The Arrival

I have always thought of myself as a techie. That is another thing I secured merely 43 marks in Computers in Class 12th and most of my engineering was spent watching movies, playing cricket and flying kites. Once professional career started with a 6K per month CTC I got more and more serious. I mean its Darwin's jungle out there. One has to be fit enough to survive. Natural selection still holds true inspite of Harari's claims of an empathetic society post agricultural revolution. So I spent the next 16 years of my life reading every possible book on the planet on technology, management, startups, marketing, sales management, strategy, products, design, behavioural psychology and economics. I would code like crazy for 10 hours a day to understand more about how an algorithm works or how can a system be built optimally. I even went to the extent of leaving my cushy job at SF to start my own startup in Bangalore and tried living under 25K per month as this blog describes. Most of my startups perished but 2 survived the test of times. I mean I was trying to violate Goldilocks's rule and failure was bound to happen. But again out of failure rises boundless wisdom that makes you a bit sharper than your peers who aren't into entrepreneurship and that has worked out real well even now when I am inching towards 40. Anyway after spending close to 16 something years in tech I decided to take a complete U turn and accepted an offer from a Non Profit. I had 3 offers in my hands from a San Francisco based company, a Singapore based company and our very own Namma Bengaluru based company. All of these roles revolved around being the head of products or marketing or sales. I had done 2 growth gigs post my entrepreneurial career and although some of the products these companies built were quite exciting and scale was what they had in their mind my job didn't sound that exciting save the money and stuff that comes with it. I wanted to create an impact and the new job as the COO of a non profit offered exactly the kind of adrenaline rush I needed. Although taking an unconventional path is not new to me so I didn't think much before taking up the offer.

I was supposed to come down to a small city called Deoria situated in Eastern Uttar Pradesh where Jagriti Seva Sansthan the parent group was running an incubator called Jagriti Enterprise Center Purvanchal. Now this might sound like any other incubator but bear with me for another 2 minutes and you'd know how different it is. So Jagriti received fame through something called a Jagriti Yatra which was tried out in India some 12 years back for the first time which worked out pretty well only to have more yatras running over the course of the next one decade. The idea is the brainchild of Shashank Mani Tripathi who wanted to change the country by virtue of creating more and more small enterprises across the nation. Jagriti Yatra typically happens over a course of 15 days when a train packed with 300 plus entrepreneurs travels the nooks and corners of the country brainstorming several ideas. Its an intellectually stimulating experience as per people I have met in Deoria who have been a part of yatra. It changes your perspective towards life. It might change mine too this December when I'll be packed off in a 2 Tier AC compartment along with 300 plus people. Before we digress any further let us come back to the original discussion.

I arrived in Deoria on 1st April expecting all of this to be nothing more than an April Fool's prank as it happens in first world cities but I was taken aback by the embellishments of a small city. I mean I had barely been in one in decades save Boston which is typically a small city but quite different from a rural Indian city. Although it might sound right from a KJo movie but I felt I was home again. I had a team mate come down and fetch me. He took me to a spacious place and dumped me there along with my suitcase. Now before you start drawing conclusions that was only a figure of speech. My team mate Vishwas was kind enough to help me move my things to the rented place where I would put up. In an hour I was in office meeting with the staff where provisions had been made for my induction. I met with some of our board members who have been looking after Jagriti for close to a decade now and have done an outstanding job till date. Anyway post induction I went off to meet the existing entrepreneurs who we were incubating.

This is where I met Pooja. Pooja is an epitome of what a woman can achieve if she decides to follow her heart. She runs a company called Deoria Design which builds beautiful jewellery out of macrame thread. She employs 25 more women who help her with the jewellery design. She has won several accolades from bodies of esteem. It even got IIT Kanpur to invest money in her startup venture. She is the Martha Stewart of Eastern Uttar Pradesh and if she keeps up with the pace she should be able to build a decent company around Eastern UP providing jobs to hundreds of women if not thousands. But before I wrap up this paragraph let me not forget mentioning the fact that Pooja inspite of all her achievements is a humble girl who loves to treat everyone around her with respect and warmth. What most people do not know is the fact that Pooja has superlative culinary skills.She cooked me some amazing things when I was in Deoria and I am eternally grateful to her for her hospitality. This is what Pooja looks like :)

The next thing I saw was a rural call center by the name Rural Shores which employs rural folks and trains them on various skillsets only to put them on voice based processes. That pretty much doesn't sound like a unique idea but you'd have to change your lenses if you were to see through things that are almost invisible to the commoner. What rural shores depicts is how much impact can a company create in a village by generating employment through upskilling people. Rural Shores is a bright example of what can be achieved if the middle India tectonic belt of around 600 million people can be empowered. It almost sounds unbelievable but Rural Shores is a profitable company running call centers in rural localities around the country. Most of what they teach as part of their training is on the job so no one is at bench at any point in time. They cater to Amazon voice processes and are expecting more business from some Indian behemoths in the next couple of months. This is what a typical day in Rural Shores Deoria looks like

Next on the list was a company called Rural Roots that have tried to encapsulate the culture of Eastern Uttar Pradesh famous for its culinary delicacies in bottles of pickles created from locally grown vegetables and naturally available oils and spices. The company employs around 40 odd women who create everything from scratch and sell all across the country. They also sell on Amazon and till recently their product was amongst the top pickles on Amazon. What isn't apparent is that it tends to empower 40 plus odd women who get a shot at achieving financial independence by virtue of Rural Roots. Take a look

So after meeting up with various entrepreneurs we decided to come back.

The day went as productive as it can get and we exchanged ideas on various things on how an incubator like JECP can bring about a difference by creating enterprises and through that generating employment. I had a dinner with the team which I must say is Numero Uno when it comes to understanding the region comprehensively. They have been living in that region for close to 3 decades and understand every aspect of localisation embedded in the region. Our conversation over dinner pulled up some interesting observations pertaining to Deoria. That's typically how my day unfolded with loads of memories.

It is a tough task as Eastern UP has never been an entrepreneurial hub and has been supplying manpower for close to 2 millennia to other entrepreneurial hubs. Unfortunately jobs have reduced drastically and the ones we have in the organised sector involves skillsets and competencies far from what a rural guy actually has. With the government sector also cutting down jobs in various several public sector units and with a lot of ailing public sector units not many have a shot to bag a government job. So the only way forward if we were to move ahead with a growing economy plush with jobs would be to encourage creation of small scale enterprises that can absorb various people. It would put an end to the unemployment crisis that has plagued our country for close to 5 decades.

Now after reading all this many of you would wonder why would a software guy leave plush offers just to bite dust in a seemingly backward place like Deoria. The answer to this question is what Peter Thiel has tried to mention in his cult book Zero to One. Unless one tries to solve hard problems in his career your career won't move ahead exponentially. That also involves having a huge risk appetite. I can't deny there is going to be failures but it would take you several notches ahead of your peers in terms of learning. If I use a computation analogy I'd say making Deoria an entrepreneurial hub is an NP hard problem with a solution not feasible in polynomial time. However as Steve Jobs could bend reality with his reality distortion tactics we too can change the existing ecosystem if we move ahead with the right strategy and team. I am convinced I got a great team at my disposal. I just need to create the right strategy.More so if a problem isn't complex it isn't fun to solve one. Deoria happens to be one of those interesting problems no one notices in first world cities that if solved could be replicated all across the nation and that according to me would be the golden day for Indian democracy. Till then I got a lot to do and you just need to wait a few days before I post my second blog.