Mumbai: When Naavya Shah was 13, she co-founded Dressing Hearts, an initiative that collected and donated refurbished clothes to underserved communities. During a visit to Shantighar, a women’s shelter in Mumbai, the women there told her something unexpected: aata, the flour that goes into daily Indian meals, was one of their biggest struggles.
“One kg of aata can mean so much to someone,” Naavya said. She began funding monthly aata donations of about 50 kg using proceeds from bake sales. But she wanted something more sustainable, a model where buying aata also supported the people who made it. That search led her to women-run flour mills, and eventually to founding Aata Girl.
Aata Girl sources fresh flour from a women-run mill and is built to give the women involved greater control over pricing, customer interactions and earnings, rather than routing that income through middlemen. The business now handles 30 to 35 kg of orders a week, and Naavya, still a student, manages sourcing, packing and delivery schedules around her school hours.
One of those women is Kaanchi, who moved to Mumbai from Darjeeling and works with the mill. When she started, she stayed out of conversations about pricing, even though she was among the more educated women on the team. Over time, she began taking customer orders directly, coordinating deliveries and negotiating prices herself.
“Watching her go from staying silent to confidently bargaining with customers, that’s the actual change Aata Girl exists to create,” Naavya said.
The numbers behind that change have grown steadily: 3,000+ kg of flour sold, 31 women supported, 350+ families served and more than ₹2,25,000 in community impact generated so far.
Naavya’s entrepreneurial track record extends beyond Aata Girl. She co-founded Girls with Power’s India chapter to support young women entrepreneurs and is working on a coffee table book documenting the stories of six women entrepreneurs.
Looking ahead, Naavya wants Aata Girl to grow into a network rather than a single brand: multiple women-run mills, each supported by its own team of women delivery partners, supplying fresh, organic aata across Mumbai. She also plans to bring Aata Girl onto quick-commerce platforms, aiming to be among the first fresh, organic aata brands available on them.
“I want any woman running a mill to be able to plug into fair pricing, real customers and real income, without needing a middleman,” Naavya said.
