Ques. Could you please give us a brief introduction of yours?
I recently graduated from Ramjas College, University of Delhi, with a degree in B.A. (Hons.) Economics. I come from Purulia, West Bengal, natively. I did my schooling till standard 10th over there itself. After 10th I moved on to a new city, which is Bokaro Steel City in Jharkhand. I finished my 12th standard doing commerce with mathematics from there. I was pretty sure that I wanted to do economics. I first got into St. Xavier's College (Autonomous), Kolkata for B.A. (Hons.) Economics. I wanted to stay in St. Xavier's college, Kolkata because that's quite near to my home, and I felt like that's a better college in terms of academics. But It was always a dream to pursue B.A. (Hons.) Economics from Delhi University. My dream college was St. Stephen’s as it has a lot of alumni and alma maters that interested me more. Then I got into Ramjas college, However I was not, quite, sure whether I'll be pursuing my degree in Ramjas College or not.
Then I was also willing to move back to Xavier's in Kolkata, but after one or two months out here in Delhi, I was sure that I'll be going with it as it was all worth it. I love the culture in Delhi, and I miss it a lot. And within these two and a half years of stay in Delhi, I've been a part of multiple corporations too, as an intern of their team. Few to name is the Open Network for Digital Commerce, which comes under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry where I later converted it to a full-time job as a Public Policy Associate where I even worked for a month before joining for Master’s. Others are The Economic Times of Times of India group and Reliance Securities, where I summer interned in the second year of my college,interned with a few startups during the first year like Trucknetic and Waricrew and then were a also part of few other companies as a campus ambassador like Microsoft, Willis Towers Watson. Apart from that, I was also the Organisational Development Director at Enactus Ramjas during my 2nd year of college.
This year we also got the second position in the Enactus Nationals of 2024 and have been in the top leagues of Nationals 2023. I really loved my journey at Enactus, because I was pretty much not aware about a lot of broader things when I joined Enactus from the social entrepreneurship angle, fairly about the LGBTQIA+ community in general. It has opened my mind and spectrum. I further was sure about pursuing a Masters in Development Studies or Public Policy. Right now, I'm at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Mandi in my first year of Masters in Development Studies.
Ques. You just mentioned Enactus Ramjas. But you also mentioned that you previously did not have any interest in social entrepreneurship. So what got you started to explore this field?
My first semester of college was completely online, so there was not a lot of pressure at all in terms of academics. Societies interested me when my seniors explained about how they can give you exposure and let you network. I filled all the Google forms that rolled out in the WhatsApp groups. And surprisingly I got into almost all of them. Though with time, I understood that it is not possible to actually continue all the societies at a time, So as a priority, I chose Enactus as a place of exposure that I was looking forward to in a corporate setup. Enactus was also advised by my seniors. They might take you to big corporate houses like KPMG, because they have collaboration with Godrej and KPMG as a part of their CSR Initiatives.
During my first year, I decided to be a part of three societies, Enactus, which is because of the exposure and social impact, and it was my primary reason. The Placement Cell, because there was a rumour that if you are in the placement cell, you will get a placement that is absolutely not true, which I had to understand within one year. And then I joined the Ramjas Consulting Society, because honestly, those consulting teams always seemed like the smartest people around. They just knew how to tackle problems in the most efficient way and always had the best strategies to quote. So these are the three societies that have stayed by till the first year. Other than that, I was very much interested in debating till school. I was a part of multiple debate competitions in my school. I thought that Debating would be the space that I would stay in most of my college time. But that perception did change within like, one or two months of time. So yeah, a few of the new societies that came up in my mind, I wanted to stay in them for the first year later, made other priorities in the second year to just stick by one.
Ques. Coming back to Enactus, your team won the top spot in the Enactus World Cup. How was that experience for you? What was it like competing at such a prestigious level?
So, the second year of college had just started, and we were given our positions and responsibilities in the society. Enactus, in our college, is a two-year commitment. By the second year, you become eligible for leadership roles like President or Vice President. I ended up becoming the post next to the president, titled "Organisational Development Director." There are two Co-Presidents, three ODDS, and other tiers of leadership within Enactus, especially for the Enactus World Cup 2022.
The Enactus World Cup 2022 was supposed to take place in San Juan, Puerto Rico, which, fun fact, is where the famous "Despacito" video was shot. We were super excited about the idea of flying out there, I'd never been to the U.S. before, so it was a big deal for me. We went through all the formalities, multiple visa forms, applications, and passport renewals. But unfortunately, the event was in November 2022, and we couldn’t get our visas in time. The trip was supposed to be sponsored by Enactus' sponsors, so it felt like such a missed opportunity. In the end, we stayed back in India and attended the World Cup virtually from a hotel in Gurgaon. Most of the top Enactus teams, like those from SRCC, Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI), Hansraj College, and DCAC, were there as well. We stayed for two or three days, and while the competition happened in the evening, the mornings were filled with networking activities. It was a really fun experience, I even made a few friends during those days who I still keep in touch with and could count on.
