Nitin Bajaj:

Hey everyone, welcome to The Industry Show. I’m your host Nitin Bajaj and joining me today is Ravi Sreedharan. Ravi, welcome on the show. Finally. So let’s start with who is Ravi.

 

Ravi Sreedharan:

Wow. Okay, I would describe myself as a person born in the 60s when India was going through a certain phase of its own life. So a lower middle class person and thanks to what I thought was meritocracy went to a premier institution like IIT and IIM and I said it thought because now I’ve realized it was an ovarian lottery. But yeah, so enjoyed the privileges of having gotten to those institutions and made a life out of my corporate career which was very successful though I aborted it to come and be part of the Indian social sector. So yeah, middle class person enjoyed the privileges, thought I was meritocratic, actually enjoyed the liberalization, the institutions and so on and so forth. But today living the life that I want to live and I’ve been now in social work for about 14 years now.

 

Nitin Bajaj:

Ravi, this is something I’ve really, having known you for several years now, you’re extremely down to earth. You have worked hard to get to a place where you’re able to make the choices that you have made and the amazing choice you’ve made is to give back to the community and when you say you hit the lottery, a lot of hard work went into it and you made good on everything that has come your way and what you have worked for. I would love for you to share about ISDM, the organization that you co-founded and tell us a little more about the mission, the vision and more importantly, why did you end up starting ISDM?

 

Ravi Sreedharan:

Yeah, so I’ll try and do this quickly, normally is a one hour answer but ever since I moved into the social sector, I came with the corporate arrogance of having been a CEO and all that sort of stuff and I was fortunate to be able to work across the country where I was with Azeem Premji Foundation and Nitin, I kid you not, in every corner of this country, I would see amazing individuals, amazing organizations doing amazing work for the society that they live in and that was humbling because I don’t think anything I did in my corporate world was half as complex as what was being done by many of these people but the one thing I also saw was time and time again, these organizations would stumble and fail, either they would struggle to survive or if they survived, they would struggle to scale and this amazing work was not benefiting large numbers of people and that’s like serious injustice because today, countries like India have and you can put that number wherever you want but it’s in the half a billion to a billion people, are being denied that great work, that great ideas, those great passion of people and so on and so forth. What it boiled down to me was the inability to lead and manage organizations and like it or not, all this work happens in an organization, organizations like the vehicle, so if you don’t know how to manage people, processes, money, technology, networks, etc., compliance, etc., you end up with a situation where the work itself gets stopped or the work doesn’t reach or the work is not sustained and for me, that boiled down to leadership and management and that goes back a little bit to my own corporate careers and all that sort of stuff, right, that is the first part but the second part was what was the more bothersome thing which is that I talked about that corporate arrogance with which I come into the social sector, I very quickly realized that the ideas that you would intuitively come up with as a general management practitioner are completely out of place and I say that politely because if I was more in your face about it, I would have said you would do more harm than you would do good and that’s when it started striking me that this needs to be thought through very differently, you need management but this management needs to be designed for the way a social sector organization needs to be operating and that’s where really ISDM started off and then as I studied the history of management, Nitin, I realized there was management for the state which is what we typically call public administration, there is management for the business which we call masters in business administration but there was nothing for the social sector and willy-nilly we just tried to copy-paste public administration or business administration here and that’s a disaster because the way the state has to be run is very different from how a business needs to be run, is very different from how a social sector organization needs to be run and if all these three don’t do their own respective role, you will never achieve that goal of a flourishing civilization or a society, that’s when I realized you need management that is designed bespoke for the social sector and maybe as we go along I can talk a little bit about that.

 

Nitin Bajaj:

Sure and I absolutely love the mission and also the vision and you have a state-of-the-art facility and that I’ve had an opportunity to come visit. Tell us more about as things stand today, ISDM has been in existence for a few years, you’ve had a few students or now alums that are out in the sector and helping the current and the larger community. Tell us the size and scale of the operations and more importantly the impact that ISDM has done created in just a very few short years.

