Atul Satija: Give Till It Hurts

He kept promising himself he would fight poverty one day. First at retirement. Then in his fifties. Then his forties. Until the day it felt like he was lying to himself. So one weekend he started cold-calling nonprofits at random, and walked away from a career most people spend their lives chasing.

Atul Satija is the founder of The/Nudge Institute, one of India’s most ambitious anti-poverty organisations, and the “Founder 2.0” of GiveIndia. Before that, he spent nearly two decades in the front line of the tech industry: Google, then InMobi, where he sat in the room as it raised 200 million dollars from SoftBank and had to make the calls that come with that kind of money. He has pledged half his net worth to giving. He is the person JP wanted to talk to about the single hardest question in social impact: not how to care, but how to make caring actually work at scale.

I came to this conversation from my own leap. When I moved from leading teams at Microsoft to building Live for Good, I discovered something that still surprises me: it can be harder to raise a small grant for a good cause than to close an enormous enterprise deal. Atul has lived that gap for years, and he has thought harder than almost anyone about how to close it. What he taught me is that generosity is not enough. You have to engineer it.

In our conversation, we explore:

→ What extreme poverty actually is: families of five or six living on three hundred dollars a year, and why the loss of dignity cuts as deep as the loss of income
→ Why the model that lifts a family out of poverty for good worked everywhere and scaled nowhere, and his answer: shape the state, do not replace it
→ The jar, the rocks and the sand: “you don’t want to build a parallel railroad, you want to fix what’s broken so bigger trains run on the same track”
→ Give till it hurts: why the poorest communities give a larger share of what they have than the richest do
→ AI seen from the bottom: why, for those who have almost nothing, there is nothing left for it to take

“If you’re giving what does not change anything in your life, then it is not really giving. You’re buying something with some extra money.”

Atul Satija, founder of The/Nudge Institute

If you have ever told yourself you will do the meaningful thing later, once the timing is right, this episode is about the day later stops being an option.

🎧 Related episodes:

• Nandan Nilekani, who wrote The/Nudge’s first cheque, “Achieving ambitious goals”: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/13663342
• James Chen, “Seeing the Future and Transforming Millions of Lives”: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/16724860
• Raj Sisodia, “How Conscious Capitalism Brings Love into Business”: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/19005670

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Transcript

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Jean-Philippe Courtois [00:00] Hello and welcome to Positive Leadership Podcast, the podcast that helps you grow as an individual, as a leader, and eventually as a global citizen. I'm Jean-Philippe Courtois. Today, my guest grew up, lower middle class in Chandigarh, climbed the Indian corporate ladder seventeen years across different companies like Infosys, Samsung, Adobe, Google, InMobi, where he became chief revenue officer, then walked away to dedicate his life to ending poverty in India within his lifetime. He founded the The/Nudge Institute in twenty fifteen, became founder 2.0 of GiveIndia in twenty seventeen, and led it through COVID, raising eighty-five million dollars. In twenty-three, he and his wife, Gagandeep, committed fifty percent of their net worth to philanthropy. His guiding belief, not a slogan, but a strategy: every human being can live a dignified life out of poverty within our lifetime. Atul Satija, a very warm welcome to Positive Leadership Podcast.

Atul Satija [01:07] Thank you so much, JP. Looking forward to this. Thanks for having me here.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [01:10] Well, it's a pleasure, Atul. So Atul, as I just said, I think you are born and raised in Chandigarh in a lower middle class home. Your dad was a government employee and your mom a school teacher, and your parents quietly supported an uncle, I think, who drove a rickshaw, and another ran a tea stall. So before we talk about the The/Nudge or GiveIndia, can you tell us more about that home in Chandigarh? What did you see growing up? Where what were the conversations around the dinner table?

Atul Satija [01:42] Yeah. So JP, a little bit of background on that. We are actually a migrant family that, during the partition of India and Pakistan, moved from the Pakistan side to the India side. And like lots of families during that time, the family lost everything they had built over generations in that, transition. And, my grandfather, used to make undergarments for the neighbors as a tailor, living in a small town in Indian side of Punjab, and unfortunately died in extreme poverty, you can say. My dad ran away from, his place in, that town and moved to Chandigarh, finished his undergrad after he got married, and somehow landed a government job. That gave us, as a family, a very safe childhood. But I think growing up, I saw my dad, save up every year to support The extended family, my uncles and aunts and their kids. And, I think that energy of him almost on a, maybe not an everyday dinner table, but, once a week, once a month, these topics would keep coming up, like this uncle needs this help, or this aunt has this problem, or their kids don't know how to go to school, or they need medical help, et cetera. And he was almost permanently planning how to save up, beyond our family means for everyone else. And, a part of me was inspired by that unknowingly. I think it was in the back of my mind somewhere. And, you still need to come full circle to see the value of that later in life. And, the more, call it, the career-oriented, ambitious part of me was carrying the anger of needing a lot more capital and resources to live a good life. And I think a lot of family was like that. Very simple Indian Lower middle class family, work hard, study well, find a good job, make sure you do well for yourself, kind Of opinion.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [03:42] No, I'm sure it grounded you actually very early in your life in terms of what it takes to, protect your family, what it takes to protect your community, have a sense of, safety, shelter, the basic survival needs. So can you tell us more about the behaviors maybe that it helped developed in yourself maybe early on in the way you think about, the way you think about precarity, maybe money, and taking care again of, of the beloved ones, that you support?

Atul Satija [04:17] I think a lot of values growing up, JP, were nothing out of the ordinary, like the value of hard work, the value of focusing on education The value of supporting the community Call it now in current language, individual social responsibility. A lot of lower middle class families in India, like in many communities globally, are very interdependent, right? Unlike as societies become rich, we are less and less interdependent on each other, and we lose that sense of, we need to continue to give some to take some. We would see, one of our neighbors got the first television in town and, we would all go and watch television in their house. You would have a refrigerator in your house, so others would come and make sure that they use your refrigerator to cool, - In extreme Indian heat some stuff. It was a very interdependent life. I think, the value for appreciating money and for what you have received was very ingrained in us. Gratitude, appreciating the privileges you carry, having seen, your cousins around who don't have, even as much as you have. I think that was pretty much most of the childhood, gratitude, hard work, study. And like they say, a good student, a good child A good community member Was the, was the mainstay.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [05:45] What about, what about, again, the examples of your mom and dad were both, I think, government employees, dedicating their lives to, public service, right? Teaching in case of your mom and your Dad as government employee. Did it, did it also, instill in yourself a sense of service to the, to the people in a, in a broader sense, right?

Atul Satija [06:08] To be honest, JP, their career choices came from whatever best opportunities they found back in the day To support the family. I think the giving side was more coming from my dad's, behavior to support the family, desire to be useful to others. And I've seen him do it day in, day out over decades, and I think a lot of my giving energy actually came from being inspired by his work.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [06:36] I see. On this show, Atul, I had someone I'm sure you may know, I think you may have even have discussed with her on a podcast. I had Indra Nooyi, the former CEO of PepsiCo, on the podcast, and she shared with me as well, of course, her values that her father instilled in her when she was in Madras, and that those value system became basically the operating system of her PepsiCo years, so as a CEO, which is very interesting. So she reflected on that. I remember an anecdote when she was telling me that actually her parents were asking her, and her siblings as well, to, to basically defend a public opinion at the table, so to basically shape your opinion and express it publicly as a kid, which I found quite fascinating, and that gave her A deep sense, of course, of, basically of not just accountability, but framing and shaping opinions while respecting others' ideas. Any similar experiences you had as well in terms of the discussions at the dinner table?

Atul Satija [07:48] I think in our family, a lot of conversations would veer around the role models that my parents would, be inspired by, whether it's Mahatma Gandhi or Mother Teresa or the cousins who worked very hard and got a good career for themselves and their family or other community leaders. Like the town I grew up in, we had a huge public lake, - Called Sukhna Lake. And a lot of the lake desilting was done by the city volunteering there. So every Saturday morning, my mom would wake me up in the morning and say, "Take your bicycle, go to the lake, and do the physical labor as volunteering there. We are desilting the lake Again there." I did that over years actually. And, values would be a lot more of demonstrated leadership and community service And being inspired by change-makers in broader society, like obviously Martin Luther King or Mother Teresa or Mahatma Gandhi. Conversations would be a lot more around those things and businesses and industries and of that kind. And I think somewhere, the inspiration quotient of life has stayed with action-oriented leaders for me always.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [08:59] That's wonderful. Can you tell us at what point and when and how did you decide to go and study engineering at NIT, and ISB then, as an MBA, which I think is a, is a complete portfolio, right, in terms of engineering and business all together in India at some of the best institutions. So who decided you to do that? Was it on your own? Did you have some discussion with some of the people who inspired you?

