Prior to Sattva, Lakshmi has worked with the Manipal Group, Jubilant Retail and ITC Hotels across sales, business development and strategy functions. She holds a PGDM from T.A.Pai Management Institute.

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Prior to Sattva, Sumit traversed various roles in his career from consulting for the United Nations and working for multinationals to running his own social enterprise. His company APART Education trained thousands of young graduates and improved the employability skills and quality of Indian workforce.

Sumit is an alumnus of the University of Oxford where he studied MBA as a Skoll Scholar.

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SATTVA’S VALUE-ADD
As advisors our primary role with these entrepreneurs, whose innovations were mostly at seed or early stages of development, was to develop an actionable strategy to grow their venture from idea to market. We worked with them closely to establish the best business model to validate their innovations as well as identify the ideal consumer base in every market. We designed a business model strategy for three to five years which included correct pricing to ensure a product-market fit for long-term sustainability. Our mission was to condition entrepreneurs with business thinking and this involved working proactively with them to zero down on the core value-proposition of their product. Once they hit the market we delved into specific capacity building around sales, marketing, operational planning, financial forecasting and partnership strategy for the foreseeable future. From June 2016 we have meticulously helped these entrepreneurs move through each stage of their journey to reach the ultimate end goal of impact on the ground.

KEY LEARNINGS
We documented our actionable strategy for each aspect of business and entrepreneurship in a playbook which we believe can be customised for use by any innovator in the ecosystem. This knowledge material is a valuable asset for all players in the sector. Alongside, we contributed to change the mindset of social entrepreneurs to prove that innovations can lead to viable and sustainable businesses. Also, we were able to give them actionable strategies to survive and scale ventures, thereby boosting overall confidence in the sector. Innovators were able to strengthen their go-to-market strategy and capacities for next three-five years.

HIGHLIGHTS
Number of entrepreneurs advised: 12
10 Regions covered: Ghana, Mali, Mozambique, Kenya, South Africa, Bangladesh, India, Cambodia, Vietnam and Nepal
Innovations included: Seed tape, affordable green-house technology, contract farming, precision agricultural devices, and weather management phone service

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SATTVA’S VALUE-ADD
Sattva’s association with the organisation started with smaller individual projects. In January 2017, we entered into a strategic advisory partnership with the foundation, to co-create a blueprint for quality delivery at scale for 600,000 schools.
We helped them align the core objective of improving the Student Learning Outcomes(SLO) for interventions across the organization across various operations. We helped design a multi-level capability maturity model for the 10 key interventions for development of schools through critical milestones at various stages. We led the co-creation of an organization-wide technology platform through a mobile based application to ensure easy collaboration for fellows (this organisation runs a significant and sough-after fellowship programme) to map their journey across 5000+ schools and gather data analytics for monitoring and evaluation purpose.

KEY LEARNINGS
The Maturity model and the Journey app is being further used by various government schools, NGOs in the ecosystem to map their leadership development initiatives. Our combined efforts helped the organization to structure the products around solutioning for various stakeholders at all levels, starting from teachers all the way to the middle managers in the education ecosystem. The foundation is now a reputed name in the field of education working across states and districts to replicate this model to 6,00,000 schools in the future in line with its overall vision.

OUTCOMES
● Capability maturity model for 10 key interventions for school development across stages through milestones
● Product creation: Journey app for 5000+schools in PLDP and DTP which can be replicated across 6,00,000 schools
● Number of people impacted: 5000+ schools, 500+ fellows
● Interventions planned across 12 states covered in STP – Jammu & Kashmir, Haryana, Delhi, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Uttarakhand, Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh

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SATTVA’S METHODOLOGY
Our first step was to review NGOs in each location. A few selection parameters to select these CSR partners included financial data, due diligence based on a check list of documents, prior work experience, focus on emerging and underdeveloped areas in education (digital classroom/sports), ability to work in multi-stakeholder environments with agility, as well as provisions for infrastructure and events centred around schools. Partner NGOs were asked to propose a Programme Plan – which comprised of weekly activities, infrastructure support and final culmination event, a crucial aspect for selection. The Programme Plans of activities by 23 selected NGOs were shared with the company’s CSR team. We then designed and executed necessary internal communication campaigns to get employees to volunteer. As employee sensitisation tool, we were able to successfully use in-house workshops as well as region-wise WhatsApp groups for continued engagement and motivation. To ensure smooth functioning of on-ground activities and their monitoring, we set up a robust progress monitoring and communication system involving designated SPOCs (points of contact) within the company.

KEY LEARNINGS
This project clearly demonstrated that a company’s CSR initiatives can be a great way to make the future generation more socially conscious and aware. Also, as a result of this engagement many employees were encouraged to continue volunteering with these NGOs independently. Through our efforts we managed to mobilise 695 employees who put in 2000+ hours of volunteering time. This project reinforced a positive perception of the company with its workforce across the board.

OUTCOMES
23 partners onboarded across 17 locations
Total investment outlay: INR 55 Lakh+
695 volunteers engaged
2000+ volunteer hours contributed
7,234 beneficiaries reached
Focus Areas: Digital Literacy, Education, Sports & Life skills, Elder Care, Child Welfare, Health and Well-Being, STEM, WASH, PwD

BLURB
“This project clearly demonstrated that a company’s CSR initiatives can be a great way to make the future generation more socially conscious and aware.”

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