Economic Empowerment, Diversity and Inclusion

Women, Youth, Marginalized Communities

November 6, 2025 8 mins read

Uma’s Journey with Nirmaan’s Impact Hiring

Light slides across the glass, catching the edge of her laptop like a promise. She taps keys with a steady rhythm, headphones on, voice muted on a call that threads teams across continents. The office hums around her. People move with the easy fluency of those for whom this space is ordinary. For her, every click and every message is a small proof that the long journey was worth it.

This is Uma Devi. When she looks up from her screen she sometimes sees the dusty lanes of Ramagiri as clearly as the city skyline outside the window. A cup of chai sits beside her keyboard. She sips slowly and thinks of the quiet rules her father taught her: do something that helps others, and whatever you earn give ten percent away. Those rules travel with her into meetings that she attends everyday. On other days she opens an email and the memory of the offer letter that changed everything presses warm and sharp to the surface.

Roots in Ramagiri Fields

Ramagiri in Ananthapur district is a place where seasons decide the rhythm of life. Her father wakes before the sun and walks the field to check the crop. Money was never steady. Conversations at home often moved around the weather and the next sowing. Guides on study routes or career maps did not exist in their circle. Instead she learned by watching.

As a child she watched the men leave with tools and return with tired smiles. She watched her mother manage the house on small sums and stretch them into days of food and tiny treats. There was love and there was a quiet scarcity. Those things embedded themselves into her. She grew up with a hunger not only for food but for possibility.

The Long Road to Learning

Early in her childhood, Uma moved into a residential school nearly forty kilometres from her home — the first place where she truly felt what it meant to step beyond the map her family knew. Away from the comfort of familiar faces, she learned to focus on what was right in front of her: her studies. She read beyond the syllabus, driven not just by curiosity but by quiet determination, and graduated as a school topper with distinction.

Years later, she earned admission into a B.Tech program and moved to Bangalore. The college wasn’t among the elite ones; it was a tier-three institution where dreams often struggled to keep pace with opportunity. Financial strain remained. In Bangalore, she learned the grammar of code and the logic of systems, but more importantly, she met mentors who showed her what she was capable of and guided her when direction felt distant. Mentors like Rahul Gupta Sir, who supported her throughout her four years of B.Tech and continues to do so even today, and Ranganath Sir, who later connected her with Nirmaan and guided her toward the right career path. Their encouragement gave Uma clarity, confidence, and the belief that financial independence wasn’t just about earning, it was about gaining the freedom to choose her own path and to finally give back to the family that had given her everything.

Pathway to Employment

The program that reshaped Uma’s future was Nirmaan’s Impact Hiring, a platform designed to connect talent from underserved backgrounds with equal opportunities. Through this portal, job seekers from diverse communities such as girls, Persons with Disabilities, LGBTQIA+ individuals, and youth from rural, tribal, and urban slum areas find genuine access to employers who value inclusion. The platform offers everything free of cost from online registration and verified job postings to skill development courses, online learning modules, and dedicated job assistance. For many like Uma, it wasn’t just a website; it was a bridge between potential and possibility.

Her journey through Impact Hiring began quietly with online sessions, mock interviews, and guidance from mentors who explained how companies think and hire. A few of them, Harish Sir, who introduced her to Nirmaan and supported her both personally and professionally. When she lacked a personal laptop to practise coding, he provided her one; and Pradeep Sir, who helped her grow technically during her apprenticeship with patient guidance, played pivotal roles in shaping her journey. They helped her make the right decisions at every step and build strong technical and job-related skills that would carry her forward.

Uma went on to secure an apprenticeship at State Street Corporation, Hyderabad, for a year. Apprenticeship life was a camera that zoomed in on small things - it demanded accountability, discipline, and endurance. At the end of that year, she wasn’t guaranteed a job. She had to appear for another interview to be rehired as a full-time employee. The second interview became a test of what she had become. She prepared the way she always had, with quiet focus, steady practice, and a refusal to let the fear of failure speak louder than her work.

Redrawing the Borderlines

The offer letter came as a printed email. She remembers the way her father put his hand over her head in a silent blessing. Her family had lived through lean seasons and borrowed days. The letter did not erase that history but it shifted the future. It meant a world of learning and contribution, it meant a steady pay. It meant choices in life.

For her it meant something else too. She is the first in her family in all generations to live away from home and work as a software employee. That fact carries weight in Ramagiri. Young girls in the village now ask her how she did it. She speaks of small rules and large stubbornness. She speaks about asking for help when you need it. She reminds them that constraints are real, but not destiny.

Now that she lives miles away from home, Uma still carries her father’s rule close to her heart - the rule of giving back. She often thinks of the girls who still do not know what is possible, the ones who haven’t yet seen what education can unlock. Uma has also decided to give back to Nirmaan by guiding students in skill centres, helping them build the confidence and clarity she once sought. She dreams of taking this possibility to every lane of her hometown, to make learning feel alive, creative, and within reach.

The road to Ramagiri is dust and seasons, but the office she walks into each morning is glass and steel and possibility. She moves between these two worlds with a quiet calm, someone who understands both maps and is steadily working to redraw the border between them.

-- Bhanusri Pothrepally
- Executive Content Writer at ISR

Read Next