Ananya Birla

Founder

Founder of Mpower

Photo: Wikimedia (CC BY-SA)

Ananya Birla is the founder of Mpower [1], an Indian non-profit working on mental health from Mumbai.

Ananyashree Birla (born 17 July 1994) is an Indian businesswoman, musician and mental health campaigner. She is the eldest daughter of the industrialist Kumar Mangalam Birla and Neerja Birla.

With her mother she co-founded Mpower in 2016, an organisation working on mental health in India through clinical services, helplines, school and workplace programmes and public awareness campaigns. She serves as its co-founder and vice-chairperson.

Early life and education

Birla was born on 17 July 1994 in Mumbai and attended the American School of Bombay. She read economics and management at the University of Oxford.

Career

At seventeen Birla founded Svatantra Microfin, a microfinance company lending to women in rural India. She later founded the e-commerce ventures CuroCarte and Ikai Asai, of which she is founder and chief executive.

From 2016 she also worked as a singer-songwriter, releasing English-language singles including 'Livin' the Life' and 'Meant to Be', and collaborating with A. R. Rahman on 'Hindustani Way', India's cheer song for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Mpower grew out of a conversation with her mother while she was studying at Oxford. Founded in 2016 with the child psychiatrist Zirak Marker, it provides clinical care and counselling, runs outreach and education programmes, and operates a helpline; during the COVID-19 pandemic its 24-hour line received tens of thousands of calls in its first months. Birla established the Ananya Birla Foundation in 2020 and has served as an ambassador for the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Recognition

Forbes named Birla one of Asia's Women to Watch in 2016.[2][3][4][5]

Mpower

Mpower is a mental health initiative of the Aditya Birla Education Trust, running clinics, a 24x7 helpline, school and workplace awareness programmes, and its Mpower Foundation wing for affordable and free care across Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Pune, Delhi and other cities.

Mpower reports the following, on its own site: