. At the time, most of them were not earning anything, despite living in a city synonymous with the shoe industry. Ravi and his team rented basic machinery for about 400 rupees a month, found a good trainer, and began teaching women to stitch and assemble  men’s  footwear.​

That modest set-up has now grown into six centres, with machines owned by the organisation and more than 1,000 women trained so far. Many of them earn around 5,000 rupees a month each, and together they have collectively generated more than one crore rupees in income from this programme. “Now we have 6 centres that include machinery bought by us, and they are very happy that they are able to earn something in their homeground without having to go to far-off factories,” Ravi shares. The women are able to work from their own neighbourhoods instead of large factories, preserving both mobility and dignity, while anchoring economic power squarely within their communities.

From Namkeen To Footballs: Entrepreneurs In The Making

Beyond footwear, FAME has supported women who wanted to build businesses around skills they already possessed. In savoury-making, for instance, women who were confident about producing traditional namkeen were trained to manufacture in volumes, form a business, and FAME stepped in with marketing and branding support. The resulting label, “Diwa”, is being slowly nurtured with the audacious dream of making it “the new Haldiram,” with more than 20000 kilograms of namkeen sold in a single year so far.

In another cluster in Meerut, women are stitching footballs and earning between 3,000 and 4,000 rupees a month, adding yet another income stream to their households. For Ravi, the true metric of success is not just the number of programmes, but the visible changes they bring to people’s lives – women who can now decide what to buy for their children, families who can finally access basic services, and communities that start to see themselves not as beneficiaries but as entrepreneurs and decision-makers.

Data, Strategy And A New CSR Mindset

Ravi’s journey has unfolded alongside the evolution of CSR in India. Early on, most corporate saw CSR as a burden, an obligatory line item rather than a strategic responsibility. Over time, especially after the CSR mandate came into place, he has watched mindsets shift. “The earlier mindset was that a company is for profit only,” he tells. “There is now more focus on purpose and planet, that is also our responsibility.” For him, the CSR mandate was “much needed” and “very visionary” because it forced companies to think systematically about where and how they engage.

Today, top leadership teams are much more involved and curious about CSR strategy, and the work itself has become sharply organised, built around planning, clear strategies, verification and, crucially, data. Ravi notes how the sector was once casual about data, but is now far more focused on measurement, outcomes, impact and accountability. Within FAME, every new idea starts as a detailed plan, presented to the board and translated into what he calls a clear “theory of change” that links activities to tangible improvements on the ground.

Trust Deficits And Gender Barriers

Despite the sophistication of modern CSR, the frontline challenges in communities remain deeply human. When Ravi and his team enter a new area, the first question people often ask is: “Why are you here? What is your benefit?” Years of broken promises have created a trust deficit that cannot be bridged with presentations alone. The team spends time in meetings, conversations and sharing examples of earlier work, slowly demonstrating that their presence is about social obligation rather than hidden profit.

Gender norms add another layer of complexity. Many women need permission from their husbands or in-laws to join trainings; some men feel threatened or jealous if their wives begin to earn more. One practical solution has been to put women staff in front during field engagement and to start participants off with small earnings, 200 or 400 rupees—so families can see the benefit without feeling overwhelmed. Over time, as neighbours share success stories by word of mouth, trust grows and more women step forward.

No Exit, Only Long-Term Partnership

Ravi is wary of the idea that social sector organisations should “move out” quickly once a programme looks successful. Brands like Diwa, he points out, take years to build; meaningful market presence and stable livelihoods cannot be created and abandoned in a three-year cycle. Instead of an exit strategy, he speaks of sustained partnership with communities, where external interference reduces over time but does not disappear entirely.

As FAME scales rapidly, with donors and new partnerships coming onboard, Ravi keeps returning to the core questions that first confronted him in those roadless villages of Udaipur. “If strategy is made thoughtfully, then work can be seen on ground,” he says in conversation with The Logical Indian, emphasising that committees, data and plans only matter if they translate into  Income, livelihoods, justiceand dignity in the places that need them most. In those everyday transformations, from homemaker to artisan, from invisible worker to entrepreneur, he finds the true purpose that continues to guide his work.

The Logical Indian’s Perspective

Ravi Agarwal embodies the shift from grassroots grit to strategic impact, proving purposeful CSR can transform lives without fanfare. His work at FAME, empowering over a lakh women annually through home-based skills in footwear, namkeen, and sports goods, challenges the narrative that rural India is beyond reach, prioritizing data-driven “theory of change” and long-term partnerships over quick exits.