Ques. Your team won top four and top five in different RACES, right? I think one was about tackling climate change, and the other focused on ways to feed the planet. Can you walk me through those projects and what your presentations were about?
Yeah, so one of the projects was called Project Waraq. Our focus was on tackling the issue of stubble burning in Haryana and Punjab. We worked with beneficiaries to collect stubble seeds and partnered with a third-party manufacturing company. It's an NGO based out of Delhi that processes the stubble into a paste. That paste is then dried in certain areas, and we embedded seeds with long lifespans into the paste, turning it into food plates. These plates were originally sold to midday meal schools, which are government schools in Delhi and nearby region. However, after the completion of my tenure at Enactus, the team also collaborated with corporate houses and started working with them, using the plates for corporate gifting. The core idea of Waraq was to turn stubble, which is usually considered to be waste, i.e., burned, into plates embedded with seeds, giving them a new purpose.
The other project was Inaayat. It focused on water hyacinths. We collected water hyacinth from our beneficiaries and turned it into jewellery and home decoration products. These products were sold at exhibitions or through other partnerships. Both projects Waraq and Inaayat reached the top four and top five in the global Enactus Races at the World Cup 2022.
Ques. How do you ensure that a team functions smoothly and everyone there is acting as a team player?
In our second year, we hired around 60 to 70 juniors to join our team, and they were all super enthusiastic. We established a clear team structure under different heads. Three of the ODDs focused on two key areas: Public Relations and Media Relations. These were the most important sections, and then we had the project directors. We decentralized power, which allowed us to manage things more effectively. To join the public relations team at Enactus, you had to pass an interview after qualifying to get into Enactus in the first place. I was in charge of public relations, managing a team of about 20 people, four to five for each of our five projects that year. The other two ODDs handled media relations, primarily reaching out to government sectors and media industries. They worked hard to establish collaborations with media leads and get our initiatives featured in newspapers and other publications, ensuring that our decentralized structure was functioning smoothly.
Ques. In 2023 you and your team won the Sustainability Award, do you think your past experience from the 2022 World Cup could contribute to this win in the National Enactus Exposition of 2023.
The nationals in 2023 were mostly about our juniors. By the time September rolled around, we were getting ready to complete our tenure, and the first years were stepping up to lead the new batch. So, we really focused on giving our juniors more responsibilities, especially when it came to preparing presentations and handling the nationals pitch. Honestly, we felt we could have done better. We ended up in League Three, which was the semi-final league of the Enactus National 2023 presentations. That year, some new Enactus teams really shone. For instance, the team from VIT Vellore, a college in South India, presented exceptionally well and ended up winning a place.
The overall winner was Sri Guru Gobind Singh College of Commerce, who won twice, in 2022 and again in 2023. We felt like we could have performed better, but sometimes different permutations and combinations play a role in the final results. Our juniors did great, and while we as seniors could have contributed more, we also had our academic responsibilities to juggle at the same time.
Ques. How has your Enactus journey helped you grow personally, you know, like on a personal level and in your actual personality development?
So I was not aware about multiple things before joining Enactus, as I was not aware about the LGBTQIA+ community. So in our first year of college, we had a project named TransCreations. Now TransCreations was a flagship project of Enactus Ramjas. That started in the year 2011 and it stayed till 2022 so it was a long project of 11 years. So the project basically worked on the LGBTQIA+ community. We did multiple need assessment surveys in the areas of Delhi. We collaborated with a few NGO. So they had a few of the beneficiaries who actually identify as LGBTQI, mostly transgender. So the assessment survey that we did had their preference in the work sector, mostly we found that there were two sectors. First is beauty and salon. Second is jewellery making.
Then we had a collaboration with Godrej Salon Initiative in order to set up our first parlour. So we thought of actually starting a parlour for the community, which would be run completely by them, but we'll be the one who would be actually looking at the management. The parlour was established through the funding that we got from Godrej itself, which was somewhere around 80,000 Rupees. Then people from the community were trained for the job who later trained others. We expanded to four different parlours in four different regions of Delhi and promoted those through our Instagram handles, different student communities and word of mouth within the campus. And those parlours became sustainable in the year 2022. One of the parlours was even earning more than 40k-50k rupees per month. It was quite an established parlour, and all their life earnings were actually from the parlour. We were super proud of that project, and it actually introduced me to the area of how people do identify themselves. That was something that I learned and like to cherish a lot.
I went to more than 70-80 Business Plan competitions in like two and a half years of my college and they led me to places like Bangalore, Indore, Mumbai, Pilani. Even the travel costs were sponsored by a few of them. So I was happy about getting the kind of exposure that I needed from this.
