Our Kayakalp Story

In 2014, as a freshman in my under-graduation course, I along with my batch mates were exploring opportunities to deploy the positive power of business to drive social impact. Tracing our urge to find communities in need, we set foot in a dingy lane in a peri-urban slum called ‘Kathputli colony, Shadipur Depot’ in West Delhi. With its dilapidated huts and open drains, Kathputli Colony (which takes its name from the Hindi word for wooden puppet) smelled like scores of slums dotted across Delhi. It harboured families of over 2000 traditional artists including puppeteers, sword swallowers, acrobats, magicians who had settled in this colony since half a century. While Kathputli colony’s residents performed at parties thrown by wealthy businessmen in five star hotels and for audiences around the world, they returned home to their windowless huts without running water and basic sanitation. This chance expedition to the ‘magical’ slum opened doors for my prolonged interest in a career in creative communications. 

Our puppeteers and my college seniors in Kathputli Colony

As a child, I vividly remember my grandmother narrating fables which intended to bust myths prevalent in our community. My grandmother’s fables introduced me to the power of storytelling and rekindled a hope in me that social evils and misinformation could be dispelled by compelling narratives that reached masses through powerful mediums. In 2014, I was presented with a unique opportunity to create a lasting impact in a resource-hungry colony using Indian puppetry which had 4000 years of remarkable history in storytelling through puppets. What started as an endeavour to provide tripartite impact to mere four puppeteers in Kathputli colony in terms of enhanced incomes through modern muppet shows, access to large clientele and increased standards of living through education and quality health care access, has moulded into a social venture impacting 40 puppeteers by performing 2000+ puppet shows reaching thousands of people across eight states of India in 2019. Issues concerning health care such as preventing infectious diseases, removing the stigma around mental health among youth and advocating for women’s rights to family planning services form the fulcrum of our muppet show messaging. Kayakalp – the muppetry venture that my team and I continue to run part-time along with our full-time jobs – inched me closer towards understanding the importance of simplifying science, especially public health concepts, for the masses (many of whom are illiterate).

My education at SRCC and my work on Kayakalp while in college, took me within the walls of the most reputed Government Ministries, halfway around the world to the infamous Netherlands, the gorgeous North-East, mind-blowing Sabarmati Ashram, busy Mumbai (of course) and to numerous conceptual and intellectual locations. My mentor at Kayakalp today is a man who runs a multi-billion dollar company. When I first met him, I thought that I'll probably faint or something, let alone having the courage to present an elevator pitch for Kayakalp in front of 2500 people at Ahmedabad. All of these are simply a small subset of the opportunities I have partaken of in my time continuing to work on Kayakalp. All of these have profoundly impacted my learning, changed my view of the world I live in every day, and improved my self-confidence—and I have certainly forged many friendships and mentorships along the way.

In the coming years, we would like to scale up Kayakalp into an organization that provides cost-efficient, scalable and quality solutions to a vast array of clients in communications, policy and advocacy. Our vision is to create an organization that adapts its service delivery to fit into a country’s communications  system, works in places where the need is the greatest, and is financially self-reliant. Through solutions focused at building government’s own capacity, rather than relying on or fuelling growth through external funders, the organization would provide solid analytical evidence to help inform government decisions and execute game-changing communications strategies that reach the last mile through creative mediums.

Please reach me at riagolecha@gmail.com incase you'd like to collaborate/ support us on our mission.

Ria Golecha Director, Kayakalp