TLI Staff
New Delhi: Delhi will get its first job fair for LGBTQ+ community with Q-rious being held in the national capital on November 23 (Saturday).
A year has passed since Supreme Court passed the landmark judgment that decriminalised homosexuality in India and the country is slowly opening up to the betterment of the much-ignored community that is yet to match up to their western counterparts in terms of opportunities, income and contribution to country’s GDP.
In July this year, India’s first-ever LGBTQ+ job fair was held in Bangalore, and received a warm response as reputed companies like Intel, Ford, Goldman Sachs and Uber made their presence felt and connected with the talent pool of the queer community.
And now it’s the national capital’s turn to follow suit. In the said event, prominent speakers including transgender activist Shree Gauri Sawant, Prince of Rajpipla (Gujarat) Manvendra Singh Gohil, drag queen Lisa Nova Jena, Suhail Abbasi and former Roadies contestant Ankita Mehra will be present.
The job fair conceptualised by Stockroom.io and Equiv along with Humsafar Trust is free to attend for the members of the LGBTQ+ community and will be held at The Lalit, Connaught Place. Registrations are open till November 20, Wednesday. Click here to register
The organisers aim at bringing corporate and LGBTQ+ community job seekers at a platform where they can understand each other’s requirements better.
Participating companies will also gain insights on the economic impact of excluding the community from the workplace and will have the opportunity to engage in unstructured discussions with members of the community about ways to identify and absorb talent from the community to the private sector.
According to Mint, a 2014 World Bank report has estimated that India has already lost 0.17-1.7 per cent of the GDP due to homophobia. Incidentally, the segment globally is known as Pink Dollar Economy and is increasingly contributing to various industries like travel, insurance etc in many countries.
Stockroom CEO Naren Krishna said in a press statement: “We as a company are working towards making India Inc more inclusive. We have been doing some impactful work in the gender diversity and disability space, post section 377 is decriminalised we see a lot of companies actively come forward to hire people from LGBTQ+ community. Q-rious is going to help the people from community to explore opportunities with truly inclusive and safe workplaces. We are truly overwhelmed by the response we have been getting from the Delhi-NCR community. We are expecting a total footfall of overall 400 candidates and some good conversions to happen. This is just a start for making workplaces available for every human being irrespective of his/her sexuality.”
The event will kick start the 6-city programme which aims to break cultural barriers and promote inclusiveness at workplaces.