Beyond Friez - India's first 100% women operated multi outlet QSR brand.

In India, marginalized women face disproportionate barriers that includes lack of access to capital, digital tools, markets, and childcare thereby limiting their ability to pursue a livelihood. This results in them feeling extremely rejected and face social isolation hugely impacting their self-esteem resulting in low self-efficacy. This is exacerbated by skills gaps that inhibit a women’s full participation in economic life.

Globally, even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the difference in expected lifetime earnings between women and men amounted to US$172.3 trillion, according to the World Bank - nearly two times the world’s annual GDP. India ranks 142/146 in “economic participation and opportunity” sub-index in 2023, released by the World Economic Forum.

On other note, 1 out of 3 in India suffer from some form of depression. 53.7% of the total population constitutes India’s adolescent and youth with one student giving up his/her life every 42 minutes. Of the total number of suicides per year, a staggering 58% of them is due to mental illness. The reasons for this vary from culture conditioning, limited exposure to diversity, ineffective coping mechanism, fear of vulnerability and lack of emotional education and role models. Empirical research has shown that emotional wellbeing is central to overall health and often a deciding factor in their ability to experience life in a deep and beneficial way.

Beyond Friez is 100% women operated multi outlet QSR brand placed inside a safe and controlled environment of universities and colleges selling premium quality food at an affordable cost thereby providing a reliable, safe, and dignified livelihood to the marginalized and distressed women. The revenue generated through the cart sales in the locations not only support the livelihood of these women but also in conducting focused workshops to the students on emotional wellbeing at zero cost. The food outlet here plays a medium bringing in two communities together addressing the livelihood to women and emotional wellbeing of the youth.

We achieve this through meaningful collaborations with multiple government and non-government agencies. Firstly, we identify women from marginalized and distressed communities through credible partner NGOs. A one-on-one interview would be conducted post which the shortlisted ones in a batch of 20-25 would be sent to a two-week training program at IHM (Institute of Hotel Management, Hyderabad – a premier central government hotel management institute).

The training would be supervised by a senior faculty with a focus on both cooking and non-cooking skills which include cleaning & hygiene, necessary digital tools, customer service experience, upselling and cross selling skills. The women are incentivized with travel allowance and stipend which they can claim on successful completion of the training program. This ensures there are minimal dropouts through the trainings.

On successful completion of trainings, we employ the women to operate the QSR outlet placed inside universities and colleges. The women take care of the daily sales while the organization takes care of the back-end operations along with learning and development trainings to the women.

The revenue generated supports in conducting focused workshops on emotional wellbeing to the students at the university and college outlet locations at zero cost. We follow a customized curriculum catering to the youth with a focus on improving their self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, building good relationship skills and ability to take responsible decisions.

The students find these women to be great role models who took a brave call to build their lives and give life a second chance towards prosperity.

On the technology aspect, the women operate the outlet 100% digital. We use a cloud based Point of Sale (PoS) software for order and billing, Inventory, CRM, accounting & sale reports along with mobile data gathering app for HR, Operations & Procurement. 

Our solution primarily focuses on two communities –

• marginalized and distressed women - Lack of economic opportunities and decision-making power to rebuild their lives is only taking them decades behind from prosperity. The ripple effect is seen in lack of access to good health and wellbeing. Poor to no exposure to relevant work skills deprives them an opportunity to decent work and economic growth.
• Youth - Worldwide, 1 in 7 adolescents is estimated to live with a diagnosed mental health issue. In India, too, the numbers are similar. The National Mental Health Survey found that the prevalence of mental disorders in youth was 7.3% on average, but the comparable prevalence among them in urban metros was much higher at 13.5%. A more recent UNICEF survey found that 14% of teens and adults (aged 15-24) reported “often feeling depressed or having little interest in doing things.”

Beyond Friez is a unique initiative that address the needs of these two communities. We equip the necessary skills to women through certified training provide livelihood in a safe environment. Over time, we identify the necessary skills for them to grow through the rank and conduct learning and development programs. The spillover effect when women earn an income and control their earnings would be that their children are more likely to attend school, their families are healthier, their self-worth improves; and their household incomes grow—along with the global economy.

With over 1.4 billion people, India has the largest population of youth in the world. While the adolescent population is over 253 million, this substantial portion of India's demographic holds the future of its economic and developmental prosperity. Youth are the torchbearers of the country’s legacy. But to leverage this mileage, we must address our youth’s potential from risks, especially mental health risks.  Emotional wellbeing is an important aspect of young adult’s health. It can help them to persist through challenges, identify and manage emotions, and communicate effectively.

Each one in our team have built their careers in social sector by closely working with the targeted communities for over a decade now. Our founder and CEO, Susheel Chaitanya, worked closely with diverse communities in rural set up i.e. small land holding farmers and artisans towards their increase in their income. Later he was exposed to the lives of marginalized and distressed women in urban areas where he closely worked towards providing livelihood. On a parallel note, he has a personal interest in mental wellbeing as his mother was diagnosed with Schizophrenia during his growing up times. His strong will to understand his mother better led him to pursue a bachelor’s degree in psychology. He firmly believes that a safe space needs to be created for learning to improve one’s emotional wellbeing. 

As COO, Abhilash’s prior involvement with the communities hugely benefit the cause. He worked closely with marginal women communities in areas of health,education and economic upliftment. His understanding of communities motivates him to always look for human centered approach in solving a problem. 

As on today, we have interviewed 300+ women from which we have shortlisted 15 to be trained in both cooking and non-cooking skills at a premier hotel management institute.

Currently, the outlets are active in three locations catering to 10500+ students while providing employment to 9 marginalized and distressed women. At the same time, we conducted emotional wellbeing workshops to 500+ students. 

We are applying to sail through few roadblocks in our vision to grow to a sustainable impact driven model.

 Partnerships: We look to collaborate and work closely with like-minded organisations from your network who work in the same focus area as ours.

 Refine our narrative: We want to improve our narrative to reach wider audience in the most effective way possible. We hope to leverage the expertise that you brings in this space.

 Mentorship & Networking: We wish to leverage your strong community in learning and unlearning the many unknown roadblocks towards building a sustainable model.

 Connect with the academia: We hope to get introduced to the relevant academic faculty from MIT to refine and enhance our well-being curriculum focusing on youth.

We combined two different communities together addressing their pressing issues in hand equally. The marginalized women through livelihood not just support their own finance decision making but also enable us to provide the critical emotional wellbeing workshops to the student communities. They come across as effective role models and with regular interactions through the purchases, the students would grow compassion and get inspired seeing these women giving life a second chance.

When the women benefits, her immediate family benefits, her neighbourhood benefits and the society benefits at large. The youth play a significant role in the nation building and it’s only possible through channelling their energies most effectively and their quality of life is hugely dependent on their emotional wellbeing.

Full time - 12

Part time - 5

We have been working on this solution since November'2022. So, 1 year, 5 months until today.