Atul Satija [09:24] It was very organic journey, JP. I think a lot of my career, much like in entrepreneurship, is a journey of driving in dense fog. You see the next 100 meters, and you cover it, and then you see the next 100 meters, and then you see the next 100. I think, I finished my 10th and, almost by accident chose engineering or medical, like most Indian since they could Would choose one of these two potential pathways. And almost by accident I chose engineering. It was not a design. Couple of my friends were choosing it. Parents, didn't push me to pick one over the other, and they said, "Pick whatever you want," and I had no clue. So I saw A couple of my friends writing for engineering, and I said, "Okay also sign me up for that." That's how it happened. And after that, I took the college I got admission in and did my mechanical engineering from there. I was not interested in mechanical, so I landed in My first job in sales almost by exclusion of all mechanical jobs not by choice. And a few years into that I was "Look, doesn't look like this is what I want to do for the rest of my life, so what's the next logical thing?" And a management degree was the next logical thing. So I applied for obviously, management courses and landed at ISB. No grand plans of life at all till that point, - And, I changed, almost eight jobs in my first, five years of my career.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [10:49] Eight jobs in five years?

Atul Satija [10:49] Almost on instinct. Yeah, almost on saying "Look, doesn't look like I'm enjoying what I'm doing. Let me find what else." And I think I had a very, low bar for, staying put when I don't like something, in terms of work. I probably valued my time more than the company was valuing in all these stints, and I quickly got impatient and moved out. I learnt in my ISB campus interviews that is not a good strategy when you want a campus job. And, one company trusted that I was clueless, but now I'm less clueless, and gave me a job. Adobe it was.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [11:30] Was it Infosys?

Atul Satija [11:31] I survived It was actually Adobe, from campus.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [11:35] Adobe was the first company. Okay. Yeah.

Atul Satija [11:37] Post my ISB, and I survived two and a half years there.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [11:41] You survive. Interesting world.

Atul Satija [11:44] Well, I got a couple of change in jobs, and I liked that stint. And then it was Google, and then there I did five years, and that was my longest stint, till that point.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [11:55] Yeah. So, I'd love you maybe to unpack a little bit for us, Atul, some of the key learning that you went through that corporate life because, and you had the, at least the pleasure or maybe the survival also experience, as you said. To go through very different types of company, Adobe, Google, Samsung, InMobi, Infosys as well. By the way, I got Nandan On my show as well a couple of years ago. And we discussed also philanthropy, of course, not just tech.

Atul Satija [12:27] He's a role model, yes.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [12:28] Yeah, I think he's a role model, right, with his family as well. So what did each company, maybe particularly, and you should pick the ones that are still top of your mind, did you learn the most from in terms of leadership, in terms of actually execution, whatever, people? Tell me more about the way those learnings have really, have shaped you in who you are today, as a philanthropist actually, and as an operator In social entrepreneurship.

Atul Satija [12:59] Yeah. I think different jobs had very different flavors for me, JP. I distinctly remember, you always have this one manager, like you have one teacher, or this one, stint that, gave you the most opportunity, et cetera. In my case, I think the most, distinct memory of an awesome manager I have is from my Adobe days. This person is the one who said, "I know you have changed a lot of jobs, but looks like there is certain impatience in you to want to deliver results and getting bored easily. I will be challenged, by you to keep you excited and energized, but I hope you will deliver, a lot more than, what I'm used to seeing." He trusted me and called out, what I was not giving to my previous employers. And gave me a lot of trust and the space to operate well. I think it did really well in Adobe in those two and a half years. I was three weeks a month on the road traveling across the globe. And, I think I delivered, more than what I thought I will in my first job post B school.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [14:10] Huh.

Atul Satija [14:11] So it was a very fascinating stint for me. I think, he threw a challenge at me. He trusted me and called out the risk that he saw in me. And I was owning up to that risk that I had to deliver enough value to make sure that I live up to the expectation this person have of me, and that trust he has placed in me. Learned a few very important lessons there. I think my, second, piece of learning came in my Google stint. It was, five and a half years for me. And I think a part of what I loved at Google was the way Larry, Sergey, and the broader leadership team at Google, and then the culture of Google was about how they Thought about the problems. It was very first principles thinking. Normally you are used to saying this is how things happen here. This is how HR is done. This is how, sales targets are given. This is how you do reviews. But Google, for the first time I saw that they were just very comfortable in their skin with first principles thinking. Not looking left or right on how things were done before Google or in other companies. People do bring their learnings along But questioning them, comfortably in their face and expecting either a mature answer because people have tried those things, or questioning when it is not making sense, I learned at Google. I remember a conversation when I was in Mountain View on a trip. And, Sergey was there on the floor, and there was a general conversation about transportation. And somebody was showing frustration about the traffic in the Bay Area, and the conversation I was just like a fly on the wall just listening in because I just saw Sergey standing in a hallway Talking to someone, and there were like 10 people around him, me being one of them. I think the way he was just, thinking aloud about the problem, saying, "Okay, so, how much, usage do we see of, physical roads?" And somebody said, "Look, if you take nighttime, free time, and this and that, maybe less than 5% usage. Human beings don't know how to be responsive, so no VNOV velocity is between the cars." And suddenly he started thinking "Oh, okay. If we improve that, 3%, 4% usage of all surface area of roads globally, right, by X, you can, double the, the transportation efficiency worldwide." "What if humans weren't driving? What if, traffic was managed automatically through robots and not, these old school systems?" And I was, surprised at how people thought about a problem as straightforward as transportation. There's so much first principle that you're not afraid of digging a road network below the ground or in the air. And it was just a whole new conversation. I loved that. I think a lot of my ambition and first principles thinking came from instances Like that at Google that I distinctly remember. I think InMobi taught me entrepreneurship the most.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [17:15] Yeah. Entrepreneurship.

Atul Satija [17:16] I'd done very small stint here and there, but When I joined the InMobi founding team, we were a bunch of, first-time entrepreneurs, in India. Obviously, I was not a part of the founding team per se But a part of the leadership team that built the company. And I enjoyed the ambition part, which I think I brought in from Google myself. But I think the company was not afraid to do what was not done before in India. And seeing how to build a company from ground zero to ground one to ground two to ground three, and Keep leveling up every few years, was very interesting for me. I saw how we could build a global company out of India by Leveraging the ambition and the first principles And, solving problems along the way with keeping a talent bar very high and things like that. So a lot of my risk-taking Problem-solving comes from my experience and exposure at InMobi.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [18:21] No, I love it. Thanks. Thanks a lot for sharing and, that insightful journey. A follow-up question in InMobi because I think your title, your job was chief revenue officer, so bringing the revenue, the money in the bank. I happen to I used to be the head of global sales for Microsoft, so I can relate to that too. What did, what did it taught you in terms of, again, of, getting the money back to the company, being in front of customers every single day, of course, when it comes to philanthropy? Because I can also relate to that as I share with you for the last ten years as well. I create an NGO, I have a foundation as well as my family, a bit like you. And honestly, my experience is very humble. It's much harder even to get a ten thousand euros grant for philanthropy than selling a few billion dollars deals of Azure on Microsoft to customers. Do you have the same experience

Atul Satija [19:16] Of course

Jean-Philippe Courtois [19:16] As a former chief revenue officer as well?

Atul Satija [19:20] And it was fun actually. When I, joined InMobi, JP, we were mostly, Southeast Asia, India, Middle East mobile advertising network. And, soon after I joined, we got lucky. We got two hundred million dollars from SoftBank. And suddenly now you have to deploy that capital to scale the company that you have promised to your investors. And I think, what we realized when I when we quickly got this capital is that we can't play the game that we were playing earlier, which was in a constrained environment, you think in with constraints. A lot of our business was coming from scattered money from a Vietnam or, Philippines or some Indonesia or some, UAE. We could never play the game in the big leagues, say, in China or US. And the minute we got this two hundred million dollars, it was a very hard decision to say, "Should we be collecting a little bit money from " We were in Kenya, Nigeria South Africa, Southeast Asian countries. And the hardest decision for me minute after the money was to go to the founder and say, "Naveen, look, we can't be collecting, a small revenue from the countries that made sense for us yesterday." "But today, now, if we have to really scale the company, we can't ever be successful in these countries and still be successful as a company." "So if we want to succeed as a company, we have to let go of the countries where success still does not add up for our numbers going forward." "So let's just go and focus on US, UK and China

Jean-Philippe Courtois [20:57] Of course, the bigger opportunities

Atul Satija [20:58] And, start investing in that." So I think, building the right sales strategy for a global ecosystem with first principles was the first lesson. We had to make the hard calls to shut down many countries so that we can play the game in China, US and other big countries as well. I think it turned out to be really good decision like three years out But it was hellish to three years to justify every quarter that why are we earning At a much faster rate in countries that will give yield over a period of time.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [21:29] I'd love to ask you a question actually about did it break your heart to stop serving those countries because they were low-income countries?

Atul Satija [21:38] Actually, the hardest part is not to shut down the revenue in these countries because those are business calls. They come from a rational mind.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [21:44] The people, the customers.

Atul Satija [21:45] It is the people, right? There are customers who understand it was a rational decision, like we were giving them value, and they were buying value. But it is the people who trusted their careers and learning and growth

Jean-Philippe Courtois [21:56] Of course

Atul Satija [21:56] And years at InMobi, and then you shut down these countries. You can't move everybody to new countries. Some people did move, but, when we shut those countries down, there was obviously some people impact, in those geographies. That was the most difficult thing to do. Those are the only sleepless nights most leaders, including me, remember. Like there are Business difficulties that you have sleepless nights with, but they are Very they're just cortisol, right? Like it doesn't stay in your emotions later. - But these things stay with you, and that was the hardest part.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [22:31] For sure. Any analogy again you would draw from that, job as chief revenue officer and the way you raise money today, with philanthropy?

Atul Satija [22:44] I think more than the ways of doing things, JP, here versus my past corporate life, it is respecting that you have somebody who's paying, the bills or whatever you're choosing to do. At InMobi it was, employees' wealth creation, investors' wealth creation But you're providing value to a customer, and customer is paying for that. I think, respecting sales and fundraising as a first-class citizen was the biggest thing I carried very naturally into the nonprofit sector. I think here I've seen people wish they had a lot of capital to create impact, but people don't want to spend time and effort thinking about fundraising. Almost assuming that if you're doing good work, somebody should see and appreciate, and society should be able to place money on that work. Reality could not be further away, from this, wish. And if you don't treat fundraising and sales as your first-class citizen, it's, you're a stunt, right? So that was the biggest thing for us. It, bring that, bringing that discipline of treating fundraising as an important function came from day one of Naadi, and I think that helped Naadi in our journey.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [23:59] Yeah. We'll, we'll come back to that theme later on, Atul talking about the way to expand philanthropy, the way also to attract new type of philanthropies, but let's hold on that questions for now. So I think you said, "When I entered my thirties, I started volunteering with a nonprofit in Delhi, and I used to wait for the evenings and weekends to go spend time in communities, and that really told me my heart is on the grassroots, not In the corporate rate race, sorry. Rate race. So walk us through that period of time, and when did you first realize that volunteering was your real life, and that the day job, was actually a rehearsal for your next life?

Atul Satija [24:45] Yeah. It happened gradually for me, JP. I've seen a lot of people having a moment, right? Some difficult situation personally Realizing you have a cause now to care for because of situation at home, et cetera. For me, it was very gradual. I think this romantic notion of retiring and doing, social work Was there along the way, but it was like I'll do it in 60s. But I think as India did better than India thought, or my career did, better than I needed it to, et cetera, I think this notion slipped from I should do it post-retirement to saying, "Okay, why don't I make a transition at 50s, or can I do it in my 40s?" So when I turned 30, like an annual reflection window for all of us, new year break, Christmas break, et cetera I was "Okay, how should I be thinking about the next year or the next few years?" And it felt like I was cheating myself Like what I thought I will do at some point in time later I'm not making any, concrete work towards that. So I decided to take, my, year 31, to be the year where I start doing something And I started calling non-profit to say, "Look, can I just volunteer and learn?" I thought I'll use my 30s to learn. At some point in my 40s, I'll make a transition to the social sector. I think it I got very lucky that My random phone calls over a weekend landed me to a non-profit that was a few miles away from my house. They were very sincere and genuine people wanting to create change. It was a young organization. And I got to everything from finalizing their logo to the program design on the ground, to how to think about fundraising and writing their first deck. I was involved in that. And, good things happened

Jean-Philippe Courtois [26:38] And what was their mission? W sorry, what was their mission, Atul, just to give us some context?

Atul Satija [26:42] Well, the mission, the reason why it pulled me was it was very aligned to how I used to think about my volunteering. The organization's name was End Poverty. Very similar to what we do today.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [26:55] That's a big name.

Atul Satija [26:56] So I started working with them, and they used to work with, one of the poorest communities in India at the border of, two states in India close to Delhi. I think doing weekends with them gave me the sense that I was enjoying that work a lot more than I was enjoying my day job back then. And I also felt, that I was able to add value. Obviously the team said that, but I felt on the ground I was able to see the impact of my work. And feeling that I'm enjoying it and I'm useful, both gave me, the confidence and the inspiration that I needed to say, "Look, this could be a long-term game. This could be a full-time game." And, I think I was not ready back then to make a full-time switch. I finished my Google stint, joined InMobi, did five more years. But at InMobi, I was not able to continue the volunteering because I shifted cities for that.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [27:53] Of course.

Atul Satija [27:54] And it started biting me every year that I'm not doing, - Anything at all, even though I made a head start. InMobi finished the first S-curve, post we raised the initial round of capital, and I felt I was ready at the end of the first journey, to make the switch.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [28:11] To make the switch, to open a new, line of life. So I think just building what you said, Atul, I believe that before raising a single rupee or writing a single slide, you walked through more than 100 settlements across Bengaluru and Delhi, months of listening before actually months of building. You reminded me of a discussion with someone I'm sure you may know, Jeroo Billimoria, the founder of, Aflatoun and Child Helpline International, who told me her most important education came from sitting with street children in Mumbai. This is where she learned, and this is where she started building when she was actually a teenager, yes, in India, and she's a good friend of mine, by the way, still today. She's doing some wonderful work, with social entrepreneurs, across the world with catalysts and some other movements. So tell me more about, what did you learn, what did you hear in visiting those 100 settlements that changed your thinking about the way to go?

Atul Satija [29:13] I think a lot of my, on-ground learning came in the first six months of starting The/Nudge, when I spent time on the ground. I remember, two pieces very distinctly. One was, we would go there during the day, and have con nice conversations. People would say what they think we want to hear or what they, want to, superficially tell us and shoo us away with. And we thought that was, how listening happens. But I think one day accidentally it rained, we got stuck in the community, and It became dark, and in the nights we realized how community changes. When the life Of the community changes because people are back at home, husbands are back at home Women are there, kids are running around, and the life restarts in the evening, I think around the sunset to ten, eleven, or in the night. I think conversations then were, very different than what it used to be when we used to go in the mornings and evenings in our working day schedule. And, we got a lot more honest feedback that looked very different from what we were hearing during the days earlier.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [30:28] Of course.

Atul Satija [30:28] And I realized that you have to fit into their lifestyles, their routines, if you really want to make sense of the life in the communities. That was one big learning. The second one was specific incident actually. We used To, do English language coaching classes for domestic helps in Bangalore in one particular community as a pilot. More to learn. And one day I saw one of my regulars was missing, and I asked one of my, colleagues to say, "Hey," female colleague to say, "Can you go and check in on this lady who used to come every day?" And she goes to the house and comes back and says, "No, she's saying she can't come. Some problem." I said "No, let's go and see whether we can, insist and get her To the class." She did come to the class, but I saw that she was sitting in the class with the teacher in front, and I was standing at the back of the class. I saw that her neck had a big red patch. A burn patch. And after the class, I asked my colleague to ask her to stop And, have a conversation. And the story we heard, even when I tell right now it gives me goosebumps. She, basically told us that the course started midweek, and she has been Coming through the week. But on The weekend, husband would come every day in the evening partially drunk or too tired to have a conversation. So this Saturday when he was not working, - I told him that I started doing these English language classes in the evening, and I was Cooking lunch, in that informal settlement. So he took the same utensil I was cooking the lunch with, the, the, the cooker or the vessel, and put That burning vessel on my neck. Almost like saying, "How could you do that? Are you trying By learning English are you showing off that you are more qualified than me?" "What are you trying to do by learning English, and why did you not take my permission?" And, it was so heartbreaking to see that she was saying, "But of course the problem is mine, right? What harm would it have been if I Had just waited four days to take his permission and then do the course," as if everything was her problem still. And it, gave me this lesson very deeply that, look, there is a way communities work. It She's not saying, to be in the victim mode forever. She has seen her mom do it, her neighbors Do it, other, sisters do it. And the problem is the husband has also seen his fathers and uncles and neighbors respond the same way to the same situation. Rather than trying to judge the husband or the wife, it is more to understand where they come from. Make sense that you go spend time with the communities, understand their history Their mental models, and their way of, synthesizing what's happening around them, and then think about what solutions will make sense here if you want to improve whatever you are trying to improve. That was a second very distinct learning. I think the The third one, which is more an incident, is that when we started doing these fully residential training programs for girls The first ever student who said yes to come to a fully residential setup was a Muslim girl, - Who are otherwise conservative in sending their girls out in the communities We were working. She was a Polio patient, which means that she had, more difficulties in accessibility, et cetera, to use our facility. And she had seven, family members, five siblings And she was the only earning member.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [34:22] Oof.

