NSEF Idea Conference at VNIT

Last week, I had the opportunity to visit the small but upcoming town of Nagpur, to speak at NSEF’s Idea Conference at VNIT.

Eminent speakers at the conference included Robin Chaurasiya of Kranti, Unmesh Bramhe of CXO Partners, and Kushroo Poacha of IndianBloodDonors.com. Robin, an Unreasonable Institute Fellow, and a former lieutenant of the U.S. Force, has co-founded an organization to provide a healing home and leadership training to daughters of sex workers.  Unmesh, a former Senior Vice President and Sustainability Head at HSBC Bank in India, leads a global advisory firm, advising and fund-raising for social enterprises. Mr. Poacha founded Indianblooddonors.com, an online database of volunteers donors, with minimal capital, and while holding down a full-time job - a fine testament to creating social change with little more than a burning passion to do so.

It was a great conference with highly inspirational talks from Robin, Unmesh and Khushroo. It’s very encouraging to see the growing interest in this space from the youth (around 300 students attended the conference). From the questions asked, and the kind of business plan ideas the students shared with us, it’s clear to see that a growing number of students are embracing social entrepreneurship as a viable career choice.

And, of course, since Nagpur is famous for oranges, I had to end my day on a sweet note. At the airport, I had just enough time to grab a Haldiram orange barfi (yum!).

Art Workshop in Rural Schools of U.P.

Recently, I had the opportunity to visit low-cost rural schools in the Sahaspur and Dhanora regions of Western U.P. Up to 2,300 children in these schools are supported by Child Literacy, a fund-raising organization in the U.S. that supports the educational development of children, with a number of projects in India. (I am currently a Board Member of Child Literacy). These schools provide basic education to the children of daily wage earners in what are considered to be some of the poorest parts of the country, where over 90% of the people live below the poverty line, and child labor is painfully common.

In conjunction with my visit, we organized an art workshop for the students in the entire school. Our only instructions to the students were to draw whatever made them happy! It was wonderful to see the whole school come alive, as the students found a rare outlet for their creativity. The students drew everything from their favorite ice-cream and animals, to their dream home and their favorite super-hero!

Learn more about Child Literacy and its projects here.

NSEF Chapter Now At Anna University!

On October 15^th, I had the honor of inaugurating a chapter for NSEF at the historic Anna University in Chennai. The entrepreneurship cell at Anna, called Jugaad, will now also have a platform for students to discuss and explore ideas around social entrepreneurship. (Yay!)

Mr. M Sekar, Dean of Anna University, presided over the inauguration ceremony, which kick started NSEF’s Idea Conference. We invited notable social entrepreneurs from the Chennai region to come and share information and insights from their work with the students – L Kannan, founder of Vortex Engineering (http://vortexindia.co.in/) , and R Madhavan, founder of Agriculture Consultancy Management Foundation (http://agriconsulting.org/default.aspx). Mr. Kannan founded Vortex to develop appropriate technologies for rural India, such as low-cost ATMs that consume 90% less energy than a conventional ATM and can be run on solar power, while Mr. Madhavan has made commendable strides in using ACMF’s research and expertise to improve the productivity of small and marginal farmers, and in pursuing his mission of bringing prosperity to rural India. I provided an overview of social entrepreneurship, and spoke about how we at NSEF can help budding young social entrepreneurs realize their dreams for creating social impact.

We ended the conference with a social business plan competition, for which 10 student teams had 3 minutes each to pitch their idea. The students combined their engineering expertise, business acumen and passion for social change to come up with a variety of innovative ideas in the areas such as waste management, clean energy, and agriculture.

Kudos to the members of Jugaad for putting together a fantastic event!

Talking to Students at IIT on Social Enterprise

Last month (August), I had the opportunity to speak on social entrepreneurship at the IIT-Kharagpur campus, at an Idea Conference organized by the Entrepreneurship Cell of IIT-K in association with the National Social Entrepreneurship Forum (NSEF). I spoke on the fundamentals of social entrepreneurship, and why we need more young and talented students to forge their own destinies as change-makers and social entrepreneurs.

Other speakers included four incredibly inspiring social entrepreneurs: Santanu Bhattacharjee, founder of Technable Solutions, which provides training and employment solutions for white-collar jobs; Kaushlendra, founder of Kaushalya Foundation, which focuses on organizing and branding the informal sector for vegetable vendors; and Manish Kumar and Shashank Kumar, both IIT-Alums and founders of Farms ‘n Farmers, which provides end-to-end solutions for improving productivity and livelihoods of poor farmers in Bihar.

Read more about the conference here.

