Man who travels on wheels is opening doors of hope for many

In 2012, Nipun Malhotra was studying at the Delhi School of Economics, after graduating from St. Stephen’s College, when he appeared for campus placements. Despite a good academic record, he was not hired by any of the eight companies he applied to.

His world came crashing down when he realised the stumbling block between his dreams and his abilities, had nothing to do with him and in a perverse way, everything to do with him. Nipun is born with a rare congenital condition, Arthrogryposis, which led to a lack of muscles in arms and legs, forcing him to commute with a wheelchair.

“One recruiter told me that he did not think I could sit in a wheelchair and work for eight hours. Another told me that they did not have a disabled-friendly restroom. To the first, I responded that I have studied and commuted on my wheelchair all my life. To the second, I replied that I could hold my bladders for eight hours,” says Nipun, now 29, seated in his swank office at Gurgaon’s Park Centra.

 “My parents had given me all the best opportunities in life. I was a country topper in business studies. I thought all of that had gone waste. For three months after that I was very depressed. I stopped going to college,” says Nipun. He decided that it was futile to mull over the placements debacle and joined his family business, Nipman Fasteners, a company that manufactures automotive fasteners, where he is now executive director.

He also founded the Nipman Foundation to work with persons with disabilities. And in a fitting reply to the companies which looked past his abilities, Nipun instituted the Nipman Foundation Equal Opportunities Awards, now in its third year, to recognise companies that employee persons with disabilities.

The Nipman Foundation partnered with Ernst and Young who took care of the task of auditing the companies and the two entities set up an independent jury to vet the applicants. The application form asks questions like ratio of disabled employees in the company’s workforce, the challenges the company faced in employing disabled employees, and the metrics used to evaluate the success of the initiative like productivity level,  career growth and attrition rate. 21 companies from across India applied for the 2016 awards and the winners were ANZ (Bengaluru hub), IBM (Bengaluru centre) and Sunrise Candles (Maharashtra).

At ANZ, PwD staff was more than two per cent of the total workforce. All the 2,280 employees at Sunrise Candles, a Mahabaleshwar-based candle making company, were visually impaired individuals.

An E&Y executive, who coordinated the application and audit process, said the auditor also conducted field visits to verify the claims made by the companies. She said that more and more companies were realising the importance of equal opportunity practices.

“The companies I visited which have equal opportunity practices was an eyeopener. They treat the disabled employees as one among them. At one place, I met a man without both hands. He would use his leg to write but he had the most beautiful handwriting. All the company had to do to accommodate him was to arrange a shorter desk,” said the E&Y executive.

Nipun credits his mother Priyanka Malhotra for driving him towards taking up the cause of persons with disabilities. Priyanka was a homemaker who was focused on ensuring that all of Nipun’s needs were taken care of.

“Then as a child he asked me, ‘Mamma, what about all the other Nipuns in the world,” says Priyanka.

That set her on the course of activism and she was a consultant with the Delhi Metro and the DTC on accessibility issues. “She would tell me to become so important that people inviting me for events will stage them only at those venues which are accessible to me,” says Nipun.

The 29-year-old is also passionately involved in another project, “Wheels for Life”, which connects people willing to donate wheelchairs with those who need them.