In 6 Years, The/Nudge Institute Has Helped Skill Millions To Earn A Livelihood And In Turn Uplift Others
In 2015, shortly after Atul Satija founded The/Nudge Foundation (later The/Nudge Institute), he set out to invite young adults from slums across Bengaluru to join Gurukul, a 90-day residential programme for skill development and employment. As he made his way from one slum to another, he realised it was not going to be easy. “It was for the very first batch, so they had reservations about it,” recalls Satija. That’s when he met Ayesha Siddiqui, a young woman with polio, struggling to support her family on her meagre salary as a garment factory worker. “She was the first one to sign up,” he says. “As the sole breadwinner for a conservative family, it took a big leap of faith for her to quit the job. But because of her, many others joined, and that’s how our journey began.”
The first batch of a few dozen students, including Ayesha, graduated with a job in the service sector. She started working at a BPO firm with a monthly salary of Rs 14,000 – a huge improvement on her factory wage.
Cut to 2022, the trickle has turned into a torrent. Today, the institute runs three centres – for social innovation, skill development and entrepreneurship, and rural development – and is backed by some of the biggest names in the social and corporate sectors. It has also launched several programmes, including the Indian Administrative Fellowship, for private sector executives to collaborate with the government on resolving development challenges.
For Satija, Nudge wasn’t entirely fortuitous – it had always been at the back of his mind – but it shaped up way sooner than he had expected.
“Social work was part of my retirement plan,” he says. However, as his career progressed, and he started volunteering with a non-profit in Delhi during his stint at Google, he realised he didn’t want to wait till he turned 60. He was working with InMobi in Bengaluru in 2015 when he quit the corporate world and started Nudge with the broad goal of alleviating poverty, sustainably and scalably. “We’re not very hung up on drawing rigid lines,” says Satija about his definition of poverty. “Broadly, we look at it as the inability to afford a life of dignity, with basic healthcare, education and housing. But it’s not easily defined. We will have to customise our approach for every state.”
In many ways, Satija’s interest in the cause is redolent of his early years. He grew up in a lower-middle-class family in Chandigarh, where his father was a government employee and his mother worked as a teacher. His uncles struggled to make ends meet with minimum-wage jobs, so his father took the responsibility of caring for their families as well. Satija, who is also the founder 2.0 and CEO of nonprofit GiveIndia, says his father is one of his earliest inspirations.
Over the years, and especially since the pandemic, Nudge has managed to bridge the worsening gap between the underprivileged and economic opportunities, with technology. Gurukul, for example, has shifted to the digital mode, and has trained thousands of youth from low-income families in service-sector skills, spoken English and personality development. The online mode, in fact, has even helped overcome gender and demographic barriers.
Ashwini DV, 19, from Bengaluru, who had to discontinue her education due to financial constraints, was unemployed when she joined the 15-day ‘Job Coach’ programme last year. Her mother used to work overtime to support their family of seven even as her health was deteriorating.
The course helped Ashwini brush up on her spoken English, and prepared her to face job interviews. She bagged a job at a reputed BPO firm with a monthly salary of Rs 20,000.
“I realised that youth unemployment is one of our biggest challenges,” says Satija. “A large number of those whom we consider our future, are either unemployed or underemployed. So skilling was our starting point. Over the years, we have managed to directly or indirectly impact over 14 million lives. I cannot imagine such a large-scale social change without placing technology at the centre.”
Sudha Srinivasan, CEO of The/Nudge Centre for Social Innovation, couldn’t agree more. “The very same technology that makes our life more comfortable can also save lives. What we need is people with a vision and disruptive thinking to use technology for good,” says Srinivasan, who joined Nudge in 2016 after a long stint at Intel. The/Nudge Incubator under CSI helps support individuals by nurturing early-stage nonprofit startups with a grant of up to Rs 15 lakh, along with access to mentors and social networks.
Gramhal is one such incubatee. Founded by Simeen Kaleem, Vikas Birhma and Achint Sanghi, the nonprofit’s WhatsApp chatbot enables around 60,000 farmers to easily access and consume agri-related big data like crop prices in the market, weather and crop advisories. “From the very beginning, The/Nudge has provided us with timely support in the form of hands-on mentorship, fundraiser sessions, and experts to access the impact of our work,” says Kaleem.
“Our commitment has increased manifold over the years,” says Satiija on the recent shift from The/Nudge Foundation to The/Nudge Institute. “As we complete six years, we’re now reimagining our role as a catalyst for largescale social change.” The institute is now looking at a “poverty-free India, within our lifetime”.
“By the time India celebrates its 100th year of independence, we hope to see our nation free of poverty,” says Satija. “We need corporates, NGOs, governments, stakeholders and individuals to come together and work towards this goal. We need more nonprofit entrepreneurs, and more support for them.”
“Every sector is disrupted by startups,” Srinivasan pitches in. “The development sector too could benefit from that kind of energy and innovation.”
