Before Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant’s lavish and spectacular wedding in 2024, we saw another Ambani couple start their journey together with a splendid and grand wedding back in 2019, Aakash Ambani and Shloka Ambani. Soon after, Aakash became the Chairman of Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd, a post he holds to this day. Shloka, on the other hand, had a different vision and wanted to work in the social sector. She co-founded a non-profit organisation with Maniti Shah called ConnectFor, and in a recent podcast appearance, Shloka talked about her journey as a founder and what all goes into keeping a non-profit organisation afloat.
ConnectFor joins NGOs and with willing volunteers from all over the country. Their ‘About Us’ section of the website describes them as a “non-profit organisation that seeks to contribute to the developmental sector by facilitating engagement of the volunteering community, building capacity, and creating value-added services for NGOs”. Shloka made an appearance on Masoom Minawala’s YouTube channel and shared the exact vision behind her company and what all she has faced trying to run it. “ConnectFor is basically a Shaadi.com for volunteering. We started with a very simple idea, which was that there are lots of people who want to do good things but find it challenging to locate the means to do so. We, as a country, have so many NGOs, so we decided to become a bridge between the people who wanted to help and the ones who needed it.”
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Her co-founder added that the organisation has already made a sizable dent in the system with 1 lakh volunteers currently working with over 1000 NGOs. She shared that ConnectFor has, in fact, helped save non-profit organisations over Rs 21 crore since the start of their operations. When asked about her vision for the future or what the ‘north star’ of the company looks like, Shloka said, “Honestly, it keeps changing very quickly. Initially, we wanted to be a one-stop solution for Mumbai, but then we ended up expanding all over the country. Over time we realised the scope of corporate engagement, and all of these things have fallen into our laps, and now we are working with Amazon and so many unbelievable companies.”
Shloka admitted that even though the company has been making headway and getting better and bigger with each year, social work is hard, and the financial struggles that go hand in hand with it make it very difficult for people to actually go out of their way and help. She said, “Social work doesn’t pay well, not at all. It is very tricky to motivate people, and it comes down to the person’s intentions. To work in this sector, you have to be largely and intrinsically motivated, and you need to be someone who is inspired by the stories you see around yourself.” Shloka added that even though her work is a challenging endeavour, the support of her family and especially her husband has been a massive support system.
She said, “I think our biggest achievement is just surviving. For that we have to give full credit to our families, because none of this would have worked if they didn’t believe in our vision as much as we did. Our families and our husbands take great pride in our work, and our husbands boast about our work to their friends and colleagues.”