May 3: Orientation

CK and Ramesh finally joined us this morning. Now, there will be more fun and laughter among the group.

Today marks our first day at Byrraju Foundation. Even though it is a Saturday, we had to turn up for orientation. We finally had the opportunity to meet Ms Padmavati - the HR manager – and Dr Verghese – the operations director – among a host of other personalities who dedicate their lives to rural development. We were also provided with a more in-depth briefing of the operations of the Foundation and spent most of the day exploring the place since we only get to meet our Guides on May 5^th.

The Foundation is the social arm of Satyam Computers, a huge conglomerate specializing in the manufacturing and retailing of computers and IT systems in India.

Committed to achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), especially sustainable rural development, the Foundation advocates a holistic approach comprising of 12 different “modules”. To name a few, these include education, sanitation, healthcare, environmental sustainability, agriculture services, and my personal favourite: BPO (business process outsourcing) which involves outsourcing the execution of certain processes in the entire supply chain to the rural communities that the Foundation works with.

These processes can include communication (i.e. call centres \ telemarketing) and back office work (i.e. administration and low-level IT consultancy). All these provide opportunities for employment for the rural population by linking them to mainstream markets.

There are over 40 different programmes running in about 200 villages in the province of Andhra Pradesh (with Hyderabad as its capital). In fact, we sat in on one of the project presentations by a team of 4 Masters students from the SPJ Institute of Management & Research (they have a branch in S’pore) who introduced a 3-village cooperative model of coconut harvesting, processing into related products, and marketing for international markets.

It was a brilliant presentation and idea as the team analysed right down to the profit-cost sustainability of this business model with a 5-year projection period, the type of technology and manpower required, and even the recommended start-up scale of the project.

However, due to the existence of imperfect knowledge within markets such as the variations in prices of coconut products across different regions due to different transportation costs and a byzantium network of middlemen and dealers who distort prices, it is very difficult to determine the procurement price necessary to ensure the success of this model. As such, these models are often created based on a given set of assumptions (that often do not hold in reality).

Many of these projects also require a huge grant from either businesses or government schemes due to their high initial capital costs. Many also fail to break even after the projected period and have to be stopped. While failure is aplenty, there are still many success stories out there too.

In that short 30 minutes presentation, I learnt more about rural development schemes than I ever did in the 2 years of my university education so far.

It has bolstered my hunger to want to learn more. In fact, this has vindicated my very presence here in India.