Atul Satija [34:22] And she said, "Look, if I don't do it now, I know where my life's gonna go. If I Don't take this risk right now, my entire family's life is dependent on me, and if I don't build my own capabilities and make more money, there is no way I can solve this. So I take the risk and come." She was the first ever student who trusted us, - To come, and then everybody else followed, and that started with her as the first customer, you can say, who trusted us to give Her three months of her life. So So yeah, I think some of these things really, gave us a lot of, learnings and energy in the early days.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [34:58] No, thanks so much for sharing those, incredible stories, and I think j just like you, I'm always touched by those very special life that we have a chance to potentially change and have a positive impact on. And I think it's, it's, it's incredible to see the way see engraved in your memory the same way I have as well with some people I tried to support through the NGO because, it's fresh on my mind on the way. Those people have grown and, have become actually as well ambassadors and role models in their communities. I think it's always a wonderful sentiment. This is why I think giving is so, such a great, such a great, I would say addition to anyone's life, right? I think you are Yeah, no, I'm not, I'm not going to convince you because you are already pretty much convinced. So I'd love to come back to some of the programs you put together, Atul. I think one of the first one was the Gurukul, which was one of the The/Nudge first program. 90 days of life skills, learning skills, job skills, and the first cohort of 45 students graduated with 100% job placement. And I think actually back to one of our common friends, Nandan Ni Nilekani, gave you a first major grant of $200,000. So can you tell us more about that story? And again, the moments where you basically confirmed that it was your life now. It was not going to be just a, discovery. You are into that life fully.

Atul Satija [36:37] Yeah. I think a part of me, JP, knew when I was, moving into post-corporate sector, starting, spending time in the social that I'm making this transition to purposeful work for life. I was not wedded, and I'm still not wedded to the entity and the structure, and, you can keep evolving the ways in which you do meaningful work. But in some ways I knew. But it is not real, right, till it takes a shape and form that has roots. And I think, Nandan was the first person who came on board and said obviously, he was an informal advisor to InMobi. So he had a little bit, seen the work. Plus one of our board members knew Nandan. He connected. I spent some probably an hour with Nandan explaining what I was trying to do, and he said, "Oh, okay. Sounds exciting. Looks like you have a unique thesis and you believe in it, so And I know, you will make something out of it, so I'm happy to write the first check." And I think with him, - Tata Trusts came as the second organization. Very philanthropic. Again, it came through some references, et cetera. And they looked at our plan and the work, and they said, "This makes sense. Some well-meaning people are trying to do this with some capabilities in their, kitty, so let's support them." I think the minute we had Nandan and Tata support come in, some other corporates came on board, et cetera, as well, and we knew that, look, this shape and form is also going to stay, and it makes sense to go deep in and build the organization as you would in any other, avatar of your work life. And, yeah, The/Nudge was born, and, we take a we took a medium-term commitment saying that, okay, let's just build this organization with the impact we want to create At any level. Yes. Since, yeah.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [38:27] No, that's great. That's great to have such support early on as well. So I think today the The/Nudge works across rural development, skill development, social innovation, right? Partnering with incredible institutions, the Gates Foundation, Rockefeller, Skoll, Tata Trusts, and fifteen Indian government's ministries as well. And Asha Kiran aims to lift five hundred thousand households out of poverty, right? So for int for our international listeners, because many listeners are living all across the world. That will actually not just in Europe, in US, everywhere, in Africa, in India as well, there are quite many. What does poverty look like in rural Uttar Pradesh? And what makes, again, the graduation approach pioneered by BRAC in Bangladesh the right model to scale?

Atul Satija [39:13] Yeah. So JP, if you look at, the poorest of the poor in India, but also in Africa and other parts of the world. See, usually, in most of these communities, for the poorest of the poor, what it looks like is that you are living with food insecurity, which means You don't have confidence of two meals a day throughout the year. You have to, earn that livelihood every day, and there could be periods throughout the year that you don't have enough food. Kids are stunted, et cetera, et cetera. In most of these places, you also saw that lack of dignity, is visible, which means They are choosing to do work that they wouldn't do if they ever had a choice. Either they are making illicit country liquor and selling in local markets Or these are distressed migrants going to, urban centers to carry bricks on their head into, - Clay on their head to make bricks. These are nomadic communities. These are people who are voluntarily doing sewage cleaning, for example. So lots of communities like that. In our communities that we work with in parts of UP, parts of Jharkhand, other places, these are families Who live on three hundred dollars a year Of annual income for a family of five or six.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [40:36] Oof.

Atul Satija [40:37] Right? Which means that, other than food security, you always are either permanently in debt, you have no money for your kids' education, supplementation beyond whatever they get in a government school, if at all they have access to that. There is no emergency capital for a health shock, if at all. And we know that one-third of the poor who come out of poverty fall back into poverty because of a health shock. So this is the reality of, the families that we work with. We discovered in two thousand eighteen, nineteen, JP, that what BRAC had done was quite powerful. And not just BRAC A lot of organizations started copying that.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [41:16] Sorry to interrupt you. Just for our listeners, could you, could you just, explain a little bit more what BRAC is, actually stands for?

Atul Satija [41:24] Yeah. BRAC is a Bangladesh Resource Action Committee. It's one of the largest operating nonprofits across the globe. And they were born when the country was created, - To solve for community help during the times of, - The country went through a lot of, upheaval during the partition time. And they have been doing lot of development work over years. They obviously did a lot of work on microfinance and scaled it, just like Muhammad Yunus, talked about it. And they've been very successful organization. I think one of the things, that global development community started piloting, with some pilots coming from BRAC, is that when families are not able to access credit, how do you take families in extreme poverty to a point where market credit can support them? You need grant models to build that, either social protection from government Like government giving money to poor through universal basic income and things like that Or you create models to build your capacity, so very Poor families can get to a point of poverty where credits can come, and they can Then make money from money. So this model called the graduation approach was working in many countries with lot Of evidence. Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Michael Kremer got their Nobel, and many of their RCTs were done on graduation approach. When we saw that, look, there is a solution that works Has a lot of evidence, but for some reason it is not scaling anywhere. We thought we should try it out, see whether it works in India in our context, and if yes, we will see whether we can scale it. And what happened, JP, was very interesting. We tried this on ground pilots in India. And fortunately, we saw very good results. 92 Percent of the 1,300 or so families we started with graduated. People stopped migrating, income Doubled, savings Tripled, credit started Assets grew. In a way, families came out of extreme poverty, if you were to use that loose definition of the term. But I think we were scratching our heads saying, "How do you scale it? If something works, why can't have all extreme poor in the world put on poverty graduation pathway," right? It is not an extensive program, and you see the depth of impact it creates per household and per household family member. And we realized that there were certain challenges. The budget that it requires, the global aid is not large enough to solve for it. Governments in poor countries don't have that money. And the implementing infrastructure at large scale is not created globally for this, and NGOs are not the right channel to scale it. But India was in a very unique place. Indian government has the budget that African governments individually may not, and we realized that India had built a rural development infrastructure very uniquely that could Implement this in India. There are points at which it is broken, et cetera, et cetera But with some support And capacity, government has done a brilliant job building this infrastructure. So we thought, look, what if we were able to convince government By showing this program to say put money, and can we get this rural development infrastructure to implement it as quasi-government anyway? And the good thing is that over the last four or five years of we trying it, BRAC trying it J-PAL, Abhijit Banerjee's organization Trying it, I think Indian governments have collectively now allocated around 700, $750 million already for poverty graduation. Which is almost good enough for a million households. We're discussing two New Zealands, right? 5 million people.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [45:13] Yeah. It's, it's, it's pretty amazing. C can you share with our listeners, Atul, the, the investment, I would call I'm calling that the philanthropic investment or a generous investment. How much does it cost to actually elevate a person out of poverty through this pro Through that program?

Atul Satija [45:37] I think it varies, by context and geography, JP, but roughly You would say the average per household spending required to do this is around 600 to $700.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [45:49] That's it.

Atul Satija [45:49] Over three years. It's a one-time investment to a family to do this. Obviously, there is a technical assistance cost that nonprofits like us and others have to incur. Some evidence, little bit of RCTs and other cost involved as well. So if you say $800 per household or so is a good enough cumulative number to do this on an average.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [46:18] It's amazing. It's amazing. I think, -

Atul Satija [46:19] And if you just add up the numbers, yeah. It's very possible.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [46:22] No, it's amazing, and I think as many of our listeners, I know, for a fact actually love to give to some NGOs. I think it's, it's a wonderful reminder of that you have some proven programs like this one which can truly, make such a huge difference for millions of people in the world actually, - Because they are well executed, well-known, well-designed. This is a well-scale problem as well, and that's why I loved you to tell this story actually, Atul. Now let's continue. I think in 2017, you met Venkat Krishnan in Seattle, a city I know well, I love well, obviously because of my former employer there. And, Venkat is the founder of GiveIndia. He choose you as his successor, and together you created the title Founder 2.0, keeping the lineage visible, giving credit where it was due. Tell us about Venkat, about that connection, that friendship I'm sure, and what leader was he, and what did it feel like to step into an organization 17 years old and deeply loved as well?

Atul Satija [47:34] Yes. So JP, there is a little bit of a backstory to this. In The/Nudge When we started, we realized that talent and capital are going to be our two biggest challenges to create impact at scale. For talent, we had started a nonprofit incubator, accelerator through our own work, and we had actually created a new initiative within The/Nudge called Goodwill, which is where goodness happens. Where the Idea was that we will create a giving platform. And it had already started when I met Venkat in Seattle, and I was actually asking him advice on what would he tell me, where somebody is trying to create a new platform as a part of The/Nudge. And he said While he obviously generously gave his learnings of 17 years on how, GiveIndia has evolved over years, what it tried, what worked, what didn't work. But at the end, both of us are scratching our head saying, "Look, GiveIndia has done so much," right? You don't know from outside, but you listen to this guy and he's just so awesome. He has tried All the amazing things. He's built such a respectful institution. It already has the capital resources required to create impact, and he had, after he left Many years of instability of GiveIndia with change in leadership, no long-term stability And he was looking on who will take this organization to its 2.0 journey. And I was creating a new baby, and I think it naturally led to a point where we started having this conversation saying, "But why create a new entity?" Right?

Jean-Philippe Courtois [49:10] I see.

Atul Satija [49:11] Why don't you take this and build on it?

Jean-Philippe Courtois [49:13] Bring it together.

Atul Satija [49:13] Obviously, he put certain conditions on me to say, "Look, this entity Already exists. First one year, two years, don't change anything. Listen understand, absorb the history, and start Creating an impact. And over time, do whatever you want to do with the board, the entity, and whatever." And I also said that, "Okay, here are the things I am signing off for, which are different than what I would do on my own. But here is The value that I get. I get a respected institution, a great brand, lot of learning, - And an awesome set of advisors, mentors, and capital that was available within GiveIndia to do this." So we had a few people who were, about to support the goodwill entity, including Nandan and his wife Rohini, who were coming in as investors in that, Gate, Saumitra and others. All of them Actually transitioned to GiveIndia and said, "Okay, we'll give you capital there. You take this-" "pool of capital and build a new organization within GiveIndia, and let's see where that goes." So that was the

Jean-Philippe Courtois [50:15] Well, that's a wonderful story. I wish there were many, such successions happening actually across, - Foundations and donations platform as well. I think you said that Venkat's most enduring gift at all was a value instill from day one, sacrifice. Give till it hurts I think you said, right? So what does that phrase look like in your life and your own leadership motto?

Atul Satija [50:46] Yeah. I think it's a very, good and deep question, JP, so thanks for asking that. It's a very controversial one as well. There is a point of view to say, "Why do you have to live in poverty to solve for poverty?" I know it's a more extreme comment, but why should you have to experience pain to solve for somebody else's pain? And I think in Venkat's ways, it is, if you're giving what does not change anything in your life, then it is not really giving. It's, - almost, you're buying something with some extra money, right? A candy You don't need, or a meal you don't need, or food that you waste. There is value in that, but it's easier to waste than to recycle. So in his mind, only when you start to cut the fat, when it starts to touch the muscles and lead you to the bone Is when - That it's actually starting to hurt you, and you're sacrificing something to do that. And then it is very personal to you, then it is very deep to you, and that you will do it because it has a meaning beyond, the superficial feel good of it Et cetera, et cetera. That's like an external run. So a lot of Give's philosophy was that, we should ourselves preach what we are telling our philanthropists to do. If our Philanthropists are not giving till it hurts, right, then it is not much, and it actually is supported by data. Every time we looked at data of who gives the most and who Gives till what point, we saw that the poorer the communities, the more they give In, in proportionate terms to their wealth. And it goes back to the earlier point we discussed that, poorer communities are more interdependent, so they see That by sharing is how you live. And, the wealthier you go, the less percentage of your median or mean wealth you give, and it was visible in all data that we analyzed of all of our platform givers over decades. So he used to preach That a lot, and for personally I like that value for myself, that if I don't take, say, a giving pledge, I have no right To preach it. If I don't know, how to sacrifice pieces of my lifetime, the choices that I make, - Then it is not, Like I don't have a right to ask for others to give, especially when it hurts, what they would do Otherwise with that money.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [53:15] I love it. It's such a, such a powerful statement, powerful actually life, signature in many ways. I think that tells a lot about you, Atul. So thanks a lot for giving us more colors around that statement. Now, let's, bring us back to a year that has been super painful across the world, particularly in India, when COVID hit India in 2020, right? And g at the time, GiveIndia raised $85 million under your leadership as migrant workers worked home, hospitals collapsed, and families shattered. I remember that because I was still working at Microsoft, and we had a incredible, support and community from our employees across the country to mobilize and try to help out the country, which was really, - Deeply touched. Can you take us back to those weeks, and what was your operating reality, and how did you decide what to do first when everything was urgent, everything was collapsing, right, in the country?

Atul Satija [54:18] Yeah, like you said, it was, a window in almost everybody's life like no other. Anybody that had The unfortunate window to, see that, phase. I think for us it happened that, when Indian government announced the shutdown, 20th, 21st of March 2020. I got a ping from Venkat on that weekend saying, "Atul, a lot of migrants don't know what to do in shutdown. Why don't we create some campaign?" And, - The same day, somebody from Gates Foundation, a good friend now called Arnav pinged me saying "Atul, are you thinking of something?" Internally we knew we have to start, but we had no clue what to do. Where we could be useful beyond saying, "We'll go on the website, put a banner saying, 'Look, if you want to contribute, we'll do it. We'll talk to a few NGOs who are doing work on the ground, and we'll channelize the resources Where they will make the most impact.'" But I think we took a step back, and within 24, 4 hours of these two people pinging me The gravity of the situation hit us as we did some internal whiteboarding. And we realized that the approach that we normally take as giving platforms will not work here. Because people don't know what to do with the capital that easily. Everybody probably has a desire to contribute, and everyone is impacted, not just the poorer segments of society. So, we took a couple of days. We were actually behind other players in that, and we said, "Why don't we set up a group of people who know what it means?" So we very quickly set up what we called later India COVID Response Fund, ICRF. And we invited people from, biopharma industry. We invited People from the hospital, doctors. We invited people from the distribution networks that large scale banks have and FMCG has. We invited a few people from the celebrity networks we knew how to lend their voice As you reach to communities. And we reached out to a couple of big philanthropists to come on board as well. And I was surprised that the people that we otherwise would not have easy access to, everyone very quickly said yes, whether it is Indra Nooyi or Vinod Khosla, later Sundar Pichai, Jai Shetty from US, and a lot of people like that From India. Everybody Came on board and said, "What can we do?" And I think, very interestingly, we put an advisory board together. We started figuring out, saying that, "Oh, okay, now we need to provide PPE kits,", and, let us say Little bit of the Screening services. Over time It became vaccination service. It became oxygen plants Oxygen concentrators. It became vaccination support, community screening. It became behavior change. It became Setting up labs, including setting Up a hospital on the fly in UP. All of that Happened in that period of one and a half years.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [57:26] Huh.

Atul Satija [57:26] And, we saw the most generosity ever from humanity in that window. We also saw the most volunteering and giving energy on the ground with people risking themselves in the service

Jean-Philippe Courtois [57:42] Yes, their lives

Atul Satija [57:42] Of others. We saw, yeah, it was just incredible, how we saw all dimensions of, capital, implementation Brainstorming, strategy, partnerships. Everything came together to allow us to deliver. We would've spent around $125 million or so all put together for COVID response Over one and a half years. And, it was, incredible. I remember In particular, Vinod Khosla sending, a tweet saying, "I want to send-" I think it's, it read something "I want to send plane loads of oxygen to India given so many people are dying." "Why isn't somebody reaching out to do this?" And I quickly messaged him because I was connected to him earlier saying, "Vinod This is exactly what we are trying to do. How much can you support with?" And he said, "Okay, I'll ping people in my ecosystem. As much as you can spend, don't worry about money. Just save as many lives as you can." And I remember every night at my 2:00 AM or 3:00 AM or at some random time, I would get a message From him. Obviously, it was 24 by 7 for us. He would call We'll get on a call, and he would say, "Atul, what did we do today?" And I would tell him "We ordered, these were 20 plants from this country, or these were the oxygen concentrator." "We suddenly found a supply from Hungary or China or wherever." And he said, "Okay, why did you not buy more?" And I said, "Supply issue." But sometimes I would say that, "Look, I'm still waiting for a budget commitment to come." He said, "Look, I told you, please spend as fast as you can." And he had to remind me for three days before I felt the comfort to spend tens of millions Of dollars, ASAP to save more lives. So it was incredible.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [59:38] Yeah. No, it was a, that was an amazing time everywhere in the world. I remember that as well in my home country, Atul. And, but you just used one word that also keeps coming my to my mind. Was it just a window? Meaning, do you think that the pandemic permanently shifted the country's relationship to philanthropy giving, or not really? Or did we just came back to the a previous world? What do you think?

Atul Satija [60:07] Unfortunately, I think it is closer to the latter than the former.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [60:11] Huh.