Ques. Talking about your achievements, you won the President's award for the Environment Essay Writing Competition, which was hosted by the Republic of Korea. Can you tell us about that?
It was back in the 12th Standard when COVID was actually prevalent. I was introduced to this competition through Facebook and it interested me. Also I never participated in any international competition before. So the host country was the Republic of Korea, and it was conducted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Korea. So they did give a problem statement which was “Women, Children and their Pads: the Apparent Environmental Enemies”. South Korea is actually quite good with technology, but they were not able to find any proper public policy when it comes to managing the waste generated by sanitary pads and diapers of children. So they wanted to address a policy that might help in order to do so. I was quite interested in participating in it, and I even consulted my siblings asking for the possible solutions, then I had a dialogue with them. I did present my like break paper as a part of the submission. The competition was open to every age group. And there was no such restriction that you need to be a school student or a college student. As far as I remember, the minimum was 16 years of age, and the maximum was no limit. Then,I submitted my paper in the month of October 2021.
Further, they had multiple short listings of the papers. The policy that I presented “Women, Children and their Pads” is something related to the UNSC (United Nations Security Council). The UNSC can contribute to a greater extent towards the disposal of sanitary napkins and pads, because the nuclear waste that has been produced by different countries is the same as the disposal of sanitary pads and napkins. So I related those two ideas, and they found the idea to be very innovative. Then the last stage of the competition was held at University of Seoul, South Korea. My father and I actually went there and the trip was also sponsored by them. I needed to defend my paper for the final presentation. It's more like a thesis defence. It was then, when I also got an interest in pursuing my higher studies in public policy, something like a PhD in public policy. It gave me an internal kick. So I defended that paper, and certainly I got the first prize out there globally.
Ques. Have you always been passionate about writing?
I actually have been doing a bit of freelancing. There are a few websites that actually pay you to write for them. In 12th standard, I started freelancing because it was COVID, and I was actually trying to find multiple opportunities other than academics. Though I was looking forward to my 12th standard because I wanted to score as much as possible, I deviated from the core academics because of all the other things I was doing alongside. I found a few websites like Reflections Live, ReachyIvy etc where I posted multiples of my articles. I have made a portfolio out there, and they do pay you for writing certain content about the burning socio-economic issues that are actually happening in the country. So yes, I do have a passion for writing.
Ques. You mentioned that you've participated in 70 to 80 business plan competitions. Is there any particular business plan that you developed and you're particularly proud of?
During my first year, I was asked to present transcreations because I was a part of that project itself. The transcreations had certain business aspects when it came to the parlours. But I created another business model of Transcreation, Transcit.org, which I later continued in my Millennium fellowship. At transcit we got in touch with multiple corporate houses and did all the job listings. Few of the corporations are quite an alley when it comes to job opportunities. Like in the Pride Month, they do change their logos for the companies, turning them into something which supports the LGBTQI Community. They have multiple job opportunities when it comes to the specific community sectors. So we played the middleman to those job opportunities. We created a new website, and we shared it with our community members. We created another business model out of it. So we were actually suggesting different job opportunities for career guidance. That's as simple as that, but we took money out of the corporate houses in order to give them the kind of data that we actually got filled from them. So that was the kind of second business aspect that I created, which I am proud of. Apart from that, in my second year, Waraq has different business models, but when it comes to the corporate housing setups, we made money out of it. So yeah, that was also something that we created within the second year. And I used to present mostly Transcreations, Waraq and Inaayat alternatively.
Ques. Please explain more about the millennium fellowship.
In your UG days, you can go for the United Nations Millennium fellowship. You can give a project name to whatever your interest is in social entrepreneurship and form a different business model out of it, and fill out their applications. So Millennium fellowship is a lot about filling minute applications. There are a lot of forms in the Millennium fellowship. You need to fill multiple pages, essays. Then you need to also get a letter of recommendation from one of the professors at your college or someone you know, in person, they will be mailed. They need to fill another form for you. Then they will be selecting the people. They select quite a few people from different campuses and the attendance for lectures and sessions are mandatory otherwise you don't qualify for a certificate of completion.
When I joined I pivoted the project idea, like a website for the LGBTQIA+ community, and I made it completely like Unstop which inspired me a lot. I did not promote the website but I connected with my beneficiaries from Enactus. So I shared it with them, and later they filled a lot of forms out of it. And they also got connected to multiple corporate houses. Then we even had field visits and other sessions mandatory to attend. Mostly the same campus students stay together, for my case it was the North Campus people.
Ques. Right now you're doing your Masters in Development Studies. So what exactly do you study about? Can you explain more about the stream?
