Good afternoon.
Today we have Madhura Dasgupta Sena.
In most cases, people start with their first job when they graduate.
But Madhura has found a whole new career after she had already had a wonderful streak in
banking.
She was part of ANZ GreenLays.
Then she headed the consumer division looking after over 2 million accounts at Stanchart
and she set up the HR practices and processes at IDFC.
But in March 2020, when the pandemic broke, that's the exact point when she decided she
needed to make a difference in women's lives.
We'll try and figure out how her motivations work and what has got her into the whole new
exercise of making a revolution in employing women.
Hi Madhura.
Welcome to the show.
Thank you so much.
It's been a pleasure having you and there's so much that I want to start, talk about.
But one of the things that I saw was that you won the Schevening scholarship back in
2003.
So, did that have something to do with the way your life worked out and the influences
that it had?
Well, it was great that you started with Schevening because it was a very defining experience in
my life.
We are celebrating 20 years of that wonderful experience.
The British Schevening scholarship program was being given out to 12 women across India
and they were women from all walks of life.
What I gained out of that three months of living in the UK and also traveling a bit
of the parts around there, I realized that you can actually get friendships for life
if you're thrown into circumstances like that.
Some of my friends from my British Schevening scholarship program today are pillars that
aspire for her.
They have been my friends, philosophers, guides across my journey.
It's been absolutely wonderful to cherish that wealth of friendships that got created
during the Schevening days.
Also, notably, I think my thoughts around diversity and my views around women in the
workplace changed and molded quite a bit thanks to the experience I had in the British Schevening
scholarship program because there was a dissertation that we all needed to do.
I had chosen a topic saying what prevents women from becoming CEOs.
I got a chance to meet very interesting women across the globe because of that, including
a bunch of them in the UK.
That actually defined and helped me also come to terms with some of the harsh realities
that women professionals face as they become more and more senior in the corporate world.
How did you start off?
What were your early experiences in banking?
I had a fairly conventional life.
I became an engineer because it was a good thing to become an engineer.
I then did my MBA because it seemed to be a good thing to do.
I joined banking purely because Ainsley and Greenless Bank came to our campus and decided
I was a good fit.
I truly enjoyed banking because I think the 25 years that I spent in banking were very
rewarding in multiple different ways.
It shaped my thinking.
It shaped my vision.
It also gave me huge opportunities to build on my leadership skills.
I really enjoyed banking.
I feel a little sad at times that banking and banking careers often get a bit of a bad
press at times.
But frankly, I think it can be one of the most enriching careers, not financially, but
otherwise one of the most enriching careers that one can have on this planet.
The thing about relationship banking, you get these calls once in a way, you have people
who say, what does it involve?
How do you manage?
Because very clearly this is a relationship that's built on a business.
So when it comes to interacting with people who know very clearly that, yes, their interests
are being kept in mind, but what are the kinds of things that you have to navigate?
So look, banking is finally all about trust.
The bank that I started with right out of campus was Ainsley Greenleys Bank.
That was actually called the Relationship Bank.
I think so many years ago, 25 years ago, they ran a beautiful program on their relationship
managers, a bit of an advertising campaign actually, where they featured the real relationship
managers who would come forward and their faces, and they were stalwarts because customers
would absolutely swear by them.
What I saw in my early years in banking is when you are part of a bank, you're a branch
manager or you're part of the branch, you're part of a community.
So the entire community trusts you and the entire community wants to embrace you and
welcome you within them.
You're there for a few years, but that does happen.
I used to be in Santa Cruz branch and we had a lot of celebrity customers from Bollywood
and they would come and have a cup of coffee with me from time to time.
I would usually get invited to all the parties of Bollywood, et cetera.
I used to read Stardust for professional development.
I needed to know the right things and who was seeing who and who was doing which movies
so that I could make intelligent conversation with my clients.
But finally, when it all turns out to be the kind of person that you are, because often
a lot of those customers and those clients have become great friends.
They talk to me when they're taking a life decision.
They talk to me when they're wanting to make a big investment or anything that's coming
their way, though I have nothing to do with their professional lives or with their banking
lives anymore.
But I think banking gives you an immediate access to the community.
In those days, at least, I think it used to be a lot more evident.
There was a huge amount of respect and love and affection for the banker who was almost
part of your life.
I was part of another branch, which is a 24-hour branch in Breach Candy.
