What this BrandMasters episode teaches about brand purpose

Ladies and gentlemen, hello and welcome to Brand Studio Live. I'm Rameet Arora, we're now well into the new season. And with me in the HT Newsroom today is a brand new set of brand masters. I've often described this show as a platform where leaders talk about the hottest topics in marketing, branding and business. In doing that, we not only learn from the best, but also get inspired by their ideas, their experiences and their perspective. Ladies and gentlemen, without any further ado, let's get started with today's episode, Brands with Purpose.

Brand Studio Live Accenture said that 63% of the customers they researched want to associate themselves with brands that stand for a purpose. A purpose that reflects their own values and beliefs that could be related to health, education, rural development, empowerment, even environmental sustainability. Effective brands, and we'll see some examples of that today, put purpose at the center of their vision and allow it to inform every decision including business decisions.

In effect, brands are not just becoming purposeful, they are becoming both catalysts and enablers of change. And on that note, I'd like to welcome Seema Bansal, leader of BCG's social impact practice in the Asia Pacific region and my first guest today. She's a partner and director in the New Delhi office and has been with BCG for 20 years now. Seema has dedicated the last 10 years of her life to causes such as education, health and skilling. She's passionate about making changes at the grassroots level and delivers services to those who need them most.

She's a TED at the rate BCG speaker and a TEDx speaker. Welcome to the show Seema. Thank you so much. You know the world is full of armchair experts and I say that very responsibly. You've seen what it's like on ground and you've led change ground upwards. Talk to us about that journey. Sure, absolutely. So Ramit, I work in sectors which we all typically believe we know. You know, all of, I work in education, I work in health, food security, nutrition. And as adults, we all feel like we've been through those places and we know that.

So if I was to ask a group of people today, what is wrong with education in India today? Why do government schools not deliver? All of us will have hypotheses. You know, and we have these beliefs that, oh, teachers don't come to schools, teachers are absent, they don't want to teach. And oftentimes, I think solutions get designed from those beliefs and worldviews, you know, which we have. One of the things that we have tried to do at BCG is to really just go deep into the ground and really understand what actually happens on the ground.

And what we find there is actually very counterintuitive and very surprising. So, for example, when you actually go and look at teachers inside government schools, the fact is that they work really very hard. You know, the fact is that 50% of the schools in this country today only have two teachers. That teacher doesn't have a sweeper, doesn't have a midday meal cook, doesn't have anything else to support him or her.

And hence, all of that teacher's time is going basically into things like, you know, filling out forms, cooking meals, buying uniforms for kids, etc. And she doesn't actually get the time to teach. The fact is that the classrooms that she actually has to teach in are really, really very difficult. They are, you know, kids who come from very poor families, no academic support at home. And no matter what she tries in that 30-40 minute period, it is very difficult to actually transact teaching.

So, once you get into the field, what you find are things which are completely counterintuitive to the beliefs that we actually hold. And I think we've really forced ourselves to actually go down and understand that. Unless we go deep down into these places, trying to have impact with our own very sort of skewed worldviews becomes very difficult. And that's what we've really tried to do over the last few years. Is measuring impact really where the ball always falls?

Because, you know, this blanket, I did something and this probably impact has always been a problem. Is measuring real impact and being able to put a common metric to that impact a challenge that you faced and solved? I think so. And I think it's two parts to it. One is, you know, measuring impact just in terms of hardcore numbers, metrics, you know, are kids learning, are health outcomes improving, you know, is infant mortality actually going down, some of those things.

But I think even much before that, going out and, you know, reflecting on impact or reflecting on the whole theory of change, reflecting on how behaviors are actually changing. Once again, going back to education because it's my passion, you know, one of the things that you find is no matter how much you train the teachers, how much materials do you actually give to them, many children often still don't learn. And then we ask the question, why are they not learning? And then you go into a little bit of child psychology.

