Social Entrepreneurship Saturday — C-Balance

1. Each of the domains discussed on ‘22nd October 2020’:

1. Personal journey

Mr. Ghilani developed his moral fabric through his childhood, by questioning the choices he made. He was inspired by a series — Raced to Save the Planet. With some initiatives in the childhood, he began work towards reducing the impact of climate change. He eventually became an anti-west person, consuming more Swadeshi goods. He used humor as a way to overcome his depression. He strongly believes that rage keeps you going, but it doesn’t make him angry.

2. Organizational Journey

He started the organization with the aim to create tools and consult different institutions to reduce their carbon footprint, thereby preventing global warming. He strongly believes in system change to target the root cause of the problem rather than having a symptomatic change. The theory of change is based on the supply chain intervention approach, and ecosystem catalyzing approach.

3. Products and Services:

The organization provides 4 services -

i. Mapping Carbon Footprint — which involves mapping the level of carbon footprint of the organization, devising a strategy and helping in implementing it.

ii. Ecolabeling — it provides a certification that the your product is environmentally sustainable. C-balance is one of the two consultant organization’s who received this authority of certifying organizations.

iii. Footprint reporter — it is a medium through which new developments by the organization and the projects taken up are communicated.

iv. Carbon emission Factor Database — this is the data-base of the amount of carbon footprint different activities have.

2. Organisational culture:

The culture of the organization is transparent, autonomous and encouraging. One of the policies of the organization is that no employee is sacked. So it shows that the selection process is quite rigorous and the employees are invested in to build their skills.

3. Three takeaways from the speaker’s journey

1. To do a lot of things you do not require to be an expert, you may start with small things in your capacity.

2. Home-grown leadership is encouraged. This makes them invest a lot in the growth of their employees.

3. Increase in income has direct impact on carbon footprint, which has made the organization have the policy of not aiming for expanding the organization. It has to be organic.

4. Three comments on the organisation structure

1. It doesn’t have a top-down structure. Each person has the freedom and is encouraged to share opinions and views with one and other.

2. Character is given the priority while recruiting as they believe skills can be developed.

3. The employees are handpicked and the vacancy is not advertised.

5. Two practices, which you thought are very unique, and could be replicated

1. Recruitment methodology — hiring for character

2. Policies and initiatives for the employees growth.

3. Hiring only when there is money for 9–10 months to be paid to the employee.

6. Two practices/policies which you aren’t convinced about, stating reasons for the same and your way of achieving the same goal.

Expansion idea — the organization is not aiming to scale which I feel is not a great idea, as the need for such a program is quite a lot.