You know, again, I think the most high net worth catchment area in the country.
You were expected to know the dog's birthday as well at that point in time.
That was how deep relationships went.
Okay, but what does a 24-hour branch involve?
Why does it never shut?
But the point is, which is what online banking is today.
But before it came in, what was the real, the fact that it never shuts is the only,
or were there things that customers wanted?
I'll tell you a story.
There used to be a bunch of customers who would, again, this is in a Breach Candy, one
of the most premier, expensive locations in the country.
So there would be customers who would come in at 11 p.m. because they want to access
the lockers and they would take out their diamonds and then go to the party.
Usually, these would be on page three parties with fairly high profile folks, guests, and
then they would come back at 3 a.m. and put their diamonds back.
So this was a...
Okay, diamond in, party in, and then diamond back in place and back to work.
Okay.
Yeah, and because we were open at 3 a.m. and therefore, it really, really helped them.
So you're right that nowadays also banks never shut because you have it all on your mobile
phone.
And in those days, we were not as tech-friendly as we are today.
Banking wasn't as digital.
But this is something that you cannot do digitally, right?
So a 24-hour bank did help.
And our customers loved the fact that we never shut.
So you just could not put the shutters down.
That's it.
But sometimes aren't these customers extremely demanding as well?
I mean, can't it get...
It can get a little...
Breach Candy customers were among, I think, the most demanding that I have ever seen in
my life.
Extremely.
They were extremely, they knew exactly what they wanted.
And the world was out there to give it to them.
But I think it was one of the best learning experiences in my life because later in life,
I realized that if I have managed a Breach Candy customer well, and if I've kept them
happy, I can keep anybody happy.
That's just about it.
That's the gold standard of customer management.
Absolutely.
Because they were difficult, they were demanding.
But when you walked with them on their journey, then they would also become great friends.
So I think it also gave me a lot of confidence about my own relationship management skills
and how perhaps I was kind of, I think, trusted.
And I felt there's a huge responsibility.
And I sort of liked being part of that entire circle of trust, really.
What were the Bollywood customers like?
Were they...
Obviously, when you see them without the glamour, without the...
Where they're asking about the mundane problems as opposed to something else.
No, they were amazing.
They were amazing.
And at that time, we had customers, actors, producers, directors, and a whole lot of them.
So one of my really, really favorite clients was Aishwarya Rai's father.
And he used to keep coming, Mr. Rai used to keep coming to the branch and having a cup
of coffee with me almost every day.
And it was like my favorite ritual to start my day.
And he would talk about what Aishwarya was doing in those days, a really long back, much
before she got married.
And we had such a wonderful relationship.
And that he would share his challenges at times and he would share how blessed he felt
as a family.
Because Aishwarya's career trajectory was really, really taking off.
And we all felt very, very proud of her.
She was going to Cannes, in fact, and it was one episode.
And at that time, we used to have travelers checks.
And if you recall, the travelers checks had to be signed in the presence of a branch official.
And so I was the branch manager and I was supposed to go to her house and she was going
to Cannes and I was supposed to go to her house and hand over the traveler checks because
it had to happen in my presence.
And suddenly I realized that my boss and his boss suddenly got very excited about travelers
checks.
And I was like, okay.
And basically, can we help you in some way?
And we can go across.
We can go across and do this for you.
And I had never seen this enthusiasm and this excitement for any other customer and any
other traveler checks.
So it was indeed a very funny moment.
And I said, I think I'll manage.
But they were very, very interested and insistent about being of service to me.
No other motivation at all.
They just wanted to help me out and carry to the customer.
You mentioned that once you've handled a breach candy customer, you've really...
And I think that's true of practically every corporate boardroom, because when you get
to that level, you know exactly what you need to do and where you need to intervene, where
you need to stay quiet and where you need to...
Which is, I think, an art that evolves only over time.
It doesn't come right in the beginning.
It's one of those things that you...
Do you think you instinctively had it in you or was it an art that you developed over time?
You know, I think naturally I'm a bit of an introvert, but nobody believes it, unfortunately.
Nobody believes it.
I believe it.
And I think I developed the art of conversation.
And like you said about probably the ability to know when one should speak or when one
should not and when one should just hold one's tongue.
I think I picked that up a lot through my client interactions.
And I was always...
I always feel that that one cup of coffee that you have, you should have it with a customer.