What you actually find is that most of the kids in government schools come from fairly disadvantaged backgrounds. They possibly have come from a very traumatic experience that morning. You know, maybe their parents had a fight, maybe they actually didn't get food at home. Something must have happened. And hence their ability to actually come into a classroom and engage with learning itself is very difficult, right?

So, when we actually sort of train teachers, give them new content and curriculum and learning is still not happening, you have to go and ask yourself why is it not happening? And then are you equipping the teacher with the right tools in terms of child psychology, child behavior to also deal with that?

So, I think once again, you know, you can design interventions and when you roll them out, unless you go out into the field and really just reflect on how that is getting absorbed, how that is fitting into the behavioral ecosystems of the student and the child, of the doctor and the patient. Unless you actually do that, you may not necessarily find impact. And of course, then there's a broader point that you made about, you know, do we actually have tools, techniques to measure real impact?

You know, do we have organizations and firms who can measure learning outcomes, who can do this in a robust manner, who can really tell you what's going on? But I think the latter is less of a challenge and it's the former, going out and actually observing the cycles of impact and the, you know, and the, so the whole ecosystem of impact, which I don't think we necessarily do enough of. How do you choose which areas to focus on and in the ecosystem that you've clearly built, which is, which is leading to the impact that you're creating?

What are the pieces you think can work harder or need to be, need to be looked at a little more? Yeah. So in my mind, I think I define that on two dimensions. I think one is, we never think of change as a intervention based change. We always think of change as a systems based change, right? So when you're trying to actually change, let's say a public health system, one way to think about it is that, you know, I need to make an intervention.

I need to, let's say, you know, disabilities, I need to train all the doctors in being able to measure and identify disabilities. And if I train all the doctors, impact will happen. That's one part of it. And then in that system, the ecosystem that needs to come together is a very complex combination of policy changes, private sector, you know, skills and capabilities, development sector, NGO skills and capabilities. And then how do different people come together to actually make all of these things happen so that the entire system moves forward?

I think those are the two dimensions of the ecosystem for me. Interesting. And the government and policy are clearly important parts of this ecosystem. Is partnership with government now real or is the work you're doing an aberration? I genuinely think it's real. I'll give you an example. About two and a half years ago, we were called in by a central body to say that we would like you guys to support certain states in education transformation.

But we want states to come and apply to us. Right. We're not just going to pick three states. And we also want the states to pay some of the BCG fees. We want states to actually be accountable to us. This is called Project SAAT. Right. And they sent out a letter to all the states saying, hey, if you want support from us, the central body and from BCG, please apply to us. If you get selected, you pay for BCG and you are accountable to us on a monthly basis. 16 out of the 30 states in the country still applied.

Wow. You've clearly created an entire practice. You're passionate consultants who are not afraid to roll up their sleeves and work in the trenches. Tell us a little bit about that and tell us how you pick these people and how you build these teams and how you've managed to actually configure something like this within the setup. I mean, it's fascinating that you're a career consultant yourself and you've managed to create something like this. Well, you know, it's not honestly been difficult. We all talk about the millennials. We talk about Gen Z. Right.

And we talk about how they're very different. And I do think that much of the talent that we engage with, which is probably the top 1% of India's talent and which is still a very large pool. Right. They're not necessarily looking for regular careers. They're not necessarily looking to, you know, make money and tick all the boxes. So I'll give you an example. I've, you know, been looking at the other offices in Asia Pacific recently and I was in the Tokyo office.

And we had all of our staff actually vote for which practice in BCG do they want to be affiliated with. And we have 7 practices. 40% people said social impact. Wow. And I think a combination of those career consultants who bring in structured thinking and, you know, then these grassroot level, you know, amazing talent who actually have worked on the ground. I think that creates a great sort of synergy and pushes everyone in the right direction. Questions?

My question is where do you kind of stop defining impact for education because you spoke so much about education. Is it when the child has learned something? Is it when the child gets skilled with something? Is it when the person, the child becomes, you know, an adult and gets a job? When and what is it? How do you, you know, kind of track this impact that you have hopefully achieved? I think there's two parts to it. One is what is the right answer? And then the second is what do we do?

