[CTQ Smartcast] Lessons in Sustainability and Preparing for Multiple Futures, with Ravina More
Ravina More has pursued and excelled in multiple interest areas. She is working on sustainability as a part of Tata Administrative Services and has completed her M.Tech in Computer Science from the College of Engineering, Pune. She worked in the field of natural language processing at Tata Research Development and Design Center (TRDDC) and was the president of Pune Advanced Toastmasters Club. She is also heading Tahaan, an NGO working in the field of water conservation.
This Smartcast, hosted by CTQ co-founder BV Harish Kumar, is a great opportunity to know the various aspects of scenario planning, pursuing multiple interests, and how to think about sustainability while thinking about future relevance.
If you are someone who wants to incorporate sustainability in your business or are someone who wants to stay relevant in the future, you’ll find this conversation extremely useful.
Prefer an audio version of the Smartcast? Listen below.
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(Read the shownotes below or skip to the transcript)
SOME OF THE THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT
How to juggle and pursue multiple interests?
Tahaan and its contribution to water conservation.
A setback is not a failure, but a redirection.
Importance of reflection and scenario planning.
Sustainability and the Tatas.
LINKS TO BOOKS, PEOPLE, ARTICLES, WEBSITES MENTIONED IN THE SMARTCAST
ORGANIZATIONS
PEOPLE
Prof Aswath Damodaran, Professor of Finance, Stern School of Business (NYU)
Sheryl Sandberg, COO, Facebook
Dr. Sachin Pawar, Scientist at TCS
BOOKS AND PODCASTS
Mahabharat - Fever FM - HT Smartcast
If you enjoyed this Smartcast, you will also like Inside The Brain Of A Polymath: An Interview With Niranjan Pedanekar
TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
00:00:00
Harish Kumar: Ravina More is part of the Tata Administrative Services or TAS as it’s well-known. At a young age, Ravina has pursued and excelled in multiple interest areas. She has completed her M.Tech in Computer Science from the College of Engineering, Pune. Worked at Tata Research Development and Design Center in the field of natural language processing. She’s a president of an NGO called Tahaan which works in the field of water conservation. Was the president of the Pune Advanced Toastmasters Club and is now working on sustainability as part of TAS. She also had to change courses in her career after being diagnosed with tuberculosis. So this was a great opportunity for me to talk to Ravina about so many aspects of future relevance, scenario planning, pursuing multiple interests, and how to think about sustainability while thinking about future relevance. So if you are a leader who wants to start thinking about sustainability in your business or if you are thinking about collecting and connecting the dots to stay future relevant yourself, you will find this chat very useful. By the way, remember to subscribe to our show on whatever platform you are getting this on, that way you will get notified when we publish a new episode and we do have many interesting guests lined up for you.
00:01:27
Harish: Hi, welcome Ravina, welcome to the CTQ Smartcast.
00:01:30
Ravina: Hi Harish, thank you so much for inviting me over.
00:01:35
Harish: So Ravina, there are a lot of things to talk about when we have looked at your profile and what you've done. Just to start with something that piqued curiosity. You completed your Masters of Technology from College of Engineering, Pune in 2018 and actively worked in Pune Advanced Toastmasters Club, served at Tahaan, and also worked at TRDDC. In 2021, you got selected for TAS, the Tata Administrative Services. How have you been able to efficiently juggle between so many projects in various fields all at once, and also study for something like TAS?
00:02:11
Ravina: So, now when you put it across it seems like how did all of this happen? But if I just break it down into my regular schedule, I would get up in the morning, do my morning routine, exercise or read the newspaper, go to work. This was before the lockdown days. Come back from work at around 7-7:30, that I would have 2 hours of Tahaan meetings or discussions with the team. We have a big team of about 100 people with strong leadership over there. After 9 o’clock I would spend some time studying, reflecting, reading books, that’s my hobby anyway. Saturdays and Sundays would be complete, 100% for Tahaan and Toastmasters, so no office work would come into the weekends. My friends would be disappointed with me because I would be the one backing out from all the weekend plans because I had some projects lined up. So yes, I've been a bit low on social life but apart from that everything was on schedule. You have certain buckets for certain activities, then it gets done. But, preparing for TAS, it’s not something that I consciously did over the last few years. It was just the last 2-3 months that I took some time out 3-4 hours every day for 3-4 months and that consistency just paid off.