And I think COVID, they put paid to some of those very glorious thoughts I had about aspire
for her clients as well, that I should go and meet them all the time.
And obviously Zoom and these virtual models have become much easier now.
But I strongly felt that being a part of their lives and being a part of their entire ecosystem
and not necessarily only at a transactional level.
I need some work to be done or I need a checkbook to be picked up or I need a traveler's checks
to be delivered, et cetera.
Not really only at that level, but at a deeper level in terms of being genuinely interested
in their lives.
I think that helps me.
And I think I have developed that skill a little bit.
So I enjoy it.
I enjoy it.
I enjoy being interested in other people's lives and finding out more about them.
And it therefore naturally weaves into probably the conversations that I have with them.
Yeah, no, it's a, it's really one of those things.
And I think that's the other part that making friends and being able to have longstanding
friends, people with whom you've been through a lot right from the beginning, whether it's
college or at a point when none of you had anything in the, there was nothing at stake.
Yeah, there was no agenda.
There was no agenda.
Whereas unfortunately, once it gets into a job, there is an agenda and no matter how
open people are, there is always this little thing that you can't be a hundred percent
certain that this is how things will work out, which is sad, but I guess that's the
way of the world.
It's not as if it's, it's something that, and the sooner you understand those nuances,
the better it gets for you.
Yes.
And also think that even later in life, you can actually make good friends.
Yes.
Especially as fire for her has actually given me some absolutely amazing friends and that's
only three years old.
Right?
So I never thought that at the age of 50, you know, I would make so many deep friendships
and I'm very blessed that that's the way it's turned out.
I think that's a complete flip, but I'll just dwell one little bit because you said that
you approached HR in a completely different way at IDFC and you focused on the employee.
What was the thinking there?
Actually, it was a very interesting conversation that I had when I was joining IDFC.
You know, I thought that the role that they would probably offer to me would be something
in the consumer banking realm.
And suddenly the conversation changed and the person who was talking to me and I really
think he's one of the best thought leaders in HR today.
He said, you know, I want you to start something called employee experience.
And I said, look, you know, I have not even done an HR degree and I've never done an HR
role in my life.
I have been a consumer banker all my life.
And why do you want me to do this?
And he said, you know, we're going to be the 89th bank in the country.
And we will not be able to attract talent unless we have a very strong talent proposition.
And that talent proposition can happen if we treat our employees like our best customers.
So hey, I want somebody like you who's dealt with customers all their lives to come in
and set up employee experience at IDFC.
So that's how that journey started.
And it was a fascinating journey of actually building a bank because when I joined IDFC,
it was not a bank.
It was still an NBFC.
And only after about one and a half years, I did the bank, you know, take birth.
So that was a bank when you started IDFC would have had how many employees on board would
have had roughly about zero.
You're part of the founding team.
Yeah, I was, I was actually the probably the third or fourth person who joined for the
bank.
So I joined the the NBFC.
I joined the other entity because at that time there was no banking entity.
But I was a third or fourth person who joined for the bank.
So and then of course, by the time I left, we had 20,000 employees.
Wow.
Okay.
Now, this is one thing.
It's easy to maintain a relationship when the number of people is small.
But as you extend and it goes geographically, it spreads across many regions.
What's the key?
How do you ensure that this employee first is something that you're able to implement
right down the line?
So you know, we used a model of employee experience and we used a combination of tech and touch.
As we grow, it's very difficult to replicate that same warmth and affection and touch based
models across the employee base.
So what we did is we started something like an employee experience relationship manager.
And this was something that we used to do in banking quite successfully.
So the EXRM, so the employee experience relationship managers would actually be in charge of a
certain set of employees and they would be the sole point of contacts to ensure that
the bank's policies, processes, relationships, any needs that they had were sort of met.
So when we started, we looked at employee journeys and we looked at journey mapping
very closely and we actually mapped out 18 employee journeys.
And we started at the time that any person would start thinking about a new job and how
can we be in their inbox?
How can we be there in their Instagram feed?
How can we be there in their social media at that point in time?
That's when a journey actually starts, the employee journey starts.
And then it continues into onboarding and recruitment and all of that.
And the journey actually never ends because if you've been a part of an organization
and if that organization has walked with you for a part of your professional journey, then
you always remain an alumni.
You always remain a part of that organization.
A part of you also gets left behind there.
