CSR Initiative by Benett Coleman & Co. Ltd.

About Teach India

The primary objective of the program is to enhance the employability prospects of the
underprivileged youth of India by providing them with vocational training in spoken
English.
It aims to make Indias youth employable for jobs which require basic proficiency in
English
For example, Waiters at luxury restaurants, Fast food (McDonald, KFC counters), IT
representatives, HouseKeeping staff, etc.
Teach India began as a CSR initiative with 1000 learners and 150 volunteers in October
2010
It is operational in Delhi, NCR and Mumbai region and has a good network of branches

Teach India - CSR Model

BCCL/ Times
Group
Framework
design &
Management
Scouting NGOs
Funding & Other
Resources

NGOs
On-ground implementation
Day-to-day sessions
planning
Arranging placement
activities

Unemployed
because of lack of
English proficiency

BCCL scouts
NGOs

Teach
India

British Council
Knowledge
partners
Curriculum Design
Content Curation
Teacher Training

NGOs scout
teaching
volunteers

Volunteers
go through a
6 day
teaching
program

Employed and
earning 15k to 20k

Learners go
through a
100 day
spoken
English

Learners get
placed

Gopikrishan Bali National Head (Volunteer Training and Content

Development for Teach India)
He directly reports to Sanjeev Kora (Head of
CSR - BCCL)
He works as a channel between BCCL, British
council and various NGOs
He has a team of 20 members which carries
out various activities related to the Teach
India Initiative
He and his team are solely devoted from
BCCL end for managing this initiative
Prior to BCCL, he has founded an NGO named
Aaditya which worked in Community
Development and Vocational Training domain

Role of BCCL
Scouting for NGO partners and selecting them based on set standards
Each NGO is audited for impact by BCCL team and filtered out if they are not performing
Funding NGOs to scout for volunteers and set guidelines for selection. They have a
framework for selecting volunteers which includes 3Cs Communication, Clarity &
Commitment.
Providing NGOs with teaching material (online & offline), classrooms and other facilities
Persuading companies for placements and ensuring that the entire batch gets placed
Tracking social and economic progress of a beneficiary once he/she is out of the system

Impact on society
In the past 5 years, since inception, it has changed lives of about 35,000 people
Provided them proper training in English and stable career
70% are getting placed in the job fair on the very first day
Increased volunteer base from 2500 to 4600 in past 2 years
More and more students are becoming volunteers getting a sense of making a
difference in someones life
They also undertook some other projects with Government ITIs, The Delhi Police, Tihar
jail inmates & CISF.

Stage of the CSR model

Teach india is at a Transforming stage but there are other aspects which need to be addressed
Why is it Transforming?
Visionary Leadership in the form
of Mr. Kora & Mr. Baali and
Strategic Intent to build brand
and user base with
Practical Impact on people
Multi-organization Alliances
What are the issues with the
model?
The issue is not critical.
Essentially, they are teaching
English to young people
The scale is small just 2 cities
Separate workforce
Zero on-ground implementation

Issues in Implementation
The foremost issue which was faced by Teach India according to BCCL was finding
suitable NGOs for on-ground implementation
Mr Bali, points out that 80% of NGOs work for Women or Children. There is a dearth of
NGOs working for Youth Empowerment.
As there is no monetary reward for NGOs, finding motivated NGOs is the primary
difficulty
According to Mr. Bali, devoted and passionate leadership is the key to success for any
CSR initiative
Most of the NGOs are audited on a timely basis. The non-performing NGOs are
eliminated from the partners list

Benefits for BCCL and Times group

As said by Mr. Bali, it is definitely is Brand visibility exercise for BCCL and consequently,
Times of India newspaper
We feel that they are an English daily. The CSR initiative aims at teaching youth English.
This amounts to direct increase in the readership base
Any person coming out of this initiative will most certainly prefer purchasing TOI over
any other newspaper. (Due to moral obligation)

Suggested Improvements
Expand into all cities and rural areas which has presence of TOI
Provide a module for elementary Computer Training along with spoken English
Motivate employees to volunteer for the program. Also ask the employees to
encourage their immediate family members to volunteer for the program
They should do all the promotions related to Teach India through in-house
resources. Engage BCCL employees for promotions.
Initiate a free-for-all spoken English website, where user can access course materials
and videos online
Incentivize volunteers for Travel and food expenses, to improve participation

Thank You