I came to a spork in the road...

I figured I should write about what I'm currently up to here in Bombay so this is my best effort at it. It will probably help to preface it with a little background though.

I am a bit of an idealist. I think the world is a really shitty place for 90% of its population and through absolutely no effort of my own, I've had excessively fantastic opportunities available to me throughout my life that most of the rest of the world will never experience. Maybe it's just guilt that's driving me here - but I do feel that perhaps I should be doing something that helps improve the lives of the worst off, lest I be reborn as a mentally-challenged cockroach in my next life.

Some people who probably don't think my bulldozer
designs are improving their lives

An engineer by trade, my old job involved designing construction vehicles such as bulldozers. I wouldn't really consider that as something that made a huge impact on making the world a better place for people. Some may argue that that's not necessarily true and there may be some merit to that.

Nonetheless, I've always thought I could be doing something that felt more fulfilling in this regard. During the start of my MBA program last year, the school held a workshop called The Bottom of the Pyramid. This is a concept popularized by C.K. Prahalad a few years ago about the tremendous profit potential in serving the needs of the lower rungs of the economic ladder. The session itself was an eye-opening look into how one can apply business concepts to improve the lives of those who need it most. It was at that point that I began to think that making a career out of social impact was a practical possibility. 

Myself and Prof Yunus - he may be
accomplished but I'm handsome

Fast forward a few months and I got a chance to hear a keynote speech at an annual social responsibility forum organized by my business school. The speaker was Hans Reitz, a serial entrepreneur who has moved into the social sphere. He's an inspirational creative speaker who spoke on the concept of social business, coined by Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus. In a nutshell, this describes a philosophy in which business concepts are applied to address social problems plaguing our world. An important distinction here is that any profits made by social businesses are reinvested into the company to grow and maximize its social impact rather than for an investor or owner to get returns on. It's an intriguing concept and while there are several successful examples of this model, it remains to be seen if it will obtain widespread acceptance (that's a discussion for an entirely different time - I actually find this to be a really intriguing topic of discussion and will probably bring it up quite a bit on here).

In February this year, while dejectedly looking for jobs and praying for a swift death, I thought back to Hans' speech and looked up his firm that he had mentioned during his keynote address. This is a consultancy focusing on fostering the growth of social businesses. It does this by working with entrepreneurs, corporate partners, foundations and academic institutions to take social business ideas from conception to implementation. I casually submitted an application not thinking that it would lead anywhere given that I've been a cold, robotic engineer all my life.

A couple of months passed and I forgot entirely that I had even applied and then one fine day I got word that they were still looking for people to work out of the brand new Bombay office. Long story short, now I'm sitting in the sweltering heat of Bombay, working pro bono for a few months to help the office get on its feet. And Hans is now my boss.

As mentioned, it's a volunteer position for me to really get a taste of this kind of work. It's a radical departure from my own background obviously and so a lot of people are surprised that I'm doing this in the first place. For me, this is really also a test for me to see if I have the actual balls (or cojones) to go into an industry that can never promise to pay well and typically has its base in countries that tend to be very different from the comfy developed places I'm used to. It's easy to say that I have a passion for making the world a better place but it's much harder to walk the walk.

These few months may help me figure that out and I'll go into details of this in the near future but as a spoiler, I guess I can say that in practical terms, it's difficult for me to see this going much further (at least as it stands right now with me desperately needing to earn a paycheck sometime soon).

I think this serves as a good explanation as to why I'm all the way over here to all those who have been asking. I've been here for over 2 weeks now so I've got a few initial impressions to share, which I'll go into in future posts.