So therefore we feel that it's a journey with a beginning but not with an end.
And all of those 18 journeys we actually sat down and we used a lot of tech-based approaches
to ensure that across the moments of truth of each of those journeys, we also used a
bit of touch.
So in a critical moments of truth, like for example, the day that you join or the day
that you get your letter and we used some very small things like when the employee was
getting welcomed into the organization and when she got the letter, we would also give
a bouquet of flowers to the spouse.
And this was something that at that time was very, very unusual.
And in many cases, the spouses got their first ever bouquets of flowers from the bank.
So they were very, very touched and they said, wow, this is really cool.
And they would also ensure that as a part of the journey, they'd also ensure that their
wife or their husband definitely goes and joins the bank because they felt very special
and they felt very, very welcomed.
After a few days, the employee would actually get a Starbucks card, a preloaded Starbucks
card.
And while the flower was meant to win over the family and to welcome the family to the
bank, the Starbucks card was meant to win over his colleagues and friends.
The thought process being that he or she would go to Starbucks and take other friends along
and also talk about the wonderful new place that they were joining and therefore the friends
would also want to apply and come and join.
I think you've touched on something really important here that the way the employee works
with the organization and the experience and her experience after she leaves contributes
just as much to how easy it becomes to get people in later because all it takes is for
someone whose work somewhere to say, no, I didn't like it very much to turn people off.
Whereas if they say, go ahead, you're going to learn a lot from there, it just becomes
progressively easier.
And I think Mudra also used to do this, that the spouse, the wife or the husband would
get something and it always did make a difference.
Oh, it's a very small gesture, but it made a huge difference.
And we continued this for a few years and of course every organization evolves and every
organization goes through its own journey.
But I think we got a lot of accolades and we got a lot of awards for the kind of impact
that this created.
And the fact that employees really looked at it as a very warm, welcoming workplace,
which truly sort of in a celebrated marriage, which truly celebrated its employees.
Yeah.
And this is true.
The other aspect is really to reflect truly what the organization is.
So if it's a serious place, if you project fun in the ad, it normally attracts the wrong
people.
Yes.
So, you know, so I think it's so important to get the tone, right?
Some people feel that, no, but I will not get the right person.
The whole point is that, like you said, the journeys have to be mapped and then you have
to figure out exactly who fits in and who will deliver.
Only then does it really make sense.
Yeah.
Yes.
I mean, the whole journey mapping, you know, journey mapping journey that we did, which
is across all those 18 journeys.
That was one of the best learning experiences in my life as well.
And I can imagine how, you know, going to 20,000 from zero is, is really something.
So it's not something that a lot of organizations will not have that rate of growth beyond a
certain point.
So you understand scale, you understand how it takes it to that level.
So let's say now the part which you're really, you know, which you're fully invested in.
Yes.
So March 2020, I think the whole world was worried about the impending pandemic and you
decide that you want to start a new company or you want to get into this.
I didn't know that the pandemic would start right after that.
So 8th of March is when we wanted to launch.
And I had been thinking about this for a while because I wanted to do something for the women
of our country.
I was turning 50 years old and I felt I waited long enough.
And I was looking at the devastating data and I was very, very upset.
And you know, I was complaining to my mother saying, you know, this is so terrible and
how come India is absolutely at the bottom in terms of women's economic participation.
And look at LFPR, look at labor force participation rate for women.
It's going down every year.
It goes, it goes down a bit.
And just very unobtrusively, it seems to just slide.
We've dug ourselves into some kind of hole.
What are we doing?
And I was seeing the best and the brightest women around me in India.
And you know, then my mother looked at me and said, what are you doing about it?
And so I said, all right, I think I should do something about it myself.
And you know, she said, yeah, instead of complaining and whining and mourning that things are not
happening and you know, others are not doing this and the government is not doing that.
And this is then, you know, the world is not doing anything.
What are you doing about it?
You know, do something, get up and do something.
So that's why I did.
That's it.
So what are the first steps?
Where did you begin?
So you know, I was very keen to do something for women becoming financially independent.
So I basically wanted to motivate all women in our country to become financially independent.
And it actually started with one day when, you know, it just became too much.
And I said, I have to do this.
And the same day, two things happened.
So my friend, the dear friend of mine who used to work before and then left her job
after marriage, her dad was unwell and she actually wanted to contribute to his medical
expenses.
