Decoding Impact with Rathish Balakrishnan

Decoding Impact with Rathish Balakrishnan

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Decoding Impact with Rathish Balakrishnan episodes

  • Are jobs in India pulling people out of poverty? ft. Manish Sabharwal

    From the macro to the micro and everything in between, in this episode of Decoding Impact, Manish Sabharwal illuminates the economics of India's current job market and the systemic levers needed to thrust India into grasping its full potential as an economy, society and nation.

    As one of the foremost experts on India's job market and the plight of Education in India today, Manish shares his expert insights, critical frameworks, and orbit-shifting views on how India can address its challenges at scale across its diverse geography, complex beaurocracy, and challenging education system. Some of the key insights he shares with host Rathish Balakrishnan include:
    • India does not have an unemployment issue, but a wages issue & there are five key levers where this can be addressed
    • However, across these five drivers regulatory cholesterol is a key limiting factor to India's labour market
    • Addressing the discrepancies between formality and informality means solving for poverty
    • Moving beyond the current drudgery in education requires five key design principles
    • Apprenticeships need to play a more significant role in how India is skilling its future workforce
    • We need clarity of vision in what education is giving children in India, which includes the traditional three "r's", but also important soft skills
    Manish elucidates each insight with clarifying data and global comparisons to ground the Indian story of where our labour market is today, and where it could be in as little as five years time with certain critical changes. Tune into the latest episode from season three of Decoding Impact today!
    Manish Sabharwal is is Vice-Chairman of TeamLease Services, one of India’s leading staffing and human capital firm. Additionally, he co-founded India Life, an HR outsourcing company in 1996, and is a member of the National Skill Mission, Central Advisory Board of Education and has served on various policy committees for education, employment and employability.

    1 hr 11 min
  • Powering Prosperity: Emerging Promise of DPIs in India's Energy Sector ft. Dr Nikit Abhyankar

    The Indian energy sector is at a critical juncture. Electricity consumption, a key indicator of economic growth, has grown significantly over the past 50-60 years, and India is primed to leapfrog into a sustainably powered future.


    This transition calls for a robust policy foundation, technological advancements in demand-supply and storage mechanisms, and a keen study of economic incentives for users of green energy. In this episode of Decoding Impact, Rathish Balakrishnan is in conversation with scientist Dr. Nikit Abhyankar to unpack the unique opportunity India has, to transition to renewable energy, with economic viability and technological feasibility at the centre.


    Through this conversation, you will learn about:


    • The interplay between energy consumption and economic growth;


    • The potential for the energy sector to leapfrog mirroring India's telecom boom;


    • The policy environment, key shifts necessary in demand management, and


    • The role of digital public infrastructure (DPI) in facilitating efficient energy transactions.


    Tune into this latest episode of Decoding Impact today!


    Dr Nikit Abhyankar is a Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and a Senior Scientist at the Center for Environmental Public Policy of the University of California, Berkeley. Dr Abhyankar has conducted extensive research and policy analysis on a range of key energy issues such as renewable energy, energy efficiency, electric vehicles, and energy access in the United States and key emerging economies such as India, China, Indonesia, and Vietnam. He regularly advises governments, regulators, and utilities in multiple countries on designing clean energy policies and programs.


    Guest: Dr Nikit Abhyankar


    Host: Rathish Balakrishnan


    Producer: Meenakshi Iyer


    Produced by: Pickle Jar Media


    Explore some of our SKI products related to this topic:

    Enabling Energy Transition Through Open Networks


    Green Roads Ahead: Decoding India's EV and


    Digital Public Infrastructure ft. Akhil JP & Arun VinayakDigital Public Goods Glossary

    1 hr
  • Are we settling for less in India's Education system? ft. Akshay Saxena & Vandana Goyal

    With the recent Union Budget announcement allocating ₹1.48 lakh crore to education, employment, and skilling, one question we continue to grapple with in the impact ecosystem, but in Education especially, is whether money is enough to really achieve the outcomes needed?