And, you know, success of education is if you actually have happy, healthy, as are adults who have positive lives and who are positive influences in their community. Having said that, our projects are typically three to four years long, right? We work with the state or we work with a school system for three to four years. So, we have to define our metrics a little bit more narrowly. Depending upon whether we're working with primary kids or secondary kids, we will define them still as has the child achieved learning outcomes.

If it's a secondary school, has the child graduated into higher education or, you know, found a vocation outside of school, which is probably the beginning of a positive adult life. So, you spoke about education very passionately and the, you know, how the children are impacted because of their background, etc. One of the things which, are the parents, do you do any interventions with the parents? So, I think that's a great question. And, you know, I think this is where the whole ecosystem thinking comes in. Absolutely.

So, all stakeholders, you know, policymakers, teachers, principals, district officials and parents need to come together to create that ecosystem for the child to learn. And when we think about the parents, then we basically, you know, that's where we get into partnerships. Because as BCG, I genuinely don't think we have the skill set to sort of even understand that mindset fully. You know, so ranging from how do you think about school management committees, which is where parents come in and how do you actually strengthen school management committees?

How do you actually use a forum which, you know, gets used in private schools quite often, parent-teacher meetings, right? How do you create parent-teacher meetings in the context of government schools, poor income schools, rural schools? How do you bring parents in? And what do you do with them, right? And how do you educate them? How do you interact and engage with them? That's something that we're doing. On that note, thank you so much. What a lovely session to start with. Thank you, Rami. Thank you.

My next guest is Vijay Sharma, Head Emerging Markets Acceleration Team at GSK Consumer Healthcare. Vijay was instrumental in the creation of the iconic community-based consumer engagement program, the Haldix Swast Abhyan, which aims to eradicate malnutrition in villages. Previously, he was the head of Unilever's Project Shakti, a case study and an example of how to create a strong positive impact on communities while doing business. It's wonderful to have you here, Vijay. You know, Vijay, the brands and business that have purpose built into their core,

tread the harder path to profit into scale. And you've dealt with this challenge many times. Is it more rewarding at the end of the day to discover a brand's purpose and build outwards from it? Having a purpose at the heart and center of the brand from day one? Or is it sometimes a challenge because you are trying to build outwards from filters that you've already put for brands and companies? Yeah. So, most certainly, I think it's extremely rewarding. It's not just rewarding. I think it's extremely rewarding.

It's not only, you know, the work is not only intellectually stimulating, it's not only emotionally satisfying, but I believe it's also financially rewarding. And therefore, I feel it's at the end of the day, it is very, very rewarding. Having said that, it's not that it starts from there. There are quite a few challenges. In fact, it's extremely difficult to start it and it's difficult to conceive of it and then put together. But, and then because you're dealing with challenges which are not only external but also internal.

So, my remit has been mostly rural India where I've actually built base of pyramid businesses here. I've done that for Unilever and Project Shakti and I've also done it for GSK. What I do realize is that it's important to make sure that you put the purpose at the core and you build it in a way which is kind of natural. It fits, it should fit in naturally. But actually, it should also be that the business good and the social good are linked together. So, for example, when we did that for Shakti, we would go to the remotest of villages

and take underprivileged rural women who are in need of enterprise and business, train them and educate them to become distributors, right? So, they could actually earn extra income through this and they got the macro enterprise which they were looking for. And all the business for Unilever was dependent upon how they performed, right? So, our good, our revenues were dependent on how the Shakti entrepreneur actually performed and therefore, it was important for us to make sure that she also delivers and she also gets the income that she is looking for.

