Good Business Lab was founded by economists Achutya Adhvaryu and Anant Nyshadham, along with organizational development leader Anant Ahuja. Brought together by a shared belief that improving worker wellbeing also improves business outcomes, they designed a randomized controlled trial to test their hypothesis within Shahi, India’s largest apparel manufacturer. The trial proved their hypothesis beyond doubt and so Good Business Lab was born.
Since then, the team has grown to include more than 100 passionate researchers, designers, and communications experts across South Asia, Latin America and the United States. We are registered as a Section 8 non-profit company in India.
Worker wellbeing is good business.
We believe that building the business case to support better conditions for workers is the most sustainable way to transform labor markets and enable everyone to reach their economic potential and live a dignified life.
We work closely with companies that have large worker populations in both the Global South and North to deeply understand the data behind their workforce and empirically test the return on investment of a wide range of worker-focused initiatives.
By building an evidence-based business case, our ambition is to make worker wellbeing an essential part of doing business, so that companies and workers can prosper together.
Economists Anant Nyshadham and Achyuta Adhvaryu used Nobel Prize-winning randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to evaluate P.A.C.E, a Gap Inc. skills program for women garment workers, assessing its impact on worker wellbeing and the firm's productivity.
P.A.C.E program's results of enhanced worker wellbeing and substantial return on investment motivated us to develop interventions geared towards worker wellbeing. We kicked off with projects like STITCH, SRH, Lighting on the Factory Floor and Worker Voice.
We expanded into Latin America, focusing on the automobile and food service sectors. In the U.S., we initiated research on AI's role in supporting potential workers across various industries.
We developed an ROI tool for UNFPA to assess health program impacts on women workers. We won the Zendesk Tech for Good award & Future of Work India and Indonesia challenge by MIT Solve.
We secured funding from the Gates Foundation to advance our gender equality initiatives. We are developing interventions in private healthcare, automobiles, garments, and the gig economy and forging partnerships with over 60 steady collaborators.
Ach has a PhD in economics from Yale. He leads innovation for GBL and serves as a principal investigator on research projects. He is also an Associate Professor at the University of Michigan.
Anant holds a B.A. in political science from the University of Pennsylvania. He is the CEO at GBL & the head of Organizational Development at Shahi Exports, a company started by his grandmother which is now India’s largest apparel exporter.
Anant holds a Ph.D. in economics from Yale. He helps to set overall strategy and often serves as a Principal investigator on research projects. He is also an Associate Professor at the University of Michigan.