    Since Independence, Education has been the cornerstone of growth, development, and perhaps most importantly, hope for the nation. Yet, after so many decades of interventions, well-intentioned individual efforts, and the collective intent across philanthropy, the corporate sector, and government, why is Education in India still falling short of excellence?


    In this episode of Decoding Impact, through a rich and powerful discussion with expert guests from Avanti Fellows, Akshay Saxena, Co-founder & co-CEO, & Vandana Goyal, Managing Trustee & co-CEO, host Rathish Balakrishnan delves into challenges across scale, systems, and gender in Education today to understand what it will take to truly scale excellence in India's education system.


    Explore some of our SKI products related to this topic:

    • Decoding ASER for Foundational Literacy and Numeracy Outcomes with Dr Rukmini Banerji

    • Decoding Mafias, National Heroes, and the role of Government in Education ft. Anil Swarup

    • Barriers to Breakthroughs: Encouraging Girls’ Participation in STEM Education


    Guests: Akshay Saxena & Vandana Goyal

    Host: Rathish Balakrishnan

    Producer: Meenakshi Iyer

    Produced by: Pickle Jar Media

    1 hr 20 min
  • #Rapidfire ft. Akhil JP & Arun Vinayak

    Get to know more about our latest guests featured on Decoding Impact, Akhil JP & Arun Vinayak,⁠ through this revealing rapid fire!

    Listen to the latest episode of Decoding Impact!:
    🔴⁠ ⁠⁠Youtube⁠⁠⁠⁠
    🟣 ⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠
    🔵 ⁠⁠⁠⁠Amazon⁠⁠⁠⁠
    🔗⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Website

    3 min
  • What is social innovation? Decoding challenges and tailwinds for India's entrepreneurs ft. Manoj Kumar

    India is the third largest innovation ecosystem in the world. From India's transformational growth in the IT sector to her rapid digitisation, innovation is truly having its moment in India today. However, despite this promising outlook, social innovation continues to face challenges to scale.


    Faced by the perennial challenge that the problems for people and planet are running faster than the solutions being created to solve them, social innovation has a critical and lasting role to play in ensuring we break the cycle of creating poor solutions for the poor. In this episode of Decoding Impact, Rathish Balakrishnan and expert guest Manoj Kumar engage in a dialogue on social innovation that is not only helpful to understand the innovation landscape in India today, but to also numerous ideas and examples of what social innovation looks like.


    Through this discussion you will get insight into:

    • India's innovation landscape

    • The mental models for entrepreneurs to succeed

    • The architecture needed for social innovation to scale

    • How we need to look at unlocking diverse forms of capital from across CSR and Philanthropy


    Tune into this latest episode of Decoding Impact today!


    Manoj Kumar is the founder of Social Alpha, a multistage innovation curation and venture development platform that has supported over 300 startups under his leadership. Manoj is one of the pioneering forces in India's social innovation landscape, with a wealth of expertise and hands-on experience founding startups.


    Explore some of our SKI products related to this topic:

    • Decoding the Rupee for Rupee impact of blended finance ft. Ramraj Pai

    • Decoding the Role of Philanthropy in Blended Finance ft. Prachi Windlass

    • Guidebook: CSR and Corporate Philanthropy Towards Innovation


    Guest: Manoj Kumar

    Host: Rathish Balakrishnan

    Producer: Meenakshi Iyer

    Produced by: Pickle Jar Media



    1 hr 31 min
  • Green Roads Ahead: Decoding India’s EV and Digital Infrastructure ft. Akhil Jayaprakash & Arun Vinayak

    Worldwide, roads are increasingly seeing the presence of electric vehicles (EV) and India is expected to take 30% of the EV market worldwide. However, these tailwinds are attracting many players to the EV ecosystem, from suppliers to customers, to make EVs a reality on the road.


