It’s usually a vacation in Paris or Switzerland for most investment bankers, but Hemendra Kothari, founder of DSP group, invariably headed to forests and wildlife sanctuaries whenever he wanted a break from deal-making. Twice a year, he sought the company of tigers and leopards even at the height of his investment banking career. Today, he is applying investment banking principles to promote and protect wildlife across India through the Wildlife Conservation Trust (WCT).
“Although the two (wildlife and investment banking) are different, my experience in setting up and running an organisation (DSP Group) helped inject corporate culture into an NGO,” says the chairman of DSP Blackrock India, a leading mutual fund that manages assets worth over ₹33,000 crore.
“The increase in the cases of poaching around the early years of this century was a big trigger,” says the 67-year-old businessman, explaining the need for businesslike efficiency in wildlife protection.
He realised that the best way to protect wildlife is by protecting their habitat (the forest), which in turn can happen only if the dependence of people on forests was reduced.
So his approach has been to create livelihood, health and education facilities for people living near forests. WCT teams visit the villages and survey the unemployed youth. NGOs are roped in to provide skills training, while companies are approached to provide them jobs.
“Corporates face shortage of labour in retail, fabrication and other businesses, while people in and around forest areas don’t have jobs. We bridge this gap by bringing them together and, in turn, reduce dependence on forests,” says Kothari, whose great grandfather was one of the founders of the Bombay Stock Exchange.
His investment banking career taught him that growth is quicker through multiplication rather than division. DSP Financial Consultants, set up by him in 1975, tied up with Merrill Lynch in 1995 to become a sought-after investment banking firm. The alternative was to compete with Merrill Lynch for the same goals and companies.
Similarly, in wildlife conservation too, Kothari prefers to partner with NGOs for various projects. “We identify and develop the project and get in the NGOs. We give money and support to them as that works better,” he says.
At villages in and around the Pench Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra, WCT has tied up with the NGO Pratham, the State forest department and the Taj Group to provide hospitality training to unemployed youth. Similar programmes are on in Ranthambore, Kanha and Mudumalai. WCT is active in over 100 parks across 18 States.
“We look for tie-ups with companies in close vicinity, preferably within 150sqkm of these villages,” says Kothari, even as he persuades big corporates to come up with more jobs.
While forest conservation is one aspect of WCT’s efforts, anti-poaching is another. Since 2013, at more than 1,600 anti-poaching camps in over 60 protected areas, the WCT has equipped frontline forest staff with gear ranging from shoes and utensils to solar lighting and naturally insulating bricks.
Earning their stripes
An important part of WCT’s conservation efforts is the scientific mapping of the big cat. Going beyond pugmarks, WCT uses camera trapping and DNA mapping to track tiger movements. Interestingly, a tiger in Kanha (Madhya Pradesh) today is likely to be found in Pench (Maharashtra) in two to three years.
Camera trapping images help identify individual tigers as their stripes like fingerprints are unique. “Several tigers live outside protected areas and often travel through human-dominated areas at night,” Kothari says.
So while camera traps are used in protected areas, the movement of tigers elsewhere is mapped using faecal DNA studies. WCT teams walk nearly 12 hours a day for four to five months in a year, collecting field data. The DNA from the faeces helps identify individual tigers unambiguously. State governments are urged to safeguard tiger corridors, which are vital for the big cats to move from one park to another and prevent inbreeding.
“Sometimes tigers can’t find territories and man-animal conflict starts. Our objective is to reduce this conflict,” says Kothari.
The DNA study costs ₹5,000 per sample. “We spend $3-3.5 million each year towards the conservation efforts and will continue to spend more,” he asserts.
Wild dream team
In June, he joined hands with environmental philanthropists from China, the US and UAE to provide $80-million funding to Panthera, a global alliance for the conservation of wild cats. DSP Blackrock is a global name and Kothari’s wildlife conservation efforts too have expanded into the international domain.
His wish list includes the protection of snow leopards in the Himalayas. “Areas with snow leopards need to be protected. Apart from protecting forests, it will help mitigate climate change and foster tourism. That, in turn, will create jobs in the region.”
As WCT’s work extends from forests and animals to hydrology and ecology, Kothari has built his team accordingly. WCT president Anish Andheria has a doctorate from Mumbai’s Institute of Chemical Technology, while the rest of the team includes doctors, lawyers, engineers and experts in fields as diverse as education and herbivores. “We have a young and very enthusiastic team, possibly one of the biggest in the Indian wildlife conservation space,” he says.
But Kothari, as always, swears by multiplication: “My objective is to see that more people join us in 10 years’ time.”