Indian women are often referred to as Goddess Durga, the Devi with multiple arms. When I, in my current role, visit a VFS borrower and get to know of her personal life, I cannot help but agree with the comparison. It is indeed amazing to know of the various roles our borrower plays, other than being the budding entrepreneur whom we try to help with access to capital.

A daughter, a wife, a home-maker, a mother - she does not avoid any responsibility citing the excuse of the business that she is toiling to build. One might wonder how she manages her time, which after all is always limited to the 24-hour cycle that nature has provided us.

Her daily commute is one of the few activities on which she might be able to save time. While many VFS customers work from home or a location near to it, our employees might need to travel some distance to reach their workplace, a time that could have been used better in some productive activity or rejuvenating rest.

The recent restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic made us look afresh at our processes. We have started challenging all activities that we insisted had to be executed from office and find that many of them can easily be moved to the homes of the team members. While work-from-home is not possible for those who have to run machinery at work, many of our customers depend on manual processes or use small machines such as sewing machines. Easy access to mobile phones has been helping in communication for some time now, making coordination easy.

Accommodating work-from-home comes as a welcome change for team members. The time saved in travel can now be better used for either personal or office work, making it a win-win situation for all. If this becomes the practice, and there is no reason why it should not, we can expect more women joining the workforce, either as entrepreneurs or as employees.

The challenge to status quo has indeed come out as one of the few positives of this pandemic year.