What Seema Bansal teaches about brand purpose

I started to wonder where I was going with all of this. I loved the work, I loved what we did, I loved the high of problem solving but did I really want to you know continue to help corporates improve revenues and cut costs and develop strategies or did I want to do something more? We know about the work you do, we know about the exciting work that BCG has done in this space, we just thought we'd get to know you a little better and through you talk about your work. So all

this amazing work, where do you get all the passion and the inspiration from, what's the source? I mean has it been like something you wanted to do always, did you discover it along the way and what keeps you going? Yeah so I think a few things, one is growing up I had a very sort of a childhood where I spent a lot of time in many different places you know from studying in a Hindi medium school in Himachal to studying in Chandigarh to being moved to the US you know for three or four years, coming back to

India. At various points of time I had challenges with when I moved from Himachal to Chandigarh I didn't know English, when I moved back from the US back to India I had you know almost forgotten Hindi, right? So I went through a very diverse education system and hence education and its role in a person's life was always very important to me. So even back when I was 15 I felt like I wanted to do something in education and I wanted to think about how education impacts children and how it can do so more

positively. In my early years at BCG I had the opportunity to work with a few people like Arun Myra you know who who's were thinking about nation building even though they were in you know corporate lives and then about six seven years of being at BCG I started to wonder where I was going with all of this. I loved the work, I loved what we did, I loved the high of problem solving but I did it did I really want to you know continue to help corporates improve revenues and cut costs and develop strategies or

did I want to do something more and then you know at that point of time I said let me at least try the development sector. I had no clue I genuinely had no clue let me try the development sector so I stepped in bit by bit you know letting go of the corporate life a little bit and you know looking at the development a little bit and then along the way an education project came and my passion from when I was 15 and that kind of clicked together and I think things just kind of blew up from there and became bigger

and bigger of course we do a lot more work now and you know education and health and in many different topics so it's not just education. But you've created it from scratch and that couldn't have been easy especially a practice which is at least from the outside would seem like is not as lucrative as a corporate practice but tell us about that because this is almost like being entrepreneurial and creating something very very special. Yeah yeah no it it's been a journey when I initially thought I

wanted to work in the development space I did not think I could do it within my company within BCG. I felt like it didn't fit with what we normally did so I actually offered to quit I you know went in with my resignation letter but I think it was the leadership which said well why not you know if you want to work in the development space why not within BCG and I said but that's not what we do but then they said you know what we provide is advice we can provide it to anyone what we do is help create

change we can do it for anyone so try it out I think part of it was probably some element of female retention whatever it was but I gave it. You must give yourself more credit than that. Whatever it was I said okay fine you know this is if I have the space to try it out I must do it here and I think for four or five years the practice was completely pro bono I wasn't bringing in any money at all I was a cost head completely but also as we built our skill set what we found was that people were willing to pay for us not we're not charging our

corporate rates we want to be responsible in terms of our own you know responsibility in this space but people are willing to pay for us because you know the philanthropic space the policy space the government implementation space you know spend so much money and if you're actually able to come in there and help it be a little bit more effective and solve real problems and solve real problems and create real change people are willing to put money on the table people are willing to sort of put some skin in the game

and we are co-investing. What's the vision for the practice? It's a vision that you would not expect I think what we want to do is we want to take our social impact work societal impact work back to all our corporate clients it is not about only working with the government only working with the development sector I genuinely believe and BCG as a firm genuinely believes that all corporates need to be thinking not only about just shareholder return but societal impact increasingly more marketeers are trying to

find purpose and higher order purpose for brands that is where everything is going that's where the world is going what would be your message to them given everything that you've done we're still living in sort of you know corporates create two different worlds they create a world of business and then they create a world and language around CSR right and this operates separately and this kind of operates separately once we stop thinking about CSR philanthropy as a cost which needs to sit

separately or as a good to do but start thinking about how we build it into our core business I think that's what it is I mean look at us right I mean this practice now is financially self-sustaining it gives us amazing relationships it gives us a seat at the table it is positive it's a win-win-win for everyone absolutely and I think that's probably where everyone needs to be getting to from everything that I know you've created this amazing work-life balance the young people in the team give us research which says you've

climbed Mount Kilimanjaro you're learning the salsa you're learning to play an instrument you're a trained scuba driver where do you find time to do all this and how I think work-life balance is a myth but a few things I think someone very early in my career talked to me about energy sources and energy sinks right that you have to balance those things out so what are your sources of energy and for me outdoors has always been a source of energy so I just need to be outdoors I need to be you know either

near an ocean or near a mountain so I think part of it is that part of it is I genuinely believe that all of us have a long long life to live right I am still in my early 40s and some days it stresses me out that I probably have another 30 40 years to live right so I'm not in a rush to get anywhere and I think the herd is I have an amazingly supportive ecosystem but I also believe specifically with respect to kids that the more people that they have in their lives the better it will be so even if I go

away for four days to die you know they'll be with their grandparents they will be with their aunts and uncles and that's great for them because they're actually getting exposure to other people