Jaipur Rugs!

A couple of months back I had the opportunity of meeting Mr NK Chaudhury, the founder of Jaipur Rugs at a training on 'Sustainability', where he had kindly agreed to come and share about Jaipur Rugs approach to Business and Life.  I hadn't heard of Jaipur Rugs then and wondered what's the big deal.  Mr Chaudhury - NKC - as he is referred to by his family and friends - made a presentation - mostly speaking in Hindi.  His story is quite an inspiring story - here is a brief view.

In 1976, NKC started working on the hand-woven carpets by 1978 he had two looms and 4 families engaged in the production near Jaipur, Rajasthan.  In 1981, he started exporting formally.  Over the period of time he has been able to expand his production base to eight states in India, and now engages over 40,000 weavers across India.  They produce over 1million sq ft of carpet/rugs annually!  They only export!  Exporting to over 25 countries.

The carpets are all hand-woven and NKC realized very early that this quality product had much higher valuation in Western countries and he based his business model on that.  Jaipur Rugs is a family business with 2 of NKC's daughters (educated in US) driving the business primarily.  The elder daughter is the CEO and focuses on customer connect.  The younger one is the designer who brings out innovation from amongst the weavers to create new designs for customers.

Since I saw and spoke with Mr Chaudhary in person - I was amazed at his down-to-earth approach to life, the simplistic manner in which he focuses on his business.  In response to questions on what he feels is his mantra for success, he gave the following key messages:
1. Work directly with people:  When he started, people from his community outcasted him since he used to go and live with weavers from lower castes.  However, he did not give up on his approach and continues to go and live with the weavers today - as he feels that is the only way to develop people and also best understand them.
2.  Every one has ability and talent - we need to spot it and bring it out.  From his experience of living with the people, he says that each and everyone has something in them and it was his effort, learning, and challenge to figure out the abilities and nurture them.  Big thing is to give confidence to the people that they have the ability in them.

3.  Everything/every solution is inside us:  he is a practitioner of the belief that solutions to all problems and challenges lie within us.  He kept repeating the importance of introspection.  He said that when he reflected on himself, his approach, his attitude, his learning - he was able to build solutions to even people not working or being able to deliver quality work. 
4. Stay connected with customers always as the expectation and requirements change with time.  Bring the customer view to the development people/weavers regularly.

Jaipur Rugs story fascinated even CK Prahalad and he wrote a chapter on it in his famous book "Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid".  You can check out more on the company itself on their website.
http://www.jaipurrugsco.com/

Of course there is lots to learn from this simple man with simple dreams but big achievements and he encourages people to connect with him and his company, visit their production areas and in fact he proudly spoke of how students from many colleges visit them regularly.  So take the opportunity if you can!

Life - Like Riding a Bicycle

Whether its making a social venture work, or a regular business -- one is constantly striving for sustainability and balance.  I am calling this 'life' as we all anyway spend most of our living time doing this.

I just found an analogy from Dr Yash Pal's book - Random Curiosity (a collection of questions from children and youth about life and observations of phenomena and simple but scientific researched answers from Prof Yash Pal).  Prof Mashelkar (ex-CSIR Head and Scientist) in his tribute shares how Prof YashPal  in a response to question - why are we able to balance a moving bicycle as compared to one that is stationary - provides not only a simple physics explanation but also a philosophical understanding relating the riding of bike to life. 

The key point to note here is that a person has to continue to turn the pedal and keep the bike moving for it to stay stable/balanced versus trying to balance a stationary bike.

The fact that we need to pedal and move to keep the balance points to three key aspects of achieving sustainability in life:
1) Life is dynamic - balance comes with active movement,
2) We need to have a rhythm and regular action on the right set of activities
3) We need to focus on a distance away from the immediate and let the handle be held loosely only to be firmed up during bumps and turns.

New Year Every Day!

New day, new beginning!

As the new year dawns, the calendar is reset to begin from the beginning, the clock too starts afresh.  Only the moments gone by never repeat. 

Each moment that has been 'lived' builds our legacy.  Each moment that is waiting to come, brings an opportunity to create a legacy.

I determine to sieze every possible moment in this new day of the fresh calendar towards a worthwhile legacy!