She suddenly realized that she does not have any money that she can call her own.
And she gets along very well with her husband.
It's not that there's any problem, but she didn't want to ask him for money.
And she realized that, you know, I cannot even support my dad in his treatment.
And this is such a terrible feeling.
And she felt very, very depressed and sad about this.
And she said, my parents have done so much and I cannot give back anything.
And the same day, you know, as I was having tea, you know, a friend of a friend of my
daughter's comes in and says, you know what, this person talking about a third person,
she's gone and left her job today.
She was working in Deloitte.
So I said, why?
What happened?
You know, has she got a better job?
And she says, no, not at all.
She's getting into an arranged marriage.
And the boy's family has said that the women in our family don't work.
So she has resigned.
I said, does she not know that she's going to become my friend, my morning friend, you
know, in 20 years time, does she not know that this is going to happen to her?
So she somebody needs to tell her that this is going to happen to you.
And that's how I thought of the name aspire for her.
And that's how I said, let's get this started.
And that's how I started.
So I worked for about, I would say, maybe a one and a half months.
I think I started sometime in Jan.
And then I started working and we were, I found somebody who would help me do the website,
put together the basic creatives and all of that, do some little bit of social media,
et cetera.
And I was actually landing in the U.S. on the seventh of March because we wanted to
spend spring break with my daughter.
And so the whole flight, I was actually signing off on things and looking at the designs and
looking at the website and all of that.
So the whole flight was very productive and we landed and we thought that there was something
wrong.
I mean, at that time, the pandemic was a little, I mean, it was there, but we felt that it
could go off in a few weeks.
Right.
All of us felt that way.
And in the U.S., everybody at that time was very, very, you know, they were doing their
own thing and nobody seemed to feel that there's anything wrong.
And we felt that we were probably being ultra cautious or we were being a little paranoid.
And then suddenly everything escalated in that week.
So we launched Aspire for Her on the eighth of March.
And I was in Boston and a bunch of folks here across India and other parts of the world
all sort of signed in, logged in and we said, hey, we're on and we launched.
That's it.
And the flight, as I said, most of the stuff got done on the flight.
So that's it.
That's how we launched.
And the first day, I think we had just a few people signed up.
A lot of my daughter's friends signed up.
And you know, every hour we would see to see how many new people signed up to Aspire for
Her.
And yeah, that's how it started.
And that was the beginning.
Okay.
I think you say educate, empower and employment, education and entrepreneurship.
Those are the three.
We say E-Cube is equal to MC-Cubed.
That's how we see the trillion dollar opportunity.
So E-Cube is essentially employment, entrepreneurship or education, which leads to one of these two.
So deliberately, I put education third because education has to lead to either employment
or entrepreneurship.
And MC-CNC are the critical success factors that we work to change mindsets of women and
the ecosystem, mentors and role models, courses, cohorts and learning, career previews and
resources and of course, community, which is at the heart of all that.
Okay.
But someone signs up.
Okay.
You said you sign up and then we will help you or you say that we'll figure out what
needs to be done.
How did you arrive at a kind of system for evaluating what help each person needed?
So we don't really have a very foolproof system for evaluating what help each person needs.
But what we do is we use this model for anyone who comes and becomes part of our community.
So usually a person who comes into the community has a need and in any community, in any relationship,
as you know, that there is always a mix of give and take.
Usually when they join Aspire for Her, there is something that's in the take bucket that's
there in their head.
So either they want a job or they want a mentorship or they want some insight in a career or they
want some learning opportunities or they want to do a course, etc.
So that's when they usually join.
And in our experience, what you've seen is that the give and take sort of progresses
along as they go along and at one point in time, they reach a point to say, hey, I want
to give back now.
You know, I'm a returning woman.
I have come into Aspire for Her.
I have done the Amazon course.
I have got a fantastic job in Capgemini.
I feel very happy that I could actually get back into the workforce after 10 years of
break.
And now I want to give back.
I want to ensure that 10 other women, 20 other women, 100 other women like me also find that
they find their way back into the workforce.
And I help them with their interview preparation.
I help them with their confidence building.
I help them with negotiation skills and I give back and paid forward.
That's been the philosophy of our community all through that.
It's a mix of give and take.
When you come in, you're probably in the take mode.
But as you progress and as you grow within the community, you start giving.
And there could be another point in time when you want to get back into the take mode again.
But it is a community for a lifetime.
