Climbing Out of the Deep End

It's been three weeks of break-neck speed that I've spent in India; cutting costs, streamlining processes, and hiring replacements for the high turnover that exists in a company that services the BoP (bottom of pyramid, we're talking). Swimming in alphabet soups, the many hats of a start-up start spinning and play mind games with wearer. Who are we serving? The poor. Who are we courting? The wealthy. Are we efficient? Maybe. Do the benefits of our program justify the incredible costs of working in outlying rural areas? Probably. Are we covering the costs of petrol, man hours, transaction fees, high-risk loans, faxes, electricity (um, add internet connectivity) and stamps?...stamps! for chrissake. Yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes. Phew, I think I can actually leave feeling that I accomplished something in this quagmire of an industry. What's it called? Serving the BoP... international rural development...business management...product development...economic forecasting...educational microfinance. For me it's working towards poverty alleviation. I'm trying to keep my hats on straight, vision clear, and goals in pocket. I'm working for the poor and bankrupting my sanity in the process by taking a gamble and working towards something that matters to me.


On Monday I flew to Hyderabad to meet with a potential partner who gives loans to affordable private schools. They basically build school infrastructure and develop rating systems for the high-potential schools (rather than for the individual student). I've been following their work for a year now and enjoyed meeting the like-minds of those in the field (Indian School Finance Company, http://www.isfc.in). Getting off the plane and entering the sticky climate of tropical South India, I looked around at the immense number of women wearing full black burqas and checked myself on feeling overheated. The ghostly movement of women in long, black costume is something I'm still not used to, especially as we catch each other's dark eyes scrutinizing...who are you? However, it's the Muslim population that saves me in Hyderabad, where I can speak Urdu (similar to Hindi) in a land of Telagu. Whisked into a world past the "High Tech City" to the "Old City," where houses stack upon wretched waterways and alleys are overrun with mangled traffic and out of school children serving chai, I was reminded of what a tantamount social issue it is we've chosen to address. On the flip-side, because it's difficult, we are also one of the only companies in our field. Imagine...in the whole world. The common perception is that schools and education are government issues to be left to their own devices. But government schools are empty. Teachers take their paycheck and don't show. Crumbling brick buildings litter the landscape of many rural villages across northern India, cutting millions of people off from basic literacy and arithmetic.


So, what if? What if we could build school infrastructure? What if this could be a profitable business AND reach the poorest for reasonable prices? What if you had a market of billions of dollars AND billions of people at your fingertips? What if it began in investing in just one student, knowing you'd get your money back to invest in another? Well, in such a scenario, you might just have to take a pay cut, hop back up on the horse, and figure just how much it's going to cost to transfer those funds, hire someone to pick up a bag of money, drive it out to Madhubani in rural Bihar...well, after the floods recede. Sometimes it comes down to the little things, like floods, droughts, mudslides, migration, bank branches closing, cost margins, and stamps. Stamps, god dammit. It's not an efficient system, it's not an easy road; otherwise extreme poverty would have been solved a long time ago. But what can I say? I love it. I have the luxury to leave it, but I will be back.