As a kid Anindya (pronounced Anindo) Mukerji suffered from a degenerative disease. AM grew up in the industrial township of Burnpur, near Asansol, where his dad had got a job in the IISCO steel plant, after finishing an education from Presidency College, Calcutta. Doctors had given AM till 25 to live. He had been awarded the prestigious NTSE scholarship in his school days. And it would have been a loss of good government scholarship money if the docs had been right. Anindya was glad he proved the medical fraternity to be in error. Went on to do his petroleum engineering from the Indian school of Mines, Dhanbad. And then jumped directly to Joka. He is Ranjan Banerjee’s batchmate, PGDM batch of 1989.
AM counts amongst his ancestors, one of the founders of the Congress party, SN Banerjee. SN Banerjee was part of the moderate faction of the party. He was a mentor to Gokhale and Tilak. SN Banerjee was also part of the ICS for some time. He seemed to have developed a liking for the perks of power – and took up the offer of ministership in a Brit installed government. He got his knighthood as a result, but the side effect was his growing unpopularity in Congress ranks – and a gentle sidelining. Could have been an age factor too – even MKG, who was 70+ during the last days of the freedom movement, had been sidelined by Nehru and company from 1940 onwards.
After IIM Calcutta, AM worked in the finance function at Hindustan Lever Limited for 5 years. There is a gap in the linkedin profile between 1999 to 2004. Since then he has been on his own. Runs Transforma, a leadership consulting firm. AM is the non ops guy. Anuradha Sehgal, 1988 pass out of London school of economics and Saujanya Shetty, a 1989 pass out of Narsee Monjee, are his two other partners at Eklavya. Saujanya has done her BSc in statistics from mithibai College. After her MBA she worked with companies like Philips in their marketing function. She was a Vice President at British Gas before she joined up with Anindya to start Transforma in 2004.
Transforma is into management leadership coaching. Their key differentiation is identifying attitudinal valuable resources. Saujanya gave an example of a boy who was serving chai at a Maruti dealership that they were visiting as part of a Maruti assignment. The boy’s dad was a vegetable vendor. The young man used to do gardening in the evening. Would study for his BA at night. Transforma identified him as a top talent, merely on attitude. Like Eklavya, he had passion but no gurus. Our young friend overcame his challenging circumstances and with a little bit of nudging from Transforma moved up the ladder. Today he is a vice president at Google.
Apart from consulting, there is also an implementation side to AM. About 20 years ago, AM along with two others founded Eklavya, a skill enhancement NGO. Talent is universal, opportunities are not. Eklayva proactively looks for talent. And promises to work with this talent till it achieves the velocity required to escape from poverty. Pagar bhi, Padhaai bhi is Eklavya’s motto.
Eklavya’s flagship program is the 6 month duration Sushruha. This program helps develop skilled healthcare workers. There are niches in the healthcare sector that they are trying to fill. One of them is specific focus on Alzheimer’s patients. There are 28,000 patients of Alzheimer’s in Pune. And just about 340 dedicated beds.
Most existing nurse training setups have a very low placement rate. Anindya gave an example of one such NGO based out of Pune, where in a typical batch of 30, only 2 were found to be working. The rest had excuses for not working. Even for those who did work, the feedback from doctors was not too good. Rampant absenteeism. Non existent proactiveness. Sometimes even lacking in reactiveness. Patients can ring the assistance buzzer, but nurses don’t bother to turn up. AM believes that empathy is more important than skills. Was especially so in Corona times, when even family members were not allowed to go near the patient.
At Eklavya, the focus is on the girl child. Some of the intake for the Sushruha program is from orphanages. 175 students apply for the 25 vacancies that are there in a batch that starts every month. Numbers in the Eklavya programs have been going north. In February and May 21, the monthly intake was more than 40 students. There is a 70-93 % completion rate for the program. 12 to 15% drop outs happen because of home circumstances. On successful completion of this program, hospitals take on students on probation. Even after they become regular employees, students are encouraged to go in for advanced formal education: like the ANM (Auxiliary Nurse and midwife) or the GNM, (General Nurse and Midwife) or a BSc (Nursing). There is a good demand for nurses in Africa for UN programs. A three-year stint in Africa means you end up with savings of Rs. 20-60 lakh rupees.
Eklavya has an interesting filter that they use at the intake. Attitude. Attitude is one thing that cannot be changed. Attitude is like the root of the tree. What is visible in a person is the qualification and experience. What is not is the attitude. Attitude is humility. A nurse has to accept that she also has to do a mama-mavshi job at times. A good check of attitude is to give a person power. 70% of the treatment is psychology. You need a nurse who is energetic. You need a person who has a smile on her face. A person who has a natural respect for elders. A person with compassion. A person who gives hope. A person who gives encouragement to the patient. Attitude assessment is in the Eklavya bloodstream.
How does Eklavya go about filtering for attitude? It’s a triangulation of references. From teachers. From friends. From colleagues. From relatives. From the basti people. From neighbours. There is no recruitment that happens to an Eklavya program without a reference check.
In the interview, instead of a hypothetical future Eklavya focuses on the past. Values are discussed. Role models are discussed. Childhood memories are discussed. Interviewers look at the past and try to gauge resilience by looking at instances where a student has failed and bounced back. Eklavya believes that it needs to set up people for failure to reinforce attitudes. This helps frame the attitude reference.
Another check for the healthcare worker is compassion. Applicants are asked about family members who have suffered from grevious illnesses. And what was the role of the applicant as a caregiver. If a student is selected, there is a one month online course. In this one month the program rejects candidates who are attitude and work misfits.
