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How two dreamers are changing the way India sees disability
There are stories that quietly restore your faith in people and this is one of them. It begins with two men who couldn’t be more different: Ferose V R, a tech leader who’s spent his life in the boardrooms of SAP and Silicon Valley, and Vicky Roy, a world-travelling photographer who once lived on the streets of Delhi.
Different worlds, different lives, but one shared belief: that everyone is good at something. Together, they’re showing India and the world what inclusion really looks like.
Ferose was the leader people read about in business magazines, the youngest managing director of SAP India, a tech giant that powers enterprises around the world. Then came a diagnosis that stopped him cold. At 18 months old, his son, Vivaan, was diagnosed with autism.
“Suddenly, all the things that mattered: promotions, meetings and numbers, felt small,” he recalls. “What mattered was creating a world where my son could belong.” That realization changed everything.
He started by transforming his own company, launching Autism at Work, a program that gave people on the autism spectrum meaningful jobs in the tech world. That one idea spread to dozens of countries. But Ferose wasn’t done. He wanted to take inclusion beyond offices and into everyday life, especially to the corners of India where disability is still spoken about in whispers.
At the same time somewhere else in India, far away, another story was quietly taking shape. Vicky Roy grew up on the streets of Delhi. He ran away from home at 11, survived by collecting bottles, and later found refuge in a children’s shelter where, amidst the blur of survival, someone handed him a camera and he discovered photography! That camera changed everything.
Vicky began capturing the world as he saw it: real, raw, and full of soul. His photographs ended up in New York, London, and Berlin. But fame never interested him. “I wanted my work to mean something,” he says with a shy smile. So, when Ferose reached out with an idea to document stories of people with disabilities in rural India, Vicky didn’t hesitate. “Let’s do it,” he said.
And just like that, Everyone Is Good at Something was born.
This project had no big sponsors, logos or PR campaigns. Just people, photographed and celebrated for who they are. Vicky travels across India, capturing images that pulse with authenticity. In dusty villages, he meets people whose lives unfold in silence. A mother whose son paints with his feet. A farmer who ploughs with one arm. A girl with cerebral palsy who teaches herself to sing. His subjects aren’t posed like campaign models. They’re farmers tending crops, mothers weaving baskets and kids laughing in courtyards. They’re not waiting for sympathy, they’re living and he photographs them as equals.
“They’re not stories of sadness,” Vicky insists. “They’re stories of strength.”
Each photo becomes part of an online collection of stories translated into five languages by a team of volunteers. Readers from across the world follow these stories, often reaching out to help directly. One built a ramp for a family. Another sent equipment to a child learning to walk. It’s a ripple effect of kindness, small acts inspired by honest storytelling. And that spirit of doing good quietly and collectively, comes straight from the heart of the movement. That’s Ferose’s mantra. The India Inclusion Foundation which powers this initiative runs on volunteer energy and genuine heart. “We don’t take credit,” he says. “We just tell stories.” And that’s why it works. People trust authenticity and respond to truth. Through these stories, they see disability not as limitation, but as possibility.
“Once you start looking at what people can do,” Ferose says, “the world starts to open up.”
Ferose may be the voice behind the vision, but Vicky is the sole eye behind the lens, the one translating it into images that make people stop, think, and feel. In one India Inclusion Summit display, they even took that idea a step further, creating tactile versions of the photographs so that people who are visually impaired could experience them through touch. The raised outlines and textured surfaces turned each image into something living, art that could be felt, not just seen. It was inclusion in its most beautiful, literal form.
Ask Vicky about his process, and his answer is simple: “I don’t just take photos. I listen.” He spends hours in people’s homes before clicking the shutter, sharing meals, hearing laughter, watching life unfold. Only when the moment feels right does he raise his camera. That’s why his portraits feel so alive. There’s no pity, no posing, just connection. A farmer’s calm smile, a child’s mischievous eyes or a mother’s quiet pride. You don’t see disability first. You see the person. And Vicky’s lens doesn’t glorify or dramatize. It reflects. The light on a farmer’s face, the laughter of a child who uses a wheelchair, the gentle pride of a mother teaching her son. These are not grand moments, but they matter. They redefine what strength looks like. And it’s in those quiet, everyday moments that the project finds its power.
Ferose believes stories can do what policies can’t: touch hearts. That belief runs through everything he does from the India Inclusion Summit to a short film festival and art fellowships for people with disabilities.
“We’re not changing systems overnight,” he admits, “but we’re changing mindsets, one story at a time.”
And that, perhaps, is the most powerful kind of change. Today, Everyone Is Good at Something has featured more than 200 stories, and the list keeps growing. But for Ferose and Vicky, the numbers are not important. Instead, each face in a photo reminds them that ability comes in infinite forms and that keeps them going.
That belief doesn’t end with the photographs. Vicky also carries it with him wherever he speaks, turning images into words, and stories into conversations that travel far beyond the frame. Beyond his camera, Vicky Roy is a sought-after speaker who shares his journey and insights at events across the world. He’s spoken at the United Nations, the Jaipur Literature Festival, and the India Inclusion Summit, where he often talks about using photography as a bridge between privilege and invisibility. Whether addressing students, artists, or changemakers, Vicky’s message stays the same: that every person has a story worth seeing, and that inclusion begins when we choose to look with empathy.
The power of Everyone Is Good at Something lies in how the photographs are made, not just what they show. Vicky doesn’t shoot people for pity or pageantry. He searches for their strength, their craft, their light. He describes spending time with each subject so their personality and purpose emerge: a woman weaving delicate baskets, a boy painting with his feet, a farmer tending his crop even with limited mobility. Each image captures a moment where ability speaks louder than limitation and when you see that, you understand exactly how everyone is good at something.
What began with one father’s heartbreak and one photographer’s compassion has become something that defies labels. It’s hope, stitched into photographs and shared one story at a time. Because yes, everyone is good at something. Sometimes, all they need is someone who believes that and someone who’s willing to look through the lens long enough to see it.