Shital’s family emigrated from India when she was only four years old, but her heart and soul still remain there. She went on to graduate from Northwestern University and returned to India as an Indicorps fellow. She completed her Master of Public Administration from New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service, specializing in International Development. She is currently an intern at Acumen Fund’s India office, working with the Agriculture and Health portfolios.
Cross Posted on ThinkChange India
Day One: Laying the Groundwork
In a gathering of practitioners and investors, the Khemka Forum kicked off at the India School of Business in Hyderabad. The day’s activities ranged from plenaries to sector working group lunches to track breakouts. Social entrepreneurs converged to discuss the state of their field, lessons learnt, ideas for collaboration, and the way forward.
As Don Mohanlal, CEO of Khemka Foundation, quoted, “the best time to begin a long journey was 10 years ago. The next best time is today.” In the long journey to create a complete social entrepreneurship ecosystem in India, the Khemka Forum aimed to kick off a constructive conversation on action-oriented, short-term ideas that Indian social entrepreneurs could take as the work toward the longer term goal.
Working Scale Issues: “Fingers Burnt, Lessons Learnt”
Healthy debate and discussion around scale indicated that even the most successful social enterprises in India are grappling with this issue. Manish Sabharwal, Co-Founder of TeamLease, mentioned that entrepreneurs can create two types of organizations – a baby or a dwarf – one that starts small and gets much bigger, or one that will remain small. He identified various factors that influence scale, including opportunity, team, organizational design, strategy, and risk. Pawan Patil, CEO of the Global Partnership for Youth Investment, talked about creating an enabling environment and busting myths. Dr. Patil focused largely on creating jobs, especially for the growing youth population, as a necessary step toward achieving scale. Nachiket Mor, President of ICICI Foundation, emphasized starting from the ground, building up, and then replicating.
SCALERS
In a session on “SCALERS – Driving Social Impact,” Matthew Nash, Managing Director of the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship at Duke University, discussed a new model for talking about scale. SCALERS stands for Staffing, Communicating, Alliance-building, Lobbying, Earnings generation, Replicating, and Stimulating market forces. Parag Gupta, Founder of Waste Bank, presented a case study on SELCO (TC-I previously interviewed Harish Hande here) using the SCALERS model and identified the enterprise’s accomplishments and challenges.
Similarly, Professor Madhukar Shukla of XLRI Jamshedpur presented a case study on Nidan (founded by Arbind Singh, Khemka’s Social Entrepreneur of the Year in 2008). Since Nidan focuses on a completely different sector – organizing marginalized workers – and operates as a nonprofit, the two organizations had very different outcomes on the SCALERS model. The model provided a good basis to talk about the various factors involved in scaling up and strategic steps for moving forward.
Sector Working Groups
I sat in on the sector working group focusing on rural innovations, led by Prema Gopalan of Swayam Sikshan Prayog. Other working groups included health, education, renewable energy, and youth entrepreneurship. The rural innovations group identified major barriers – from knowledge management to product design to innovative financing. From there, the conversation shifted to collaborations and action steps, especially on ways that practitioners could connect more deeply and consistently. We will all have to stay tuned to see what these working group discussions will eventually produce…
Alternative Talent Pools
Finally, I attended the track organized by Dasra on Building Alternative Talent Pool. In a panel facilitated by Dasra Managing Partner Neera Nundy, Manish Sabharwal (again of TeamLease), Deep Joshi (Co-Founder of Pradan), and Prashant Bhaskar (Head of PLUG HR) discussed the ways in which they attracted, retained, and built the capacity of talent for organizations. A lively discussion around how social enterprises should hire and train employees ensued, with Mr. Sabharwal reminding the audience that the role of the employer is not to manufacture employees, while Mr. Joshi explained his desire to treat each person in the organization as a changemaker or social entrepreneur. A lot of the discussion linked back to public policy and the existing inequality of opportunity, as well as the need to reform current skill development and vocational training programs. Finally, participants worked through the importance of organizational culture, citing personal examples of how to make sure a certain culture permeates from the top to the bottom of an enterprise.
Day 2: Moving into Action
While Day 1 of the Khemka Forum on Social Entrepreneurship focused on plenaries and making connections within sectors, Day 2 moved into smaller groups, deeper conversations, and creating plans for bridging gaps.
Measuring Impact
In the track on Performance Metrics, Matthew Nash of Duke University provided a thorough overview of the key trends in social impact measurement. He discussed many trends, including the experimentation with tools and techniques, movement toward common metrics, emphasis on data quality, program evaluation through randomized design, and building robust performance management systems. Mr. Nash also made the important point that outcomes do not equal impact, and that impact is actually the outcome minus what would happen in absence of the program. Organizations often confuse this, thereby inflating the actual impact of their work.
Anant Kumar, CEO of LifeSpring Hospitals, which offer low-cost, high quality maternal and child care, spoke on the enterprise perspective of tracking metrics. One of the key points he made was the value of democratizing data – basically, data needs to be present up, down, and across an organization so that it cannot be manipulated or modified.
Acumen Fund India’s Energy Portfolio Manager Katie Hill spoke on the social investor viewpoint. She pointed out that the real challenge is that metrics must be understandable, inexpensive, and useful. You can read more directly from Katie in the Acumen Fund blog post on metrics. Finally, IFMR’s Centre for Microfinance Executive Director Justin Oliver wrapped up the panel by elaborating on what gets measured, how it gets measured, and how to interpret the data.
Participants, while eager to learn how to incorporate good data gathering into their organization, also discussed the difficulties around funding data collection and being able to measure data accurately. A general agreement on the value of data and metrics, however, pointed the way forward for experimental systems and reminded everyone the importance of starting small, but starting somewhere.
Consultancy Clinics
One of the more unique aspects of this forum were the consultancy clinics, which focused on law & social entrepreneurship, effective stakeholder communication, getting investment ready, and new forms of knowledge creation. Matthew Nash led a dynamic consultancy clinic on knowledge creation, which I attended with the interest of understanding how TC-I could continue to serve as a platform for newly created knowledge. The small group consisted of both academics and practitioners, allowing both sides to voice their perspectives and then discuss how to bridge existing gaps. Mr. Nash started with the basic question of what action research agenda is needed to advance the field of social entrepreneurship in India. While case study development is common, practitioners were concerned about the lack of usefulness for their organizations, as well as the large amount of time needed to share this knowledge. The group discussed how to create collaborative research, use online networking forums, and engage students via practicums or internships. As time spilled over into lunch, the clinic participants formulated a plan on how to move forward after the forum and ensure continued dialogue on this important issue.
Building an ecosystem
At the beginning of this event, speakers placed emphasis on building an ecosystem for social entrepreneurs in India. The Khemka Forum was a bold attempt to convene the right players to do just that. As a starting point, it was great to see the enthusiasm and seriousness with which participants approached this task. Discussion and action will continue well beyond the Forum, and I’m hopeful in witnessing the creation of a more enabling environment for social entrepreneurs in India. At the end of the day, there are investors, entrepreneurs, academics, donors, and the wider community who want to see innovative, market based solutions make a deep impact on India’s social issues. With the efforts of all these stakeholders, and a concerted effort to bring others into the fray (from government to lawyers to media), the Khemka Forum is indeed a catalyst for accelerating the business of social change.