WTF am I doing here?

So it occurred to me that even though the primary purpose of this entire experience is my work with Roshan Vikas, I’ve yet to post anything about what it is I’m actually working on here.  So I’m going to take a break from meaningless posts about mangoes and indian gym etiquette and really briefly explain what Roshan Vikas does and what my role is supposed to be over the next 9 months.

So Roshan Vikas’s  (“RV”) focuses on improving the livelihood of marginalized sections of society – in particular urban Muslim women in Hyderabad.   The reason RV is so focused on this particular population is because:

• Over 32% of India’s urban population lives below the poverty line (earning less than USD $100 a year)
• 25% of this population is Muslim – the largest group belonging to a single group
• Women are the most vulnerable  - only 18% are employed and most of those jobs are  some of the lowest paying in the country.

To address this issue RV strives to provide this community with access to financial services, skills development, and other livelihood promotion activities.  To achieve this vision RV had adopted a set of guiding principles that I felt were best expressed in this funnel line object rather than in straightforward bullet form (it’s the former investment banker in me): 

While women's empowerment is nothing unique in the NGO world, the other two aspects are key differences between Roshan Vikas and most other microfinance organizations.  Most microfinance organizations focus almost exclusively on providing loans and other financial products.  RV has a slightly different tact in that it wants to promote savings or “capital formation” as a prerequisite to lending.  This seems like an obvious thing to do, but its shocking how many microfinance outfits (especially the for-profit ones) seem to forget this and became obsessed with “selling” loans to individuals that may or may not necessarily need them. 

The second aspect – community ownership – is also unique because it means that RV is actually owned by its membership.  RV has a “thrift cooperative” ownership structure in which the women that RV focuses on lending to actually run the place (which is why it’s kinda awkward for me in the office hanging around with all these women in burkas).  The capital to run the organization is also put up by groups of local women.  I won’t get in to too much details about how this works structurally but what it does mean is that there is a very flat organizations structure and all decision making is very consensus based (so democratic, but so inefficient).   

I should mention that in addition to providing loans Roshan Vikas has also gotten involved in artisans crafts skills development.  Basically they form groups of local artisans and provide training and access to distribution channels for their goods.  I’m not really all that involved with that part of the organization since it involves creativity and artistic talent and I’m more of an excel kinda guy. 

Anyhow, back to me.  So Roshan Vikas has been around for about 5 years now and has been growing dramatically during that period.  It went from zero to 19,000 members very rapidly and is now running into some growth problems that are preventing it from making the next jump in scale to ~40,000 members by 2010. RV stopped turning a profit recently and is beginning to suffer from very classic growth related issues that most small businesses face.  There are hundreds of issues – but the essence of the problem is that RV is now losing money despite an expanding membership base (i.e. they have more customers, but are making less money per customer).

I’ve only been here a short while, but my perspective is that the organization has grown so quickly that controls, skills, technology, and other resources have not kept up and this is acting as a bottleneck to further growth.  So RV needs the same thing that many of friends desperately need – a serious intervention.

My role is to coordinate this intervention to identify where the bottlenecks are, what can be done about them, and then execute – all in the next 6 months.  I’ll be working closely with a “core group” that includes Roshan Vikas’s CEO, an external turnaround specialist management consultant, auditing firms, a few key staff members, and other experts as needed.  Basically I’ve somehow turned into an NGO consultant and have been asked to serve as a “change agent” (their words, not mine).   I have a few other things I’m working on in addition to this main project but its honestly too much to type this time around and I know its way more than your attention spans can handle anyways.  

How much experience do I have turning around NGOs?  Absolutely none.  However a lot of this role is just using common sense (which, contrary to common belief, I DO have). For instance I didn’t need a lot of experience to figure out that losing money on each new member is probably a bad thing.  That being said – I definitely feel like I’m in WAY OVER MY HEAD. Fortunately I’m working with a good group of people and so its unlikely (though not entirely out of the realm of possibility) that I will drive Roshan Vikas into the ground.   

Wish me luck. 

http://www.roshanvikas.org/