On 16th Feb 2012, as part of the NEN E-Week, there was a guest lecture by Ms Krupa Latha Das, Founder and executive of Director, SUKRUPA, an NGO located in Bangalore. She spoke about social entrepreneurship that is becoming a very popular career option for youth across the world.
Krupa Latha has been a successful social entrepreneur for over two decades. Prior to 2002, before setting up SUKRUPA the non-profit, Krupa was in the granite industry in India and worked as a consultant in the United States; her business opportunities have lead her to Italy, Brazil, Japan, Malaysia, Srilanka, and Indonesia, instilling a global perspective on the social problems of India. Out of a passion to create opportunities for deprived children Krupa ended her lucrative career in the United States after a four-week vacation to India during summer of 2002 to setup the non-profit organization that has grown into SUKRUPA and SUKRUPA Creations.
SUKRUPA is a registered non-profit, charitable organization that addresses the educational and socio-economic development of disadvantaged children and young adults in urban and rural Bangalore, India.
She started off with her personal story, where she talked about her mother who was very passionate about teaching unprivileged children. She talked further about her enriched childhood, and the inception of SUKRUPA in 2006. Passion and commitment of a person is required the most for managing a social entrepreneurship project. The factors that were highlighted were transparency, professionalism, business plan, fundraising and sustainability in a project. But above all, management skills were given the utmost importance. In Sukrupa, these values are practiced very diligently and Krupa Latha gave a lot of examples of the organisation to make the point. “At Sukrupa, we go out of the way to get things done; it’s the passion that drives us, here”. Going forward with the lecture, there was a video clip that was screened, which showed a remarkable effort this organisation is putting for the unprivileged children. And lives of so many children have changed because of Sukrupa. The video encouraged the people to donate, so that the children can get education, nutritious food and healthcare.
Further talking about the non profit organisations, she again stressed about empathy and passion that is required for it. And volunteer work is also appreciated a lot in these organisations. For CSR activities, Delloit has done a lot of work through Sukrupa. For the students, she gave a brief description of the internship opportunities at Sukrupa, with marketing, fundraising, designing, teaching etc. Every year, a lot of students from American Universities come to India for their voluntary service work.
For empowerment of women, Sukrupa creations provide training and dignified employment to the rural and urban communities. It was touching to hear the story of Soni, a budding entrepreneur at Sukrupa who dreams to be a businesswoman someday. Such examples of the people who are struggling with their lives in slums, made the whole session very inspirational. Students asked questions about social entrepreneurship in India and there was a lively discussion on that.
By: Neeti Thakur
