Birthday:
December 3
Birthday: December 3
Birthday:
December 3
Company
Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore
Department
Social Science
Position
Research Associate
City
Dubai
Country
UAE
Professional Background
With over 9+ years IT services experience I have done my full time MBA in Marketing Strategy at IIM Bangalore. Now I am continuing my research in Strategic Competence Building for Sustainable Competitive Advantage with focus on Middle East Frontier markets. The research is done under the guidance of Professor A Damodaran
CSR Interest & Background
As the SPOC for Prayaas committee (social responsibility group of Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore), I was responsible for Prayaas activities during my academic year of management study. Apart from the medical intervention camp, I lead the team to establish multiple new initiatives including building a trust, fund raiser event, project nutrition and more. Medical intervention camp has been conducted since inception of Prayaas committee; with focus on providing artificial limp to the handicapped. Along with this other medical camps conducted include eye camp, maxilo facial surgery camp, blood donation camp, blood test camps etc. The number of physically handicapped beneficiaries from the camp conducted by my team exceeded in number higher than the total beneficiaries from over all the previous camps conducted. This was achieved through a complete publicity at the right time and the right points to reach the needy. From the fund we received from our previous batch, I have taken effort to increase the fund volume through various initiatives and gathered 20 times the fund that any of our senior batches have gathered. The fund gathered during our year depended on corporate/other huge sponsorships than looking at individuals for financial help. I made the team spend more time on organizing new initiatives than concentrating on fund collection. One of the fund raiser events was India level (national level) paper presentation contest on the topic “Sustainability of corporate social responsibility (CSR)” Out of the hundreds of papers received; top 10 participants presented their idea on the annual competition. One of the top 3 ideas has been chosen by the Government to be implemented in the city of Bangalore, India. Registering Prayaas as a trust has also helped us increase the volume of help received through contributions. Nutrition program was another initiative that I have started off to address the health needs of kids below 5 years of age. Malnourishment is a major problem that rural India is facing. Project Nutrition involved choosing a village that needs this initiative and place a process and setup to take care of the kid’s food supplement needs to help them move to a healthy state from the current undernourished or malnourished state of health. 6 months from the start of the program, we could notice visible/measureable changes on 68 kids from the village. Soon after we started this initiative, we noticed Government also starting off initiatives to increase the awareness among public on the need to focus on the health of kids until atleast they reach 5 years of age. Now I continue providing consultation to current batch of students on finding solution to their problems/needs related to Prayaas activities. Pioneer member in establishing “Outreach” – Cognizant’s CSR initiative. We, few employees of Cognizant started with weekend social activities and called our group Outreach. The effort and reach of this team was recognized by making our team the official CSR initiative of Cognizant. Outreach is existent at Cognizant since six years now. The framework in place has helped the team run all the initiatives which we started off 8 years back. Since my school days and college, I was involved in various social service initiatives. This instinct was installed in me through various social service camps that I attended through “Scouts & Guides” and “National Cadet Corps - Army” initiatives. Being involved in various broad categories of social initiatives starting from health intervention, immunity and cleanliness, education, basic needs, community needs, women empowerment and more; these days I can map one problem at one place to a need at another point in the society. A direct link between these two entities can help solve problem at both the end. Being informed of different problems can this help eliminate Information asymmetry, to provide benefit to two entities. Apart from this, I have found an NGO in rural area of Southern tip of India. My NGO, Anvi supports 18 girls and 10 boys with their primary education and related needs. The criteria for getting a student into this program is based on their financial inability and the kid’s interest to go to school. So far, we do not have any drop out. My international exposure in different geographies like USA, UK, EU and Asia Pacific has added to my understanding about the different needs that each society has. Each economy irrespective of how strong or weak they are; there is a category of people who have lot of unmet needs and some of the needs are very basic ones.