 

Ravi Sreedharan:

Yeah, no, they said it’s obviously we’re coming up to our eighth foundation year, so we’ve graduated six batches of our postgraduate program, we’ve done a lot of knowledge work, we’ve set up three centers of excellence on data sciences for social impact, innovative finance for social impact, on philanthropy for inclusive development, these are all management questions if you understand. We’ve also set up like an innovation hub where we’re trying to figure out how can management be applied in very small rural organizations in the country, four or five people with 10 lakh, 20 lakh rupee budget, management doesn’t reach there but the backbone of the civil society is there, so how does management reach there, so that’s an innovation lab. We’ve started building capacity of the organizations in the country, so working with leadership teams of large organizations like America India Foundation, DCM Sriram Foundation, like Plan International and so on so forth. We’re also trying to put together an e-school of development management where we can give wide access and over time hopefully in languages because social workers are in all sorts of languages. So we’ve graduated six batches, we graduate about one class each roughly about 60-70 students, so we have in north of about 400 odd students and they are all over the country, they come from all over the country and every batch has had students from at least 20 states and they go all over the country, so they’re in you know check writing organizations to grassroot organization. It’s like the MBA right, the MBA doesn’t prepare you for a sector, it’s like that I prepare management graduates for the social sector and then they can go into education, they can go into livelihood, they can go into many other areas and different functions, they could be in behavior change, they could be in fundraising, they could be in program management and so on so forth. So but the biggest change in my opinion that we have achieved, Nitin is really not in these numbers which itself is impressive, is changing the narrative in the country. You know when we started people said why are you putting development and management in the same sentence? Management are those bad guys, please keep them far away and I tried to explain that this management is a verb not the noun that you’re imagining. You need management to do whatever you’re doing, you’re organizing a wedding, you need management, you know what I mean? So it was that idea and today there are actually people using that language very conveniently and there are also other institutions that have got inspired to start some work and labeling it as development management and that’s our holy grail. It’s not about the institution, it’s about mainstreaming the idea of development management. Then institutions will take off, programs will take off, youngsters will go study, people will do research and scholarship and that’s the challenge when you’re building a category right and for me that is the measure of success that the narrative is building and that’s going to drive a huge change. I say this like we spend about 100,000 crores of rupees every year of private philanthropy, even a one percent improvement in the effectiveness is worth a thousand crores and our institution is run at about 20-25 crores so the ROI is humongous.

 

Nitin Bajaj:

I love two things about that, one is as you said just even a fraction of that huge number is pretty significant but then as you percolate through the systems and you shift those mindsets, you will see even more exponential gains over the years and that’s the beauty of starting something in a green field essentially, there was nothing like this that existed in India and given India’s own journey and growth and where it’s at now and it will be over the next 20-25 years, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with institutionalizing ISDM at the right time, at the right place, with the right people. Several people on your team are as amazing maybe if not as cool as you but so kudos to you for bringing all of this together and making this significant change in the community for generations to come.

 

Ravi Sreedharan:

Isn’t one interesting statistic I want to share with you, today the largest NGO in this country reaches about 38 million people, that’s like a drop in the ocean in a country like ours where almost a billion plus people can’t afford their calorific needs in this country. I’m imagining that by 2047 which is 100 years of Indian independence, if development management does take roots, it will do to the social sector what the MBAs did to the world of business which is be able to do things at large scale and make the difference. I expect at least 100 NGOs with a 100 crores budget and reaching 100 million people, that’s when this country is going to change complete. That’s my headline goal.

 

Nitin Bajaj:

That’s massive and knowing you and knowing the people you mess around with, it’s happening way before that 100-year mark. Here to root for you and for the entire team. 

Ravi Sreedharan: Thanks Nitin.

 

Nitin Bajaj:  Ravi, as we talk about these numbers and we look at what’s to come at us in the next few years, what’s the one big challenge you’re facing?

 

Ravi Sreedharan:

One thing that I realized as in this journey is you need to build iconic institutions. It’s like imagine a Harvard Business School or a Harvard Kennedy School, right? So we need to build an iconic institution with students from all over the world, faculty from all over the world, great ideas, great knowledge being created, recreated, a fountainhead of knowledge for the space people are looking at. That takes time and in many ways, we are in a race against time and that’s the biggest challenge because today with every passing year, another 20-25 million people are coming out of the school with pathetic education or another 200 million are being born into households which are living without being able to afford the basic requirements for a dignified healthy life. That hurts. I know this is going to take time but I want to do this in a hurry. So the biggest challenge is to figure out how do you do this rapidly. The good news is that today in the world we live, thanks to the convergence of technology, communication, geographies, etc. I think we can do it and as you can see, I’m a very optimistic person. So I’m of the belief that if a Harvard Business School has been around for 125 years, we don’t have that luxury. We have to build that sort of an institution in 20 years and that’s the biggest challenge and that requires many people to come together and funding is a huge issue when you build institutions and people like me have come with a lot of passion, with a lot of execution ability, with a lot of ideas but not with large bank balances because I gave up my corporate career with just about enough to live till 75 years or something like that. So that combination of bringing people, bringing technology, bringing those networks and partnership, that’s the key and I use this phrase at ISDN that you don’t build a new domain with some 80 people sitting in a however fancy institution. It is going to happen through collective wisdom. So the idea of collective wisdom is the second challenge if you ask me and the third is funding. Funding I know is an easier problem to solve. How do you do this fast? How do you build those networks and collaborations and collectivism and money?

 

Nitin Bajaj:

And in many ways, those challenges also are butting against opportunities that we have. One being the significant impact at scale that can happen and transform generations. So what’s that most exciting opportunity you’re looking at?

 

Ravi Sreedharan:

I think India is the huge opportunity because India today is in its own journey. So you’re also operating in an ecosystem and sometimes I told you about my corporate world, I thought I was successful but I rode a wave. So in many ways, it’s also about catching the wave and I think there is a huge wave in India thanks to the combination of social progress, economic progress and some of the youngsters and the youth coming up with more progressive ideas and wanting to challenge the status quo. I think there is a general wave that is happening and that’s the biggest opportunity that you ride that wave. I look at the youngsters of today and compare them to my generation. They are way ahead. They are far more questioning the system, questioning the status quo, not just discussing it in the living room but actually wanting to make a difference and that’s a huge opportunity. That’s the first one. The second I said is the economic progress. Today, countries like India are producing the largest number of billionaires. This year, we’re going to produce a billionaire every week, a US dollar billionaire every week. That’s unreal and so there is the economic capital also that’s available and the other side of it is also the Maslow’s hierarchy, right?

 

As people make more money, then they go into more of the social and they wonder what am I going to do with all this money? So there is that money thing coming and third is the intellectual capital. India just produces the most amazing intellectual capital that you can imagine and they’re all over the world and everybody is willing to in some ways give up part of that capital that they have. So the opportunity is many ways India and the last thing I say is that I am not an India story. I am as a global south story because the way you lead and manage organizations in the social sector in a developing country is very different from how you would manage it in a developed country. This story is not just about India.

When I talk to people, I say that Germany might have had the first engineering school in the world. US might have had the first medical school and the first management school. I think India has the opportunity to build the first development management school, a number one development management school to roll across. Short answer to your question, the opportunity is India.

 

Nitin Bajaj:

I love that and I’m with you 100%. That is the big one. Now as we look forward, I want to pause and reflect and look at the rear view mirror and ask you to share two moments in your life career. One that did not work out as you had expected and planned, became a failure, was a lesson and another one that exceeded your own expectations and became a process beyond your imagination.

 

Ravi Sreedharan:

Yeah, the first one is the more difficult one and I say that with a huge humility and recognition of my privilege that I’ve had a life which has been very blessed and or maybe just my positive sort of attitude but and this might sound trivial, Nitin, but when I started ISDM, I thought I’ll do this for five years maybe and it’ll all be sorted and done and that’s the corporate world, right? I write five-year strategies, I deliver to that and I move on with a big bonus or something like that. So I thought this is going to be a five-year journey and now we are into the eighth year and I think we’re still putting the foundational blocks. So I won’t call it a failure but it certainly was not what I had expected will happen and that is one side of the story. The other is, it’s a collective failure and I think as a middle class person or at least an ex-middle class today maybe I’m in a slightly better socioeconomic bracket, we let our brothers, sisters and others down and I see that in my own family, I see that in my own communities, I see that in my own colleges, I see that in my own district, state and country where I feel that and I own this responsibility that we made a lot of progress thanks to the public system. We went to public schools, we went to public health places, we went to public distribution and then once we made money, we created our own bubbles. We went to private schools, we went to supermarkets and we went to the private hospital and we just completely ignored the fact that 90% of this country was suffering. That for me is a very big letdown and the fact that I didn’t even realize it while I was growing up, I just thought I was leading the correct life and things like that and that for me is definitely a huge failure if you ask me. In terms of, sorry and the learning from that for me is just being aware and raising our children with greater awareness. In India, I say that today there is a Bharat and there is an India and some of us privileged people live in India and think there is no caste, there is no poverty, India is a great country, we have flyovers, we have bullet train. Not realizing that 80% of your country still is not able to afford a basic healthy dignified life and I think raising the awareness is a huge thing and that goes back to parenting, that goes back to school education, that goes back to societal values and things like that and that’s a big learning which is that this is a whole system that needs to change, there is no magical app or tablet that you can produce that changes. So a huge learning is that social change requires thinking systemically and that’s a very different mindset because a lot of us who come from the corporate world problematize and solve the problem. It doesn’t work like that, it’s so easy we’ve solved our problems long back. So that’s from the failure or the negative side of coming from that side of the spectrum if you like with it. On the positive side is ISDN for me, right? When I started ISDN, I said that iconic world-class institutions are built by the Rockefellers or the Azim Premji’s or the Ambani’s. Ravi, who are you? I started with this idea that listen, this is a life I want to lead, this is what I want to do, if it succeeds fantastic, if it doesn’t succeed I’ve led the life that I wanted to lead anyways. That was my simple theory of starting and I gave myself a five percent chance. I’ll be very honest when I started, I gave myself a five percent chance saying come on Ravi, I think you know yourself that you’re trying to do something way beyond your own but it’s unreal when you think audaciously, think big for society, how much of tailwinds you will pick up. Now whether it is a timing thing or not and this is interesting I think because I’m a non-believer. For me, I’m too much of a rationalist, I need an explanation for everything but the number of times the world has conspired to make things happen in the ISDN journey is unreal and that for me is a huge message to people who might listen to this talk which is don’t underestimate what you can do. Start, move that leg, move that hand, do something, it’s unreal what you can achieve. I think all of us get overwhelmed by who am I, what can I do, the problems are too big, this country is too large, it’s too complex. Really Nitin, the biggest learning for me is put that first foot forward and then we’ll figure out the second and the third and the fourth.

It’s unreal how much you can achieve.

 

Nitin Bajaj:

I can so relate to that and I’m glad you’re mentioning this because we have to dream big because we are solving bigger problems and once you take that first step, once you show that leadership, you’re right, people will follow along, people will see that vision and they’ll help you get there. It doesn’t remove the challenges we’ll face but it does help to have that collective effort and backing so it takes you closer to that next step. Now, can you get it done in five years? That’s a whole different story.

 

Ravi Sreedharan:

It may not and that’s the other thing about working in the social sector. You can’t be too deterministic, I will change this in five years time. No, it’s too complex but I’m doing the right thing for change to happen, that’s what you should do and then change might happen in five years, change may not happen in five and not everything is in your control, so you have to do your bit.

 

Nitin Bajaj:

So true. Ravi, before we move on to the next section, I’d love for you to tell us other than ISDM, what do you do for fun?

 

Ravi Sreedharan:

Yeah, I call it fun, it may not, a lot of audience may think it’s not fun. The thing that I really enjoy is time with youngsters and thanks to ISDM, I meet a lot of youngsters and it’s therapeutic when you’re near 60 and you have friends who are closer to 25, it’s unreal, so that’s my absolute fun. So, spending time with students, spending time with alums and so on so forth and the other small personal story is I’d gone off to work in a village in Kerala for a year and during that time, there are seven kids from that village who like become my kids and they and that joy of being like a parent, mentor, friend, guide to those seven kids and to see them having flourished and now being able to move their own families and their village a long distance socio-economically is a huge privilege and joy. There are youngsters like them, youngsters like the alum and then by this age, a lot of people want you to be a mentor. Oh, I love it because I learn so much from them.

 

Nitin Bajaj:

So true. I was just having a discussion with the teacher and I said, both in the philanthropic world where you write a cheque, you receive more than you give and also as a teacher, when you’re teaching, you’re learning more than you’re actually teaching. Yeah, I agree 100% with you.

 

Ravi Sreedharan:

This thing about getting more than you give is so true, Nitin. People, a lot of my batchmates say, you’re an IIT, IIM guy, you gave it all up and you’re doing social work and I tell them, I don’t think you realize it, I’m getting way, way more than I’m giving. So, don’t think of me as some altruistic, special person or anything. I’m leading a very selfish life. I’m doing things I really enjoy.

