What happens when over 250 Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM) employees trade their suits for soap moulds? You get the 34th edition of iCare — a heartwarming blend of corporate social responsibility, eco-friendliness, and good old-fashioned elbow grease, all in celebration of National Women’s Small Business Month 2025.
This wasn’t your average weekend volunteering gig. At NSS Bhavan, Bangalore University, the iCare volunteers collectively rolled up their sleeves to craft 1,000 bars of eco-friendly natural soap—each one a fragrant symbol of empowerment. The beneficiaries? Women-led Self-Help Groups (SHGs) like Sreelakshmi Swasahaya Sanga and Basaveshwara Swami Mahila Swasahaya Sanga from rural Ramanagara district, who are steadily bubbling their way to entrepreneurship glory.
The volunteers didn’t just stop at soap-making. Toyota provided sustainable packaging materials, eco-moulds, and production tools, ensuring these women can continue scaling their micro-enterprises. It’s a classic Toyota move — continuous improvement (Kaizen) applied not to cars, but to communities.
“True societal transformation begins with empowering the underserved,” said Sudeep Dalvi, Chief Communication Officer & Senior Vice President at TKM. “We’re driving not just cars, but change — towards Viksit Bharat 2047 through diversity, equity, inclusion, and eco-conscious entrepreneurship.”
Of course, this wasn’t just a CSR checkbox exercise. The iCare volunteers applied Toyota’s legendary process optimization techniques to soap-making — proving once again that where there’s a bottleneck, there’s a Toyota solution. Rumor has it one team even created a mini “assembly line” for drying the soaps, complete with mock quality checks.
From Skill India to Sustain India, the initiative underscores TKM’s commitment to empowering communities across six CSR pillars — Education, Health & Hygiene, Environment, Skill Development, Road Safety, and Disaster Management.
So while the rest of the city was unwinding on a lazy weekend, Team Toyota was busy proving that impact, much like soap, works best when it spreads.
