Rising to the Challenge

NEHA ARORA 35, FOUNDER, PLANET ABLED

- Jeevan Prakash Sharma

SHE quit a lucrative MNC job to work on making travel and tourism a friendlier experience for the physically challenged. It was a big challenge for Neha Arora, who resigned from Adobe and launched Planet Abled on January 1, 2016. It was also a personal mission for Neha, who comes from a family that has faced challenges while travelling. “My father is blind and my mother is on a wheelchair,” she says. “As kids, we didn’t travel much—it was always about school picnics and the homes of our grandparents. When we grew up and started travelling as a family, we faced a lot of issues in terms of accessibility and the kind of leisure activities available. There were instances when we had travelled 2,000 miles only to realise that the place is not accessible.” There came a point when her parents stopped travelling, saying they were unable to enjoy the experience due to inaccessibility and social insensitivity. “Very little of infrastructure is in place. Even at one of the Unesco World Heritage sites, which claims to have accessible toilets, it is mere tokenism,” Neha adds.