Swiggy Appoints First Transgender Employee As Part Of Gender Inclusivity

Chennai: There has been a significant perception and change towards gender inclusivity in the corporate sector over the recent years. In a bid to support the LGBTQ community, food ordering and delivery company Swiggy has started an in-house support group. As part of this it has hired its first transgender employee Samyukhta Vijayan, a techie as its Principal Program Manager.

Samyukhta Vijayan Profile

Vijayan who is from Chennai completed her Bachelors in Engineering (electronics and communication) from PSG College of Technology. She had previously worked in Amazon and also runs her own start-up named Toute Studio which focuses on up skilling transgender women in areas related to fashion, design, makeup and hairstyling.She is also into modelling for her own products as well.

After working in Europe and the US for many years she finally came back to India in 2017. Acknowledging the challenges that most transgender candidates go through, Vijayan thanked her family for their support in education and extracurricular activities to shape her career, and which made her financially independent.

“As soon as I joined Swiggy, I was made a part of the ‘Women in Tech’ group along with a Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) Council. I’m currently working with the team to have an in-house LGBT support group as well. We plan to start a pride network and actively work towards increasing LGBT visibility and diversity through hiring, within the company,” said Vijayan. She also believes that for companies to have an inclusive work environment they need to extend these policies to non-corporate employees like a housekeeping person.

“For transgender candidates who have the potential but do not have the traditional qualifications (like a university degree or a certain skill) companies should put together an internship or a training program to train them with the right skills and then absorb them into the firm as an employee,” said Vijayan. (With inputs from YourStory )

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