The RYTHM Foundation, the social impact arm of multinational conglomerate QI Group, received two awards at India’s CSR & Sustainability Awards 2025, organized by the All-India Business Community & Foundation (AIBCF) in New Delhi.
The honors recognized programs operating in two distinct settings, an urban resettlement community in Delhi and rural communities in North Bengal, each targeting conditions that limit access to education and personal safety for women and children.
Founded in 1998, QI Group operates across more than 30 countries with a workforce exceeding 2,000 people drawn from approximately 50 nationalities. Its businesses span wellness and lifestyle products, higher education, hospitality, luxury watchmaking, and direct selling. The RYTHM Foundation, incorporated in 2005, functions as the group’s formal commitment to community investment: QI Group directs 10% of its revenues to fund the foundation’s work across more than 15 countries.
Safer Cities and Foundational Literacy
The Safer Cities for Girls project, developed in partnership with Plan India, earned RYTHM’s first award. The program works within an urban resettlement community in Delhi, concentrating on adolescent girls’ safety, mobility, and access to public space. During 2025, it engaged 2,030 adolescents and trained 330 of them as Champions of Change, a peer advocacy framework that gives participants a defined, active role in shaping conditions in their own neighborhoods. Community outreach tied to the program reached more than 55,600 people across the year.
The second award recognized the Enabling Foundational Literacy and Numeracy in Rural North Bengal initiative, built in collaboration with the Parinaama Development Foundation. The program serves children from marginalized communities working toward joining or returning to mainstream education. During 2025, 1,147 students enrolled and 1,012 maintained regular attendance through the year.
The program was designed to address a pressing problem in rural communities: attendance in a basic literacy program is one of the harder outcomes to sustain in communities where children’s time competes with economic necessity at home.
Leading By Example
Santhi Periasamy, Head of RYTHM Foundation, accepted both awards at the New Delhi ceremony.
“The awards reaffirm our commitment to driving social change through these and other projects. We share this recognition with our dedicated partners and the communities we serve, whose resilience and determination make our work possible,” she said.
Periasamy also joined a panel discussion during the awards conference, where she addressed the function of corporate social responsibility within broader governance frameworks. Her remarks were precise on one point: transparency and accountability are not aspirational values ,but operational requirements for any program that depends on community trust.
“CSR can combat corruption by promoting transparency and accountability,” she said. “When businesses lead by example, they set a standard for ethical behaviour, which can spread to the communities they serve.”
She also placed RYTHM’s work within an international regulatory context. “CSR has evolved beyond just connecting businesses with communities. Today, CSR is integrated into global frameworks such as the International Labour Organisation and the United Nations, focusing on practices that benefit people and the planet.”
On RYTHM’s internal standards specifically, she stressed that “[g]ood governance is crucial for building trust and credibility. At RYTHM, we ensure that the programmes we support uphold high standards of transparency and accountability. This fosters mutual trust with communities, enabling businesses and non-profits to work together on impactful projects.”
A Wider Year of Education Work
The two award-winning programs are part of QI Group and RYTHM Foundation’s broader 2025 portfolio, which the foundation described in its 2025 impact report as focused on producing results that “could be seen and measured.”
Its education programs ran across four countries throughout the year.
Nepal: The Engaging School Community for Quality Education program supported 678 students daily through school meals, integrated co-teaching (ICT) classes, and structured parent engagement. A separate Nepal initiative targeting the Chepang community in the remote Raksirang district engaged 172 children, 80% of whom transitioned into formal schooling by year’s end; four local women’s groups continued providing support for those efforts.
Malaysia: The Panai 3M Literacy Programme worked with indigenous Orang Asli Semelai students in Negeri Sembilan. By program’s end, 88% demonstrated measurable improvement in reading, writing, and arithmetic. The Maharani School Programme reached more than 160 girls across two cohorts, with participants reporting a 90% increase in confidence; a separate Maharani Learning Lab component delivered 12 basic coding sessions to girls with limited prior digital experience.
Ghana: The ANOPA Project ran across two schools in Cape Coast, pairing vocational training with infrastructure upgrades, physical renovations designed to make daily movement through school grounds safer for students with disabilities.
Beyond the Classroom
RYTHM Foundation’s 2025 work extended into indigenous language preservation, youth development, and community infrastructure. The Basic Readers for Indigenous Children project in Malaysia produced the first written learning materials in the Orang Asli Bateq language, with more than two hours of audio recorded and 20,916 words transcribed.
In Sri Lanka, the RYTHM-sponsored Community Development and Training Centre in Mullaitivu reached 95% completion. The facility is designed to support vocational training for youth and women.
QI Group’s Employee Community Impact Program adds another layer to this picture. Staff members across the company’s global offices have dedicated more than 125,000 hours to community service since 2013.