 

Nitin Bajaj:

I so agree with that. Now, onto my favorite part of the show, the one-line life lessons. Ravi, I would love for you to share your life lessons with us.

 

Ravi Sreedharan:

Sure. So, the first thing is to make a lot of friends and travel because I think we all need to be more aware of the world we live in and things like that help you to become aware. And I have a favorite line which I use in my college, which I’d heard long back somewhere else, so it’s not like my original line or anything, is that you will learn the most from people who are least like you. And that mantra is so powerful. So, I’m all the time going to the most different person and saying hi or traveling to some distant place where I don’t. So, that’s one big life lesson, which is you will learn the most from people who are least like you and thereby try and spend that time. If you’re aware, you will lead a far more meaningful, rich life. That certainly would be one. Another one is this thing that we talked a little earlier.

If you are unhappy with some reality or status quo, do something about it. I think too many of us are stuck in this living room conversations and not doing anything about it. And not because there is no intention. It’s because there’s a feeling of being overwhelmed. It’s beyond me, it’s for the politician, it’s for the Godman, it’s for the whatever. I really think that we should just set forth in whatever change.

So, do something if you have a problem, if you feel bad, if you feel it’s unfair. I think doing something, a bias for action would be a big thing. That’s the second one.

The third one for me is this thing I talked about meritocracy. Don’t fool yourself to think that you’re meritocratic. There is no meritocracy in this world. That’s the biggest nonsense we have created. I think everybody is meritocratic. The opportunities are different.

The life experiences are different and thereby you manifest different things. If you recognize and realize that child who’s begging at your car window could have been a philosopher, could have been an artist, could have been a musician, could have been an engineer, is something that will completely change the way you look at life and respect other people. So, I think seeing the agency in everyone around you and it’s very selfish by the way because it makes you a superhuman because you will benefit from all those that humility of accepting and learning from everybody else. The fourth one for me and this is a very Indian thing, this treating youngsters without respect for their abilities. It’s so systemic I can’t even begin to tell you. The biggest marginalized community in our country is not the conventional labels you’ll think of. I think it’s the youth. The youth do not have a platform. The youth are permanently kept under by the previous generation. They’re told not to ask questions. They’re not told not to question things. They’re told whatever and they’re always told you’re irresponsible, you don’t care etc and I think that’s a very unfortunate reality of the world.

The other thing I would say is that we shouldn’t think of work very selfishly and think about it purely from our lifetimes. We should lead a life that is good in your lifetime. The results of your life could be in this lifetime and may not be in this lifetime. The reason I say that is there’s some types of change will not happen even in your lifetime. Changing attitude towards caste, it may take longer than your life. It may not also. It may change rapidly and that’s just a complex combination of things happening but should does that mean you don’t work on that and you only work on COVID because COVID needs to be fixed in the next two years. I think you have a problem there. So then what happens you tend not to work on things you can’t change in your lifetime and that’s not good because that continues into an intergenerational problem. That would be another lesson for me. The next one is about education. Unfortunately, all of us look at education as with an instrumentality as a lever to a good life versus the way to become a good adult and I think education is not about just economic progress that you achieve in your life or some status in your life. It’s about how do you become a good adult in a meaningful society. That idea has to be understood otherwise you’re going to study geography, maths and whatever very rote fashion or in a very formulaic way versus building critical thinking, building problem-solving abilities, building the ability to synthesize things and all that. So that I think is an important thing for I have certainly benefited and learned from. I think respecting other species is another big one that’s you wouldn’t see any of this climate change and all the other bad things that are happening if you just had that simple idea that this planet is not only for human beings but for everybody else and by the way if the everybody else is not there you human being are anyway going to go extinct right and I think that respect for whether it’s an animal, whether it’s a plant, whether it’s a water body, whether it is a mountain. I think that’s a another idea that I think is gosh I sound like a godman talking about so many life lessons. I don’t know did you get enough or I can think of more.

 

Nitin Bajaj:

Ravi, thank you so much. Really appreciate you sharing your journey and story and your life lessons but more importantly for doing what you do. You were an ace corporate guy and you said enough of this I’m gonna go make a change, uplift the community and make a difference and you have and I know you will continue to here in the few years to come.

Thank you once again for being you, for doing what you do and really appreciate you making the time to come and spend this journey with us.

 

Ravi Sreedharan:

Thank you.