A few months back, Selvan met a Dasra representative at a conference held at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai. She told him about the Dasra Social Impact Program, an executive education program that trains decision makers of leading nonprofits and social enterprises across India. Then she said that Essmart should consider participating in it.

As Essmart’s co-founders, Jackie and I deliberated about whether or not to join. There were pros and cons. The main pro was that Dasra is well connected in the social sector (industry?), and we’re new to India and could use the connections. This is particularly the case because, as Jackie wrote in the previous blog entry, our operations are based here and neither of us is Indian. The second pro was what I would be able to learn from other participants. The third pro was personal/professional development, since I now have the role of pitching Essmart in India.

Despite these pros, the cons were also plenty. The biggest con was that participating in the program came at a financial cost, and we’re bootstrapping. The second con was that the program required three weeks of my time.

After a analyzing the potential costs and benefits, we decided to go for it. Were the costs worth it? It’s too early to tell if Dasra’s connections will pan out into something financially tangible for Essmart. I’ll have to wait until after the second and third workshops, when we comb through and edit our business plans, polish our pitches, and present to potential investors. I did learn a few new concepts from the sessions and peer-learning sessions, but sometimes the discussions were a bit unfocused, nonprofit-centric, and not yet applicable to us at our early stage. I think I did grow personally and professionally. At least, I’m figuring out the most effective ways for me to represent Essmart and the most effective ways for Essmart to be represented to potential customers, partners, and funders. We’re still firm believers in limiting hype and selling results.

It has taken me a few weeks to see it, but the most beneficial takeaway from DSI’s first workshop was the time and space to revisit, rethink about, and re-articulate Essmart’s vision. When we’re busy with operations, we tend to lose sight of the big picture. Since Essmart is just starting off, we need to make sure that our first steps are taken carefully and deliberately. But for us to be aware of how our decisions support our vision, we need to be able to clearly articulate our vision.

The importance of defining who we are, what we do, and what we stand for came up the following week, when I made it down to Pollachi. Sales are picking up considerably, especially for a particular product. We also realized that if we go through additional, non-retail-store distribution channel, we could increase our sales in the short-run.

However, Essmart’s vision is to use the retail shop network as a means for people in rural areas to learn about great new products, get great new products, and trust the people behind great new products. It would be easy to follow the money and chase volumes of easy sales, but that wouldn’t build up the vision. We don’t want to become seen as distributors of a single product who go through ad hoc measures to sell. Anyone can sell products, but we’re creating a new distribution channel. Creating a new distribution channel takes time and conscious decision-making, especially in the early stages.

So, thank you, DSI, for making us hammer out our business model canvases, think through our theories of change, write and deliver 30-second pitches, and turn-in a two-pager and business plan slide deck. All of these activities help us recenter on who we are, what we do, and how we do it. We’re looking forward to working with you over the few months ahead.

This isn’t an update from the field, but it’s still part of the entire experience of building Essmart out here in India. Last week, I had the opportunity to participate in an “International Faculty Seminar on Social Entrepreneurship” at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai. The Dell Social Innovation Challenge out of UT Austin invited me to represent Essmart, which won this year’s grand prize.

As the title of the seminar indicates, most of the participants were faculty and administrators from Indian universities, nonprofit organizations, and social entrepreneurship networks. From what I gathered, the goal of the seminar was to spur social entrepreneurship on Indian campuses, ultimately encouraging students to involve themselves in the just-about-burgeoning-yet-still-somewhat-undefined field.

Essmart began when I was a graduate student at MIT, and our team consisted and still consists of students. Naturally, I compared Essmart’s experience to one that a team of Indian students dabbling in social entrepreneurship would have. I hadn’t realized how much I had taken Boston’s (and particularly, MIT’s) entrepreneurial environment for granted. My final year in graduate school was really a transformative process; I flirted with social entrepreneurship in September, but as I got more involved in the classes, networking events, opportunities, and process of developing Essmart with co-founder Jackie Stenson, I was naturally drawn into taking real, actionable steps by June.

The process doesn’t happen as naturally for Indian undergraduate and graduate students, as the academic environment isn’t as supportive of student-initiated social enterprises in terms of funding and mentorship. Additionally, the way that social entrepreneurship is taught is not particularly inspiring. During the seminar’s curriculum development sessions, I could see the huge disconnect between teachers who treat social entrepreneurship as a thought exercise and students who may want to take it up on the margins or as a career. For example, one newly-minted professor insisted that students sit through lectures covering every single theory of social, economic, and political change under the sun. I counter-insisted that such lectures are not necessary and rather make students less interested in actually doing something.

At the end of the seminar, I had an opportunity to pitch Essmart to these Indian faculty members. The long question and answer session reflected the doubts that many of them had about Essmart’s model and our “outsider’s” understanding of local conditions here in India. While I understand that academicians establish their careers on their abilities to think critically, the thought that ran through my mind was, “Well, you can’t know until you try. And at least we’re trying.”

And that thought was confirmed immediately after I returned to my seat. One of the computer technicians approached me with the help of a translator. He said that his peri-urban village faced similar problems that our Pollachi end users face. Then he asked where he could get his hands on the technologies in our catalogue.

After I put this computer technician in touch with someone who could help, I couldn’t help but reflect on the sequence of events that took place. Talk really is cheap, and the beauty about innovation is that its untested newness holds so much potential. While we were students, we at Essmart were given the space, encouragement, and support to gradually try out our ideas, which in turn, gradually transformed us. We began with an idea, which was supported by a pilot, which was used to demonstrate feasibility and generate a more formal business plan, which launched us into the position to acquire more funding. Now that we’ve begun operations, we hope that other student-initiated social enterprises can be fortunate to receive the support that we’ve benefited from.