The day started out uneventfully: a quick call home to say good morning/good night to my wife and daughters and a cold shower (which was actually refreshing given that the a/c had conked out in the middle of the night following one of those periodic blackouts). The spent a few minutes on my blackberry reviewing e-mails - sure to be a futile effort, but a blackberry addiction knows not international boundaries....
Following my rickshaw adventures of yesterday, I decided that living life on the wild side may actually pose a legitimate risk to my health and safety, so I intended to opt for a more conventional option of a taxi. I went downstairs to greet the sauna of a morning and to meet my taxi. Now my taxi had been arranged by the Drishtee House caretaker, Reban, a short, corpulent fellow who is about the nicest guy in the world, always with a smile on his face with that wonderful Indian head bobble (no = yes) and always eager to help with anything. However, Reban's English consists primarily of two or three word pairings that I can decipher followed by several words that I can't, perhaps because they are in Hindi. Unfortunately, Hindi is not in my official language repertoire, which leads to some interesting conversation between us. In this case, we either misunderstood each other or the taxi driver and I didn't see each other in the midst of the mess that they call traffic in New Delhi, and after about 10 minutes and with sweat beads forming on my brow, I decided to do the unthinkable, temp fate, and yes, you got it - hail down the next rickshaw....now I'll spare you anothe rickshaw story, but needless to say, if you want some adventure in your life, just come to New Delhi and jump in a rickshaw.
I arrived at Drishtee a little bit dustier and sweatier than when I left my apartment. The office space is completely open, with everyone occupying a very small desk that are lined up one next to another. Even the CEO and founder of the organization has his little desk, just like everyone else. The Drishtee leadership team has mentioned that they want humility to be a trademark of the organization, and they do see to embody that trait in more ways than one. Entering the office, I am struck by how quiet and reserved the staff is - no "good mornings" or "hellos", very quiet atmosphere, yet everyone is exceptionally polite and pleasant. Different vibe altogether and quite a far cry from the hugs, kisses and general volume that accompanied the morning arrivals in Hollywood and Sunrise offices ;-) Que viva India! Que viva Latinoamerica!
Mid morning I met Satyan, the Drishtee founder, and discussed with him the outlines of a project that would be a bit different than the one that we had previously identified for me. Following lunch, I met with Siddarth, the lead Strategy and Business Development guy for Drishtee. We further delved into the scope and parameters of my project. We decided that my skill set would be best suited to developing a branding and positioning strategy to help Drishtee better engage key stakeholders. Since its inception, Drishtee, like many organizations of its size and socpe, has been very focused on building and evolving its business model and growing its organization, but less focused on how to build the Drishtee name among stakeholder communities. I'm excited about taking on this project and feel that it will provide me with the opportunity to help Drishtee to impact its present and future.
So what is Drishtee about? Well, their stated mission is "to collaborate with marginalized communities to develope and nurture rural entreprises to support the community ecosytem". In simple terms, Drishtee is active in 5,000 rural villages in northern India, identifying and working with local entreprenuers to deliver access to key services and products (consumer goods, financial services, health and education). Drishtee is what's known as a "social entreprise", which means that their raison d'etre is to address social needs (in this case, access to goods and services in marginalized rural communities) to improve people's lives and in turn address a massive problem in India of "distress migration" from rural to urban areas (a common phenomenon in all developing countries, but particularly acute in India - did you know that there are 610,000 villages in India and the rural population of India is 800 million? Another way to look at it is that one of every 8 inhabitants on the planet live in an Indian village....pretty amazing!). As a social "entreprise" Drishtee has to fund its operations and expansion fully through profit that they can achieve through their business model, which involves charging villagers nominal fees for all goods/services and sharing those fees with the local entrepreneur (franchisee) who delivers the good or service on behalf of Drishtee. Very interesting and innovative model.....
Throughout the afternoon, I met the rest of the leadership team. All are MBAs with experience working in banking, IT and consulting with leading multinational. Brilliant guys, and all have given up great-paying jobs and careers to build Drishtee. Just an impressive group of individuals who are true visionaries in developing and evolving a business model that attempts to address the highly complex social problem of rural proverty and human development.....my hat truly goes off to these guys.
So I'm relieved to have gotten greater clarity and alignment on my project. Before I leave for the day, I get help from one of the IT guys in the office to set up a portable camera that I can attach to my computer so I can use Skype. I text my wife to let her know that I'll be up bright and early tomorrow morning to tuck my girls in and say prayers from the other side of the world...all courtesty of Skype. The marvels of modern technology!
No comments:
Post a Comment