BOOK SPECIAL .................... Not just another day in paradise

Not just another day in paradise





K Anji Reddy's memoirs show that social responsibility is more than just a handy catchphrase

When industrialists write their mem oirs, they generally highlight all the business nitty-gritty that made them successful. When reading An Unfinished Agenda: My Life in the Pharmaceutical Industry by K Anji Reddy, the late founder-chairman of Dr Reddy's Labs, I am surprised to find 36 pages (about 14 per cent of the book) dedicated to social responsibility.

There are a number of lessons that one can draw from what the great man had to say on the subject of corporate social responsibility (CSR).

Lesson one. It's not enough to listen; what is it that we truly hear?
Dr Reddy's CSR journey started most unusually. A shareholder called Professor Chaturvedi asked him an unusual question at a DRL AGM: `The company is making good profits and you are getting wealthier every year, but what are you giving back to society?' Most people would have identified some charitable contributions and mollified the good old professor. The question bothered Dr Reddy well beyond the AGM, kickstarting an introspection that made him analyse whether the family's charitable contributions ­ temple offerings or his father providing ayurvedic remedies free to those who needed them ­ qualified as wealth distribution in the corporate sense. Obviously they didn't, and being the seeker that he was this AGM query started Dr Reddy on a journey towards organized, structured philanthropy.

Lesson two. Stay connected, stay curious.

Dr Reddy could have issued a memo to his munim to scout for a worthy cause to which a periodic contribution could be made and the conscience addressed. He assumed direct control instead. He describes it well: On the way to office one day, he noticed a hospital (Heritage Hospital: a Hospital for the Elderly). Sure enough, he networked to locate the hospital's promoter, comprehended the operating model, figured that the promoter was strapped by an annual interest outflow of Rs 450,000, and wrote out a cheque of Rs 500,000 on the spot ­ `the first time I had done something like that,' he writes. That might have been the end of the story, but wasn't (but more of that later). Lesson three. If you want to do great work, engage great people.

Dr Reddy didn't embark on his CSR agenda by distributing work across this newfound responsibility across some of his senior executives, convinced that this would help amortise a fixed expense across larger responsibilities. But this is how things panned out: Remember the hospital promoter whose annual interest outflow had been bankrolled? A year after, his wife went to see Dr Reddy. He asked her what she did. She mentioned `Ashoka Fellow'. Dr Reddy drew a blank.So she told him what was Ashoka Foundation was, how it had offered her a job in the US, and how she didn't want to leave Hyderabad. And then she told Dr Reddy the magic line: `If you set up a foundation, I would like to join it.' The following morning, Dr Reddy's Foundation for Hu man and Social Development was a reality, with Nalini Gangadharan as its executive director.

Lesson four. You don't need to explore a synergy between your core business and your CSR direction.

Pharmaceutical companies may want to work in the CSR space of healthcare. Personal hygiene companies may want to work in the area of public hygiene. No harm. Dr Reddy and Ms Gangadharan worked out of the box instead; their first project transformed domestic garbage collectors into `street beautifiers', who carted garbage from homes to municipal garbage bins in exchange for a fee from each household (some beautifiers earning up to Rs 8,000 per month).Thereafter, the duo focused on cleaning Hyderabad's Monda Market (arguably the largest vegetable market in Asia) by drawing lines behind which vendors would hawk their wares in addition to getting them to clean the place (ah, not the municipal cleaner) after they finished each evening. Of course the place got cleaned; there was also an unexpected spin-off: Each vendor reported an income increase of Rs 25 a day; the market reported an income increase of Rs 100,000 a week.

Lesson five. Think progressively bigger.

What I like about Dr Reddy's story is that the man was not a CSR visionary from day one. He was a late-ish convert; he was a tentative believer; he was a small risk-taker; he `gambled' with unconnected projects; he progressively raised the bar; he evolved into a visionary. His Livelihood Advancement Business School (LABS) focused on skilling school dropouts and the relatively unschooled. In a few years, LABS had trained more than 250,000 individuals, engaging a number of Indian corporates in this training agenda while extending operations to Vietnam, Indonesia and Sri Lanka.

There is more of the CSR stuff that Dr Reddy did that can make engaging reading, but for that you might have to buy the book! * Dr Reddy's Foundation is now one of the largest CSR interventionists in India, touching the lives of more than 35000 individuals a year. And yes, money from Dr Reddy's book will ­ unsurprisingly ­ go to charity.

MUDAR PATHERYA  MM23MAR15