5 companies celebrate Diwali with unique initiatives, bringing the festive spirit back to corporate India
In corporate India, the holiday spirit has returned. After two uninspired years of exchanging holiday greetings digitally, businesses are now celebrating holidays like Diwali with their employees in person. Among others, WeWork, Gecko Worldwide, B Medical Systems, Coca-Cola, and Surendra Pathare Foundation are in a festive mood and intend to give out presents focused on flexibility and wellbeing, such as time-off and leaves, in addition to arranging parties and decorating offices. Here is a list of notable businesses that are reviving the holiday spirit in corporate India by commemorating Diwali with special activities.
1. Coca Cola
Coke’s new Diwali campaign, which revives the true beauty of interpersonal relationships, exhorts its audience to “meet” rather than just “greet” their loved ones this holiday season. Due to people using “virtual wishes” to cope with the pandemic during the past two years, the holiday season has lacked the spark of real interactions. The actual magic of celebrations is what Coca-Cola urges its audience to celebrate, since it is ingrained in its ideology. This year, Coca-Cola wants to encourage people to enjoy Diwali in person and to foster a sense of community.
2. Surendra Pathre Foundation
A four-day Diwali festival called Bhairav 2022 was hosted by the Surendra Pathare Foundation. This project aims to support women entrepreneurs and self-help organisations in Pune while also celebrating the communal spirit of Diwali. This is done in order to provide a platform for self-help organisations to grow their business. The event will offer more than a hundred vendors with traditional Maharashtrian food, a sizable handicraft market, well-known foods with distinctive local flavours, handmade jewellery, and environmentally friendly goods manufactured from waste. Along with these exciting events, Bhairav will also feature folk art performances, orchestra, folk dance, beautiful music, kid-friendly games, competitions, fashion presentations, and mouthwatering food demos.
3. B Medical Systems
This year’s Diwali celebrations will be marked by the launch of #BadlavWaliDiwali, an initiative from B Medical Systems, a manufacturer of medical cold chain solutions and a world leader in vaccine cold chain solutions. The initiative intends to empower Indian youth—starting with residents of Goersama village, which is close to the company’s production facility in Mundhra, Gujarat—toward a successful and sustainable future. The Deputy CEO of B Medical Systems, Mr. Jesal Doshi, will spoke to the students, gave out gifts and food, and interacted with them as part of the celebration of Diwali at the neighbourhood school. On the school grounds, a Rangoli tournament also took place.
4. HCL
To foster a better relationship between its workers and their families, HCL Technologies hosted a number of events. This year, HCL collaborated with an NGO to set up holiday booths inside the campus. Proceeds from the sales will go to HCL’s Power of One Initiative, a daily one-rupee donation programme by HCL employees for charitable causes. In addition to participating in the “OneWishataTime” social campaign, which encouraged people to share ideas for celebrating Diwali with a focus on social and environmental welfare, more than 2,000 HCL employees from eight cities took part in a multi-talent show and tried their hands at creative arts.
5. Gecko Worldwide
Before the Diwali vacations, the Gecko Worldwide crew will gather for a tree-planting ceremony to reduce noise and air pollution. The business is celebrating the season with the children at an orphanage in the area this year, bringing them gifts and sharing in their childlike joyous attitude. In addition to monitoring the environment, businesses attempt to encourage their workers to adopt healthy lifestyles. They are working to dispel the idea that Diwali is associated with unhealthy consumption and slowly but surely encourage the staff to celebrate the festival responsibly.