Sustaining a Social Initiative

Last week I attended a workshop organized by International Business Leaders Forum and DFID (UK) on measuring impact of Inclusive Business Models. Here are some key learning points/take-aways for me:
1. Sustainability of social initiatives is ensured when we look at inclusivity from both ends -- for example, a model that focuses on employability of the poor and underprivileged youth - works better if we can include the middle class youth and may be even the rich as well. I had not really thought like this -- was always mentally excluding the better off people from the initiative. It brings a different set of challenges to the table - but ones that are more addressable. This is inclusivity the other way round.
2. Partnerships should be true to the word - sharing of both risks and gains. This changes the mind-set from the customer-supplier relationships that we were getting into for all 'partnerships' - of course the challenge is (a) having us accept sharing the gains and (b) having the partner accept the risks. Will need to explore the implementation challenges more.
3. Approach solutions from a sector perspective rather than a general perspective. This is not something new for most vocational training organizations. However, I feel most training only focuses on getting the people started in the sector as compared to supporting building a career in the sector. There are long-term sustainability benefits that come from this approach.

Corporate Social Responsibility

Sometime back I attended a session by Dr Wayne Visser (pronounced wiser - and surely was wiser on the subject than most in the room) - CEO of CSR International. He referred to current CSR efforts by organizations to be not at all effective in the long run or even in scale. The main reason cited was the lack of creativity in thinking about alignment to the main business.


For example, a cement manufacturing unit considering education of the people in the vicinity of the factory as CSR has all good intentions but it does not necessarily link with the company’s expertise and hence sustenance and scale are limited. Also, in difficult times the CSR is quick to be downscaled. It lives as a year on year project. But then how should the Cement Company change its approach to CSR? Difficult? Yes... needs creativity and thinking and more importantly a vision and passion to drive it! That is the wiser view.

Lot of discussion ensued and my own feeling was that CSR appeared to be like a band-aid effort on to an ailing body with sores breaking out all over. So the band-aid was rarely even a temporary relief -- it was just a hope of healing sometime soon while the main issue of why the sores are breaking out is not getting addressed.

However, the story does not end here. As I meet people from the corporations who are volunteering and supporting through personal funds or from corporate funds – I am realizing that the band-aid effort is much needed. It provides the hope and relief and keeps the motivation going for the people who are all out into inclusive efforts.  The people who are investing their lives in solving the core problems need to be encouraged.

As Ruma of NDS recently said: Its important that Corporates do what they do and earn so that they can 'give' and that the feeling of abundance is defined by how much a person 'feels' they can give. And only when the corporates give, the not-for-profit efforts of organizations like NDS (www.noidadeafsociety.net) grow and start bridging the divides and develop long-term scalable models.

In conclusion, I realized that CSR is an important activity that enables the required change through NGOs (slow) as well as Government’s structured initiatives (even slower). Now whether it should stay philanthropic or it should get linked with strategic business initiatives is a separate debate that should not take away from what is being done today.  Slow is okay since it is definite.

Giving or Taking from Society (or rather the whole World)

When you ask an investor to invest or you ask a philanthropist to give -- standard question is what is the return. Nothing wrong with this question. Resource and monies applied to any venture must be utilized efficiently and that should be the objective for all - giver, taker, user etc.


However, there is an element to the attitude of giving which we should reflect on:

How much do we consider usage efficiency when we take - we take all the time without even realizing -- service from servants, air, water, oil, beauty from nature, politeness and consideration from fellow human beings ... are just some examples to consider.

So my statement is -- when we give - we watch the return with hawk eyes but when we take sometimes we dont even know we have taken.

What do you think?  How should we build the gratitude in each of us?

What comes first - value creating Individual or value creating society

Last couple of months I have been spending time with students in the rural setting, our slum centers, and also have visited locations of other NGOs and organizations operating in the rural areas.  I was carrying forward the question from my previous blog of what holds us back as a nation in creating value.

One such place was an NGO by the name of Samuha in Karnataka.  They have partnered with Foundation for Life (another NGO of course).  They run an English, IT and Life Skills training for complete illiterates from the base of the pyramid and have them ready for BPO in 6-8 months!!! 

What was most interesting for me was that the trainees appeared to be all very responsbile, bright, driven, polite and at the same time not diffident at all.  It could be very clearly and obviously be linked to the environment and community they were being made to live with (I was meeting them after they had been there for over 6 months).  The whole community of trainers, facilitators, and management are very compassionate, driven, very responsible for their own actions.  An almost ideal micro-ecosystem if I may say so.

So then it seemed obvious that we are what we are because of how our society is, our education is -- probably also corroborated by the more observed phenomena of Indians becoming like Americans in the US. But then looking at this NGO setup in the midst of India and in a rural setting - I felt that someone has created the community too -- it is not like it has been there for ages.  Sunil Savara, the founder of Foundation for life - and the main person behind this community training experience, is from a corporate background like most of us.  But that one individual has managed to create a community that I believe is what most of us hope we could be living in - in India.  So then what created value first?  The Individual or the Society?