Prior to Sattva, Lakshmi has worked with the Manipal Group, Jubilant Retail and ITC Hotels across sales, business development and strategy functions. She holds a PGDM from T.A.Pai Management Institute.

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Prior to Sattva, Sumit traversed various roles in his career from consulting for the United Nations and working for multinationals to running his own social enterprise. His company APART Education trained thousands of young graduates and improved the employability skills and quality of Indian workforce.

Sumit is an alumnus of the University of Oxford where he studied MBA as a Skoll Scholar.

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SATTVA’S ASSESSMENT APPROACH
We studied 400 women from three of the five states using a hybrid methodology combining qualitative and quantitative data. These women, who had been part of the programme before September 2015, were interviewed through focus group discussions along with multiple stakeholders – implementation partner, local NGOs and anganwadi workers. The discussion was a means to gauge improvement in livelihood patterns, changes in income levels, overall empowerment in taking household decisions for those who chose to opt out of this trade, and more importantly reduction in social exclusion. These parameters formed the qualitative side. Quantitative data, on factors like increase in household income, improvements in family’s standard of living, and education opportunities for their children because of higher income, was collected through a survey.

KEY LEARNINGS
Working and studying a sensitive community brought out valuable insights for us as well as the ecosystem at large. This programme successfully demonstrated self-employment is a sustainable model for livelihood for this group of women, and one that can be institutionalised. Our hybrid methodology, that blended quantitative and qualitative data, proved to be innovative as well as a disciplined and systematic approach leading to desired results within designated time-frame. Also, liaising with an external expert, who came with in-depth understanding of this community, helped us communicate effectively in order to gather valuable information. Collaborating with the NGO provided balance in field dynamics, as they gave us necessary inputs and direction on broaching sensitive questions. This, we believe, was a crucial aspect of the assessment. As a result, the CSR arm was able to assess the programme’s impact well, and the programme proved to be feasible for this community.

HIGHLIGHTS
● Studied a sample set of 400 women in three states
● States covered: Uttar Pradesh (Lucknow), Andhra Pradesh (Vizag) and Maharashtra (Pune)
● Duration: 2.5 months
● Age group: 20-50 years
● Adopted a scientific research methodology blending qualitative and quantitative data
● Assessed a complex socio-economic and cultural setting

BLURB
“Adopting a hybrid methodology was an extremely disciplined and systematic approach leading to desired results within the time-frame earmarked for this assessment.”

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SATTVA’S METHODOLOGY
As third-party assessors, our mandate was to measure performance of the company’s CSR programmes implemented at its plants across seven parameters and steer them forward. We created a comprehensive rating framework and scoring metric to give each plant a weightage score on 100, applicable across the company’s manufacturing units. This framework helped the company assess headway made by its CSR team in conjunction with project plans set out at the beginning of 2017 and take decisions on certain projects in plant locations as well.

KEY LEARNINGS
Through this engagement undertaken in collaboration with the company, we developed a comprehensive framework for evaluation that can be extended to CSR programmes by other manufacturing companies. It was interesting to note that results of the audit directly impacted the company’s business. It was able to promote, reward, remunerate plant heads and managers based on overall score each manufacturing unit got. Additionally, it helped the company plan and budget the next year’s CSR initiatives better. In parallel, we were able to test and demonstrate our ability to execute and complete a large-scale project in a short span of 30 days.

HIGHLIGHTS
● 14 plants audited in one month
● 11 states covered: Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu, and Maharashtra
● Projects covered in diverse areas of sanitation, health, livelihood, education, and general community development
● 30 non-profit organisations were engaged in this audit

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