77: A conversation with Rachita Vora, Co-Founder, India Development Review - The contribution of social sector to India's growth agenda

ShownotesMy guest on The Elephant in the Room podcast this week took the path less trodden. After a BA in History from Yale and an MBA from Judge Business School - she didn’t follow the path of her peers to investment banking but decided to pursue a career in the social sector in spite of the disapproval of family and friends. Rachita Vora is co-founder of India Development Review. India Development Review (IDR) is India’s first and largest independent media platform for the development community. Before IDR, Rachita led the Dasra Girl Alliance, an INR 250 crore multi-stakeholder platform that sought to improve maternal, adolescent and child health outcomes in India.During our freewheeling conversation Rachita spoke about her background, privilege and education that enabled her to take a decision to work in the social sector…….👉🏾 The ambition behind setting up IDR👉🏾 The challenges of running a magazine for the non-profit sector in an age of 24x7 media, dwindling ad budgets👉🏾 The big issues facing the social sector in India including dwindling pool of donor, the regulatory environment, negative perception, small talent pool, the impact of COVID 19👉🏾 The pivotal role of the social sector in helping India meet the SDGs and its ambition to for a high growth economy👉🏾 Collaborations between state and the sector👉🏾 Calling out the social sector for its shortcomings and Failure FilesWe also spoke about future plans, existential questions, and what inspires her…..Memorable Passages from the podcast 👉🏾 Thanks Sudha. Thanks so much for having me. 👉🏾 Yeah, sure. So I've been working in the social impact space for around 16 years and if you had asked me when I was a kid, what I wanted to be when I grew up. I don't think I'd ever have imagined that this is a career choice I would've made. I grew up in an upper-middle-class family, so I grew up with a lot of privilege and a lot of opportunities. And I think because of those, I was able to attend Yale, which is really where I think the seed for wanting to work in the service of others really took root. I didn't realise it when I was there, maybe it was the kind of friends that I kept. But it was really when I moved back to India in 2007 that I began to feel very strongly that I wanted to use my education for something that was bigger than me.👉🏾 And this was also alongside sort of at a time when there was just growing inequality and the wide income disparities, gender disparities, class disparities that I was noticing coming back to India after a while, really hit me hard. And so, I did sort of speak to a bunch of people and try to figure out where within the social impact space I could work, but then once I made the decision, there was really no looking back. And so I started working at an organisation called Swadhaar Finserve which was one of the first urban micro finance institutions in India at the time and then of course went on to work in CSR and at different kinds of organisations over the course of my career. And it's been an incredible education and reflecting on it, I don't think I'd change a thing at all because it ultimately brought me to IDR, which is a job that I absolutely love.👉🏾 Yeah. I mean, I don't think my parents were too thrilled, honestly. A lot of my peers that graduated my class ended up working