Saundarya Rajesh is an Indian entrepreneur who is the founder and president of Avtar Group. She is known for her efforts in promoting second career opportunities for women in the corporate sector in India. She runs Project Puthri, an initiative to empower underprivileged girls to secure employment. She was awarded the ‘100 Women Achievers of India’ in 2016 by the Minister of Women and Child Development for her work. She received the Women Transforming India Award from the NITI Aayog and the United Nations in 2016.
She is the author of two books, The 99 Day Diversity Challenge: Creating an Inclusive Workplace (2018) and Conversations with the Career Doctor: Women Thriving and Winning at Work (2024), both published by Penguin Random House.
Saundarya started her career with Citibank in 1990. She took a break from her career on becoming a mother. She later worked as a producer and compere for All India Radio and Doordarshan between 1992–95, after which she was a part-time lecturer at MOP Vaishnav College for Women in Chennai between 1996-2003.
In 2000, Saundarya Rajesh established Avtar Career Creators, which was rebranded in 2011 as Flexi Careers India Limited. Avtar is now a firm focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in India. In 2005, she launched Avtar I-Win to assist women returning to work after a career break. This platform has since evolved into MyAvtar.com, a job portal aimed at women and other under-represented groups. In 2008, Saundarya founded Avtar Human Capital Trust, a not-for-profit organization working towards economic empowerment of women.
She runs an initiative called Project Puthri, which aims to create Career Intentionality among underprivileged girl students between the age group 13 to 18. Another initiative she runs is MITR (Men Impacting Trust & Respect), which educates and empowers boys from classes IX to XII to become inclusive and empathetic towards females.
In 2019, she gave a TEDx talk on the topic of Second Careers for Women – Re-innervating an important resource, in which she emphasizes the importance of women’s participation in the Indian workforce through a series of anecdotes and research.
