My experience at ROPE, a Villgro incubate - Vijay
Sunday April 18, 2010 , 2 min Read
Vijay holds a post-graduate degree in Rural Management from Xavier Institute of Management. He is an engineer with specialisation in electronics and communication from College of Engineering, Guindy. He earlier worked in the IT sector developing software for medical devices. He shaes with YourStory his experience as a Villgro fellow.
The discipline of a corporate with the vision of an NGO is what attracted me towards the social enterprise sector. With the hope to help the poor, I quit my career in IT sector and did my post-graduation in Rural Management. It was then I was initially exposed to social enterprises that were helping poor and sustaining themselves with the revenue generated from these operations. It fascinated me and I decided to make my career in this sector.
Before starting a venture of my own, I wanted to work in some of these enterprises to gain first-hand knowledge of the challenges faced by these start-ups. But many of these enterprises cannot afford to support professionals monetarily. Villgro fills this gap by recruiting the necessary talent and making them available to their incubate organisations.
Having found the right platform to start my career, I joined Villgro. The past one month of induction programme has been really helpful in understanding various business models, products and services that are creating a positive impact in the lives of the poor. I really liked what I call the 360 degree learning. I had the opportunity to learn from the CEOs, experts, other Villgro fellows and the field staff who are actually implementing the ideas. This helped me to understand the big picture as well as the finer details making the learning complete.
Currently, I am working ROPE, a Villgro incubate which is a manufacturer and supplier of handmade natural products creating sustainable social impact for rural workers and the environment. ROPE is a social enterprise which has proved its business model and is now geared towards expansion. It is now facing dilemma in making tactical and operational production decisions.
The challenges like increasing capacity, meeting targets and minimising cost have assumed great importance bringing information based decision making to focus. With my IT skills and management background, I hope to help innovator in collecting and analysing information using ICT that will help him in making these decisions.
