Partners in good deed

Eight young women, aged 18-20, are all set for their new job as wait-staff at Domino’s pizza outlets. Though Jubilant FoodWorks, the Indian company that holds the master franchise for the pizza giant, often hires workers from disadvantaged groups, it was for the first time hiring these young women from Bhatti Mines — an area where under-age marriage, teen motherhood and domestic violence are the norm.

Located in south Delhi, a shave away from Haryana, the area with its now-defunct mines is home to Hindu migrants from Pakistan, besides migrants from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan. Extremely conservative, the community here expects women to stay at home. Additionally, women’s safety is a matter of concern, given the rampant alcoholism and substance abuse in the community.

But change is in the air, thanks to initiatives by a group of top company executives in association with non-governmental organisations (NGOs). The newfound employment of the women, supported by their families, signals the slow social transformation at work.

It all began when the NGO Literacy India opened a centre to teach the area’s women to work with fabrics — stitching, embroidery and block printing — after coaxing the elders and menfolk to agree. After the training some of the women worked part-time at the centre, getting paid on a per piece basis. Others started stitching for women and children in the neighbourhood, earning about ₹1,500 a month. A few women were hired at an export house unit. The women now with Domino’s were once a part of the centre, and had shown keen interest in taking up employment.

A similar tale of empowerment unfolds in northwest Delhi’s Budh Vihar. Young people from underprivileged families who have finished higher secondary schooling are being trained in accounting software Tally and graphic designing at a centre run by NGO Udayan Care. All of them have been promised jobs after the course. The training centre is Tally-authorised, which means the students receive a much-prized certification on completing the course. They are also given lessons on accounting theory and practices by a chartered accountant to improve their learning of the software. The ones completing graphic designing will be mentored by Lopez Design, a boutique design studio, and then placed with small publishers and printers. A few others are learning the basics of using a computer, working with various programs for inputting data. They also learn to speak English. The Tally and graphic designing courses are not exactly cheap, but the students pay a fraction of that.

Both projects have had life-changing impact for the people who are part of it. The most tangible change is the jump in household income, which has doubled in many instances. Annual household income in Bhatti Mines earlier was less than ₹1.5 lakh on an average and in Budh Vihar about ₹2.5 lakh or less.

Helping hand

The corporate executives behind these initiatives are mostly C-suite, a term used for the chiefs of companies. All of them are achievers in their corporate careers, have helmed large corporate houses and are now members of Social Venture Partners (SVP), a global network of individual philanthropists.

SVP’s idea of philanthropy is not limited to providing financial assistance to projects or causes or individuals. Money is a small part of it — partners in India are expected to contribute a minimum of ₹2.5 lakh annually to the SVP fund, which is then invested in specific projects of partner NGOs. The membership requires partners to commit their time to the adopted projects, offer their expertise to improve its efficacy and reach, and leverage their individual networks to advance the projects. This form of “engaged philanthropy” is meant to promote sustainable livelihoods.

“We are almost like a McKinsey for social sector,” says Ganesh Natarajan, chair, SVP India. The body supports skills training, mentors NGOs, helps with branding and uses the power of networks to reach out nationally and internationally. “We have got everything mapped out. We know what people need. The goal is to scale and we pretty much know how it is to be done.”

The network, which has its origins in Seattle, was started by a group of retired Microsoft executives 20 years ago with the objective of helping their communities tackle social challenges.

“The SVP has a unique model of getting people involved. It is easier to get people to give money but getting them to give their time and to get the right kind of people to give their time is challenging,” says Rajeev Bakshi, chair of the Delhi chapter, and former managing director of Metro Cash and Carry in India — a business-to-business wholesaler.

SVP was brought to India in 2012 by Ravi Venkatesan about a year after he exited as chairman of Microsoft India. The India chapter got off to a slow start in Bengaluru, attracting top executives mostly from the information technology industry. Among the early members were Ganesh Natarajan, then vice-chairman and CEO of Zensar Technologies, Krishnakumar Natarajan, co-founder and CEO of MindTree, and his wife Akila Natarajan, the former president for Global Solution Centers at SunGard, and Bakshi.

Ganesh Natarajan expanded SVP to Pune and succeeded Venkatesan as chairman of the India chapter. SVP has since expanded to seven cities and has about 250 partners and is working with 42 non-profits.

