I’m Sudha Srinivasan, CEO of N/Core, and this is how I Lead from Within
Sudha Srinivasan’s mission is simple and clear – to redefine what success, competence, growth and scale look like in the development sector. With a rich background in the tech world, Srinivasan, as the CEO of N/Core (an incubator for nonprofits) advances nonprofits to solve problems at a large scale through the use of technology. In her pursuit of changing the norm, Srinivasan may just have found the sweet spot – between what well-harnessed technology can achieve and what the development sector in India needs.
The Beginning
My career in the corporate world spanned 17 years – all in the IT (technology) sector. I started with Infosys, followed by Credit Suisse, iNautix Technologies, Verizon Wireless and finally, Intel, where I spent over 12 years.
All through the early 2000s the overarching mission of the IT sector was to make technology affordable and take its benefits to the next billions. There was so much everyday productivity derived from the use of technology that lives actually got better. Over the years though, the evolution of technology excellence has gone through critical phases. If you look at the last 4-5 years, it’s not apparent that technology is still headed in the direction of making human lives better. It almost seemed to be at a stage of conflict between ‘a lot of good for a few’ versus ‘some good for many’. That made me wonder if I was putting my life and skills to a good use.
The Switch
A few years before I made the switch I began thinking how technology can be applied to solve problems of basic human needs. I started exploring the social sector in case I decided to make a move. I even tried different ways of seeking professional purpose – like giving money to organisations doing good work – till a full-time transition was possible.
Around the same time a friend recommended me The/Nudge Foundation. Started by Atul Satija, it opened my eyes to what is essentially the organisation’s founding principle, which is that the development sector has a huge need for great talent.
After speaking to Atul and looking at Nudge, it was clear that talent is emerging from all quarters – especially a lot of young people who are seeking purpose early in life and choosing to start up as founders of nonprofits. I could see a space where I could be useful in helping them take their ideas off the ground. In just one conversation with Atul it became apparent that it would be an interesting adventure to jump full time into N/Core, the incubator for nonprofits by The/Nudge Foundation.
The Clincher
The determinant for me was the purity of intent of both the founder and the team of The/Nudge Foundation, where everyone is extremely passionate. They make personal sacrifices to make a difference in a meaningful way.
Also, Atul and his team’s profile seemed familiar – Atul too had spent his post B-School career in the corporate sector and had transitioned to the development sector at a similar life stage. This familiarity in their journey and narrative made the risk worth taking.
Finding My Place at The/Nudge
I joined The/Nudge as a part of its Human Resource Department even though I had never before been an HR professional. I had experience in managing large teams so joining the HR department came closest to a job from the corporate world, which is all I’d known till then.
I spent a year in HR before picking up the incubator, whose concept and blueprint was ready by then. We received over a 1000 applications from non-profit startups for our first cohort, once we launched N/Core. And on the donor side, we got corporates interested to fund it. Once the concept of the incubator was validated by both the demand and supply, is when I picked up the technology thread again. I saw an opportunity to make technology work for the poor and improve human lives, and so we built around it in partnership with Cisco.
Supporting Non-Profit Entrepreneurship
Making nonprofit entrepreneurship aspirational: Traditionally, people associate the NGO world with empathy but not necessarily with the hunger to grow and scale. The design of the sector is such – there are no shareholders requiring you to grow at a certain pace or deliver a certain value with great speed – that you don’t associate those values with it. We want to change that. We want to make it hugely aspirational and viable for talent to start up as nonprofits without the dilution of their hunger to solve problems. To look at the scale of social problems and solve them in our generation requires a vision for large scale transformation – even if there are no shareholders pushing for it.
Making nonprofit entrepreneurship viable: The foremost challenge after making nonprofit entrepreneurship aspirational is enabling the entrepreneur to succeed. The early-stage support is extremely limited in the nonprofit world unlike starting a business where there’s an entire ecosystem placing big bets on you. There is very little innovation seed-money and risk capital in the nonprofit sector. What keeps me awake at night is that we’ve brought on board amazing entrepreneurs who we have helped refine their models and provided a network of mentors but it might be a good 2-3 years before they can actually make a change. It might take them that much time to get the funding required to take their idea off in the desired trajectory.
What Needs To Change
It will take an entire ecosystem of progressive grant makers to switch their mindset and place importance on the capability of the individual rather than the credibility of the model. Some of it might be risk money but they should be okay with it because that is the sectoral change that needs to happen.
Our first cohort, for example, raised over 15 crores of funding within a year of starting their journey with us. It’s not the sector average. I would think it was made possible through a lot of hard work by the entrepreneurs themselves, their teams, their immediate support systems and our collaboration with them as their incubator. The sector itself is not designed for this kind of growth and success but I want that to change.
While philanthropy is increasingly becoming progressive, high-net-worth individuals are rooting for entrepreneurship and a lot of CSR has moved towards the nonprofit sector, a lot more needs to happen for this (read ‘investing in nonprofits’) to become the new norm.
My Core Values
Two interrelated values come to my mind: applying skills and capabilities to a purpose and critically reviewing the impact of your work.
A lot of well-meaning people with their heart in the right place end up taking the overall narrative of humanity in the wrong direction. You can see that all around you – extremely smart people working hard on the wrong things. The person who invented plastic would not have thought that it would become the packaging material for every little thing and yet, its misuse is choking the planet today. We get many applicants who have an innovative idea for change. We push them through the process of incubation to ensure that their work does not have any unintended consequences, and their unit of impact is positive and meaningful.
Scaling up a bad idea could be a dangerous thing. Before you scale up you need to be absolutely sure that there are no vanity metrics involved. You need to critically review the impact of your work and collect evidence in favour of it being the right idea to scale up.
On Authenticity
I’m inspired by people who demonstrate personal integrity. It takes courage to express your thoughts and ideas authentically and openly, have them be critically reviewed, and stand up for them even if they don’t fit people’s expectations of you.
There has been a regression in the last 5-10 years in the ability of people to find their authentic selves. Today’s age of information is also the age of wilful misinformation, propaganda, unnecessary polarisation and labelling of ideology. All of this comes in the way of finding one’s authentic self. Today’s generation is so smart and efficient but, in my opinion, the single biggest barrier they face is finding themselves – all the brackets and buckets force them to think identically to everyone else who wears the same label as them. An important life skill for this generation would be to critically examine points of view to figure out what they stand for. And then to act on their beliefs with conviction, without getting bogged down by peer pressure or having to fit a label.
My Advice To Young Women
My single advice to young women is to not aspire to be a superwoman. Don’t stick with my generation’s idea of balancing home and family and work, all at once. That’s being unrealistic. The sustainable way to succeed is to demand equal participation from your partner at home – it’s the way to hold on to your sanity, which affects your productivity at work as well as at home.
Why do we have such few women in any stream of work? The simple answer is because we’re carrying a disproportionate share of life responsibilities at the cost of getting ahead at work. It’s a gender gap; it’s not a capability and definitely not a skill-set gap. Make sure that the non-work responsibility is equally shared between you and your partner so that you can put your fair share into your work, your calling, your passion.