So, it's about how do we construct this business model, right? Finally, you build brands by saying but you also build brands by doing things, right? And I fundamentally believe that if you build brands by doing things, then you've built a far more deeper connection with your consumers and you've got them for a much, much longer time. And enduring. And enduring, yeah. So, I have a question which is, you know, Seema spoke about the millennial. That's right. And how it just seems that Gen Z is so much more driven by purpose

and by the aspiration of purpose than possibly we ever were. Maybe that's how every generation feels about the next generation. But are you seeing it in your work, in your business, in the brands that you see in the company? Is it becoming even more important to… Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, it is. And it's everywhere. It's not just, you know, a Gen Z urban phenomena. It's something which is there in small towns. It's something which is there in rural markets as well. What brands appeal to these consumers are the ones where they kind of feel that,

you know, this is the kind of work that I would want to do. This is the kind of person I would want to be with, right? And if that's the brand that you are kind of, you know, building there, they have a very, very positive connect. So, for example, in Horlick Swar Sabian itself, never ever in that entire program do we say, please drink Horlicks, right? And that's something which everybody feels that you would go to these markets and you'll talk about that. Never, ever. And it's been now running for almost about 8 to 10 years.

It's just the work that you do and people see that. So, and our penetration and our markets, our growth in those markets have been phenomenal. Even today, it continues to be the highest road drivers. Vijay, I have a question for you. You talked about how, you know, business and philanthropy needs to be thought about together, that the two need to come together. And they don't, should not exist necessarily individually. But for most organizations, business exists separately and philanthropy is something which is done on the side.

What would be your advice to private sector organizations about thinking about business and development simultaneously? So, I have always been an advocate of, you know, making sure that business and social good actually come together. Philanthropy, it has its own space. You know, you will always have calamities, etc. where you need to give donations, etc. So, that will always have its own space. But if you're able to build business in a way where you can actually, where you can get the social good inherently in it, it actually works.

And it's not difficult. It's about having a different lens. Traditionally, we have not been used to doing it because we've been always thinking that, you know, resources are kind of limited. Where do you actually deploy them, etc. But if the way to business good is through social good, I'm sure it can be done. I have a question, which is, I asked Seema this as well, you know, the question on ecosystem and partnerships, the internal ecosystem and the external ecosystem. What is the kind of ecosystem you worked with?

And is there some bottlenecks that we still need to deal with? Yeah. So, both at Unilever as well as at GSK, we have had to work with a lot of NGOs, developmental agencies, government agencies, and communities as such, and community platforms as such. So, for example, with GSK, we work with schools, we work with Anganwadis, we work with the RMPs or the rural medical practitioners as well. Because if you're looking at malnutrition as an issue, it's a place where we need to strengthen the health infrastructure,

where we need to make sure that the misconceptions about, you know, a lot of practices which are there are not there, and overall improve awareness. and make sure that we impact the most critical and the vulnerable constituent, which is really the, you know, the mom who's going to give birth to a child. And therefore, you need to work with all of these together. My experience has been that as long as you are authentic in what you're trying to do, and you are very, very honest and transparent about it, then it works. On that note, I have to say thank you.

Thank you so much. It was a very, very inspiring session. Thank you. My next guest has extensive experience in business planning, brand management, advertising, and media marketing. Priya Kapadia is head Mariko Innovation Foundation. In the past, Priya has led successful marketing initiatives at the Economic Times and Citibank. It's wonderful to have you here, Priya. Thank you. You know, the Mariko Innovation Foundation carries the responsibility of a great brand in its name and charter. And it's interesting that you've honed in on innovation

as the tip of the spear for the work that you're doing. Where does this come from? Does it reflect the core values of the parent company or its leadership? Or is it simply where you found the greatest impact could happen to society? Innovation is one of the rock bed foundations of Mariko. And if you've tracked Mariko's journey, you'll find a lot of turning points in Mariko's strength and revenues, et cetera, because of innovation. So it was set up way before innovation was even a mandate with corporates. There was no startup world at that time.

Corporates were not embracing innovation. There was confusion between invention, innovation, and Jugaad. So keeping all that in mind, the organization was set up in 2003 with the intention of nurturing innovation and taking the innovation agenda forward. The first decade actually was all about demystifying innovation. What is innovation? Why should you be innovative? And what is the difference between Jugaad? And what is the difference between... What is innovation? And what is invention? And why anybody can innovate if you think a little differently?