00:03:37
Harish: Right. I’m sure it’s easier said than done and our listeners would want to know some more details on how you managed to hack your timetable, your day, schedule to get this done. But before that, a quick introduction about Tahaan. What exactly do you do and how have you been involved with Tahaan?
00:03:57
Ravina: So it all started in the year 2016. We had a group of about 30 friends. We were actively brainstorming about what are the problems we are facing and in that year, unfortunately, there was one of the worst droughts that Maharashtra faced in our generation. So that was the time when there was a train that was sent from Sangli to Latur, to satisfy the water needs over there. It was the first time that in a city like Pune, which is usually supposed to be water-sufficient, where my mother owned a two-storeyed hostel that housed around 30 girls. But the water crunch was so severe that we couldn't satisfy the needs of our hostel and it had to be shut down during 4-5 months. That is when I closely saw that however advanced we get or whatever focus we rely on education, development, industrialization, at the end of the day if there is no water, all of your activities and your economy comes to a halt. Education of kids comes to a halt, they have to go long distances to fetch water. That is when our friends came together, we started a project to serve the water needs of drought-affected villages. That was a very small act at that time. For us it felt like we were just answering the needs of society and looking back the impact of that activity was quite huge. We were able to raise around 7.5-8 lakh rupees despite being just a group of friends, almost all of the students or young working professionals, and we provided water to around 30 villages around 550 water tankers. Apart from that, every weekend we would go over there and conduct street plays, awareness sessions, meetings with the gram panchayat, gram sabhas, talk to the villagers, and understand their problems. At the end of the summer problems, we even realized that these villages lack tree covers because of which the groundwater tables were not restored. So we even conducted a tree plantation drive of around 3000 trees in that village. After the monsoons arrived in 2016, we then started thinking that this year’s problem is solved. But what if this problem occurs again after 10 years? It’s not like that time again you are going to come in and provide water tankers. What if there is no water for tankers to bring? That is when we thought about setting up an NGO and paying more attention to the long-term implications of water shortage and see how we can adapt and mitigate this problem. Now Tahaan is registered as an NGO with more than 100 members and we operate in different areas of water conservation such as restoring the groundwater table, providing clean drinking water, providing access to water, making sure that you are optimizing the use of water, and promoting a circular economy of water. So these are all activities that the next time a drought occurs in India, we will be resistant and will be able to overcome it successfully.
00:06:59
Harish: Right, yeah. That’s a fantastic job that you have done and are continuing to do. I’m sure that period in 2016 would have been life-changing for you and your friends. The way you think about friends in general.
00:07:13
Ravina: Yes. For all of us, it's very true.
00:07:17
Harish: Right, yeah. So, another question. We did do a bit of a digression where I asked you to introduce Tahaan but going back to your timetable and schedule. Is this something you had right from the beginning where you had multiple interests? Or as you grew there was something new that caught your attention and you said let me pursue this as well? It just gets added and creates another slot in your timetable, how does that work?
00:07:51
Ravina: You know they say that behind every successful man, there’s a woman. Likewise, whatever crazy things I do, there’s a successful woman and that’s my mom. Since I was a child, I was 3-4 years old, my mom had these lofty dreams planned for me. Anytime she would see some child prodigy or some successful woman, she would want me to become that. When I was a child, she wanted me to do public speaking in front of audiences. She wanted me to become a TV anchor at CNBC, she wanted me to be a fantastic dancer. At the same time, she wanted me to become a CEO, she wanted me to become a politician. There are so many dreams that she had as a child, I would love to see these dreams along with her. That made me a dreamer. The power of dreams is such that it gives you immense energy and passion to work towards it. Than anything that you see around you that matches your plan of getting close to the dream, you immediately find time for it and get excited about it. That’s how I got excited about Toastmasters where I thought it would drastically improve my public speaking and leadership skills and open up my world to a diverse set of audiences. Being from a computer science background, I’m sure that a lot of computer engineers can relate to this. We live in this bubble of computer engineers, tech geeks, and nerds and the bubble starts from the college days and stays forever. Toastmasters helped me to get out of this bubble. Similarly, volunteering at different NGOs like Bookwallah organization or Tahaan also exposed me to the reality of the world, that your bubble is not just a set of friends but again, it’s your community as well. Every single person owes something to the community. That also keeps you grounded, it also helps you to use those skills of your professional life to uplift and empower those who are not privileged to have those skills. I think these thoughts or dreams give you immense energy to pursue any actions that you want.
