Companies like HDFC Bank, CII, Hewlett-Packard, IMRB among others have one thing in common. Employees of each of these companies have been voluntarily donating a part of their pay to a worthy cause, thanks to a pay-roll giving program started by Give India.
Eight years ago, Give India’s founder Venkat Krishnan saw an untapped opportunity in increasingly discerning donors and developed an operational model to encourage a giving-culture amongst Indians. The result: over 100,000 donations amounting to over Rs. 55 crores have been made across India through Give India, to help change the lives of 1 million people.
The now-famous “Yes we can” attitude is the driver for most social entrepreneurs including Venkat Krishnan. But a deep dive into the experiences of entrepreneurs running successful social enterprises, reveals a hard-nosed business outlook as well. With a governing board comprising senior executives and heads of large corporations, Give India has synergised business principles to run a socially-focussed venture. This professionally managed social enterprise has done due diligence and short-listed 135 beneficiaries from over 1000 NGOs. And that is not all, service is guaranteed! Each person who has donated money through Give India’s platform, gets regular updates on the impact of his/her donation, however small or large the amount.
Give India is a not-for-profit enterprise, but several others, which practise creative capitalism, as coined by Bill Gates, are for-profit enterprises. One such enterprise is Earthy Goods, founded by Reshma Anand. While concepts like innovation and change are often used interchangeably, former Innovation Manager with Hindustan Unilever Ltd. Reshma Anand knew just how to differentiate them and use innovation to create change. As the founder and CEO of Earthy Goods, Reshma Anand’s venture enables agri-based enterprises in remote parts of rural India to become competitive and viable businesses. Sharing her unique formula for change, Reshma explains, “By creating a marketing platform that supports many other enterprises, we are able to address the problem of fair market access. This in turn supports the village economy where our partners are based, by creating jobs and secure incomes for people, particularly women in those areas”. Supported by the Network Enterprises Fund, an initiative of the Chennai-based ICICI Foundation, Earthy Goods has already helped its 12 partners double their revenues in a short span of 2 years.
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| By creating a marketing platform that supports many other enterprises, we are able to address the problem of fair market access. This in turn supports the village economy where our partners are based, by creating jobs and secure incomes for people, particularly women in those areas. Reshma Anand |
But Reshma is not alone in her efforts towards rural upliftment. R.K. Mishra, winner of Lead India 2008 – a popular, televised 6-month campaign that urged citizens to take the lead in changing India, is a firm believer of generating income opportunities for rural masses. He steers the Change India mission which has galvanised people keen to “make a difference”. Currently working on a 3-year pilot project to transform one village panchayat comprising nine villages and 1400 families in the Sitapur district in Uttar Pradesh through non-agriculture opportunities, Misra is committed to doubling the income of each below-poverty line family after the first year of this pilot.
In favour of for-profit socially-focussed ventures, Misra feels they can motivate more people towards social entrepreneurship, “A fantastic model. I call that a business with a heart! In fact for my rural initiative, I have put in an initial amount of Rs 1 crore, but the next set of investments will come through micro finance, which is a viable business”. Citing CK Prahlad’s theory of business at the Bottom of the Economic Pyramid, this social entrepreneur and a celebrity in his own right says, “I don’t feel that it is a must to put the profits back into the business. As long as the cause is served and people are happy, there is no harm in people getting paid well and becoming rich”.
When asked if fame through Lead India 2008 had kick-started his life as a social entrepreneur, Misra takes us back to 2002 when he started social initiatives through the innovative Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) model. Misra has a firm ‘grounding’ in social projects having creating over 100 high quality roads in and around Bangalore through the PPP approach. He explains, “After seeing the first 3 roads that cost us Rs. 30 crores, media wrote about it. The Karnataka government appointed me as the co-chair of Empowered committee of Infrastructure and then we did as many as 100 high-quality roads”. This civil engineer with a master’s degree in urban planning and transport engineering adds, “The govt has not been able to serve certain sectors of society and we as social entrepreneurs are trying to fill that gap. So to understand what govt has done or is trying to do and having them as a partner using PPP model is the best way forward”. Backed by this experience and past professional responsibilities, also as an IT company CEO, Misra has judiciously grown his network to become an effective change leader.
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Past experience in the corporate sector can be hugely beneficial while steering social enterprises, feels Give India’s CEO, Ujwal Thakar. After 28 years in the banking industry, he took a step into this space as the CEO of Pratham, an NGO in the area of universal primary education. Elaborating on his role there, Thakar says, “I was expected to introduce corporate processes, institutionalise them to make them effective, while also ensuring that the energy of the movement that was Pratham, was preserved”. With his expertise in retail banking, Thakar was quick to notice an inadequate liquidity of funds as soon as he joined Pratham. “As liquidity can be a stumbling block to growth, I decided to establish my credibility with the board and our founder Madhav Chavan by addressing this early. And with the board comprising heavy-weights of the likes of Mukesh Ambani and Kumaramangalam Birla, greater accountability for Pratham was the need of the hour. First, I fine-tuned its accounting system and quickly managed to standardise it”. Thakar’s banking experience came handy when he, “got cash-flow planning in place with steady sources of funds”.
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| Give India’s founder Venkat Krishnan saw an untapped opportunity in increasingly discerning donors and developed an operational model to encourage a giving-culture amongst Indians. |
In her ongoing efforts to catalyse change, Reshma Anand too recounts her Unilever experience as invaluable. “Having worked extensively in rural markets with HUL, I have been able to bring a deep understanding of consumers and markets, basic business processes in managing complex operations and measuring impact into the blueprint of Earthy Goods. I got my grounding in managing tough situations, leading a team of people and working with different stakeholders at Unilever”.
Pointing out the large untapped ‘market’ and the endless opportunities that exist for social entrepreneurs, Misra is more than convinced that “the switch from corporate sector to social sector is also very enjoyable”. He draws an interesting parallel thus, “Here you measure profit in terms of well being and happiness of people you intend to serve. In a corporate, you are looking into the happiness and $$ of your shareholders. Whether a CEO of a company or a Social Entrepreneur, the challenges are similar, business principles are the same and management style though different, has the same objective of satisfying either your customers, shareholders or beneficiaries”.
By making the switch from the corporate to the social sector, Reshma however candidly admits that, “The rules of business and competition apply to them as much as mainstream companies. But the context in which partners or beneficiaries work may be very removed from the norm. For instance many of our producers have to travel miles to get to work braving tough terrains and weather. Supplies can get disrupted by snow. But the customer would want deliveries on time. It is best to accept and mitigate these challenges in your business model”.
But despite these challenges, how are ventures like Earthy Goods, Give India and the Change India movement steadily growing in popularity? How do they fare well in this multidimensional construct of social entrepreneurship?
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written by Santosh Bhandarkar, March 17, 2010
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