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HINDUSTAN TIMES, NEW DELHI, WEDNESDAY, MAY 23, 2012

I wanted to do something for rural people

AGE 25
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BORN IN Gaya
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FAMILY BACKGROUND Father

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is professor of chemistry at Gaya College; mother is a school teacher

CURRENT OCCUPATION
Entrepreneur

BASED IN Gaya
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Making a difference: A plantation site in Gafa Khurd Panchayat, Bodh Gaya block of the Gaya district in Bihar. Kumar Ankit (third from right on ground) with members his team, some of his associates and villagers

Driven by a passion to do something for Bihar, XLRI alumnus Kumar Ankit founded a company that aims to eventually root out problems such as migration migration and and unemployment unemployment

plantation of 80 lakh saplings, impacting around 1.5 lakh families, which has helped increase their overall income. Some of the points we track with help from our team of block officers include the number of saplings planted; survival rate of saplings; total area of land reclaimed/utilised; and total number of families impacted.
Elaborate on your current areas of work.

it was my dream to start my venture in Gaya, Bihar. I had heard a lot from seniors in XLRI about getting a lot of support from professors and the institution for students starting social enterprises.
How did you prepare for the entrance?

Gauri Kohli
gauri.kohli@hindustantimes.com

What was your project about? How much time did you spend on it?

At Green Leaf Energy Pvt Ltd, we work as facilitators for converging biofuel and horticulture plantation with MNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) under the social forestry model. The social forestry model involves linking 200 plants (one unit) with four rural households as Vanposhaks, who take care of the plants for five years. This provides them with continuous employment. The elderly, women and differently abled are given preference in appointment as Vanposhaks and are provided 100 days of employment for taking care of the plants. We conduct awareness programmes in villages about the benefits of social forestry, ensure selection of drought proofing schemes in Gram Sabha, provide technical and material support to the gram panchayat to raise these plantations, enter into buyback arrangements to solve supply chain issues and finally forwardintegrate into biodiesel production

and food processing to complete the value chain. This way, we try to solve problems such as migration, unemployment, wastelands, Naxalism, access to energy and inefficiencies in agricultural supply chain.
How did you grow?

Agricultural Research. We are also getting technical support from professors in IISc, Bangalore and R&D centre of Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd, Greater Noida, for establishing a biodiesel manufacturing unit.
How was your team set up? What made you choose this project?

We were one of the first companies in India to converge plantations with MNREGA. We were appointed as project proponents-cum-facilitators for pongamia plantations under MNREGA by the rural development department, government of Bihar, in June 2010. We have been successful in establishing partnerships with gram panchayats and district rural development agencies for scaling up and model replication. We have been successful in establishing partnerships with GreenBodhgaya and Up2Green who fund plantation initiatives across the world for securing alternative sources of funding. We get regular mentorship and guidance from the XLRI faculty and IIM Ahmedabad. For technical guidance in raising saplings and nurseries, we have tied up with scientists in Indian Council of

We have a core team of eight people. I chose this project because I always had this passion of working for Bihar. Gaya is my hometown and I have seen vast stretches of wastelands in which farmers were not able to do anything and thus had to migrate. So, I decided to start this project.
Why is this project important? Tell us about a major impact it has had on society?

The specific social challenge that this project is attempting to solve is unemployment. The project is currently running in severely Naxal-affected areas of Bihar. The people who are going to benefit from this would be from the belowpoverty-line rural population, landless labourers and small and marginal farmers. In the past two years, our project has completed

The project started operations in June 2010 with one gram panchayat in Gaya district with one nursery. We scaled up to six gram panchayats in two blocks by 2010-11 and completed plantations of one lakh pongamia saplings. We diversified into high-density horticulture plantations on government and private land and built a team of locals as village mobilisers and block officers in 2011-12. We scaled up to 45 gram panchayats in eight blocks by 2011-12 and completed plantations of 10 lakh saplings. We have now scaled up to around 800 gram panchayats in 80 blocks of 10 districts in Bihar and complete a colossal plantation of 70 lakh saplings. We have completed studies about the topographies of various districts in Jharkhand, Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat that would suit the replication of our model along with research of various schemes like NREGA, NRLM (National Rural Livelihoods Mission), and NHM (National Horticulture Mission) for convergence. We have presented our idea to senior government officials in these states and sent our proposals.
How/why did you choose the institute?

I had joined a coaching institute to prepare for my MBA entrance. I was always good with numbers and thus quant was fairly easy for me. Verbal was not too difficult. A regular habit of reading news, magazines and current affairs also helped in handling interviews.
How was life in the management institute? How did you cope?

Students get exposure to the social sector here

umar Ankit was clear from the first term itself that he wanted to work in the social sector. He used the learnings from his MBA to work effectively in areas such as supply chain, finance and management. The rural immersion programme at XLRI, wherein we tie up with 10 NGOs in Jharkhand, helps our students work with them in villages and study the problems and issues there. XLRI also has courses such as social entrepreneurship, sustainability, development economics, and public-private partnership which gives a wider perspective to a student. This helps in giving students an exposure to the social sector.
As told to Gauri Kohli

It was initially tough to manage academics along with my project in the first two terms, but gradually I learnt better time management. I tagged even my academic projects with subjects related to my venture, say, like I had to make a project on communication, so I designed the project like an IMC (integrated marketing communication) for convincing farmers in my project. I was also a part of the committee SIGMA which gave me a lot of exposure while working with NGOs. Organising events gave me wonderful insights into how to develop a social enterprise. We also have a two-term course on social entrepreneurship, and an Entrepreneurship Development Centre at XLRI.

The context that is built here allows students to use skills for creating a social impact
- Madhukar Shukla, professor (strategic management) and chairperson of Fr Arrupe Centre for Ecology and Sustainability, XLRI, Jamshedpur

I chose XLRI, Jamshedpur, because

FIVE FACTS AT YOUR FINGERTIPS

ABOUT XLRI Founded by Father Quinn Enright, SJ, XLRI started its journey in 1949 in Jamshedpur. Its postgraduate diploma in business management has been recognised by the Association of Indian Universities. The PG diploma in personnel management and industrial relations has been recognised as equivalent to a masters degree of an Indian university in the corresponding area

INFLUENCER I wanted to contribute to solving problems such as migration, unemployment, and inefficiencies in the agricultural supply chain. I always had this passion of working for Bihar. Gaya is my hometown and I have seen vast stretches of wastelands in which farmers were not able to do anything and thus had to migrate. So, I decided to start this project, says Ankit

PROGRAMMES XLRI offers a range of full-time and part-time programmes. The flagship programmes are the two-year full-time post graduate programmes in business management and human resource management and the full-time general management course. It also offers a doctoral-level programme and a distance learning one-year certificate course via satellite mode

JAMSHEDPUR It is Indias first planned, industrial city, founded by the late Jamshedji Nusserwanji Tata It is known for the Tata Iron & Steel Company It is one of the most populous cities in Jharkhand This area is rich in mineral resources

ADMISSIONS To get admission to the flagship programme, candidates have to take the Xavier Admission Test (XAT) conducted in the first week of January every year. The candidate has to first register for XAT and use the XAT ID and password to apply to XLRI. The process starts from mid-August every year. Visit www.xlri.ac.in for details