00:10:15
Harish: Yeah. This was something which I remember happened to me, though I’m not a computer science engineer, having worked in some IT product and services companies, I could see the world was restricted to people very similar to me. When I started my previous venture, there was an opportunity to meet people from different walks of life. That changes the way you look at things.
00:10:46
Ravina: Yeah and just to add one small point to it. My mother is a homeopath doctor but she doesn’t practice full time anymore but her range of hobbies is so vast, so she does a lot of gardening, she does painting, she is a full-time trader. She invests short and long-term in the stock markets. At the same time, the hostel that I told about, was entirely built by my mom without the help of a contractor. Just to save on the cost and to make sure that it is efficient. Watching her do all these things, for me, it was very natural that it’s okay to pursue your hobby, you don’t need to be an engineer to build a house. You don’t need to be a finance professional or an MBA finance to invest in the stock market. If you have the desire you can do it.
00:11:36
Harish: Right, and one thing that you didn't mention and we also missed in the first question was your interest in quizzing. We are also interested in quizzing so we are not going to let you get away without answering a couple of quiz questions at least.
00:11:52
Ravina: Oh my god. This is a surprise bomb, Harish. I was not prepared for this.
00:11:57
Harish: But these are in some way related to you, some way connected to you and what you’ve been doing. So it should not be very difficult for you. This one, especially now when you mentioned people having lofty goals. I think this question fits that bill very nicely and should be gettable. So who is this person who was born in Paris in 1904 and was the first person in India to get a pilot’s license on Feb 10, 1929?
00:12:25
Ravina: It’s the favorite guy of all the Tata employees, this is JRD Tata.
00:12:30
Harish: Of course, it is JRD Tata who was the first commercial pilot license holder in India. We are going to come back to TAS but before that. Before we talk about the TAS chapter of your life, in a previous conversation that we had, you mentioned that you wanted to be a teacher but you decided to change course and directions. So can you talk about it, how did that happen or not happen? What happened there?
00:12:57
Ravina: Ever since childhood, in my kindergarten days, I’ve been a big fan of teachers because they transport you into a different world. They show you the possibilities that exist out of the four boundaries of the school, they simulate your imagination and they stand as a role model for every child in their developmental years. As a result of that, there was a period in the 2nd-3rd year of my engineering, I lost my phone and I wanted a Blackberry at that time. I’m just a big fan of Blackberry phones, so that is when my mom was like no, you’ve lost your phone, there’s no way that I’m going to get you a new one, that too an expensive phone like Blackberry. It was quite expensive in my college days. So I said that no problem, I’ll earn that money on my own and I will get myself a phone. That’s when I had cracked my JEE in my 12th standard so I had a good PCM foundation. I thought let me pass on those foundations or knowledge because I loved studying 11th and 12th, so I started conducting tuition classes for kids in 12th standard. It started as a small activity in the backyard but within two years we had taught about 250 students in just one small backyard. That is when I realized I love being on the stage, talking about science to kids, I got really good feedback from them and a lot of them are my friends today. Then I thought that we need more teachers like that within colleges so that students don’t need to go outside and pay extra for tuition. I thought, what if I become a professor and provide that, filling the gap or adding to the amazing teachers out there. Then I started preparing for my Master’s to get a Ph.D. because it’s mandatory to have a Ph.D. if you want to be a professor. That’s why I did my MTech from COEP, then I applied to NTU, Singapore which is among the top 15 best colleges for computer science, and luckily I got a Ph.D. offer from that university. In the year 2018, I went to Singapore to join the college but unfortunately or fortunately, the first week of our college itself, they had a health check-up. In that health check-up, I was diagnosed with a lung infection. On further investigation, they found out that I had tuberculosis at that time. Usually, when a person has TB, they have a high fever, huge weight loss, weakness, coughing out blood, but I did not have any of those symptoms. So it came as a big shock for me. They started my medications instantly as soon as they figured it out. But within a few days, I got some side effects of those medicines. As a result, I had to be admitted to the ICU and I was in the ICU for almost a month in Singapore. Given the health laws in developed countries are quite strict and they don’t have high occurrences of TB so they want to keep TB people out of their country. As a result, they denied my admission on medical grounds. I had no option but to come back to India and that was a big setback because I had been preparing for this Ph.D. dream for almost 4-5 years. I had to come back to India and I had already worked in TRDDC in two internships, so they were kind enough to give me a job but that put a temporary halt to my teaching dreams. Irrespective of that, I’m very passionate about teaching and look forward to taking up some guest lectures or teaching a course at a college in the years to come. Let’s see how that pans out.