What's the journey been so far? Tell us a little bit about the work that you do and this journey that you're talking about. What I'm also keen on knowing is, have you seen impact? So I'll talk about the journey first. When we set up in 2003, like I said, the agenda was largely to advocate innovation and talk about innovation in the country. So we did a lot of innovation workshops. We launched reports. We talked about how organizations who were probably failing in their businesses turned around and did exceptionally well because, you know, they innovated.

We talked about, you know, the social sector and the business sector, etc. And then while we were doing these workshops and talking to people in the innovation, you know, ecosystem, we realized that at that point in time, innovations were not really accolated and not really, you know, celebrated. And therefore, we set up the MIF Innovation Awards, which is largely to accolade the potential next big win. And so that's the first thing that we did, which is probably one of our oldest programs in our foundation. In 2014, we set up the MIF Scale-Up program.

This is a very unique program. So while the awards is all about showcase, the Scale-Up program is all about identifying innovations and helping them grow in a very tangible manner. We have collaborated with Marico. Marico's philosophy is make, you know, make a difference. They're an organization with a very strong purpose. The thing about this program is that since, suppose if I have an organization who has a manufacturing challenge and he says, I want to set up manufacturing, right? We actually pick up somebody who has probably done enough

and more of this with our manufacturing facilities in the country, and we bring him to work with this organization. And he works with them for about six to nine months, helps them. So the philosophy of the Scale-Up program is that you have great entrepreneurs, you have great innovators. They may be good at a few things, but business is about seven to eight things. They may be good at three or four things, right? If the balance three or four things is not streamlined and in place, you may not end up scaling as quickly or as efficiently as you would.

And this is as good an example of strategic investment as any. Yes. And it is. It's a very important point that you mentioned because we do not fund a single organization. Marico CSR is different. So we follow our CSR agenda through a different route altogether, but Marico Innovation Foundation does not fund a single organization. In fact, we charge a nominal fee of 25,000 when we onboard an organization because it's really important for skin in the game to be part of the whole play. So we pick an organization, understand the challenges that they have

and systematically solve challenges that we can solve for. The kind of organization we picked up are we're sector agnostic, we're place agnostic. So we have organizations based out of Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Delhi, Bombay. We have mentors placed out of anywhere. So we pick up, we actually match make and make sure that the right mentor and the right challenge and the right organization come together to make magic. Two out of my three programs have a very tangible impact. So the scale-up program is a very clear impact. There has to be a before and after

with what we do. So if I take an organization and he doesn't have a manufacturing setup, he has to have a manufacturing setup at the end of it, which is ISO, which is so good that he can get business out of anywhere where there is no problem with the product coming out of it. If it's an online sales, within six months or within a year, he has to move 5x, 10x, etc. So the scale-up program is very, very... And we've actually realized that even with small interventions like how do you define your KRA, how do you efficiently work on your finance management,

you actually find tangible impact over there too. Because of KRA management, organizations realign the way they've hired people or realign the way they've placed people within the organization, etc. So you can see tangible impact. Some of them are very clear cost-saving efficiencies and revenues. Some of them are more on the softer side, but you do see an impact. And for us, that tracking of that challenge before and after is very critical for us. On that note, Priya, thank you so much. It's lovely having you here. Thank you so much. Awesome.

My next guest is Debashish Ray, Head Public Affairs and spokesperson for the Tata Trust. Debashish has been associated with the Tata companies in Tata Trust since 2005. Prior to that, he was with Hindustan Unilever. Welcome, Debashish. Thank you. Tata is a brand where trust has been infused into the fabric of the company and the brand. He was even as an external person for so many years. So on one hand, there are brands that are trying to find higher purpose. That's a good thing. And on the other hand, there are brands like the Tata

which have gained reward as well as trust with their unflinching focus and purpose. Walk us through that briefly because this is possibly the most enduring and the most successful example we have in the country of a company and a brand that has scaled to the heights that it has without losing its sight on purpose. I think it started with how the founder, Chamshechi Tata, thought about his business. Yes, of course, he had his business which he started with, textiles. But mind you, they were not called Tata. He always, I think, had a larger purpose

and that purpose was two channels. One channel was that how do I create a modern industrial base? We are talking about 1870s, 1880s for the country. And the second channel of the purpose was that how do I create a bedrock of technical, scientific resources, human resources for India's growth to be sustained for all times to come. And my question for you is are there any do's or don'ts or learnings for successful, sustainable, social enterprise that you've generated or you can share with people who want to build viable social enterprise

in today's day and age? So, I think that to make something sustainable one needs to go beyond episodical philanthropy to getting wedded to a cause. So, I'll give you one example. Take health. The trusts have been working on health for a long, long time. In 2012, when Mr. Tata was already, I'm talking about Mr. Ratanen Tata, when he was he was chairman of the trust. But in 2012, when he began to devote more time to the trust, he said that why don't we add dimensions to it and look at larger causes which can bring about intergenerational change. So,

we got on to, under our health portfolio, looking at nutrition. In nutrition, the government of India and the state governments have built very, very strong systems and we've heard of that. For example, ICDS, the Integrated Child Development System. So, how do we strengthen government systems? A second leg we are working on is that how do we work with, again, government agencies on policy and advocacy. For example, fortification, our partnership with government, our partnership with non-government partners. So, willingness to work with partners.

And the third, I think, is wanting to be a platform. In the trust, we are very conscious that we are a small entity. We cannot solve every problem. We do not have the capability. But if we can help others to fire arrows at the same target, becoming a platform, possibly that problem can get served or addressed. Strike partnerships and build, being a platform without trying to be the face of everything. Fascinating. Any questions? I heard Shloka speak about climate change collaborative that you people have set up. How does that work for say a village in,

you know, Uttaranchal or Uttarakhand where these local people are trying to live and make a livelihood from farming, etc. How does it work out there? So, we have a very large portfolio of Tata Trusts is what we call Rural Uplift. And it runs hundreds of programs across the country on rural uplift, which is not only agriculture, but basically improving the quality of life among our rural citizens. So, we are working in four states. In some blocks, we cannot, we are not very large, we cannot work across the country. So, we are working in Jharkhand, Orissa,

Maharashtra and in Gujarat. In some of the poorest tribal blocks where we have identified some hundred thousand families and we are trying to take their annual income beyond hundred thousand rupees. Now, people say what is the big deal with hundred thousand rupees? It is not a big deal, of course, but in a rural setting where you are trying to take incomes up from say, basic annual income of thirty, forty thousand rupees, which is what? Five thousand rupees a month to a little more than that, doubling it, troubling it. It brings about change.

The first steps you are taking towards putting your children in schools. First mobility solution coming into the family and we are finding some success. that note, I have to say thank you for such a wonderful chat. Thank you. My next guest is Sairi Chail, founder and CEO, Shiroz. She is India's foremost evangelist for women at work and the convener of the Shiroz summit, India's largest women in business forum. Under her leadership, Shiroz is set to impact over a hundred million women in the next decade. Welcome, Sairi. Welcome back. Thank you.

It's a pleasure to have you here again. Sairi, the best businesses are built around passion and Shiroz is an excellent example actually of a business and a brand that has your vision and your passion at its core. It's a great example also of how an empowered community has not just been built but is growing itself and empowering more people. Tell us more. I think this is a little bit existential. I felt the simple question here is what is it that you want to do with your time, with your life, with the world around you and I think the business is a means

to do that. My grandmother asked me what do you guys do? We talk to women and that's it. That's the sum total of our design philosophy and everything else is built around that. That's how we built Shiroz. What we're really trying to do is really putting women at the center of it. There's only one design principle in Shiroz as a company and that's the brand principle, that's the business principle, that's the tech principle. To say everything that we do has to impact women positively and the big beneficiaries are women because I think there's a lot of

catch up we need to do both in terms of gender gap, workforce gap, income opportunities, all of that. So we're really sort of putting two and two together. And tell us, give us some examples or some anecdotes of visible impact. There's a community called English for English where women who want to learn English and women who can teach English are sort of collaborating and none of this is our doing except that we give them a login. right. Our community called Bazaar which has now 150,000 women who are micro entrepreneurs. Basically all it took was a

framework to say hey if you have products and services to sell to fellow community members you can sell here. And now there are 150,000 women who have assigned themselves the role of an entrepreneur and we know and we're like okay now our business teams are taking notice and now our tech teams are taking notice to say okay you know let's do something about it. Let's take this 150k number to a million women by next year and look what's the impact of that. You are building a pipeline of 1 million women entrepreneurs who will generate their own incomes

who will generate e-commerce GMV who will generate impacts in their society and who will of course generate more opportunities for other people around them. So I think there's a lot of tacit potential lying amongst this right. Look at all of us we live on the internet we are glued to our phones. Everybody who has access to a phone will be glued to it. And I think if we can make that usage far more constructive and far more fun we're going to have a lot more fun on the way. So I mean of course the platform that you have built is very inspiring

you're getting to do something that you really love. Just wanted to understand you mentioned a safe place for women. How do you sort of ensure that and what does that really mean? So Shiroz is women only. I think we're the only platform in the world that's women only and we sort of do like a gender check. We also developed a lot of tech like we have a gender algo which sort of runs by your profile to say are you lying? Are you a fake profile? Keeping it safe from spam, abuse, you know like it's hard to be a woman on the internet and not get spammy

content and friendship requests and you know dick pics and like all sorts of very abusive content. And if you are a new user, you're not an internet pro, this can be very intimidating. You will come for the first time and you'll never come back again. So making sure their experience is safe and it's safe enough for them to be themselves and not to feel judged. If I am an Angunwadi worker and you know and somebody who works at their large consulting firm in Gugao is also on the network, I'm going to feel very intimidated. How do you make

sure these two women find the same space? You know because some things are universal. We all want better health, we all want better relationships. We all want to feel good about ourselves. How do you make that dynamic work where people feel safe being who they are, speaking the language they speak without having to change an iota of their own identity and still making use of the opportunity that you know this big wide world of internet and you know online commerce entrepreneurs and learning and you know building content online, building

identities online, finding work, finding credit, all that can happen under one roof. I have a question which is organizational design. So you have a company that builds these products. A real company. What is the gender ratio in that company and how do you build sensitivity for the product? For the product. So I'll be honest in saying when we started the company we were women only and then we had to take conscious calls to say okay you know I had one coder in the whole team and he said ma'am please hire one more guy. I don't even have

somebody to go for a smoke. So in due course as we have scaled we are now we have 70% women but we still have about 30% men in the company. Second is everyone is on the front lines. So if you came into Shiroz as a recruit we don't care what your designation says and how you know what a big resume you have. For the first one month you're going to talk to women. How do you work with users who are not you, whose life is not like yours, the gender is not like yours. So you really have to step into the shoes, be in the trenches. You know in Hindi

there's a word called seva. So when people come and we say and then you know you'll get a little flavor of what this company is all about and at the end of it it's all about empathy levels and of course having the space for everyone to be themselves even the people who are making mistakes in the system. Fantastic. Thank you so much Sairi. It was such a nice session. Thank you. Thank you. My next guest is Atul Pokhriyal, Vice President Product, Exceed Education. Atul left a decade long career in banking at the Citigroup to do something meaningful

with children and education. Over the years he's been instrumental in taking Exceed, the Exceed method of learning to over a million children in 3,000 schools across eight countries. You represent a company that started with purpose but also with a clearly stated intention of profit. How do you retain that purpose as you scale? So Ramit, it's very important to first understand the context that we operate in. Elementary and primary education is the space we work in. Kids are really experiencing learning in our classrooms in each of

