|
Continued from previous page
Creating Access for the Next Generation
APURV BAGRI
Apurv Bagri's passion about the societal
good that can come from entrepreneurship is palpable even
during a cross-continent telephone conversation. Wealth
creation through entrepreneurship strengthens communities
not just through job creation, says Bagri, AMP'93, but by
creating a number of other intangibles as well—productivity
enhancement; national competitiveness; improved quality
of life; enhanced national education, training for new
technologies that dramatically improve the quality of the
workforce; enhanced efficiency of government services, and
personal wealth creation leading to philanthropy.
It's a compelling argument, one that Bagri lives each day
as the chairman of TiE, a fast-growing, not-for-profit networking
and mentoring group that today has 45 chapters in
the United States and nine other countries.
TiE, founded in 1994 as The Indus Entrepreneurs, was
started by ethnic South Asian entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley.
Today, the organization is reaching out to entrepreneurs from
all national backgrounds and all industries, from modest startups
to public multinationals. For a $100 fee, any entrepreneur
can join, and is eligible to receive contacts and tips, entry to
TiE Inc. events and mentoring from the organization's charter
members, whose ranks include such luminaries as Infosys
founder and chairman Narayana Murthy, former McKinsey
CEO Rajat Gupta, and C.K. Prahalad, the Paul and Ruth
McCracken Distinguished University Professor of Corporate
Strategy at the University of Michigan.
Based in London, Bagri founded TiE's U.K. chapter in
2000 after meeting many of the organization's founders during
his travels to Silicon Valley. The chapter found its feet
very quickly, and Bagri joined the TiE board in 2002. Bagri
was recently appointed as TiE's chair to continue the group's
goal to grow beyond its core North American and Indian
markets. And Bagri, who with his father Lord Bagri, president
of the London Metals Exchange runs Metdist, a large
non-ferrous metals group, has himself served as mentor to an
interesting hodgepodge of start-ups, from a software services
company to a purveyor of health drinks.
"There are hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs who
have ideas and passion, but lack structure or an understanding
about how to begin the path to entrepreneurship," Bagri
says. Getting off on the right foot is sometimes just a matter
of making an introduction to the right person.
"The doors often don't open just as you would like when
you are a young entrepreneur," he continues. "So we get
them to see the people they need to see. We have access to
hard-hitters and powerful decision makers across the world
who can help spread the entrepreneurship gospel around the
world." Other times it's much more complicated: coaching
on loan proposals, funding, market strategy.
"TiE brings together successful people and uses them as
a powerful tool to help transform the lives of others," Bagri
says. "We believe in wealth creation because wealth creation
is a mechanism for a virtuous economic cycle—one that develops
and helps society and the community at large."
Scholars across the globe agree that collaborations between
the poor, civil society organizations, governments, and
large firms can create the largest and fastest growing markets
in the world. Large-scale and wide-spread entrepreneurship,
many experts argue, is at the heart of the solution to poverty.
Bagri was born in India but moved to London with his
family in 1960, when he was a year old. Throughout his education
in Britain and in Wharton's Advanced Management
Program, Bagri has remained committed to India, both from
a business standpoint and a social and cultural one. "While
I have grown up here and have very much a British and
Western orientation, I have a cultural understanding, affinity,
and affection for India which tempers a lot of what I do,"
Bagri says. "In our family, we believe in going beyond financial
contributions to charitable organizations. We believe in
giving a significant amount of personal time." In addition to
TiE, Bagri sits on the boards of a host of other organizations,
including the Royal Parks Foundation, the City University
and the London Business School.
And while Bagri admits that his work with TiE consumes
a huge amount of his personal time, he makes no complaints.
"I probably spend 25 percent of my time on work
for TiE, and this is time I have to find. But it has been the
most extraordinary process I have ever been through. I've
met people who are kings and people with very little. Each
one has helped open another dimension to my understanding
and appreciation not only of business but of life and
people. Each one has a story and each one has taught me as
much as I have taught them."
A Hub for Social Impact Management
For social entrepreneurs, doing good
and making money are not mutually exclusive. In the words of Ian
MacMillan, Fred R. Sullivan Professor of Management and Director
of the Sol C. Snider Entrepreneurial Research Center: "It's a process
whereby the creation of new business enterprise leads to social
wealth enhancement so that both society and the entrepreneur
benefit." [For more on MacMillan's research, see "Experimental
Entrepreneurship: Removing the 'Tin Cup Dependencies'"]
Wharton has been a leader in social entrepreneurship since Joseph
Wharton first wrote his plan to educate leaders who would become "pillars
of the State, whether in private or in public life." The three-year-old Wharton
Social Impact Management Initiative (SIM) brings together all the intellectual
efforts, across the university, to find entrepreneurial approaches to social
problems. As an umbrella organization, SIM aligns faculty, students, and
external organizations to offer insight into innovative ways that public or
private enterprises can find effective solutions for social issues.
Recent initiatives include an annual day-long conference on Social
Impact Management and a new course on "Entrepreneurship and
Societal Wealth Generation," which aims to teach students that "many
social problems, if looked at through an entrepreneurial lens, create
opportunity for someone to launch a venture that generates profits by
alleviating that social problem."
The course takes a hands-on approach, requiring student groups
to develop their own business venture plans, which will ideally become
real-world businesses. In addition, Wharton students considering social
entrepreneurship can access the SIM-sponsored Wharton Net Impact.
Founded as Students for Responsible Business in 1993, Net Impact aims
to promote social impact careers among the Wharton MBA community,
in such key areas as social enterprise, non-profit management,
international and economic development, socially responsible investing,
and corporate social responsibility.
Writers Nancy Moffitt and Sharon L. Crenson are frequent
contributors to the Magazine.
|