Engaged philanthropy

Jubilant FoodWorks offered the young women from Bhatti Mines jobs after Bakshi explored those opportunities with Pratik Pota, CEO of Jubilant Works, and Bakshi’s former colleague at Pepsico India. Likewise, Tally Solutions’ association with the Udayan Care’s Budh Vihar centre happened after Venkatesan reached out to Bharat Goenka, managing director, Tally. Tally Solutions not only agreed to give special deals on the software, but also extended help with training and courseware as well as upgrading the centre to an authorised one. The chartered accountant who conducts accountancy classes for the students on weekends is an acquaintance of Sanjiv Sachar, former country head of Egon Zehnder and an SVP partner. The CA has offered his services pro bono for three months, and has also trained the Tally instructors and reviewed the courseware to improve the learning.

Such outcomes are preceded by groundwork to find NGO partners who work in skill training and livelihood and are keen to collaborate with professionals from the corporate world. In some cases, NGOs want only financial assistance, not engagement from SVP. But that is not how it works.

“Most NGOs don’t like intrusion. They have a DNA of their own and want to stick to that. They don’t like people telling them what to do. So we have to be careful — we can’t just apply management theory to them. It has to be adapted to the NGO’s requirement,” explains Bakshi. Clearly, the executives have to strike the right balance. “I am very clear: just because I have a successful track record in capitalist corporate life does not mean I have any authority over anyone else,” says Harsh Lohit, founder of HeadStrong Services India and its former managing director. “I just have certain skills that I developed from working for 30 years.” Some partnerships do go wrong. For instance, in a project in Pune, SVP had to pull back when it realised the NGO resented too much involvement from the partners.

Leading a project

For every project that SVP associates with, one member takes on the role of the lead partner — the points-person for interaction between SVP and the NGO. SVP does not choose the lead partner for a project — rather, individuals are expected to volunteer, more so if they feel passionate about a specific project or subject.

The NGO partners of SVP in the National Capital Region acknowledge they have gained immensely from the association. Udayan Care managing trustee Kiran Modi describes SVP as a “lighthouse.” At the organisation level, SVP helped them focus on their goals — do they want to just fill jobs that would have got filled anyway or create jobs. SVP also brought in corporate culture into the way the NGOs function.

“We have a limited vision, we are passionate, and we really want to do things right. They have clear-cut goals. They push us to deliver in time, which is very good,” Modi says. She recognises that the NGOs need to imbibe a certain corporate culture such as adherence to vision, timelines and effective delivery.

Call for guidance: Virohan, which trains youth from disadvantaged sections to work in medical laboratories, did not need financial assistance but help with strategising to scale rapidly

Indraani Singh, founder Literacy India and its managing trustee, who is also a captain with Air India, said the relationship with SVP had been an evolving one. SVP came into the picture when Literacy India was struggling with its project in Bhatti Mines. It lent financial assistance and support. “My job becomes comfortable if we have more people like them. One person can’t do much. You need more hands to come together and do something. If that kind of synergy happens, then why only Bhatti Mines, we will go to many places together,” says Singh.

SVP does not have any specific template for its partnerships with non-profits, although creating livelihoods and equipping beneficiaries with skills to earn a living is an objective common across all projects.

For instance, its partnership with the Faridabad-based non-profit Virohan Institute for Health and Management Sciences is very different from the Udayan Care and Literacy India projects. Virohan, an organisation that trains youth from disadvantaged sections to work in medical laboratories, does not need any financial assistance, but rather help with strategising to scale rapidly, as well as in hiring and creating a second line of command. Virohan had planned to expand to 70 centres over the next five years but after Vikas Gambhir, partner, non-profit advisory at accounting and consulting firm Grant Thornton, reviewed and suggested ways to streamline the organisation’s operations and processes, the vision was given a broader perspective. Why not think bigger, it was asked — why not aim for 150-200 centres. “Virohan already had a path before we came in,” says Gambhir, the lead partner for Virohan. However, there was a need to assess where it was going and at what speed, and Gambhir felt a change in strategy was needed. “We decided to go back to the drawing board. We realised that there were a few things that needed to be realigned first,” adds Gambhir.

Virohan is upbeat. “Just talking to Gambhir on a weekly basis and discussing strategy is a very powerful tool for us. Leveraging the mainstream network that SVP brings on board is important for us. We are able to create impact,” says Kunaal Dudeja, Virohan’s CEO and co-founder.

All three SVP projects are to be scaled up in the coming months. Says Sharat Bansal, the SVP lead partner working with Literacy India: “What attracted us to Literacy India was Indraani Singh’s experience, her capability to implement, to do honest work with the community and the passion that she brings in... We want it to be a national partnership. Bhatti Mines is the first pilot.”

Udayan Care is looking to implement its Budh Vihar centre learnings to the 13 other outfits it runs across the NCR, while Virohan will set up centres across the country. Bharat is meeting India.

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