00:17:01
Harish: Right. But what struck me, Ravina, when you were talking about this is that, though it was a setback to plans which were in the works for at least 4-5 years, it doesn’t seem to have put you back. It was a setback but you took it on the chin and rewired yourself to find a new path. I don’t want to call it Brownian motion but it is, you are figuring out your way through.
00:17:29
Ravina: No, Harish. You are right, my life has been a Brownian motion. Full points over there. Talking about such setbacks, I remember when this whole thing happened and I was in the ICU for one month, my parents were extremely worried about me, thinking that this girl has put so much effort into it. I fought against them because they were pushing me for marriage and all of that. So I had fought against them, went over there and this had happened. They thought that I would be completely heartbroken. It is quite natural for parents to have such concerns about their children. But the positive thing was, this was not the first time I had had a setback in life. In the 11th and 12th, I had put my heart and soul into JEE preparation and I cracked the exam too but I could not get a computer science seat. So that did not turn out and that time I didn’t have a plan B on what I should do if I don’t crack JEE. Similarly while preparing for GATE too, I cracked it but could not get into IIT Bombay or IISc Bangalore. Apart from that, I was able to get into all the other IITs, but those were my dream colleges. So that was again a disappointment. What is happening? All of these incidents, if I look back into history, all opened up new paths for me which if I look back and have to change things, I wouldn’t have it any other way. For example, just a Singapore experience taught me that health is so important that literally when people say that health is wealth, that is true. Because one small setback in health can change your life upside down. That also helped me to retrospect and think that Ravina, in the last few years of your life you haven’t given a lot of time to your health. It’s time now to take that seriously. Every time a setback occurs, you see whatever went wrong, you incorporate it and you become a stronger person. At the same time these experiences keep reminding you that having one dream and one aim and one mission in life, all of this sounds good on paper, it sounds good in books and when motivational speakers speak about it, but life is not that straight. Life is a Brownian motion. You have to make sure that you have lots of plan Bs so that if that one plan fails, you are not lost.
00:19:55
Harish: Right. So talk to me more about this scenario planning. You spoke about reflecting on what has happened but when you are at a juncture where you are looking at different directions that your life, career can take, how do you think about the different scenarios? Do you sit down with an excel sheet saying this is the probability of this scenario panning out, no right? So how do you do that more intuitively?
00:20:21
Ravina: You are talking about that excel sheet. Well, there is that excel sheet going on in my mind. Like let’s first try for this, if this does not happen, let’s try for this, this does not happen, let’s try for this. If this happens, then these are the options that lie ahead. In the end, all of the options that I’m continuously having in my mind, come and converge at the same goal. That is bringing some difference or impact to the community. Because of that, any decision that I have made in life, I’ve always seen that, is this a decision going ahead and impacting the community in some way or the other. Are we able to give back to society? For example, this TAS thing that happened recently was not at all my plan A. That was one of the so many plans that I had. I was working in TRDDC and it was a brilliant place to have a good work-life balance, do something good in tech, and at the same time, have a good fitness culture in the organization helped me to remain fit, which was one of my goals after the Ph.D. experience. That was always like my backup plan. If nothing I’ll spend my life in TRDDC, I’m happy. Apart from that, I had plans, I was preparing for the civil services because even though it’s late, it’s some way to give back to society, so that was on the cards. TAS preparation was going on. Few years down the line, if none of these would have worked out, maybe I would have gotten a Ph.D. while working and maybe I would have shifted back to academics as well. We were also thinking about setting up a family business with my mom and aunt. So I was helping them with the insights into how we can make a tech-enabled business. Of course with Tahaan also friends were saying that let’s have some more people join the team. Join us on a professional, payroll level. While all of these activities sound like good plans, they were not ever plans as if one of them fails, then everything is lost. It’s like different areas where you keep hitting and in a very agile fashion, whatever works, you keep taking that ahead. That’s always been my approach.
