Kavita Sugandh was born to conservative Indian Sindhi parents in Raipur, India.
Kavita expressed her desire to become an entrepreneur at a young age. Due to the financial constraints in the family, Kavita started earning a living at the early age of 14 years. After the early death of her mother, Kavita was solely responsible to run the household and financially support her family. She funded her schooling through part-time work as a gardener for neighbourhood gardens and as a substitute kindergarten teacher.
Once she completed her Bachelor in Commerce from Nagpur University, Kavita also worked at a Hutchison Whampoa (Now Vodafone), gallery from 2001-2002 as a front desk customer care executive.
She decided to move on to higher sales roles and worked with MNCs such as Aditya Birla Group wherein she worked for 5 years from 2003-2006 gaining immense experience & Kotak Mahindra Bank for a year from 2006-2007.
After a career with traditional multi-national companies, in 2007 Kavita began her entrepreneur career in the human resources industry.
She was inspired to start Search Avenue Consultants to support her clients to find the right candidates across major departments and functions. The success she achieved in her first business venture was outrageous.
In two years, Kavita expanded her team of 5 employees to 50 employees, two offices in Pune with major companies as clientele.
In 2009, Kavita decided to deep dive into the fastest growing Direct Selling industry. She is one of the high net-worth women entrepreneurs in the Indian direct selling industry with markets in every continent across the globe.
Her vision is to create more women entrepreneurs in the direct selling field and fund businesses that are environment-friendly and help reduce carbon footprints.
Kavita Sugandh started her philanthropic journey in 2018 with her India-based non-profit organisation called ANANTA. The word ‘ANANTA’ means infinite in Sanskrit. The culture of ANANTA is deeply rooted in the philosophy to place Service Above Self.
Kavita’s philanthropic team in India along with many young and dynamic individuals have come together to create a positive change in society. The team at ANANTA has undertaken many social projects. Around 600 young aspiring and successful entrepreneurs in India focus on feeding hungry children and helping them dream of a better future.
Roti Ghar, which means ‘Food House’, is an initiative formed to cook and feed malnourished children. In collaboration with Khushiyaan Foundation in late 2018, the ANANTA team started feeding 400 kids in Mumbai slums. The number has increased to 1,500 children every day in Mumbai, Bangalore, Odisha, Hyderabad collectively. A campaign ‘Boondh’ to supply fresh drinking water every week to 600 families living in the slums of Airoli and Thane has also been initiated.
ANANTA has built the Aarna English High School in Thane for children from low-income families to pursue a better future. Currently, approximately 350 kids are enrolled, most of these children belong to minimum-wage labourers.
In 2019, after the devastation caused by the Fani Cyclone in Odisha, ANANTA launched a drive to plant and adopt 5,000 trees there. A similar greening project saw them plant and adopt 10,000 trees in Thane, Mumbai, and Delhi. ANANTA’s team of 250 volunteers have set a world record of planting 10,000 trees in less than 5 hours.
Menstruation is still a taboo in many households in India. Team ANANTA has started a campaign called MARD that provides eco-friendly sanitary napkins to more than 3,000 underprivileged young tribal women each month in association with Khushiyaan Foundation. Additionally, they have set up ‘Nari Pathshala’, to provide basic education and skills training to these women to find employment.
ANANTA and Khushiyaan Foundation work closely to provide food, water, and medical care to stray animals in Mumbai and Thane. Since early 2019, team ANANTA is dedicated to feeding stray animals that have currently reached 700 daily. These include dogs, cats, birds, cows, and more. Recently, Ananta started an animal shelter ‘Home for paws’ in Thane, Mumbai. Right now, there are 50 animals in the shelter.
Approximate 9 metric tons of garbage washes the Arabian shoreline in the city of Mumbai every year. This number keeps increasing. ANANTA joined hands with Mr Chinu Kwatra led - Beach Warriors, and together they have been successful in removing plastic and other forms of harmful wastes every month by cleaning up Dadar beach.
A recent addition to the above activities is a home for the elderly in Belapur. Ananta Khushiyaan Niwas shelters all senior citizens and elderly that need support to live their life normally and are abandoned by their own families. The shelter home gives them food, clothing and provides them with necessary amenities to live a happy life.
If you would like to support any of Kavita’s charity initiatives or require more information about them, please get in touch with a message.