And it is just like any other relationship.
But we want to be that trusted partner by your side.
So do you fundamentally believe that women helping women has a better chance of success
than people who say that, no, we must uplift.
There's this whole thing about policy where you say that first, I need women to be
so they were supposed to be OK, 30 percent of the seats reserved for women.
So that's something will happen.
But we found how that went because essentially they became proxies.
Then there were other things.
So how is it that you're able to figure out what is working and where is the pushback?
Because obviously these jobs, there is always there's gender diversity, which is important.
But when unemployment is so huge, then there is likely to be conflict.
So how do you what are the things that you look at to help people get over the problem
or to understand what is it that they need to do?
So we have a lot of purpose to actually work with us.
Right.
And we have Amazon, Google.
We have standard charter.
We have DBS.
We have Deutsche Bank.
We have JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Adobe, Salesforce, IBM, a whole bunch of organizations.
These are really forward looking organizations of our country.
And they do understand that diversity is a very important parameter.
DEI is a very important thing for them.
Diversity, equity and inclusion, primarily because they all also have ESG mandates.
So like you said, we should not assume that policy level changes do not achieve anything
because we strongly feel that there are policy pushes and there are policy nudges that do
help organizations look at diversity with a far more inclusive lens.
So these organizations that I mentioned, they belong to, if you realize, they belong to
a certain genre of organizations.
Right.
They're MNCs who are operating also in India.
They're usually headquartered elsewhere.
And they also have very strict guidelines in terms of their own DEI policies, their
own DEI mandates, goals, objectives, et cetera.
So what happens in India is that because India often accounts for a large headcount for them.
So therefore their numerator versus denominator, because India becomes a large denominator,
they want to also ensure that the India numerator looks good.
Right.
It's all driven by policy, finally, at the end of the day, driven by the governance policies,
ESG policies at the heart of SNESG is DEI.
So does that help us?
Does that?
Of course it does.
And therefore, we would definitely vote for policy level interventions as well.
However, there are two lenses, right?
One is the lens of the organization or the corporate world and how they're looking at
this space.
And the other is the lens from the community perspective.
I mentioned two stories and I told you about how the community feels about being financially
disempowered, being financially dependent.
And especially after being educated, after seeing the world or after working for a bit,
if they're forced to sort of get out of the workforce or circumstances have compelled
them to get out of the workforce in some way, there is a huge sense of vacuum in the women
in the country.
What that does, and sometimes it is also linked to their sense of self-worth.
And their sense of self-worth actually goes down dramatically because they feel that they're
not really contributing.
So therefore, what we try to do is to the community model.
And that's where the community comes in.
A community is actually the source of all the power and all the energy that we have
because a spiral for her cannot be there everywhere.
But the community can be there and the community can be there.
Yeah.
It's a whole concept of women supporting women and paying it forward.
I think those have been some of the very brilliant sort of changes that we have seen happening
in front of our eyes and stories of transformation have really motivated us.
No.
And as in advertising, one of the clients we handled, this lady had a wonderful idea.
It was about training women on simple things in language and managing households and everything
else with SMS messages.
It was called mobile train.
And then she ran into problems that you would not have even thought of.
For example, most women didn't have a phone in their name.
They were using the husband's phone.
And then the other thing is that they had feature phones, which could only hold 10 messages
at a time or 15 messages.
So how do you figure out which is the message to be sent?
So when you break it down, you say, I'll create the content.
I'll send out SMS.
They will get to learn.
They will implement.
And then you run across something which seems unsurmountable because, you know, how do you
you then be distributing phones to everyone to try and sort this out?
So this, I think some of these things are that they require a level of change.
So do you believe in the top down works better than bottom up or which way do you think they
should be oriented?
So it has to come both ways, Venu, actually.
It's impossible.
This is a problem that has eaten into the fabric of our country for the past many years,
from 2005 onwards.
So that's like 17, 18 years, really.
I've been a steady decline.
And I have a personal working theory of why it started around 2005, because probably by
that time, families were getting more prosperous and the per capita income was actually growing
and women were then being told that you don't really need to work, you know, just sit at
home and relax and be the queen of your own house.
You don't need to work.
And that's the reason why I think it was also a lot of self selection out of the workforce
that was happening.
So you know, in our mind, I think both approaches are needed.
