Jindal Foundation, one of India’s foremost integrated steel producers, launched its first campaign, #HerKadam in November 2025. The campaign was conceived to spotlight and celebrate the real impact of the Foundation’s long-standing work with women and girls, and the communities it has reached over the years. To date, these interventions have touched the lives of over 2.7 million women and girls across India, spanning health & nutrition, education and skills, livelihoods & entrepreneurship, and sports.
Medianews4u.com caught up with Rishi Pathania, Vice President & CSR Head, Jindal Foundation who has nearly three decades of experience in social impact leadership. He talks about the plans to strengthen the campaign this year.
Q. Could you talk about the larger vision of Jindal Foundation? What goals have been set for 2026 and what is the game plan going to be to get there?
At Jindal Foundation, we believe in creating lasting change and not just delivering outcomes. We aim to be an organisation that is truly creating value for the people associated with it and women are at the heart of this mission. This year, we are planning on strengthening our existing programmes and deepening reach across rural and underserved geographies, particularly in Odisha, Chhattisgarh, and Jharkhand.
In 2025, we launched HerKadam, our first-ever campaign dedicated to celebrating women and advancing their empowerment across the Foundation’s diverse initiatives. Looking ahead, our focus is on continuing the campaign by strengthening more women through livelihood opportunities, improving access to quality education and preventive healthcare, and nurturing resilient community institutions that can sustain progress independently. We will prioritise stronger grassroots partnerships and aligning our efforts India’s broader development goals to create measurable and lasting impact.
Q. How will marketing activities done in 2026 drive this vision forward?
Everything that we do leading up to realising our vision of is a support-function, including marketing. For us, the primary focus will always remain on meaningful, on-ground interventions and measurable change within communities.
Our communication efforts are therefore centered around creating visibility for the Foundation and its programmes, behavioral change and transparently reporting how the needle has moved. The intent is not marketing for its own sake, but to amplify impact, encourage participation, and build trust.
Q. The aim of #HerKadam is to move beyond transactional interventions to build a collective, community-led movement where women define priorities, lead action, and support one another. What does this entail and how challenging is the execution going to be?
Transactional interventions are quite important but limited in terms of creating a ripple effect of change. What Jindal Foundation aims to do with #HerKadam is to build a movement where women are agents of change and not just at the receiving ends of our programmes.
In practical terms, this means getting in touch with communities to understand what it is that women from underserved sections truly need and following it up with a systemic structure where power shifts to these women to be able to create the change they want – this creates a circle of accountability and action that is self-sustaining.
In our existing framework, one example of peer leadership within Jindal Foundation’s livelihood initiatives can be seen in the Jan Jeevika Kendras, where women who have successfully established microenterprises go on to mentor and recruit other women from their villages. This peer-led model fosters confidence, collective ownership, and ensures that livelihood opportunities expand across the community rather than remaining individual successes.
This comes with its own set of challenges, primary out of which is trust-building within communities. However, owing to Jindal Foundation’s presence in regions such as Odisha and Chhattisgarh for over a decade, we have been able to localize support and create a community-led, responsive roadmap for our initiatives.
Q. The focus is on being a long-term behavioural change platform rather than a campaign that has short-term visibility. Why is this important?
The challenges that we are addressing are not momentary. They are long-term challenges that have been intrinsically carried forward through generations. At its core, behavior change means we are changing beliefs, social norms and habits that keep women from realising their full potential, and this required repeated and patient effort from our end to make mental acceptance for Jindal Foundation is the minds of the community members we are working with and for. Needless to say, this is not something that short-term commitment can achieve.
This approach also has implications on how we measure success. For campaign like #HerKadam, we track and celebrate the progress against clear indicators, including increased women’s economic participation, improved health outcomes, and positive shifts in is attitude towards girl’s education, etc.
Q. What are the kinds of long-term shifts in mindsets, access, and opportunity is the activity looking to drive?
We are working towards creating shifts in these three interconnected aspects. Starting off with mindset – keeping women’s roles largely domestic is not uncommon for our society. We often place women in subordinate roles because as a patriarchal society we have been told that inexperience or lack of knowledge is intrinsic to women. We are trying to change this by enabling women through skill development and knowledge creation through programmes like Jan Jeevika Kendras and Aakriti Production Centers under #HerKadam.