The Sushruha has a six month program. The first month is pure classroom. Students start earning their pagar from month 2. Stipends, sometimes boarding and lodging, are taken care of by hospitals. Students earn Rs. 6000 per month during their 5 month training and probation period. After confirmation, the salary goes to Rs. 10,000 per month. Most are proud team members today and command a lot of respect at the hospitals that they join. During training there are regular visits by Eklavya staff to supervise learning. Online teaching continues through the course. There is a lot of hand holding that happens. There are 30 full-time staff and about 180 volunteers. Almost all of them are ex-students of the Eklavya program. Eklavya has a philosophy to not teach students for free. Zero fee being seen as zero value by most folks. Students are charged Rs. 3000 for a six months program. A one cup of chai equivalent per day fee structure. The operating thumb rule at the NGO is that one-third of the fee has to come in from the student’s pockets. 2/3rd goes in as a subsidy from Eklavya.
The primary focus at Eklavya is women. 12th pass. I discussed the problem that Vigyan ashram folks told me: not enough takers being available in the 12th pass category. Most lower socioeconomic families insist on a college education today. This has also been the experience with Mayur Vora at Mapro, who is experimenting with a similar program for retail sales trainees. But Eklavya has a very different experience. Only 10 to 15% of slum girls go on to college So finding students is not too much of a problem. AM is sad that programs like the Poona Blind Men’s Association school are no longer able to provide employment in the numbers they used to in the past. Quite a few of the older NGOs have a sense of entitlement, because raising funds is super easy for them.
Eklayva has been reluctant to be on social media. You can hardly see any of their work on Facebook, Instagram or YouTube. I wonder why? There is good word of mouth from the hospitals, so marketing is taken care of. One of their unpaid brand ambassadors is Dr Shashwat of Shashwat hospital. AM says that they are not seeking donations, so finance does not bother them. They train about 200 students a year and are happy with that number. I detected a wee bit of hypocrisy here. On one hand, AM does not want donations, but on the other hand Eklavya is looking at getting sponsors and volunteers for its new programs.
Eklavya does not charge any fee to hospitals. I asked Anindya about why they don’t charge hospitals. Too much competition in supply, with a number of BSc nursing students available. Hospitals are not just used to the idea of paying for talent. The hospitals that tend to recruit from Eklavya are first generation hospitals. You could call them tier 3. They usually cater to rural folks who come to Pune for treatment. These hospitals tend to be on the outskirts of Pune, Katraj, Kharadi etc. Or they are in down market locations in Pune like Parvati. These hospitals are a better fit with Eklavya students. Most students stay in slums close by. So they don’t end up spending a lot of money or time in travel. Empathy happens naturally as Eklavya students come from the same socio-economic backgrounds as the patients. What has helped Eklavya spread their hospital base is a strong peer networking amongst Tier 3 hospitals, making word-of-mouth more effective.
One of their blockbuster programs is for English speaking: it’s called bindas bol. There is also a training program for the auto industry in association with another NGO called Gram Tarang. This Programs follow a non-cognitive emotions driven pedagogy. A new program in the pipeline is IT. My friend Aakash Singh is helping out in that program launch. Eklavya also has programs in retail. No traction in that program for the last two years, thanks to the pandemic. The pandemic has helped them too, as it transformed their physical classrooms to Google Meets. The absence of offline classrooms is disappointing to me personally, but the silver lining is that the students’ earn and learn workplace is full of physical interactions.
Another idea that AM is thrilled about was his wards going on to become entrepreneurs. Eklavya has a good connect with banks and can look at arranging loans between 5 to 10 lakh for these people to start their entrepreneurship journey. Looking forward to ideas that can help him with this. Insha Allah, 2022 will see the start of this new journey.
Anindya Mukerji, Eklavya Initiative, 18 Aug
Anindya and Saujanya Shetty landed up for breakfast. AM got some peeled pomegranates along.
Saujanya has been volunteering with Eklavya for about 10 months now. Her dad was in the army, where he represented India in athletics. Saujanya grew up in Mumbai. Shifted to Pune in 2003 after her marriage. Her hubby is currently working with RR Kabel -B Gauss. Before that he worked with Kinetic, Mahindra and Piaggio.
A teacher connects with students when there is more empathising and less patronising.
Capex is 40% of total cost, which includes functional R and D. Operational expenditure is balance.
Eklavya has also got an interesting blood bank. They have details of 12000 people who stay in slums who are ready to become blood donors. This is a much cheaper way compared to getting blood removed, processed and stored.
We discussed the launch of the pathology program. Debated whether we should go in for a formal DMLT qualification. Decided that it would be wiser to focus on practical skills rather than certification. It will also reduce costs considerably. More than 6000 rupees goes just for the certificate.
We are looking at a launch date of December or January. Dr Gill will be creating content and working along with Eklavya for creating placement opportunities for students. We will have a fee structure which is similar to what Eklavya has for their nurse program. Maybe we need to look at a slightly different set of skills. Some thinking required on this.
Saujanya will be visiting Pinky’s lab to understand the JD of a technician between 21-25 Aug. Should also attend some of their Google Meet classes. She will also get back to me with the links for the online sessions of both Bindas bol and the nursing program. Have been promised that I will get to meet with some of their ex students in hospitals in Pune.
Anindya is going to Dharamshala next week. The Dalai Lama wants to start something similar to Eklavya for his people. Must share Pradeep Gothoskar’s coordinates with him, so that he can meet up there. Will be meeting AM before that on Wednesday, 18th August over breakfast at my place.