Our story

About
ROZE

A foundation built from personal experience, and from the conviction that awareness is the first form of care.

We started ROZE because we watched someone we loved navigate a diagnosis that women in India are too often never given the chance to catch in time.

How we began

A personal story.
A broader purpose.

In 2025, during her junior year of college, Gayatri Kaimal's mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. The months that followed were difficult — but her mother received care, was diagnosed early enough to treat, and survived.

Throughout that time, Gayatri kept returning to a quieter question: what happens to the women who don't have the same access? In India, where breast cancer is the most common cancer among women, more than half of cases are diagnosed at a late stage — not because care is unavailable, but because awareness often isn't. The conversation hasn't reached them. The stigma hasn't lifted.

Women's health has always been central to Gayatri's interests. After 2025, it became the thing she felt most called to act on. ROZE was established in 2026 — a US-based foundation focused on awareness and fundraising for breast cancer in India, built around the belief that the diaspora is uniquely positioned to help close that gap.

Alongside co-founder Meredith Marefat, Gayatri built ROZE to do something practical: raise awareness, direct funds to organizations already doing trusted work in India, and keep the conversation going in communities where it matters.

“My mother was lucky. I know that. ROZE exists because luck shouldn't be the deciding factor.”

Gayatri Kaimal  ·  Founder
Our mission

To educate, advocate, and fundraise for breast cancer awareness in India — channeling the reach of the Indian-American diaspora toward women who deserve every opportunity to catch this disease early.

We are based in the United States. Our work is rooted in India. The distance between the two is exactly what we are here to bridge.

Why it matters

The numbers behind the work

93.3%

survival rate for Stage I breast cancer in India. For Stage IV, that number falls to 24.5%. The stage at diagnosis is almost everything.

Springer Breast Cancer Research, 2024
30%

of breast cancer cases in India are caught early — compared to over 60% in developed nations. That gap is not medical. It is an awareness gap.

Tribune India, 2025
50,000

additional women are expected to enter treatment for breast cancer in India each year over the next decade. The need is growing faster than the response.

Nature Journal, via ORF 2025
The people behind ROZE

Our founders

GK
Gayatri Kaimal
Founder

Gayatri is a student in the Honors College at the University of Arizona. She grew up between two worlds — the Indian-American diaspora and a deep connection to India — and has long been drawn to the questions that sit at the intersection of culture, identity, and women's health. When her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2025, those questions became personal in a way she hadn't anticipated. What stayed with her wasn't only fear, but the recognition that her mother's outcome — early enough, caught in time — was not the norm for women in India. ROZE is her attempt to do something with that recognition: something sustained, specific, and honest about what awareness actually requires.

MM
Meredith Marefat
Co-Founder

Meredith is a co-founder of ROZE Foundation and a student in the Honors College at the University of Arizona. Growing up Persian-American, she understands firsthand how women's health is discussed — and how often it isn't — within cultures where silence around illness is deeply ingrained. That experience shapes how she thinks about awareness work: not as information delivery, but as the slower, more careful work of changing what a community feels permitted to talk about. She brings that perspective to everything ROZE does.

There are many ways to be part of this.

Whether you donate, share, or simply stay informed — every action contributes to a larger shift in awareness. We're glad you're here.

Make a donation See our work