As I was not found qualified to study any other subject, I started studying business as a subject in my plus two. I have been enamoured by business ever since. I started investing in businesses at that time rather than investing in instruments. But due to various reasons, instead of pursuing business, I landed in banking sector, that too in the public sector. During my early days in banking, I discovered that there was a more fascinating business – people – investing in people. Gradually, I started sharpening my ability to identify and invest in people.
Quite unexpectedly, I ended up in BSBS as a co-founder and it has become my life – investing in people has become my creed - as Angel Investor!!
There are many who invest in people. But almost all the investors, right from premier B Schools to others invest only in the best- they select only the best. Investing in the best is passe. It is staid and boring. No challenge! No risk!! No thrill!!! I thrive on investing in rejected, unnoticed, undiscovered, under-performing people – yes! Laxmi Mittal style – pick up shuttered, mothballed steel plants in eastern Europe and get them on to performance powerhouses! – in the same way I pick up deprived rural, small town graduates to invest time, effort, emotion and passionately nurture each investment to produce the returns in multiples of multiples!!! What do I look at in people before investing? Simple- Sincerity, Hard work, Commitment. The higher the level of these qualities, the surer is the outcome!! Failures? My failure rate is below 20%. I found this business to be the riskiest. There are too many uncontrollable variables. That is what arouses my passion for investing in people.
A rural development specialist through higher education; An activist by instinct; A responsible educationist by practice…. A brief sabbatical for family after six years of working in varied roles with three companies changed my course from Employment to Entrepreneurship. Experience of motherhood enabled discovery of a mother’s yearning for her child’s improved life, at-least a few notches higher than hers (& her family’s). Made the focused move to solve the problem of ‘inability & inaccessibility to get into well-paying, upgradable job profiles’ for the large mass of youth at the bottom-of-the-pyramid- the academic degree graduates from rural & semi-urban areas.
For over a decade, I consciously traversed through various models of higher education interventions and the nuances associated with them by working in a variety of governance & policy making roles in the formal higher education space like the Academic Council & the Syndicate of State Public Universities, Member of the Board of a National Institute & in a leading non-profit organisation for capacity building & policy advocacy in higher education. Parallelly, got to experiment with a small cohort of deprived, but aspirational graduates from rural colleges through the co-founding of BSBS with like-minded souls in 2009.
Through this research & experimentation, as the Head of Corporate Relations, I took on the job of persuading small to large, domestic to foreign multinationals, new-age to yesteryear companies in providing equal opportunity to these hidden gems (transformed talent from rural colleges) to prove their capabilities on the job. Response from 130 leading companies from across Food and Agri-business, Supply-chain, Business Research & Analytics, e-commerce, Retail, IT, FMCG, Adventure & Sports, Wellness, Infrastructure, Hospitality, Manufacturing to new-age Technology firms has been overwhelming. The success of BSBS talent in the corporate world through progressive milestones in their careers is a proof of India Inc. increasingly valuing diverse attitudes in their talent pool- their invisible hands, hearts & minds endorsing the ‘inclusive development agenda’ of BSBS :)
When the top executives of the companies call and say “Jyothi, give us more Kavyas…, more Vinays….more Laxmis….”, I know my (our) BSBS has made a dent :)- I know don’t need a greater compelling reason or inspiration than this to take BSBS big- to touch larger number of lives in the years to come, to make larger number of mothers (‘fathers’ implied/ included!) have a sense of fulfilment :)
