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FOR DEEPA, SARANDEEP WAS A ‘SHOT’ IN THE ARM
HT MAN BEHIND SUCCESSFUL WOMEN AWARD
India’s first woman paralympics medalist in shot put Deepa Malik credits her mental conditioning coach Sarandeep Singh for being her source of motivation. The strong woman, despite being paralysed below the chest, made her country proud by winning 18 international medals.
“I am a person who believes in ability not disability. While going through these trials in my pursuit to represent India in the Paralympics at Rio and become the first woman to win a medal for the country, it was Sarandeep who guided me. His support to me as a mental conditioning coach instilled in me the belief and confidence that I could win a medal for my country,” she tells HT City.
Sarandeep went on to bag the first ‘The Man Behind Successful Woman’ award introduced this year at the HT Woman Award ceremony held in Lucknow recently.
“It was imperative for Deepa to get into her zone as she prepared to make India proud at the Rio Paralympics and win a medal for the country. I helped her focus before she event went into the event as most of the contests are won or lost in the mind even before the real event begins,” tells Sarandeep, a mind conditioning specialist. He also works with other sportspersons and celebrities to help them condition their mind to create and maintain a winner’s mindset.
Born in Jabalpur, he is currently based in Delhi while his mother comes from Meerut. “My father was in the Army so I have stayed all over India including Uttar Pradesh. I used to spend most of my holidays in Meerut in my mom’s house. I did my Economic Honours from Delhi
University and during my career worked with global Fortune 500 organisations in various leadership roles globally. In 2012, I came back to India when I decided to do the real ground work focusing on women empowerment,” says Sarandeep, who is a TED and an international keynote speaker. Last year, Sarandeep started Women Entrepreneurship and Empowerment (WEE) Foundation, an initiative of IIT Delhi, supported by government departments like DST, DIETY etc. “It started with the purpose of empowering women across the country. We have trained 10,000 women on various skills, teaching them na no entrepreneurship. Each of these women then teaches the next set of women in their ecosystem, creating further entrepreneurs,” tells Sarandeep who is chairman and CEO of the foundation.
About the work they do, he tells, “We teach women various things like organic farming, making sanitary pad, chutney’s, cotton and khadi block printing, making scents, agarbattis and poppadoms etc. But, there was a need to buy back their products rather than expecting them to sell their products to an agent. For this, we launched Swaroj (derived from Swabhiman and Rojgar). We will sell the products made by these women so that middlemen are removed and women make more money.”
In Uttar Pradesh, he is already working in Noida and has also started at his mother’s birthplace Meerut. “Most of the women trained by us are from UP so we will next expand to Saharanpur, Varanasi and Lucknow. In rural space, we have a vision to work in villages adopted by people so we can contribute for women in line with government’s Make in India and Skill India programme. We intend to training 1 million women from the state in the next 2 years and we seek the help of the government in this
It was imperative for Deepa to get into her zone as she prepared to make India proud at the Rio Paralympics and win a medal for the country SARANDEEP SINGH, COACH
regard.” Under Swaroj programme, he wants to run a place like Lucknow Haat on public-private-partnership model. On his experience at HT Woman Award ceremony he says, “I came to the event with my family and was very moved. After winning my resolve to work in Uttar Pradesh has strengthened and now we want to train the women here and make them economically independent. We want them to become strong that’s why we make direct transfers to their Aadhaarlinked bank accounts. Women entrepreneurs can truly make a difference to nation building.”