Access is another gap that we are hoping to bridge. It is not just physical access to resources – it is also knowing where these resources exist and how to leverage them. Our programmes Vatsalya and Kishori bring quality healthcare to women where we are, making services accessible, affordable, and easier to navigate, while also building awareness and confidence to seek timely care.
Q. What was the kind of brainstorming done with the creative agency? What was the brief given?
Prior to involving an agency, we did a rigorous internal assessment of our programmes, field reports and beneficiary accounts to ensure that our brief is built on authentic narratives. Along with our partners at AVIAN We., we wanted to create something that could interest people at a national-level and yet, be contextually rooted in the communities we serve. We worked together to construct #HerKadam keeping two pillars at the forefront – dignity and authenticity.
The logo and visual identity came from same thinking. “HerKadam” represents a step forward, but also a sense of collective momentum- progress that is led by women themselves. We kept the design simple and grounded on purpose, because we wanted it to reflect the quiet strength, resilience, and steady forward movement of the women at the heart of the campaign.
Q. What is unique about the brand film’s storytelling?
An outstanding feature of our film is that none of it is fictionalised. We haven’t used any actors, artists or external support of any kind. Every visual, face and frame in the film is a part of the #HerKadam movement on ground. This authenticity is not something that we can manufacture, it comes naturally.
The film doesn’t follow one single impact story – it carries viewers through a mosaic of narratives to create a consolidated imagery of collective progress. This design was deliberate, with the intention to showcase the foundational premise of #HerKadam – that women’s progress is not an individual phenomenon, but a community effort.
Q. What role does social media like WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube play in bringing real stories and experiences to a wider audience?
Social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Instagram, and YouTube play an important role in amplifying grassroots stories beyond geographical boundaries. They allow us to share real experiences in accessible, visual, and relatable formats, helping audiences connect more deeply with the people and communities behind the initiatives.
At the same time, these platforms enable two-way engagement- allowing stakeholders, partners, and supporters to interact, respond, and become part of the larger conversation around impact and inclusion.
Q. Could you talk about on-ground activities that will be done with grassroots partners, community workers, and local organisations?
Our on-ground approach starts with working closely with grassroots partners, community workers, and local institutions so that what we design is actually relevant and sustainable. We conduct capacity-building workshops, skill and livelihood training, health and awareness camps, and work extensively on strengthening SHGs and community mobilisation.
We also identify and support local leaders and women champions so that the programmes are owned by the community itself and continue to grow even after a specific intervention phase is over.
Q. How will the Foundation ensure measurable, meaningful outcomes from marketing activities done in 2026?
Honestly, for us, measurement isn’t just about likes or shares on social media. Of course, we look at engagement to understand how far the message has reached, but our real accountability is to the communities we work with.
We try to see whether our communication is actually supporting on-ground programmes, whether it’s helping build trust, bringing more people into our initiatives, strengthening partnerships, or creating awareness that leads to real action.
Q. Is cultural resistance a big challenge in working at this scale?
Absolutely! And it’s multifaceted and appears overtly or indirectly depending on the geography. Through the years, we’ve learned that we cannot rush confronting cultural resistance. We have to work with the community to create tangible proofs to change their points of view. When people see others like themselves succeeding with the help of our programmes, they are more likely to let go of their reservations and become more acceptable.
Take the example of Adyasha, a school girl from the village of Brahmansahi in the Angul Block, who has benefitted greatly from our Kishori Express programme, which is essentially a mobile adolescent health clinic. She was struggling in school, trying really hard but was just not able to cope. When the health van came to her school to conduct check-ups and counselling for girls, she found out she was severely anaemic. Once she started getting the right guidance and support from the ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activist), Anganwadi workers, and counsellors, her health improved, and so did her confidence.
Today, she’s the one speaking to other girls about nutrition and hygiene. When parents and teachers see that kind of transformation in a girl from their own village, attitudes begin to change on their own.