Right. I was actually quite confused whether to go for a Masters in Economics or a Masters in Development Studies. Because you know, Masters in Public Policy in India is not that popular. There are few institutes like TISS (TATA Institution Of Social Science), Hyderabad and NLSIU (National Law School Of India University), Bangalore that provides a Masters in Public Policy. But Masters in Public Policy is as expensive as an MBA, both are professional courses. Now the core structure of Masters in Public Policy in TISS (TATA Institution Of Social Science), Hyderabad and NLSIU (National Law School Of India University) Bangalore are not that great, because those are very new courses that they introduced. It's been like two or three batches that have passed out. The IITs also offer a Masters in Public Policy. But because it's a Tech Institute, They do not call it Public Policy. They would call it Development Studies, and they generally offer multiple papers in the intersection of Sociology, Economics, International Relations and Public Policy. These are the four main subjects that we work on.
The IITs that provide a Masters in Development Studies are IIT Madras, IIT Guwahati, and IIT Mandi and for these, you need to give IIT JAM and GATE examination. So there are multiple humanities papers offered by GATE and JAM like Economics, Sociology, etc. So you need to appear for one of the examinations out there. I was an Economics Graduate, so I applied for an Economics exam, and you need to qualify the basic minimum cut off that GATE and IIT JAM. It's somewhere in the range between 50-60 out of 100. You need to clear the cutoff. And then you'll get an all India rank out of all the seats. And then there are very few limited seats in these IITs, so, when it comes to Development Studies or Masters in Economics. My batch size is 19. In DU my batch size was somewhere around 60. Though over here, the attendance policy is quite strict. We need to have a strict 80% attendance in each subject.
Also, here we need to stay on campus. IIT Mandi is in a remote area. I was quite not sure whether to come here or not, because I have been staying in Delhi for the last two and a half years, and coming to a place like Shivaliks of Himalayas, is something that I was not looking forward to. I also got placed in one government company,Open network for Digital Commerce. So I turned the internship of ONDC into a full time job. I worked there for one month, as a Public Policy Associate. Deciding whether to leave the job and come to IIT Mandi was a dilemmatic decision, but my family always wanted me to pursue a Masters as soon as possible, because they wanted me to complete my PhD at a young age. Nevertheless I'm liking this course a lot. The batch I have over here, like the people I met are from different backgrounds. Few of them have some great work experiences too. Moreover it's an IIT so you get an exposure that DU can't give you. Though I equally appreciate both DU and IIT culture, but IIT culture is more about research and academics that I actually wanted to pursue since the beginning.
Ques. Are you still heavily involved in extracurriculars considering it becomes a bit difficult when you're doing a Masters?
Honestly speaking, extracurriculars are something that you cannot actually do along with Masters. There are rigorous lectures every day, starting from 8 am in the morning till 6 pm in the evening. Also Social Entrepreneurship, Enactus and such other societies are not that popular in IITs, but there is Enactus in IIT Mandi as well. People here focus more on innovation, like building some products out of tech, robotics, AI, etc. They are not that interested in Social Entrepreneurship, Consulting or Debating and such other things. As when masters students are specifically into research. There are multiple research societies that tell you how to start initiating your research portfolio, how to actually build a questionnaire, how to do data analysis, how to build a survey report or how to use different softwares like R programming, Capestone, strata and different other tools in order to present your paper.
I have been a part of the Research Society and also the Academic Co-councillor of my batch now, which is also the batch representative out of those 19 people. And it's been only one and a half months since I've been here. So, I'm exploring the place. But again, we have a mid semester examination within three days of time. So quite the pressure with academies. That was not something we found in DU. I used to stay chill in terms of classes and all like I hardly had 60-70% of attendance.
Ques. After masters, what are your plans for the future?
I have always been into the field of research. And I like writing about social economic issues. I want to pursue a PhD. My siblings wanted me to get work experience, certainly for one or two years before going for a PhD, but I was already doing it in Delhi. The work that I used to do was mostly into research as a glue-man’s guy. It's again a public policy thing. I used to look at multiple OPEDs, like different kinds of public policy briefs. And I will be continuing it in my masters too, and I'll be looking forward to doing a PhD in Public Policy. Not just only from the institutes of India, but also beyond India if possible.
HIGHLIGHTS :
President's Award at the 5th Global Youth Environment Essay Contest, hosted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Korea.
United Nations Millennium Fellow, where developed a model - Project Sustain X.
Intern at Open network for digital commerce (ONDC), The Economic Times of Times of India group, Reliance Securities, etc.
Contributed as a part of Enactus Ramjas in Enactus World Cup 2022 and Enactus Nationals 2023.
Organisational Development Director at Enactus, Ramjas.
Created a business model - TransCit.org
Part of collaboration with Godrej Salon Initiative to set up parlours to provide job opportunities to LGBTQIA+ Community members.
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