84: Building sustainable livelihoods in rural India: A conversation with Dhruvi Shah, CEO Axis Bank Foundation

Shownotes: In the 84th Episode of The Elephant in the Room Podcast, I spoke with Dhruvi Shah, Executive Trustee and CEO of Axis Bank Foundation about her journey as a banker and transitioning to working for the foundation.In the episode we talked about the work being done by Axis Bank Foundation in the ‘sustainable livelihoods’ in rural India, priorities for the Foundation, the state of the social sector in India. We also chatted about 👇🏾👇🏾  👉🏾 The importance of taking into account the cultural context of local communities to solve problems👉🏾 Grant funds as a catalyst to enable local communities to access credit from government programmes, build capacity, form SHGs etc👉🏾 Measuring return on investment - for every rupee the Foundation spends, the Foundation is able to leverage between five to seven rupees👉🏾 Changing operating model of foundations in the social sector today, where they are no longer just grant making bodies but also implementers of projects. 👉🏾 Changing priorities in a post Covid world - supporting community health initiatives and rural youth👉🏾 Sustainability not being the destination - but focusing on the lifecycle of the journey👉🏾 Allowing communities to experience the learning curve and acknowledging failure👉🏾 Build the capacity of NGOs to enable them to grow as an organisation. The need for competitive pay to attract the best talent 👉🏾 Existential challenges facing the social sector in India“So like I said, we've been doing rural livelihoods since 2010, giving us like 12 years. At an operating level, there are two or three opportunities where we need to kind of invest further. One, is on the communities participation in the markets, they're now able to produce more than subsistence. They are going to engage and interact with the market. So how do you build that capacity to have informed engagement with the market? And on the other side concerns around ecological sustainability, degradation. That's kind of two spectrums of the value chain. Now, this is more on the operating side. We are at this nice cusp of market and the society and how do we get the communities or the society to demand more from the market and how do we influence the market to be profitable at the bottom of the pyramid?” Dhruvi ShahMemorable Passages from the podcast👉🏾 So, I lead Axis Bank Foundation. I'm based in Bombay and I'm a migrant here. So I've been in Bombay for many years now. I came here for work. I was with a ABN AMRO for a 18 years and after that I joined Axis for about six years. I'm a commerce graduate and during the banking I got the opportunity to move to the not-for-profit side. I think it's a nice thing that happened, because it's not only helped me grow professionally, I think even as a person it's been a wonderful journey for me. And I, feel lucky that I have found something that I enjoy doing and something that I also believe in very strongly.👉🏾 It was definitely not by design or even by accident. I honestly didn't plan as much. And you know, in those days, like 20, 25 years ago, you studied something and you did something it kind of very well aligned and I was lucky to have transversed into something very different than whatever I ever intended to do.👉🏾 So when I look back, it feels like a very natural progression for me. I was part of the banking system, we've...