Amway India, a wholly-owned Amway Corporation subsidiary, was created in August 1995 after permission by India's Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB). Amway India began trading on May 5, 1998[1] and is presently the largest direct selling FMCG company. The company is headquartered in India's National Capital Region—New Delhi.
Amway has invested more than US$35 million (Rs. 151 crore) of this in India; US$6 million (Rs. 26 crore) is direct foreign investment. Amway India employs 400 full-time employees, generating indirect employment for 1,650 people at all contract manufacturer locations.
Amway India offers free, limitless training to all its distributors to assist them develop their business. Amway India held over 34,000 training sessions during the past 12 months, attended by over 1.5 million Amway Business Owners and prospects.
Amway India joins the Indian Direct Selling Association (IDSA). IDSA is an industry regulator with membership in various recognised international and Indian Direct Selling companies. Asha Kidnani, a Mumbai-based consumer rights campaigner, is IDSA's Ombudsman & Code Administrator. Amway India is also a member of the CII and the Indian Chambers of Commerce Federation (FICCI).
Amway gave a state-of-the-art mobile dental clinic to the 1996 Rotary Club, Delhi Mid-town, for slum use. Operated by Rotary Club, this facility gives free dental check-up and care six days a week, 52 weeks a year, to the disadvantaged in and around Delhi.
Amway gave a large bequest to Delhi University's Faculty of Management Studies (FMS), 1998. This led to the founding of FMS' Amway Chair on Entrepreneurial Development. This endowment was intended to encourage entrepreneurial study.
The Amway Opportunity Foundation (AOF) began working with the Blind in 1998 by agreeing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the All India Blind Confederation (AICB) based in Delhi (AICB). According to this MoU, AICB was to first identify the needs of Braille textbooks for Rajasthan-studying blind kids, then produce and distribute these Braille textbooks. This MoU intended to be the blue print for all following AOF activity.
AICB maintains a Braille printing unit in its Delhi suburb, Rohini headquarters. A Braille book, according to the AICB, costs 7-10 times more than a regular book. Apparently there are 16 braille printing presses in India, almost half of them are not functioning properly.
More critically, of India's 2 million blind youth, just 6-8% have access to Braille textbooks. This was the single most important reason for picking AOF's course of social responsibility: while prevention and cure for blindness is a fundamental component of the country's development plans, education for the blind has, unhappily, returned.
The AOF-AICB alliance shifted its sights on Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and now, Bihar.
In September 2000, AOF entered another strategic cooperation with the Blind National Association, India (NAB), a mumbai-based NGO. AICB and NAB are nationally significant NGOs. With NAB, AOF has ensured that blind learners in Maharashtra and Gujarat have access to Braille textbooks. While AICB is to take on north and east states, NAB is to focus on west and south. If all the Braille pages printed by AOF are joined, end-to-end, we believe a distance of about 2,000 km!
AOF plans to revisit each state in three years. Why? Why? Because a Braille textbook has a three-year lifespan, it becomes unusable. Once a cycle is formed, it is maintained regularly.
The 26th killer-quake that slammed Gujarat in 2001 decimated nearly the whole state. Tens of thousands died, uncounted others lost their houses. A huge bunch of assistance organisations rushed into the embattled state, delivering first aid, medicine, food, etc.
After going through a plethora of potential partners to channel Amway's relief money, AOF offered CRY as a preferred partner. CRY is another well-known, flawless track record NGO. As in most emergencies, children are generally the worst impacted, AOF made a conscious decision to channel Rs. 35 lakes collected by Amway distributors, staff, and Awmay as a corporation.
An AOF delegation visited around 800 miles in the worst-affected districts of Anjar (Bhuj) and Dhrol (Jamnagar) in places where not one building remained untouched. With Amway's funds, CRY runs children's activity centres in the following villages in these two areas