NSEF Workshop for Student Leaders

In July of this year, the National Student Entrepreneurship Forum (NSEF) organized a 2-day workshop for 100+ student leaders from top colleges and universities around the country. The workshop was designed to further NSEF's mission to educate and inspire students to pursue social entrepreneurship.

As a Director of NSEF, I emceed the conference, which included talks by leading change-makers and entrepreneurs, such as Ramji Raghavan of Agastya Foundation, Anshu Gupta of Goonj, Shanti Raghavan of Enable India, and Ashoka Fellow Elango Ramaswamy. There were two panel discussions on "the Art of Building a Successful Social Business" and "Key Factors Driving Social Innovation". In addition, on day 2, Jacob Matthew of Idiom Design and Consulting, led a workshop on design thinking, to train students on how design thinking can be used to creatively devise as well as implement innovative solutions to any social problem.

Learn more about NSEF and its work here. 

Half-Time!

An opportunity to exercise leadership where it is needed most? Check. An opportunity to form an intimate perspective on the challenges facing the millions of lives social enterprises are trying to impact? Check. An opportunity to learn first-hand from the social entrepreneurs and change-makers that are defining the social enterprise landscape in a country as vast, diverse, and complex as India? Check. An opportunity for unparalleled personal growth? Check. This is the mental check-list that I went through when I first made the decision to move to India last year as part of the Piramal Fellowship.  Reflecting back on the first half of my journey, I can honestly say I have gained all that I had hoped to from this experience and more.

I was brought on as a fellow with Idiom Design & Consulting where my project is to come up with an innovative financing model to extend design thinking to social enterprises.  The philosophical bedrock of the project is the notion of “design democracy” – that design thinking need not be a luxury that only big businesses can afford, but it can and should be made accessible to social enterprises where indeed it can be a powerful catalyst for growth. With significant background in finance but zero knowledge of design, my project presents me with a delicious challenge!  It was at Idiom that I would first learn about the concept of design thinking, which goes deeper than simply designing better products and services for the base of the pyramid, and gets to the very heart of designing entire systems and business models that most effectively serve under-served populations.

Over the past nine months, I have travelled to over 20 cities, small towns and villages. In Orissa, I worked with Paul Polak, founder of Spring Health, to help design solutions for clean drinking water for untouchable communities where access is constrained not just by market forces, but also by social norms. I went on a 10-day road-trip across the heartland of India, to interview and capture on film the dreams of 200+ ordinary Indians for their own lives and their country as part of Idiom’s Dream-In project.  When not on the road, my days are otherwise spent in sunny Bangalore, which is fast becoming a hotbed for social innovation.

The most important part of this Fellowship has been the nature of the fellowship itself.  When faced with challenges, and there are challenges galore, be it working in an unstructured environment or simply missing loved-ones back home, the camaraderie and support of the fellow fellows has carried us through.

Here’s looking forward to the next half of the fellowship with renewed vigor, purpose and commitment to carry forth our tasks of enabling social enterprises to effectively address the most pressing social problems around us!

Dreaming with India, for India

“I am sick and tired of the rampant corruption in the country. I would like to start a school that will only teach students about the great revolutionary leaders of India that stood tall as they embodied the highest principles of honesty, integrity and public service. My dream is to produce 10 Bhagat Singhs a month” – a political activist in Rajgarh, Madhya Pradesh.

“I have heard China is a very prosperous country. I dream about going to China, so I can learn about the farming practices there and bring that information back with me to my village to share with other farmers” – a farmer in Jetpura Village, Madhya Pradesh.

“There are far too many young Indians with broken dreams. Forced into engineering, medicine or other mainstream professions against their will, their true inner talents in music, dance, the arts, or sports are completely quashed. My dream is to start a Foundation that would fund the dreams of Indians that dare to be different. I want to reignite the souls of the youth of this nation” – a 16-year old rapper and basketball player preparing for the IIT entrance exams in Kota, Rajasthan.

7 days. 7 cities. 700 dreams. Those were my instructions as I began an exciting road-trip, in January this year, across the interiors of India, from Bhopal to Jaipur, with a mission to lead a team of 9 dream catchers that would capture the hopes, dreams and aspirations of Indians from all strata of society. Armed with little more than a zealous interest in what makes Indians tick and an insatiable quest to make a difference, we set out to learn about the dreams of every seemingly ordinary man, woman and child we would come across. We wanted to know about the biggest dreams for their lives, but also transcend to larger spheres of influence by asking about their dreams for their communities as well as the country as a whole. Why? To help create the first of its kind qualitative database of dreams, a database that could be used by leaders in government, business and the development sectors to generate ideas that would support the realization of common dreams, be it through changes in public policy, development initiatives or enterprise solutions for new products and services to better serve the people of India. This is the Dream:In Project.