Atul Satija [60:12] We see that every time that every time people are able to see somebody's pain in front of them They respond or they become thick-skinned over time. There are more people who want to respond. Every time there is a disaster, giving massively shoots up, and the disaster is over, and we get busy with the other things that, occupy our lives, I'm sure for individuals, that window in which they contributed will remain a lifetime memory. But I don't think unless it becomes front and center or a country culture or a city culture, it's easy to give people, opportunities to contribute, volunteer, live meaningfully, on an Ongoing basis. So unfortunately, I think that Budget-wise, we know that, the budgets that went up during COVID in philanthropy and giving came down. Have they exactly Come down to where it started? Probably not. There is a little bit of a Permanent bump you see. But it is nowhere close to what you would want it to be Or what we saw during COVID. And I think that's a hard problem to solve. Many people have tried that. China has done a very good job in creating, - A 1 cent donation culture on their, WhatsApp-like platforms. I think outside WeChat and Tencent and some of these companies globally, we saw Facebook launch birthday fundraisers that built Community giving culture, or GoFundMe did obviously very successfully in their journey. We don't have too many examples of this being a part of our daily lives, and I think that's an unsolved problem still for humanity on how do you make Everyday generosity, a reality Everywhere.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [62:01] I agree with you. This is also my own experience actually in France and the way it worked during the pandemic and the way it works today and the way you need to, again, restart the motion all over again. Now, I'd like to dig down a bit in the way you operate in India too because I think there's many learning as well. In my own experience with many social entrepreneurs over the past 15 years, with my foundation, NGO, but also as a, as an investor to impact entrepreneurs as well, I would say that most social entrepreneurs, don't see necessarily gov government, as partners. They see them as, pretty often as an obstacle, although they are trying to get money from them, but governments have less and less money to give away, by the way, to foundations and to NGOs. And I think you see it very differently i in India. You see it as the only true partners to scale. You've been doing that with 15 more ministries, co-designing ASHA Kiran with UP's Rural L Liv Livelihoods Mission. So can you tell us why government, what did you understand early that the others maybe are missing, and how do you keep momentum when we all know that political cycles change, every couple of years, right, in every country in the world? How does it work? How do you make it sticky, valuable, and scalable in India?

Atul Satija [63:19] Yeah. So, JP, a few very interesting things we learned in our journey. One which is very obvious is that I don't want to send the signal to people listening that fighting with government is not a good choice. That is a good choice, at times If you think about the cause very deeply And activism is the only way to get government to pay attention, right To information, right to work, right to education. So many laws have come where our activists across the globe have tried to show the mirror to the powers, and Through that approach, gotten big change done. Obviously, there are certain problems you can solve that way, right? And there are certain people who have problems of the kind that is their approach And they do it that way, and I really respect it. They have given us the space we have today in the country. But for the work that we do, which is economic opportunities for everyone, livelihoods for everyone The way to think about philanthropy, that I learned over a period of time, a and this is, one of the conversations I had with the founder of GiveIndia, Venkat Where he explained this analogy of a jar saying, if a jar is a jar of social need, government are The big rocks that fill it. Foundations are the pebbles that fill the remaining space, and nonprofits

Jean-Philippe Courtois [64:48] Huh

Atul Satija [64:48] Are the grains of sand that fill the Remaining space left over. And I think for a while I appreciated that analogy, but I realized that, look, filling the gaps is only one way to do it. If my daughter is an orphan tomorrow with no resources, I want an orphanage. I don't want to solve why kids become orphans, right? I want an orphanage for her, and there is space for and need for value in itself philanthropy. Set up orphanages Private schools for low income, et cetera, et cetera. Do cataract surgeries, feed people who are hungry, and all that. But I think there is also another way to do that, which is to say that how can Government has more resources available than they are using. It is not a finite pool. Social need is finite, but resources Of government are not finite. If I just shape the government rocks better, they will Fill a lot more space in the jar than they will without their, call it, shaped into, - A fashion where they can fill most of the need and, it will need less pebbles and less grains of sand then. And I think over time I realized that a lot of systems change work is about how do you change these government rocks in a manner That they fill more and more of the social need. If government schools are better, you don't need Low-income private schools, and that model Will never be as effective as if you have a good quality, - Public education or public healthcare system. And I think in the work that we do, we realize that the best way to scale our impact for the People in the country is by improving systems that deliver jobs and livelihoods and the outcomes Of that to the people. So knowing that in India we are at a stage where our government capacity is not where it was twenty years back We have physical access, digital access, financial access, and social Access to people, and Government has resources. You don't want to create a parallel railroad system. You want wherever it is broken to fix that so that you can run Bigger trains on the same infra.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [67:00] No, I must say

Atul Satija [67:00] With which we work

Jean-Philippe Courtois [67:02] Yeah, no, it's, it's very exciting because something I discussed also with Nandan on the podcast here, actually a couple of years ago, because as really well, he was, the architect of the Aadhaar system in India, of the full ID digitalization of the country where In a way, I think you You really create a real identity for those hundreds of millions of people who are ignored, right, in your country by being able to direct resources digitally to them one by one One family at a time, which is so powerful. And, and so I think it's, it tells a lesson. And listening to you, I love the story of the jar and the rocks. It looks like you are shaping policies like you are shaping rocks. Is that the case? You are basically the influencer, behind the jar to make sure that the rocks are well-polished and prepared to fill the jar and to fill the needs of the nation.

Atul Satija [68:01] Exactly. I think there are two, three ways to shape the shape the rocks, right? See, one is to basically do the policy advocacy, policy consultations, research, work table, round tables Workshops, et cetera, where you're informing government of what you have learned, so they have all the information to make better decisions. That is one part of it, right? That can be done through field visits, exposures, round tables, consultations, giving more and more evidence. I think the second part in which you can do that is also being technical assistance partners to the government Not by being their vendors, taking their money, but raising money independently through philanthropy to say, "Look How can we come in a non-financial basis and take The problems that you already care about and show, based on other organizations' work in the communities, what could be A good choice set for you?" And I've realized that there are way more, hardworking, sincere, smart people in government, - Than we think there are, and I've always been blown away with not just how intellectually smart, curious they are, but very grounded. They just grasp Things that work on the ground very quickly. So just by exposing them to a little bit more of the impact radiation changes things materially. And I think that's created us, as good partners of the government, and we have seen more and more, open up to say, "Okay, why don't we partner? Tell us what You are learning or seeing that we are not, and, if it works Then we'd love to adopt and implement."

Jean-Philippe Courtois [69:45] So thanks so much for sharing. It's like almost like a master class on, partnering with government, as an NGO in a country, because that's not easy for sure. Now, I'd like to shift gears and dig into, something pretty big and very significant you've done, you're doing. In 2023, you and your wife, Gagandeep, signed the Living My Promise pledge, giving 50% of your net worth to philanthropy. In a country, I think, where high net worth individuals give around 3% versus 9% in the US, just to give our listeners some proxy. So you made that pledge personally and publicly. Why, and what was the conversation l at home with your wife when you decided 50% was your number, half of your net worth? Tell us more about that conversation.

Atul Satija [70:35] So, I think in our case what happened was very interesting. Venkat of GiveIndia had moved out of GiveIndia in 2008, '9 and found a successor CEO. And, he started getting very enamored with this idea that why should giving be done by an organization or an institution like GiveIndia? It should be Celebrated like festivals, right? You celebrate Religion. You celebrate, history. You celebrate special milestones in a country's journey, et cetera. Just like you celebrate a Christmas or an Eid or a Diwali or whatever, why don't we have a giving day celebration? You have Independence Day. You have Children's Day. Why don't we have A giving day? So he started celebrating what was called the Joy of Giving Week, which then Later changed its name to Dan Utsav, which basically translates, the same thing in Hindi. So Venkat started promoting that for a long period of time, and as giving pledge scaled, he thought that these billionaires are taking giving pledges, but we have seen normal people give a lot more anyway. So how do we also spotlight a normal person's giving? They may not have a billion to give away, but we already Know they give larger. And he didn't have a number in mind, so he and some other volunteers said, "Okay, why don't we put 50%? We are okay to do it. I'm sure many other People will. At a minimum, we will beat giving pledge to their numbers with normal people Giving more than 50% to, inspire and nudge people to give more and more." So obviously, it happened actually in a very public forum. He was in GiveIndia. I invited him. He was in Bangalore. He came to the GiveIndia team And we were doing a company all-hands. And in an all-hands, while giving talk to my, GiveIndia team members, he started saying, "Oh, I'm very excited about this idea of Living My Promise. A couple of us are discussing. It sounds like a great idea. I'm gonna do it." And he asked me, "Atul, are you gonna do it?" And I said, "Of course." "I'm super happy to." it's not even a question Because I don't think the amount even mattered. 50% is just a number. If he had asked for More, I would've said more, but he said y this And I said yes. And I was "I have to go back and check,", at home. And, I think it was a very matter-of-factly conversation because I was already In the social sector for four, five years by then.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [73:05] Of course.

