I know this sounds really weird but its true. A village in Uttar Pradesh, India is now renamed as Snapdeal.com Nagar (nagar means town). Snapdeal.com is India’s biggest group buying portal and planning to expand further.

Recently, Snapdeal.com adopted a village in Utter Pradesh called Shiv Nagar as part of Snapdeal’s CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) efforts. The portal will look after the village, managing it’s infrastructure, water, the local school and hospital. They installed manual hand pumps at various places to avail clean drinking water for villagers.

Surprisingly, it was not Snapdeal who asked for change of name from Shiv Nagar to Snapdeal.com Nagar but villagers decided it to show their gratitude and surprised Snapdeal.com.

According to the Snapdeal blog, the idea arose after a brainstorming session on contributing to society. The blog says: ”….why not start from grass root level? One of our colleagues, started talking about his native village, Shiv Nagar, where people have to walk for 3 Kms to get water. And that’s where it struck us!”

After two months of discussion, Snapdeal.com became a part of the lives of 2000 villagers and nearby villages. The first phase will see solutions for unavailability of portable drinking water in the form of water pumps.
There are very few companies involved in social activities these days. Kunal Bahl, CEO of Snapdeal.com, believes that this is the company’s way of giving back to the society.