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Genre Of Impact
Education & Skilling
Drishti is India’s leading children’s mental health services provider. They work to help children as well as support their caregivers with the right knowledge and awareness of learning disability and mental health. They offer counselling, remedial and special education therapy, school counselling programs, capacity building for adults and more. Amplification of work by such change agents leads to large-scale transformation in society and communities.
Illustration: Bhavya Desai
PROBLEM
Expanding the impact footprint of Drishti, putting together a strategic, executional plan in place for market development and driving business efficiencies.
INSIGHT
Market mapping exercise of schools and aligning our actions with thrust areas of educational boards like ICSE and CBSE is critical to ensure that efforts are directed right. There was also a need for an awareness of digitisation of education itself and a road map for Drishti to lessen its dependencies on school services.
ACTION
- Market mapping and efficient market coverage by the development team for sourcing new business, and by service teams for better time management was planned
- A five-year strategic road map was put in place
- Identifying key thrust areas and orienting the products and services around the same
- Strategy tools were used to ideate and create new products for schools and teachers looking to upskill themselves
- Wherever feasible, technology was leveraged to deliver services and to make the processes more efficient
- Initiated market entry into new territories of Dubai and Qatar which have a high number of CBSE schools while enhancing market penetration in UAE schools
- Digital communication and dissemination of information over social media was taken up on a war footing to put in place a communication cascade
- The annual symposium was re-looked as an IP and was redesigned over the next few years as a very well-respected knowledge-sharing event for the academic and psychologist fraternity
- On the 25th anniversary, a compendium containing case studies on learning disabilities and mental health was released. This helped in reinforcing Drishti as a knowledge resource for the community of educators and principals
- Business management efficiencies were incorporated that included pricing structures, call-pickups at the remedial centre, response time, client feedback, progress reports, HR policies, fund drives, and audits & improvements
RESULTS
Learning disability and mental health as subjects are just beginning to rally popular support and knowledge. It is critical that organisations like Drishti grow efficiently, provide services more effectively to children, so that it brings the right attention to an underserved sector. After all, in the impact space, collaboration and collective efforts go a long way in shaping public sensitivity and policies. Since Drishti is a for-profit organisation but works in a field which helps and heals society, it walks a fine line as a business. It has to carefully balance its business imperatives and strategies with empathy and sensitivity to children and their parents. This is something that underlines each and every decision it makes as an organisation.
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Swamy as he is fondly called, understands grassroots enterprise through two lenses – first as an advanced diploma recipient in molecular diagnostics further to an Msc. in biotechnology and second as the founder of a social enterprise called Kaskom, a farm to fabric collective that is revitalising India’s native cotton value chain. His passion for social enterprise and agro-ecology that weaves in local communities & practices runs deep. As does his understanding of the circular economy. He is also the Vice President at the Organic Farming Association of India (OFAI). He is involved in developing the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for all activities from seed to fabric, for the Indian short stapled indigenous cotton, along with Gandhigram Khadi Dindigul & Gram Seva Mandal, Wardha.
Swamy has conducted numerous workshops around the revival of organic practices and indigenous cotton, held several lectures apart from being a core participant in impactful programs. These include “Reviving community based indigenous seed systems” funded by SWISS-AID India, exploring linkages between weather parameters, paddy cultivation and adaptation activities in collaboration with Earthnet Foundation, Thailand, state coordination of “Save our rice campaign” in Karnataka and the “Community biodiversity management and conservation programme” funded by GGF.
Creative. Honest. Relevant. Be it a campaign, product design or a whitepaper,
Aakanksha’s mantra has never failed her. An alumna from the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts – Singapore, specialised in design, media and animation, Aakanksha is first and foremost a storyteller, with a decade of experience developing brands across industries through consumer insights, advertising, marketing, branding, and content strategy. Conscientious and driven, Aakanksha prefers to use her creativity and understanding of human behaviour to craft impactful deliverables that do good. This has proven particularly beneficial for impact projects like Domex’s #ToiletForBabli and India’s Darwaza Band (Swachh Bharat campaign). She has worked with Lowe Lintas and The Glitch, with a portfolio comprising Flipkart, Tanishq, Carlsberg, Mumbai City FC, World Bank, Magnum Ice-cream, Arrow, and more. She has also worked on the Taj, Betterplace Safety Solutions, Nestaway, Botbot.al, and 2359Media.
Having spent over 25 years curating and designing high-end experiences and advising sustainable ventures, Philippa is passionate about discovering stories, culture and people and uses her empathy and passion to manifest unboxed ideas. Shuttling between Yorkshire and India, she helps clients reimagine the possible. A destination development specialist and, having worked on both sides of the industry, a consultant both to leading tour operators as well as DMCs, she is also the author of Escape to India, a columnist and advisor to charities and NGOs. Her adventures are literally a novel – skiing, trekking, white-water rafting, riding priceless Marwari horses, fine-dining with Maharajas, driving vintage cars, sleeping under the stars, discovering new-to-her wildlife species & being off the beaten track. Think Lara Croft, out of the box.
We call him our IP man. Having worked on building brand platforms for iconic brands like Harley Davidson, Ray Ban, Jack Daniel’s, Hard Rock Cafe, Raymond & Taj, Arpito’s body of work has been versatile and at scale. With a long foundational strategy stint, early in his career, with the Times Group in the President’s office, Arpito went on to become the Group Director at Rolling Stone and Man’s World India, launching and giving the cult brand legs in the brand activations and IP space. A Times School of Marketing alumnus, he is a hodophile, music connoisseur and possesses an uncanny knack for creative brand solutions. He revels in his understanding of community platforms, across scale, having engineered and conceived several initiatives for leading global brands. He is also the chief consultant to the Ministry of Music & Arts, Govt. of Nagaland, a consultant with Drishti and has led several initiatives with government bodies and social organisations.
Narrative could well be Anil’s middle name, which expresses itself to telling effect across his diverse roles as an entrepreneur, impact specialist, director-filmmaker, IP producer, business manager, festival director and Corp. communication. His earlier stint as the Editorial Director at Going to School Fund, a creative not-for-profit education trust, saw him ideate and design impact programs, content around sustainability, seeding entrepreneurial skills amongst young students in government schools. His work is powered by his extremely diverse life experiences. As a journalist storyteller with Times of India, HT, DNA and Mid-day, learning filmmaking at UCLA, as an assistant director on the National Award-winning film Fashion, writing a coffee table book with India’s first Oscar-winner, the late Bhanu Athaiya, titled The Art of Costume Design, published by Harper Collins with a foreword by Lord Richard Attenborough, being the India director of the Manhattan Short Film Festival, the world’s first global short film festival, co-creating the VOTE FOR INDIA platform and more. A polymath experience and perspectives are what he brings to venture design.