Like I said, that the policy does help because there are there could be a lot of hiring managers
in these organizations that I also mentioned who do not believe in diversity, who only
want to hire people who look like that, who feel that a six month maternity leave is a
very big burden on the organization.
There are many people like that in our country.
So the policy helps us put a sort of a, you know, a guardrail around those thought processes
and the policy helps motivate people to actually do this, because even if you have a good diversity
quotient in your own team, often these organizations celebrate those teams.
And if they don't have enough women in their team, then they're actually called out.
So therefore, for whatever reasons, the hiring managers do take some of those calls to say,
yes, I need to have a woman, I need to have a diverse candidate.
And again, diversity is not only about women, it is about other formats diversity also.
We of course look at gender in a bigger way.
So is policy, but it is also a lot of mindset change.
And unfortunately, mindset cannot be touched or felt or smelt.
Not easy at all.
Which is why we use the EQ physical to MCQ model to change mindsets.
It's done in a slightly indirect way.
So so that it's not really in your face and we don't keep telling you, oh, you must go
to work and this is the best thing about it.
And you know, you must study hard and you must get in there.
We try to be less preachy.
We try to be more real voices, real stories, you know, and that's the idea.
Could you give me a couple of stories, Madhura, which one is where you felt you succeeded
far more than you expected to.
And another one where you felt that no, it felt where it felt very short.
So I know that you're trying to bridge to and I just want to give viewers a sense of
where it is has it succeeded and where does the work where it hasn't worked?
You know, do you have?
I'll probably start with the second one and where.
So this is a story of a returning woman and she had a gap of, I think, 12 or 13 years
and you know, so we we had at that time started our community with Amazon Web Services and
we were looking at women in cloud.
We were looking at women getting certified in cloud and then finding jobs for them.
So the first step was to really, you know, announce this whole cohort and thousand people
applied and only 30 of them went, got in the first cohort.
So it was a very selective process.
So these 30 people got in and then they worked incredibly hard because it was a 14 week long
program, seven hours a day.
So and this is all online.
So it was a fairly intense program which they did and then they had to write the examination
for cloud certification, which is a formal global examination.
They did that and they they passed and then they went through a full placement process
and this person got into a very, very reputed organization, reputed MNC after that.
So imagine the her entire journey, right?
13 years of break, then getting selected into the cohort, working very hard, passing the
exam, going for all of these interviews and then getting into the fairly difficult journey
and everybody did not immediately get in, obviously, to this very prestigious organization.
She gets in and then after a few days, like we are prone to do, we told her, hey, listen,
come in and you must tell your story to the community because now you have to pay it forward
and you have to talk to them.
And she started crying and he said, look, you had a really fantastic journey.
Why are you sad?
What happened?
And she said that the day that I got into this organization, my husband has walked out
of home.
Well, because he says it's a job.
Look at me.
I've taken an incredible amount of effort.
I've invested and I've gone through so much of pain to get myself trained and retrained
and reskilled.
And here I want to get back into the workforce and I've managed to do this.
And this is what happens.
So this is a story where I felt that there is a lot that we need to do to the ecosystem,
which is for the men as well.
We are clearly not doing enough.
I think that is something that left me feeling very, very sad.
It really illustrates both sides of the divide.
At one point having to do so much of work in order to get there.
And finally, you're stymied not because you didn't make it, but because someone else is
feeling insecure, which is, you know, that's the saddest part of the entire thing.
There was this documentary on Netflix, which talked about, you know, students from extremely
poor backgrounds who were admitted and then they had to figure out just one person from
that group who had come in and study.
And then they had to go back to their families who were living in slums every year.
And as they progress in their education, it becomes harder and harder for them, for both
the family as well as the person who's been selected.
Because the conflict is just too much.
It gets to a point where it's very difficult to sort of come to terms with, am I lucky
or am I not good enough?
What is the...
And at the other end, they see people who are able to go much further.
That sets off another set of conflicts altogether.
Yes.
So I think it's wonderful what you're tackling and what you're trying to do.
And I think at some point it gets down to, yes, you have your victories, but there are
equally large problems that suddenly loom, especially as you get more and more successful
and more and more invested in making that change.
Yes.
Because these are not...
Yeah.
It's not an easy problem to solve and it's got multiple layers and it's got multiple
sort of... it's not an algorithm.
It's not an algorithm.
That's the issue.
Yeah.
The algorithm loses it.
