Jaideep 2.0 : Survival Story Of 15 Months Without Drawing A Salary

Most of you know me as an ex-SAP employee who crazily quit his job to pursue the quest of unlocking the potential of rural students using stories of role models and an upskilling program. Or as a key member committed to serving the PwD (People With Disability) community through my work with the India Inclusion Summit. Over the last year, many people have asked me, “What’s your model?”

KnowYourStar didn’t have a financial model or an operational model to start with. Nor did we have any money or funding. We didn’t have an incubation programme or any promises of reimbursement for the passionate work we wanted to take up.

We are four full-timers on this journey. We’re telling high school students that if your dream is to become a doctor, then your role model shouldn’t be Sachin Tendulkar or Mahatma Gandhi, but someone like Vijayalakshmi Deshmane, because you should aspire to walk her path! While donning a mentor’s hat and travelling to rural and disadvantaged schools, we are bridging the gap between passions and professions in the ignored rural student community. We want to make sure that they don’t become just another statistic – adding to the current 46%  of the population who are school dropouts every year because they lack mentors.

Full Hearts, Full Efforts, Empty Pockets

Our selfless work (these days we find ourselves debating whether to eat 1 dosa or 2 dosas. Should we take a cab, a bus, walk or…?) has evolved and emerged as a scalable 40-workshop mentorship program. This has garnered praise and mentions from several people – from the founder of Riverside School and the CEO of Lodestar to the school headmasters we work with. They have all appreciated our efforts to intelligently combine stories of role models with mentoring exercises like design thinking and problem solving, and using technology to tell students what their strengths are and helping them find appropriate role models!

While the evolution of KnowYourStar has been tremendous, this has taken a big personal toll – especially on our finances.

The money we put together has depleted, and I have drawn no salary for 15 months now. My co-founders, who quit their lucrative careers and gave up their high pay cheques, still devotedly put 12-14 hours of work a day, for 1/4th of the money they used to earn. In all honesty, our savings are fast getting over!

Our friends and well-wishers, who admire our passion, are raising questions and getting concerned about our survival strategy. Are we doing the right thing by enduring the toll for putting together a beautiful structure and technological intelligence, and for creating goodwill and credibility? Are we the only people paying the price for our vision to create responsible and highly skilled students, and working towards eventually ensuring the well-being of the whole nation? After 15 months of no salary, I have decided to draw a minimum salary from whatever money we are left with to sustain myself. Do you support this decision? What do you think of it?

Social Work Is NOT Charity, It’s a Responsibility

Fundraising for an NGO is such a taboo topic because of the socially accepted mindset that all work undertaken in the social sector is that of charity. We, at KnowYourStar, don’t believe in accepting charity, instead, we believe in the changes and impact we can drive. Recent reports say that there is a leadership void in the NGO sector and believe me – they have to be true! If you throw peanuts, you can only attract monkeys, right?

When someone sitting in an air-conditioned office wishes that the society and the education sector in this country would change, they have to start believing in the power of people who work on the ground, like us, and nourish us – with at least a small part of their salary!

We need this belief and trust from everyone who benefits from a reformed education and social system just to survive, pay our bills, and ensure that this work does not pause, and continues to gain momentum.

Can You Fuel Our Drive To Strengthen Our Vision?

Coming from corporate backgrounds, we can offer the promise to live up to the belief and trust placed on us with the greatest efficiency. We are an NGO that follows the AGILE methodology religiously and we keep self-auditing ourselves week-on-week, month-on-month! I truly feel that we have been able to build our credibility over the last 15 months only because of this mindset. But for us to continue, don’t you think that someone has to enable us to pay our bills and stop us from having to choose to eating one dosa instead of two?

Sometimes I really don’t know why I am doing this, and why my team is supporting me with this decision. We are further depleting our accounts with no guarantee that we will fulfil our dream – changing 10,000 students’ lives next year at the low cost of INR 600 per child.

My team and I are standing strong, deeply rooted and deriving strength from the special relationships we have built and nurtured with you, and our trust in cultivating a collective field of opportunities for rural students.

What drives us is that these students should not end up becoming non-utilised human capital or anti-social elements just because they didn’t get a chance to be mentored, and because they happened to belong to a less privileged background than you and I!

Having said that…

Do you think my decision of drawing a salary after 15 months is wrong?
Do you think my team and I should pause/abandon our mission just because we lack funds?
Do you believe in us, if yes, can you help?

Bank – ICICI Bank
Account No – 100705001952
Account Name – JAIJAGATH TRUST
IFSC Code – ICIC0001007

Enjoyed reading about this? Then you might like to read Jaideep 2.0 : The Next Big Thing Starts With Many Small Stories

If there’s a story that needs to be told, we are ready to tell it. Write to us at contact@knowyourstar.com with your story lead, or contact us on Facebook or Twitter.

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