Ananthalakshmi

Founder

Ananthalakshmi is the founder of EquiBeing Foundation (2022)[1], an Indian non-profit working on disability, sports and education from Bengaluru.

Ananthalakshmi, who also uses the initials AL, is an Indian disability rights campaigner and former human resources executive who founded the EquiBeing Foundation in 2022. The Bengaluru-based organisation works with blind and visually impaired people in India through education, sport, health and livelihood programmes, alongside research, advocacy and community outreach.

She grew up knowing that a macular degenerative condition would eventually cause her to lose her sight. She has said that her own experience and her doctoral research led her to the view that blindness is not an affliction to be pitied but a source of strength.

Early life and education

Refused admission to study science because of her visual impairment, Ananthalakshmi took an undergraduate degree in arts, followed by a master's degree in business administration. She later completed a PhD at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai, researching blind achievers and the barriers they overcome.

Career

Ananthalakshmi spent more than two decades in corporate human resources, working at Philips, Honeywell, Ingersoll Rand and Fidelity Investments, where she was a vice-president for human resources.

She established EquiBeing as a trust in 2022, initially with the co-founder Durga S., a chartered accountant and former classmate; Indumathi Sreenivasan, a former civil servant and financial controller of the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, later joined as a co-trustee. The foundation works to remove barriers facing blind and visually impaired people and to change public perceptions of blindness, and describes its aim as systemic and societal change rather than welfare.[2][3][4]

EquiBeing Foundation

EquiBeing Foundation, established in 2022 by Dr Ananthalakshmi Venkitarman in Bengaluru, works to maximise the potential of blind and visually impaired people through education, sport, health and livelihood programmes. It partners with government blind schools across southern India and has signed MoUs with national sports bodies to promote para sports.

EquiBeing Foundation reports the following, on its own site: