Association of Rural Dealers and Service Providers -
Reflections and Experiences of the First Six
Months
As I get involved in the field of social enterprise, some stray thoughts cross my
mind. These are thoughts of self-doubts and concerns both unfounded and real,
coupled with practical day to day problems that we are facing in operations.
I ask myself, is it natural for someone at the steering role to have
doubts and anxieties about self and others, while he is grappling with more
relevant issues of management like operational plan, opportunities and
challenges, funding for the start-up phase, profitability, break-even point,
scale of operations, existing and potential corporate partners, problems of
staffing, resource constraints, audit, legal compliances and so on and so forth.
Sometimes, one has to learn to deal with the tension of playing a 50 over cricket match if not 20-20 game or a formula 1 car racing, while trying to incubate a social enterprise. Yes, I am not exaggerating, as on one moment you thing you are on track and the next moment you have to deal with a bad news or a setback. But I guess that is the rule of the game in a new business operations. These anxieties and worries will stay till such time we have fully laid down efficient systems and more trusted people handling responsibilities of the operations. I often tell myself, there is no going back or using the popular Hindi saying "jab okhli mein sar rakh diya to musli se kya darna" that in English would mean - when one has placed his head in the mortar then what is the point in fearing the pestle. Surprisingly, I find myself filled with new energy and courage that help me overcome any self-doubt and get me going for many days all together. I have learnt through my long career in development sector that hard work has no substitute.
Yet there is another category of issues, that causes deepest of anxieties
for us in the Reach Support team. These are mostly related to our mandatory
dealings with regulatory authorities and their way of functioning. I often
think why should these questions and concerns, arise at the first place. After
all we have been working for the development of our society and the country.
When we look at these concerns closely, they point at the deep rot of our
social and political systems and their functioning. In this domain, our professional,
logical and ethical approaches all fall flat. yet, we are from the beginning, with the help of our Chartered Accountants, are investing in professional systems. In the the current financial year, being also the first year of operations, our transaction is likely to touch
` 10 m level including the rural dealership project with Tata Tea, if we are able to meet our slightly ambitious projections. This entails having a system fully geared to meet all the compliance requirements including payments of all taxes on time.
I am sometimes taken in by own abilities to do really hard back-breaking
work and in going through spells of hardships. Be it times when one has to work
late in the night to finish a presentation, a proposal or a report; or
travelling in harsh conditions, sometimes, using public transport, or spending
the night in a room full of mosquitoes with frequent load shedding, in the hot
summer. But then I think, how people who are at the centre of our
organisation’s vision, live their everyday lives even without basic amenities.
I think of the pain a mother or a father undergoes in not being able to fulfil
a very mundane demand of school stationery or a simple ride to the city, for want of
money. Compare their situation with us and the privileges that we have learnt
to take for granted.
Certain practical problems and questions therein are far too complex to finding an easy or quick solution, specially for us inexperienced in trade. Even with a firm resolve, one
finds himself on sticky wicket when faced with the so called teething trouble
of a new organisation, These relate to staffing issues of getting good talented
people interested to join you and retaining them. Recruiting the first few
staff of the organisation, gets really tricky as people despite accepting the
appointment may drops out apparently for silly reasons despite the best that is
offered to them.
One also has to always be ready to be available on phone to solve the
problems of the giys in the field. Some of them sometimes come to you for small
things like should one send a scan copy of the PAN card or a photo copy by post
or courier, which though irritating actually don't take much effort or time to
solve. On other occasions they come up with some serious problems like fight
with the some urban distributor/ agent over territory, or improper packing or low quality
of the economic brand (that too of a pioneering company!), reporting problems
with online banking, or someone wanting to drop out or wanting areas to be
reallocated and scores of other problems, that Reach Services alone cannot solve.
Communication with the corporate partner on solving some of the ground level
issues, is sometime slow and frustrating as is the lack of responsiveness of
the corporate system.
Issue of finding an angel investor like in micro-credit often comes to
my mind. Starting off an enterprise from the scratch is not easy, unless there
is some genuine funding towards he promotional expenses. Even if you are
working on a business model from the day one, you have to plan for a gestation
period. So the directors end up being the underwriters using hard earned funds
of their own, spouse, close relatives and friends.
Coming to realise as days go by, start-up fund or seed money for a social
venture is really critical if you want to work on a certain scale. Again at the
end of the day, a revenue model on trading and providing services depend on
scale or volume. Hence there is no scope of working small here as one will not
be able to survive in the trade. We are approaching many agencies, government
and private for some start-up support, without success. I had an opportunity to
visit some social enterprises in Taiwan few years back. There I noticed that many
social enterprises are blooming because of a very supportive government policy
in place. Apparently, government does not normally give grants there but there
is a climate that encourages social investments by private parties, and even
accessing seed capital and soft loans is easy. Looking at the overall scenario
here, one feels a bit frustrated.
There is so much of shallowness and lies that shroud our public discourse. Our
governments pretends that it has problem solving capabilities that was never
there. Year after year respective governments at the centre and states managed
to fool people by way of offering magic bullet solutions packed in so called
flagship schemes. Going into the specifics of the schemes and presenting their
critique is not my intent here. It should suffice saying that unless one has a
big patron or one is willing to invest speed money, getting support from the
government is not possible for any new organisation.
While I hear of some non government funding
agencies’ interest in social enterprise, it is not easy to get their support as
our work looks very basic and no glamorous at its face. Our efforts to get
support from one such agency is still continuing.
There are many systemic problems in our country that have grown in
complexities over years.
Few states
manifests them more than others and we are by choice in some of such states. There
are problems with our politics and democracy, with our own people. It is but
natural then that we have to equip ourselves to deal with the problems
associated with incubating a new organisation and a new initiative even though
it means a lot of energy and efforts, we have no choice.
We are struggling to find efficient ways in dealing with the regulatory authorities
who are not trained to discern the difference of objectives of a social
enterprise and a purely corporate enterprise. That should in fact not make any
great difference, provided the system deals with each case legally but
sensibly, meaning not finding loopholes for not doing something desirable or
rejecting an application. Multiplicity of regulatory authority and ambiguity of
legal provisions and laws cause a major problem.
The dealings for a new corporate entity could be about registration under
certain acts or provisions both central government and state specific, be it
companies act, change of purpose of business, TIN, permission to carry trade
from municipal authorities and even if you have a trade licence its purview may
restrict you to only and only certain activities. So if you want to expand the
purview by adding certain new activities you have to apply for a fresh trade
licence, as apparently the existing one can not be amended. But then you can
not apply for a fresh licence also from the same address. Similarly, for TIN
you have to produce the copy of the house tax bill of premise where you are
operating from. Agreement will not suffice. If the house owner does not
cooperate then your application gets rejected despite your genuine claim.
And mind you, most of these processes are online. So what happens? You get
offers from firms who specialise in providing consultancy services to solve
these problems. You have started off your operations, there are already many
people dependent on you for their livelihoods, so you buy these services or
chose to give it a try once more, on your own. After all your intent is 100 per
cent genuine. So, same set, same scene, you go for a retake, another month
passes by and you are back at square one. Exactly where we are today, so what
next? Why don’t we pay for the consultancy and get things sorted out then? Silly we! Going by the norm of the day, we should just get things done, after all this will not mean we are not bribing someone! Well the list of dilemma gets longer then. But what gets us gong is
our strong urge to try the social entrepreneurship route to create
self-employment opportunity for a large number of people including myself.
We are creating a network of educated unemployed, rural youth, as dealers
and service providers. Through them we plan to introduce various goods and
services as per rural demand and in the process as we say we create a win win situation
for all concerned. Quality at minimum possible cost is what the people gets
sitting at their home, the youth get self-employed and opportunity to excel in
their own businesses, corporate are able to expand their market share, banks
and financial institutions are able to reach the unreached and we fulfil our
mission of linking the poor, disabled, women and youth linked to emerging
opportunities for economic and social development.
At the end of the day, we are satisfied as we are seeing result of the hard
work that we as a team, has put forth in the last six months, is showing
remarkable result already. We are also fortunate to have a market leader
company, supporting the start-up cost even though indirectly, by paying stipend
to the rural dealers and picking up some of their costs at least for the first
couple of years. There are issues related to slow progress. There are issues of
laziness of some of our rural dealers, quality of product, or urban dealers
impinging into rural markets, issues of cost differences even if it is marginal
between our rural dealers' and urban distributors of the products of the same
company. Some of these get solved immediately, some linger on despite our best
efforts to find immediate solutions, some due to fault at our end and some due
to the fault of our partner and some with no fault of ours. But we are also
learning to do business, learning to say no and take some real hard decisions.
More than two decades of working in the voluntary sector work in India has a
lot of influence in the way I think today. I have got used to a certain way of
looking at things, going deeper and questioning endlessly, trusting, caring and
taking responsibilities. Working in Indian grant making organisations, was very
exciting, with scarce resources always challenging us to think beyond the
obvious, ask right questions and reach the unreached. Many times we failed in
even garnering the minimum resources but at least we went to common people,
talked to them and tried to understand what might possibly work if genuinely
tried. In many cases, we saw people doing it with or without our resources or
grants. Thanks to such learning, one makes efforts to understand by talking and
listening to people, and asking questions to explore solutions from a new
perspective.
The voluntary sector experience of going deep and probing beyond the
obvious, is very useful in my new work. However, the disadvantage of having
worked in the social sector if one may say so, is that we tend to listen more
to what our heart says than letting our mind rule. In business, even if it is a
social enterprise, I am learning fast, how to take orders from the mind without
suppressing the heart’s appeal. While interviewing people for recruitment, we
came across very genuine and capable people but as they failed to meet a single
criteria that they don't own a bike, we could not take them. From my experience
of the development sector, I can say one would have been more open in accepting people with
certain disadvantages. There is though no clear line of demarcation between the
two sectors, as I recall many times, one has taken hard decisions like
withdrawing a grant or asking someone to leave, even in my previous
organisations. But here the norm is to take decisions based on profit considerations.
We as a social enterprise will try to balance profit, people and planet factors
not exactly in the same order but we can not forget that our operations is not grants
based. Only as we earn profit, we can do justice to our social objective. In
that sense, earning profit is just a means, and that knowledge from the
beginning will inform our value system, work ethics and standards.
Looking back, to also address my own anxieties, I find my whole experience
in the voluntary sector, helped me to work with common people, specially the
poor and the marginalised. I learnt in some measures how to communicate,
specially with those who do not have a voice or a say in things around them,
even about their own lives and their bodies. Look at a woman from the poorest
strata of the society. She works the hardest in her family both in the rile of
a provider and a care giver. Yet she does not have a say in sending children to
school, in joining an SHG, in enrolling herself for a vocational training,
joining an evening literacy programme or things as fundamental as when to
marry, how many children she will bear. This knowledge is the capital, on the strength
of which we have jumped into the deep water of businesses.
In the long run I believe, working with the corporate stream, is going to be
very useful. I think we are fortunate that we are learning to deal with
corporate agencies in business term, which is different from their CSR dealings. Latter I
feel is laced with hypocratic icing. Whereas the business cares about profitability, so there is a recognition of truth,
as in what works and what does not. There is deep recognition, in certain
quarters of the corporate sector, including our present partner that there is
no short cut to success. I can therefore feel very satisfied by my decision to start wortking in a new mode.
This is like my second innings and I want to not just bat and bowl well but
field well too, as I have a match to win.
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