It'll handle one process.
You mix six different variables and suddenly it goes off in all kinds of directions.
As long as the process is repetitive and you require the same result over time, it's fine.
Yes.
Apparently even chat GPT goes off into hallucinations if you ask it to keep doing the same thing
over and over again.
You start getting results which are not by any yardstick normal.
Yeah.
So that's the thing.
So I think it's wonderful as to how...
I can tell you the other story as well.
You asked for two stories, right?
So I can tell you the other story as well, which sort of always motivates me, inspires
me.
And this is a person who is from a small town, Maharashtra called Dule.
Her name is Prithika Kate and we started the Not Alone Community after the brutal second
wave of COVID.
This was in the month of May 2021, exactly two years ago.
And the community started because I was very, very devastated.
We lost a classmate.
We lost several classmates, but for this particular classmate, we were trying to raise a point
of purpose for the daughter's education.
And I called the wife and said, hey, you know, I need to get your account number because
I'm creating this WhatsApp message so that everyone can remit the funds to the account.
And she said, I don't know if I have a bank account.
And these are all people like you and me.
And I was absolutely devastated.
And I said, this is what's happening to the women of our country.
They are often missing out.
I mean, they're losing their primary breadwinners without even a chance to say goodbye.
And they do not even know whether they have a bank account.
Forget whether there are huge credit card debts or whether there are loans hanging on
their head or whether the house is in their name or not, or whether the whole PF thing
is in a mess.
I mean, you know, we found anyway, so that's how we started Not Alone.
A community meant solely for women who have lost their primary breadwinners to COVID.
And that community turned out to be a huge source of inspiration for us.
And we went headlong in after this conversation.
I said we have to do something.
And we used the same EQ is equal to MCQ model like we use for all our communities, except
that the mentorship piece was very, very, very strong here.
It was almost like an anchor.
It was not really a mentor.
And some of our wonderful mentors, they became anchors and they helped many of the women
take charge of their lives.
Many of them were being thrown out of their homes because the in-laws did not want them
anymore.
They did not know their legal standing.
Many of them didn't know.
Finances, it was a huge mess.
They were emotionally devastated, financially insecure.
It's the worst ever combination that can happen to anyone.
A lot of them felt like they would end their lives.
And this person, Preeti Kattay, actually, her husband was very young in his 30s.
She had two young children, aged in-laws and parents and lived in Thule.
And husband died due to COVID.
And she had never worked in her life before.
So Preeti almost was at a point when she was giving up on life.
And then she came and joined the community, the Not Alone community.
And she went through all the stuff that we were talking about.
We had a lot of sessions.
We had a lot of stuff on mental health.
And then I had a wonderful mentor who was actually leading this whole thing.
And then she decided that she would take charge of her life.
And she started an abacus class in Thule.
So she's an entrepreneur.
And she has more than 62 children now who actually do abacus with her.
She's winning awards at a state level and at a district level.
And she's talking on LinkedIn with the colleagues of her husband.
And she is celebrating her victory there.
So that's a real heartwarming story, Madhura.
Because again, I think it's wonderful.
Do you think it's down to the individual?
Or do you think that there are some people who never give up?
What does it finally add up?
You know, I think the power of the community lends power to the individual.
So the individual earlier was feeling very lonely and very alone and very shaken.
Once they realize that they're not alone and there's an entire community around her, she
automatically becomes far stronger and far more powerful.
And she discovers that power within herself.
Wonderful.
This has been an illuminating conversation in more ways than one, Madhura.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for taking the time.
And I think it's been a lovely story because I think you've bridged two entirely different
banking where you're dealing with some of the richest and the most well-to-do people
and then going to a set of people who lack even the basics in some of the.
So more power to what you do.
I hope that it really, you know, aspire for her meets millions of aspirations.
And at the end of the day, that's the point of change.
And I think that's where you're really focused and working to change.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, Venu.
Thank you for being on the show.
Okay, goodbye.
That was Madhura Das Gupta from Aspire for Her, a banker who changed the course of her
career to help the less privileged and to work for both diversity and inclusion.
Thank you for listening.
And we'll be back next week for our 25th episode where we're flipping the equation instead
of people looking back on their lives.
We are talking of what will happen in the future.
And we are talking to three young people who are poised to make a major change in their
life.
Tune in next week and do subscribe and do let us know what you think of the episodes.
Thank you.
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