Atul Satija [73:05] As a family We had already done enough of internal maths on how we live our life. We knew The resources will be more than what we need to live our lives, and I don't think it was a question in my head that, -, it's going to be a real commitment. It was, more like this is What Venkat said. He said, "Of course,". It is what it is

Jean-Philippe Courtois [73:27] And how many peop how many people have followed your paths now in India?

Atul Satija [73:32] I think the Living My Promise is already at par. I think it's around 140 people or so. It's already at par, like 157 or so for the giving pledge. So it's very close to that number now, yeah.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [73:45] Nice. Nice to see that movement going. So, what you're describing actually, Atul, and the way you talk about, again, philanthropy, about giving, about, social action as well, reminds me a discussion I had with Bill Drayton that I'm sure, the founder of Ashoka, which w I had on the podcast, a wonderful, man. And he said, "The first thing a change maker must do is give themselves permission because most of us are told no all of our lives, and the great ones stop listenings, actually." So you made a strategic bet that social entrepreneurship will become the next aspirational career, I think, for Indian youth. So with AI reshaping everything in the world right now, including in India, I know for What makes you believe this generation will be different?

Atul Satija [74:39] I think there are, multiple forces at play, JP. One is the opportunity of AI, not for our upper-middle class, which has obviously, thanks to the IT movement and startup movement Had a very good few decades in India. But for everybody else in India, AI can only contribute to better quality of life. For a smallholder farmer, for a government school teacher, for a construction worker, for a farm laborer For a single unwed mother in Meghalaya. If you look at all the, s like for a very young, poor young person, let us say in Bihar or Chhattisgarh Wherever, there is nothing AI can take away because they have very little. AI can only increase their productivity. Create opportunities that they can get to which otherwise they were not able to get to. Kids will be able to learn better at lower cost. Public health will be available at much lower cost in a much easier fashion. Maybe not tertiary health. I'm assuming tertiary health Costs will also come down, access will increase. But primary health Telehealth, a lot of basic symptoms, AI will be able to solve for it. Preventive Healthcare will improve a lot with AI. - Not just vaccines, but, genome sequencing. So many other things will become at a very low Cost where you already know what to solve for in what population segments. And hence, I'm very optimistic that when you can solve problems, - For a very large population with AI, you will see plethora of solutions come up. The question is You could argue that, look, but where are the market models to make money on this? The reality is that Indian airports, Indian railways, Indian shipping, Indian highways All the infrastructure is already being set up with public money That make markets viable, whether it is an Indian profitable airline or an Indian Profitable company that is providing services To defense or to everything. There are, very large amount of for-profit markets viable on public money. And I think the minute government is able to leverage a portion of that capital to make markets Viable, - Using AI for large communities, change will happen much faster.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [77:05] Huh.

Atul Satija [77:07] We are already seeing that young people are inspired by meaningful problems. It is just that they don't understand this is possible, and markets aren't yet there. So with the UPI and Aadhaar, with roads being available, with Jan Dhan And Aadhaar and UPI, where financial bank accounts and access is available, I think markets Are already viable at the last mile today, which wasn't the case a decade back in India.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [77:34] I get you.

Atul Satija [77:35] So we'll see more and more entrepreneurs solving these problems using AI.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [77:39] Yeah. Yeah, so you are basically optimistic about AI being a lever or an accelerator to gain social innovation in the hands of use, i in India. Atul, I want to elevate the conversation from what you built to why you believe it's possible at all. On this show again a couple of years ago, I had someone you may know, Jacqueline Novogratz. She is the founder of Acumen

Atul Satija [78:05] Of course

Jean-Philippe Courtois [78:05] Of what is called a passions, passion capitalism, and she shared a concept I've not stopped thinking about, the moral revolution. She actually wrote a book about that, and she says, "Poverty persists not because we lack resources, but because we have not decided that every human life has equal worth. The revolution begins when one person stands on the side of dignity, recognizing that a person across every divide carries the same dreams, the same rights to a life well-lived." She calls this, again, the moral imagination, and she speaks of a moral revolution, a shift in how we see each others across poverty divides. So do you believe India is in the middle of that revolution, that moral revolution? In a way, do you feel it is stalling?

Atul Satija [78:56] I think it's an important question. I see, the forces, in opposite directions, JP. I see that a very large part of India has just learned in the last decade to this possibility that they can have wealth And not just a life of basic means, and I'm seeing more and more people, carrying, the, the confidence of Western economies that India will be a wealthy country, and we'll all get to make the first-generation wealth that we could never do In the last seven, eight, nine generations. Maybe a bit more. And hence you see a large part of India, very similar to my first decades of my life, to say, "How do you make wealth enough to have a comfortable life for yourself and the next few generations," right? And I think it's very hard to argue, and, inspire people in that mindset to think differently At this stage. India is just starting to get there. I think the opposite force I see is that government of India, we are the only large country with a lot of poor people. Most large countries are non-poor. - Or you have poor countries with poor people. We are like this country in between, where you have a lot of poor and you have a lot of money. And I think it puts a lot of burden on the government and the public systems to say, "How do you come and create the boundary conditions in which capitalism survives well?" Hoping that the moral anchoring of businesses in India will happen from inside out, I think is Unlikely to happen, as much as I may wish it happens. Earlier we had a lot of, role models like Jamsetji Tata saying the very purpose of business is to serve society. I don't think that's how businesses in India today think, and the global role models are shrinking more and more. - And these examples and stories are probably more side actors than the mainstream narrative in India and the rest of the world. There is more xenophobia. There is more how do you save the country. Geopolitics has become hard. People are becoming More, not self-centered, but more how do you protect your interest over others. We are not saying An African life is same as an Indian life is the same as an American life from our own respective Vantage points. So as much as I want this to happen It's unlikely this will happen. But I think what is possible is to say what is it that you can do by influencing the highest leverage points, which is policy and government, to create The boundaries of doing business that are actually not extractive, but Constructing. Like corporate social Responsibility did more to philanthropy than philanthropy Did to philanthropy. We get $4 Billion a year of impact capital, - Every year because of a policy Change. Similarly, if you put environmental norms, the cost of water in doing agriculture that everybody uses The cost of soil degradation in all agricultural companies Who create products that impact soil The cost of, degrading the air for companies who have emissions. I think Creating more and more of policy infrastructure to make businesses run as conscious capitalism driven by the Government, I feel is the highest leverage, opportunity for change for the next few decades, definitely in India, maybe even globally.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [82:44] Yes. Love it. Atul, when, I think when you were born in the mid-'70s, more than half of India lived in extreme poverty. Life expectancy was around 50. Famine was a recent memory. What followed is one of history's most remarkable development stories. I must say, I've been to India for the last 30 years of my life, and, and I've been amazed about to see actually 400 million people lifted out of poverty. E life expectancy growing up To more than 70, child mortality down 80%, and India is now the world's fifth-largest economy as well, by the way. So it's not just about The societies, but the economy as well and the strengths. And yet, NITI Aayog still counted 230 million Indians as, poor in 2021, and India has the world's largest population of stunted children still today, and inequality that accompany growth means the distance between India's billionaires and its bottom 300 million has widened as well. So in a way, the glass is half full and half empty, right, in terms of progress, and yet so much to be done. So if you were in the seat of Narendra Modi, okay, at the top of the government, what would you do specifically to finish the job of eradicating extreme poverty within a generation? What would be your top three measures that you'll take immediately in power?

Atul Satija [84:21] Wow, that's a big question.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [84:23] It's a big question. Yes.

Atul Satija [84:25] And a hard one to answer. It's very hard to imagine running a democracy Of over a half billion people and focus. I think two, three things come to mind, for sure, JP. One is it is not that the solutions to poverty are unknown. It's the ability To negotiate priorities to attend to that. And I think the number one thing would be how do you create incentive systems in bureaucracy In particular to attend to the problems, in a little bit more meritocratic and less bureaucratic manner? We have really smart people who work insanely hard already. The incentive systems for them are to not take risks and to not do, stuff that works, because if it comes at the cost of risk, 20 years later, they will be put to audits that, they don't want to take the risk of today. So thinking hard about creating more and more, higher risk profile and more safety nets For the government to act well in the interest of the public is the one big thing I would think about. The second is, the fiscal, space Today has been taken away in our politics. I don't have to run politics for the next 30 years Even if I'm in his shoes like you're saying. So I take the liberty That politicians don't have because they have to build a career in politics. I don't. I think the fiscal design to Go away from cash transfers and subsidies To development solutions that work, and we discussed poverty graduation as one small example Of that. Vaccines, public health, public education, - Focusing on things that work and creating fiscal space for that, even if India Has to increase its, take more debt, I think India has space for that. That would be the right direction to take. A lot of India's agriculture budget, for example, goes in farm loan waivers and fertilizer subsidies. If you're subsidizing all agrochemicals, you will never have soil sorted or water sorted. So a large part of India's work is incentives with how government is running, and Focusing on development solutions that already work, taking budget away from, pure subsidies and cash transfers that have increased in the interest of winning elections in the last five years in India. These are two big sort Of, - Broad stroke things that work, and obviously there is a lot more in the designs of, in each one of these

Jean-Philippe Courtois [87:15] No, love

Atul Satija [87:15] Development spaces.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [87:16] Love it, and thanks for taking a shot at being, muddy at least for a couple of minutes.

