ABOUT OUR FOUNDER
Reshanthy Navaneethan
Sai Shakti was founded by Ms. Reshanthy Navaneethan. She was born in Jaffna and fled to Germany with her family in 1989 due to the civil war. There, she attended school. Since 1996, she has regularly helped in her uncle’s Asian grocery store. After graduating from school, she worked at Siemens, Deutsche Bank, and Union Investment. Later, she married a man from Trincomalee, and together they founded a family business.
After the civil war in 2011, they traveled together to Sri Lanka. There, she saw many children in Trincomalee who had lost their parents due to the war and were living in poverty. After returning to Germany, she wanted to support the children in her homeland and, together with her husband, founded the Shakthy Foundation in 2018, which was financed by their family business in Frankfurt. In Muthur, Trincomalee, they established a home for underprivileged children. It was running very well until the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and the family business had to close. As a result, the Shakthy Foundation also had to shut down. Ms. Reshanthy did not want to close it and asked various businesspeople for support, but without success, so she had to close it with a heavy heart.
In December 2021, she contracted COVID-19 but fortunately survived. However, her health was severely affected, and many medications did not help. She flew to Sri Lanka and underwent Ayurvedic treatment, which improved her condition. She started consuming traditional Ayurvedic and millet products. Since she felt better afterward, she wanted to import these products to Germany and sought out Sri Lankan manufacturers.
During a phone call with a woman in Sri Lanka, she learned about the woman’s difficult situation: she had witnessed her parents being killed in the war and had also lost her sister due to the conflict. Despite her own challenges, the woman wanted to provide healthy food for people but was being disturbed by men who hindered her work. Ms. Reshanthy Navaneethan felt compelled to help this woman and thus founded Sai Shakti to support self-employed women.
The vision of Sai Shakti GUG is to support Tamil self-employed women and provide food for needy people in temples. On our website, we will host a free listing of all self-employed women from Sri Lanka, making their products accessible to everyone. Additionally, all self-employed Tamil women from around the world will have the opportunity to publish their business information here for a fee. The proceeds from these fees will be used to donate food to needy people in temples in Sri Lanka and to support self-employed women in Sri Lanka.
