Arohan Financial Services Limited | Annual Report 2021-22

Driving Gender Diversity @Arohan Arohan provides credit facility to ~ 19 Lakh customers (majority being women) across low-income geographies for different income- generating activities, who then support their families through their livelihood activities. Thesecustomersarebeingservedbyover5,000 field employees of Arohan. Since the majority of our customers are women, it is desirable for a majority of Arohan’s field employees to also be women to enable better understanding of the customers’ business cash flow needs and establish higher customer connect. Having identified the business linkage, Arohan is focussed on having a greater gender diversity in the Company with a clear roadmap in terms of attaining a natural diversity ratio of 50% by the year 2030, in line with the Aavishkaar Group’s Vision on the agenda. Arohan, being a key contributor to the Group, has set for itself a defined roadmap for the next five years in terms of reaching the desired gender diversity index. The Company is focused on developing a more cohesive, collaborative, and creativework environment as a means of driving continued growth in line with its strategic objective of improving the diversity index. With the ultimate objective of bringing in equality through equity, the Diversity Council of Arohan conducts programmes to introduce women friendly policies and processes. We have improved our Gender Diversity ratio of Arohan from 4.9% in April 2019 to 17.22% in FY2021-22. This has beenmade possible due to the introductionof various initiatives andpolicy changes included not only at the Head office or Regional office levels but also at the field levels. Arohan has categorically opened branches in several states that employ only female staff members. This has resulted in Arohan having many women-only branches where the entire business is being driven by women employees of the Company. Arohan adopted the following strategies to fosterwomenhiring as a keypart of itsDiversity & Inclusion initiatives: Hiring: The hiring criteria for field women employees has been revised for them to join in early or even join back after a break in their career. This has been done to encourage those women employees who would want to continue with their career after a break as may be needed for family reasons. Home Location Posting: The Diversity Committee worked on the most relevant feedback and suggestions received as an outcome of various Focused Group Discussion exercises, addressing women’s concerns on one hand and risk-mitigating strategy on the other, and thus, introduced the facility of Work from Home Location for women field employees in FY2021-22. With the introduction of this facility by the Diversity Committee of Arohan, women employees from rural and semi-urban geographies will also find an opportunity to build their career with a growing organization and simultaneously manage their home front.’ Travel for Women: To ensure complete safety of women during their travel, all female employees at Arohan are eligible to claim minimum one notch-up travel reimbursements. Also all women employees, who may need to work late in office, have beenmade eligible for cab services, arranged by the Company, to drop them off at their home locations. 86 Annual Report | 2021-2022