    In order to ease the challenges that these stakeholders could face in coming together, Digitial Public Infrastructure could have a key role to play and could help:


    • Reduce frictions

    • Enable greater customer experience

    • Drive better adoption for electrical vehicles in India, especially when it comes to the charging experience



    To learn more about India's burgeoning EV market and understand whether the promise of DPI can enable the EV market to solve some of its current challenges, in this episode of Decoding Impact Rathish Balakrishnan is joined by Akhil Jayaprakash, co-founder at Pulse Energy, and Arun Vinayak, co-founder at Exponent Energy. Through this discussion Akhil and Arun share their expertise to help us understand who the key stakeholders are in the EV market, what is the user experience when it comes to EV today in India, and what unification using DPI could look like in the EV market.


    Explore some of our SKI products related to this topic:

    • Decoding the Economics of MSMEs and why they should leverage Digital Public Infrastructure ft. Neelkanth Mishra

    • Decoding Account Aggregators with Shalini Gupta

    • Decoding India’s DPI Learnings for the Global South with Prof. S Rajagopalan

    • Decoding Digital Public Goods & Digital Public Infrastructure with Dr. Pramod Varma


    Guest: Akhil Jayaprakash and Arun Vinayak

    Host: Rathish Balakrishnan

    Producer: Meenakshi Iyer

    Produced by: Pickle Jar Media


    Chapters


    00:00 - Precap

    01:30 - Welcome

    01:43 - Topic and Guest Intro

    03:28 - Akhil & Arun's journey into the EV ecosystem

    08:21 - The key players in EV

    11:41 - What a vertically integrated stack looks like

    12:32 - The EV Market

    15:51 - Summarising insights on the EV market & players

    17:07- Approaching the new world with an old world mental model

    26:36 - Challenges in the charging EVs

    30:22 - Access to EV for different vehicles

    35:45 - Understanding the user experience of the EV charging infrastructure

    41:13 - Moving past the obvious solutions

    48:39 - Summary and further understanding of how to solve for charging anxiety

    59:10 - Achieving unification through a DPI approach

    01:06:58 - Where can unification unlock value

    01:10:05 - Imagining the end game

    01:16:31 - Wishlist for scaling EV infrastructure in India

    01:20:29 - Summary & Thanks



    #ElectricVehicles #EVMarketIndia #EVCharging #DigitalInfrastructure #CustomerExperience #RapidCharging #SoftwareInteroperability #ChargingInfrastructure #ConsumerConcerns #GridChallenges #RealEstateChallenges #UnifiedEVInterface #UEI #GovernmentSupport #EVStandardization #EVAdoption #ProprietaryInnovation #OpenNetwork #ExponentEnergy #PulseEnergy #Entrepreneurs #SustainableMobility #GreenTechnology #EVRevolution #CleanEnergy #FutureOfTransportation


    1 hr 24 min
  • #RapidFire ft. Prachi Windlass

    Get to know more about our latest guest featured on Decoding Impact, ⁠⁠Prachi Windlass, through this revealing rapid fire!

    Listen to the latest episode of Decoding Impact!:
    🔴 ⁠⁠ Youtube⁠⁠⁠
    🟣 ⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcast⁠⁠⁠
    🔵 ⁠⁠⁠Amazon⁠⁠⁠
    🔗 ⁠⁠⁠Website

    3 min
  • Decoding the role of philanthropy in blended finance ft. Prachi Windlass

    Philanthropy plays a vital role in the development sector naturally, however, in India today philanthropy capital accounts for only 5% of the total funding, with 95% coming from the governments.

    Is there a way we can reimagine the development sector, as a market place, that can manage risk in the hope of certain returns and rewards? With blended finance there is an opportunity to change how capital fuels and enables scale of impact. Within the promise of blended finance, philanthropy could play a significant, catalytic role, and in this episode of Decoding Impact host Rathish Balakrishnan is joined by Prachi Windlass, a Senior Director and the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, India, to discuss:

    • What does blended finance look like in India today?