Much has been written about and talked about what Kishore Biyani would label “India 1” i.e. the top 10% richest Indians that have already “made it”, as well as the great emerging Indian middle class that already is and will continue to reshape the consumption patterns and the politics of the country. Their needs and wants are understandably of great interest to businesses and policymakers alike. Then, there is an almost invisible segment of Indian society, which incidentally constitutes a vast majority of Indians, whose needs are underserved at best, or at worst, overlooked completely. This is “India 2” that serves “India 1” as house-servants, drivers, cooks, security guards, shop-keepers etc. , and “India 3”, which is the rural poor of the country. When I embarked on this project, I wondered how much India 1 really knows about India 2 or 3. There is in India a large and perceptible divide between the haves and the have-nots. That divide is not merely an economic one; it is a deep psychological divide that often prevents the haves from relating to the have-nots. How much do you really know about your maid and the circumstances in her life that made her what she is? When was the last time you asked an auto driver or a street vendor what his or her aspirations were? Did you ever wonder if a poor farmer in a small village could have dreams with implications for the entire country? Yet, each of these individuals has a dream, which cannot be ignored. They need to speak in their own voice, and not always be spoken for. They need to be heard. They need to be seen. For, if we are to create an India of our dreams, we need to have a shared vision. If we are to have a shared vision, we need to understand the dreams and aspirations of all of our fellow citizens, so we can march towards a common reality. It is our common dreams that give us a common beat to march on. This is what I believe, and this is what motivated me to be part of the Dream: In project as a team-leader, dream catcher and dream scholar.

The brainchild of Spread, a vertical within Idiom, one of the largest and innovative design consultancies in India, the first phase of the Dream:In project had over 100 dream catchers, students with a design, management or communications background, cover the length and breadth of the country by road. Each team of ten consisted of one team leader and 3 sub-teams, each with a spotter, a reader and a framer. The spotter would spot the “dreamers” and engage them in a conversation to gently draw out their most cherished dreams. The reader would document the entire conversation in a journal, and the framer would capture the dream on film with a video camera.

Reflecting on our journey, several observations come to the fore. One, everyone has a dream. As we were to learn, it did not matter how rich or poor, or young or old one was, each had a dream. If they did not dream for themselves, they dreamt through and for their children. A poor farmer in Rajgarh told us that while he has come to accept the day-to-day drudgery of his life as a farmer, what excites him most is the thought of training his daughter to become an athlete so that one day she could compete in the commonwealth games.


Two, everyone likes to share their dream. We were amazed at the generosity and the hospitality with which we were welcomed every where we went as people invited us into their homes and into their lives, forming a deep bond with us in a matter of minutes as we enabled them to give voice to a dream they had been nurturing for a long time, but never had a chance to share before. Perhaps, no one had ever cared enough to ask. “No, thank you”, said Ramu, a potter earning Rs. 300 a day from making and selling clay pots at the side of a street in Bhopal. So touched was he when we came to speak to him, that he ordered chai for all of us, worth Rs. 30. A small sum for us, to be sure, but for Ramu, it was 10% of his daily wages, yet he was adamant in not letting us pay for the chai. I wondered how many of us would spend 10% of our daily income on a stranger.

Three, the simple act of sharing one’s biggest dream is empowering for ordinary Indians. Each interview ended with the dreamer holding a slate identifying the dreamer by number and location, and looking straight into the camera to vocalize his or her dream. When Laxmi looked into the camera, and said, “My name is Laxmi and my biggest dream is become a doctor so that the people in my village don’t have to travel for an hour to go to the nearest health clinic”, with a quiet but powerful resolve, I couldn’t help but notice the glimmer in her eyes. Maybe that small act had given her ownership of her dream, and imbued her with the confidence that she can, indeed, go after her dreams with all the gusto that she can muster.

“Go farther, stay longer and come back,” were the words of wisdom I got from a development practitioner when I first landed in India, “if you really want to understand Indians and then come back and share those learnings with the rest of the world.” I now realize how true that is. It is incumbent upon us make the countless invisible Indians visible to the world by sharing their stories in their own words, their dreams as they see it, so we can realize a vision for India that is built from the ground-up.

As a next phase of the project, we held a Conclave in Bangalore in February. The Conclave included leaders from the government, business and the NGO sectors, all of whom were present with the singular goal of reading and synthesizing the dreams of Indians, and brainstorming ideas for transforming those into common, transformative and inclusive realities. For everyone involved with the Dream:In project, our shared dream now is to help realize the 50+ game-changing ideas that emerged from the Conclave, and take a small step towards creating the India of our dreams. To be continued…

Learn more about the Dream:In project here.