those 35 minute periods. The real battle that is being fought when it comes to learning is inside the 35 minute period when one teacher is interacting with 30, 40, 50, even 60, I've been to a classroom with 65 kids. That kind of, that's the battleground. That is our battleground. We are working with the private schools right in the middle of the pyramid to make a difference to that 35 minute period. Can the teacher teach in a way that will help the child to really learn for the future, not for today? So that purpose to make every child realize their

true potential is what we all are driven towards. Now if you really want to make impact when it comes to learning and classrooms and the kind of scale that we are talking about in India and the developing world, the only way you can do it is that you keep pumping in the resources to innovation and keep scaling up. That is the only way impact can be felt. And you cannot scale up, you cannot innovate if you're not making profit. So that is a choice which was made very early on at Exceed that profit is going to be the way because we really want to make an

impact at scale. And we have done that, we have done that successfully and we have done that while keeping purpose before profit. always and rightly pointed out the choice of this balance is a hard one and really is about keeping purpose before profit. The most fundamental construct of the classroom has to change and we attacked that and that is the most fundamental choice that we made. I mean researchers by even the likes of McKinsey that have been done with the best schools across the world prove that. That method is what brings

about the real change and we have done that practically, we have done that at scale again and again in 3,000 schools in India. We have scaled that model beyond the country. Good standing. So, yeah and that's the, that's one of the choices. If the group has any questions, Saidi does. I love the story of Exceed. I'm going to ask you a question which is also my own existential question. Is the ikigai of business, right? Things that make money, things that the world needs and things that are your purpose. when, when this wheel works

together, it's magic but most of the time it's not working together, right? Share some, some thought on, on this process because you know there's, there's always this alignment you're trying to reach because the things you do for money which are pretty soulless but they keep your company and mission going and the things that are really important to be done as part of your story. I want to poke a little more there. I know exactly what you're talking about, Saidi. So, there are times when you're like, you know, the ikigai is moving leftwards, rightwards,

upwards, downwards and you're like, what do I do? And you talk to people around you and they're like, yeah, I know what you mean. I'm feeling the same. But there's something very interesting about brands like ours and you running one of those. I think the horizon play for brands like these is a very long one. these brands will create impact not just in the major term but the real impact of it is going to be felt in the longer run. The minute you realize that and internalize that, I think you come to peace with yourself and that moment in the ikigai.

And I think the day the founder of the company or the key leaders of the company would really waver on that and stop believing in that long term horizon play of the brand, then there is a real challenge. Else there is not. I mean, look at Tata, what was being talked about. It's longer run. So it's a very long horizon play and my thought is that if that gets sensed or felt by the key people, and if you can get it done for all the employees, even better. That's the hardest thing to do. But yeah, that's my thought on it. And my question to you is

how do you ensure, A, I mean, what's the secret to attracting great talent? And B, how do you ensure that the workplace, the workforce continues to be as passionate about the cause, especially when you become bigger and you're geographically more spread? Correct. more spread. And when there are questions like this, the question that Sayri asks comes, how do you keep the culture focused? Right. Yes. I think consistency. The second, I think the one thing which really works, and Sayri also kind of mentioned that, is that people can experience the

change themselves. If you put them right there inside the classroom and make them see the change, you take them right down to that school in the middle of farms, where a child is talking in perfect fluent English and saying, I want to become a scientist and not help in the farms with my father, you know something is working. When the school leader says that, look, this is what you guys have done, you know it is working. If people can get infected, and that is exactly what we do, we try and infect as many people with the work we do, because we really

believe in that, there is no coming back. And even people leave, they come back. Wonderful, fantastic. Thank you so much, Antul. On that note, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us in the second episode of Brand Studio Live Season 2, co-hosted by the HT Brand Studio and DMA Asia. A sincere thanks to DMA Asia and Vatsal Ashar for constantly powering this concept with their passion. A big thank you to Fever FM, who helps us evangelize the Brand Studio Live. We'll be back with another episode soon. Keep watching. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.