    • How does philanthropic capital and other sources of capital come together to create a blended finance model?

    • The maturity curve for blended finance to come in

    • Tangible examples of how blended finance can enable impact

    With the challenge of a capital shortfall to meet the total annual funding required for India to achieve the promise of the Sustainable Developement Goals by 2030, Prachi lends her experience and expertise to illustrate the true value philanthropy can unlock to enable a sustainable transformation in India's impact ecosystem. Listen to the latest episode of Decoding Impact today on Youtube!

    Explore some of our SKI products related to this topic:

    • Decoding the Rupee for Rupee impact of blended finance ft. Ramraj Pai

    • Decoding Climate Finance with Varad Pande

    • Guidebook: CSR and Corporate Philanthropy Towards Innovation


    Guest: Prachi Windlass

    Host: Rathish Balakrishnan

    Producer: Meenakshi Iyer

    Produced by: Pickle Jar Media

    1 hr 11 min
  • #Rapidfire ft. Anil Swarup

    Get to know more about our latest guest featured on Decoding Impact, Anil Swarup, through this revealing rapid fire!

    Listen to the latest episode of Decoding Impact!:
    🔴 ⁠⁠⁠Youtube⁠⁠⁠
    🟣 ⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcast⁠⁠⁠
    🔵 ⁠⁠⁠Amazon⁠⁠⁠
    🔗 ⁠⁠⁠Website

    4 min
  • Decoding mafias, national heroes, and the role of government in Education ft. Anil Swarup

    "There are three types of people who work in education today: those who know the reality of a classroom, there are those who know the reality of grassroots, but there are very few who know the reality of how government looks at education."


    In this very special episode of Decoding Impact, host Rathish Balakrishnan is joined by Anil Swarup, Founder Chairman, Nexus of Good; Former Secretary, School Education (2016-18) & Coal (2014-16), and Author. Mr. Swarup joins us to help us decode the complex Education sector in India today and understand more about:


    • The visible and invisible challenges in Education

    • The role of the government between Delhi and the hinterlands

    • How to enable young adults thrive in the Indian Education system

    • Defining roles for different stakeholders in the Education sector


    Tune in to the latest episode of Decoding Impact today to understand more about the government's role in Education as well as some unique stories from Mr. Swarup's incredible Bhārat Yātra across the nation!


    Explore some of our SKI products related Education:


    • Promising Avenues: Landscape of School to Work Transition in India


    • Enabling Career Guidance and Mentorship for Smooth School-to-Work Transition


    • Advancing Gender Equality in Science Technology Engineering Mathematics (STEM) Education in India


    • Decoding ASER for Foundational Literacy and Numeracy Outcomes with Dr Rukmini Banerji


    Guest: Anil Swarup

    Host: Rathish Balakrishnan

    Producer: Meenakshi Iyer

    Produced by: Pickle Jar Media


    Chapters


    0:00 Precap

    1:36 Welcome to Decoding Impact

    1:50 Topic & Guest Introduction

    03:12 Anil Swarup's journey into Education in India

    06:44 The mafias in Education

    14:58 Making Education politically salient

    18:23 Anil Swarup's journey through education on the ground

    24:31 Is Education enabling young adults in India today?

    30:49 How to develop a winning aspiration for young people in India school systems

    34:13 From policy to implementation

    36:55 Addressing the government's mistrust in the private sector

    39:58 Bringing in role clarity in school systems

    44:23 Reflecting on the role of the facilitator and counselling

    47:00 Understanding the role of different stakeholders in relation to the government

    49:12 Who should play what role

    52:10 State vs. central government capacity

    54:00 Whose accountable for state outcomes?

    56:30 Summary and thanks

    58:11 General outro


    58 min

About Decoding Impact with Rathish Balakrishnan

From the publisher's feed

Welcome to Decoding Impact, a social impact podcast hosted by Rathish Balakrishnan, Co-founder and Managing Partner of Sattva Consulting.