Atul Satija [87:21] Easier, - Hat to wear when you have to just dream about it, yeah.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [87:26] For sure. For sure. Still I loved it. So my last couple of questions, Atul, because fortunately the time is moving very fast, and it was an incredible discussion. I'd love to ask you a couple of question about your leadership and positive leadership, which is, as, the core of this conversation we have. I think you are, and this, dialogue we're having together i is a good illustration of that. You are an unusually quiet leader. You don't do, tons of keynotes everywhere in the world. You don't publicize necessarily, tons of things you do. Of course you talk about some of the impact you're having to get some more resources, which makes a lot of sense, and you give credit cons con cons constantly actually to others, and you built an organization of enormous scale that does not inflate itself. So what does your everyday leadership look like on the inside, right, of the organization? How do you make also hard decisions? Because sometimes you have to make hard decisions, like in a business as well, like in government. And how do you protect your own energy and hope for the future?

Atul Satija [88:34] I think, the last one I'll start, and I'll come back to the daily leadership, - Style and approach. See, COVID was an eye-opener for me, JP. I've never been in 18 hours a day, 19 hours a day, 20 hours a day, six months in a row. Obviously you are in different time zones, et cetera. You get your down times here and there. But not having the space to negotiate that time and And, time and space for yourself was hard during COVID, and I realized that was, I could do it for a while, and then I realized that I was at a breakpoint where I couldn't handle it anymore. And I think over the last four, five years, I've started being a little bit more conscious about protecting that private space where you are able to work out, meditate, spend time with family in a slightly more non-negotiated spaces. Carve out More weekend space than you would do otherwise, et cetera. So I think I've gotten a lot more disciplined about that in the last Three, four years than I used to be, and it's materially Helped, in every other aspect of my work life and personal life, which I never thought. The hidden benefits of, - Making wise decisions, you see over time. I think that's one part. A lot of my energy, optimism, clarity of thinking, purpose, now comes from reserving that space where I find, - The my time with family and with workouts and inputs on your health And diet and all the other stuff that we all do. I think that's one part of it. I've become very Protective about that. On the leadership side, one of the things that I, learned the hard way JP, after coming To this space is for many years I kept building The The/Nudge the way I was used to building InMobi or my own teams at Google. And I realized I was actually very wrong about it. -

Jean-Philippe Courtois [90:36] Huh.

Atul Satija [90:37] One of the things that took me many years to realize was that, in social sector, the self-selected selection criteria is very different than what you have in any for-profit. So one of the things, to make it more concrete for the audience Everybody coming into the social sector on an average has much higher empathy than you would find in a for-profit.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [91:04] For sure.

Atul Satija [91:04] So imagine the empathy levels on the floor are four to five X of the empathy levels on any of our past organizations. It is not necessarily good or bad. It is just different.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [91:18] It's a fact. Yeah.

Atul Satija [91:18] What it means is that it's a fact, and if you don't factor in the most important reality of a nonprofit You design with the wrong forces and levers. Now, high empathy means the support people expect and give are very different than when the dominant Energy is a transactional relationship of career, equity, growth, salary, right? There it is a rational contract between an employee and a company. Here it is an emotional Contract that I hope the company creates the impact I'm here for. Uses me well This being, is being fair to me, et cetera. It doesn't mean lower or higher EQ, lower or higher IQ, lower or higher result orientation. If anything The result orientation has a slight, I wouldn't say negative correlation, but definitely not a positive correlation. People in Their hungriest zones of their career and growth don't apply to non-profits. People in their Most clear zones, purposeful zones apply to nudge and other non-profits. For many years I kept ignoring this, and I kept looking For obviously mission-aligned people, et cetera. But Not necessarily how do you find mission-aligned people with high result orientation. And that balance was very hard. Every time we had a hard situation in the company,? One once we had a runway problem, six months of runway available And I'm "I don't know whether I have salaries beyond six months." And then COVID happened, and we had to shut down a large program. - Every time we had a hard situation, I was surprised at how the employees responded. People Agreed to give up their salary. Some people agreed to donate money from their own pocket. And they said, "You never asked," right? If you ask We are all in this together. In corporate, we spend a lot of time inspiring people, and every ENPS survey we do tells me that people are saying, "Atul, inspire us less because we are internally motivated." We are looking for simple stuff, clarity on This decision, why you thought about X, how will you handle this? And I realized I was Ignoring processes and systems over Clarity, inspiration, purpose. And every time I Realize that we are doing something right, and people kept telling me, "No. You're focusing On the things that you don't have to worry about because they're already good." So we have to almost learn along the way on the things that matter and what that don't matter as much, So a lot of our daily leadership

Jean-Philippe Courtois [94:05] I

Atul Satija [94:05] Is just navigating these realities, JP.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [94:08] Yeah. No, I love it, really. I love it because it's a great segue into one of my very last questions, Atul, about positive leadership, which of course is the conversation we're having as well. I in many ways, positive leadership is about leading from, your self-awareness, knowing who you are and having, again, a very clear purpose in life and being able to shape your own positive energy, but to carry that positive energy with others and to bring the change you want to see in the world and have a positive impact in the world at the end of the day. So I'd love to ask you, what positive leadership does India need right now to rise fully and equitably across all constituencies? We discussed philanthropy. You just discussed a bit of the corporate world That you've been part of as well. You discussed government as well. Tell us more about the way you think about that change of mindset of what I'm calling a positive leader who be needed in India.

Atul Satija [95:08] I think what we need, we touched the pieces of that already, JP, but I think we need clarity of purpose. What a country Do we wanna build? And I'm saying it As a purpose-led capitalism, conscious capitalism, whatever, right? India needs to know how to build, the country of the future with markets in the center. So the clarity Of our purpose is very important. Second is optimism about our future. A lot of countries now in very uncertain, territories with AI, job loss. We are very services-led economy, IT services-led economy That's going to be impacted the most. So optimism About our future. And I think the third thing that India needs the most is build the capabilities of our people. We have A lot to do in building, how to make people have the capabilities beyond just raw physical labor on which most of the countries Run today, farm labor, construction labor Textile factory labor, et cetera. And if we don't educate and build capabilities of the, people of the country, we can never imagine a different future than we have today, 10 years, 20 years out. And I think these are the three things I would focus on, clarity of our purpose And direction, optimism about our future, and capabilities of our people.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [96:26] Super clear. Now my very last question. There's probably a 25-year-old in India right now, maybe in Chandigarh like you, who has the same, itch you had at 30. The safe path is visible, the calling is not yet named, and the question is whether to trust it. So what would you say to that person somewhere and to the global leader listening, could be a CEO, it could be a foundation head, could be a policy maker, who has the means to fund this work but who has not made the leap? What would you say?

Atul Satija [97:03] There is a book by, a person called Sameer Dua, JP, out of Bangalore

Jean-Philippe Courtois [97:09] Huh. Yes

Atul Satija [97:09] A good friend, who wrote a book Called Declaring Breakdowns. It basically says we should permanently keep extrapolating our curves, career curve, relationship curve, personal health curves, growth curves. And in most cases, you can extrapolate them out, a few steps in the future, a few years, a decade in our health, et cetera, et cetera. If you don't, where you see it landing when you extrapolate, declare a breakdown in that dimension of a relationship, work, health, situation, and change it. So my advice To my younger self would be don't wait. Take a start, no matter how small. And then it will be like driving in dense fog. You'll figure out the next step once you take the first one. Just show up and get started. You don't care about health, but start working in health. It will take you to education If you care about it more. Or start in education It will take you to, climate, let us say, if that's what you care about. You will discover Yourself, but just find one purposeful and meaningful activity, different than where you are if you don't like it. Declare that breakdown And find what you want.

Jean-Philippe Courtois [98:28] Love it. Love it. And make sure we share that, book with our listeners as well. Looks like a wonderful book. I will definitely read in my, in my list, Atul. Well, that was the, unfortunately the end of the discussion. It was a wonderful, incredibly inspiring discussion, Atul. It was a wonderful recommendation from our common friend Anu that I want to thank on the podcast. And, clearly from, shaping the rocks in the jar to, really defining what sacrifice means in what everyone's life, has really, given a lot of meaning to this discussion, so thank you so much. And for all of the listeners, I'm sure you loved it. So please, consider giving more to organizations like Atul's and others in the world, in your own country, wherever you are. And I hope that you loved the discussion, so feel free to share your comments on the podcast, even to leave a five, stars rating. Always appreciate it to give more excitement to others to follow. And in the meantime, take care. Again, Atul, a big thank you for this wonderful conversation.

Atul Satija [99:40] Thank you for having me, JP.