00:22:53
Harish: So I see a lot of resonance with what we call future relevance and trying to think of futures. Not just trying to forecast one particular future and putting all the eggs into one basket because that is not how life is today. Things are going to change, there are going to be shocks. Whether there is a pandemic or something else. How do you prepare for that tomorrow? What can you do today to be relevant tomorrow? That’s what we talk about when we talk about future relevance. So I see a lot of resonance of that thinking in what you just spoke, Ravina. I wanted to pick your brains on the whole idea of sustainability and climate change that is happening in the world right now. In the realm of future relevance, I wanted to get your thoughts on that. Climate change is probably happening so gradually and slowly that most people don’t realize that it is happening. All the challenges that we see with rains today and extreme temperatures in other parts of the world are all a function of climate change. But somehow it’s like it’s all happening to someone else, it’s not going to affect me individually is the notion that people seem to be having. How should people be thinking about climate change and sustainability for their professional and personal future relevance?
00:24:31
Ravina: Every person has, you can’t tell a person how to think. But there are some things that we can just consider that these things may contribute to the big picture. To give you an example, let’s say you are passionate about the environment and you want to contribute something to the environment so you start a garden in your house. You do have a very nice garden. You put your kitchen compost in your garden, you have plants, vegetables, fruits growing. You are uploading pictures about it on social media. Your friends are praising you for those efforts. Then at the end of the day, if you think about it, am I contributing to mitigating climate change? It’s happening at such a huge level but as an individual, you just have a tiny garden. Then you may get discouraged. People say that every step counts but I don’t see the other friends doing it. So how am I helping in these efforts? But now let’s take a parallel case, you are taking these efforts, your friends are appreciating these, they are considering that if Harish can do it, so can I. If Harish is doing a garden, I don’t have the time to do a garden in my house, but I can move to other sustainable decisions like I can use a cloth bag instead of a plastic bag. That’s a simple change of habits, a simple behavior change. Instead of purchasing plastic water bottles, I can carry a water bottle from my house. Instead of going for fast fashion, I can invest in something that is durable and is made of non-synthetic, natural materials. Now, when a lot of people start thinking about the sustainability aspects in their regular decision-making, that is when the real change starts. That is how a consumer-oriented company will now start thinking that the customer has now started adapting to a sustainability mindset, they are starting with sustainable behavior patterns, they are going for sustainable options. How can we provide such a value proposition to them? This kind of customer behavior then pushes the companies to think about embedding sustainability in their actions. So this can translate into a lot of things. For example, the packaging may become more sustainable like now we have a lot of brands coming up with recyclable packaging. The company can introduce more sustainable products in their portfolio instead of ones with a lot of chemicals and preservatives. The companies can embed sustainability in their supply chain by having electric cars and by demonstrating that their carbon footprint per product is very less. They can have rain-water harvesting and use water efficiently in their agricultural practices to show that the water footprint of products is very less. You might think that what is one person or community having an impact but this impact instead of saying it trickles down, rises exponentially across all the branches of the value chain of businesses. When the customers drive the demand, the businesses adapt to these changes, that is when we see a big impact happening across the world. Whenever an individual is thinking about sustainability in any action that they are performing, even for a computer engineer. If you are writing a code, if you optimize it in such a way that it reduces less energy, and consumes less power, it runs for a lesser amount of time, you are directly putting efforts to mitigate the supply chain. When I was running machine learning algorithms at that time, these algorithms take a long time to run, sometimes a day or 3-4 days. That time if you think about making all your changes in just one run instead of experimenting with the code, that can help save a lot of energy. Change in behavioral mindset is what we need in every single person in any way that they want.
00:29:00
Harish: Yeah. So I guess what you are saying is that if people in their personal lives start to think about sustainability, it is only natural that they bring these changes into their business decisions where they can make a much bigger impact.
00:29:17
Ravina: Yes.
00:29:18
Harish: Can you also talk about what you are doing at TAS? You also told me last time that you are working on some sustainability projects at TAS as well. So can you talk about what you are planning to do there?
00:29:31
Ravina: Right now, I’m posted in Tata Consumer Products which is the company that makes Tata Tea, Coffee, Himalayan Water, they have the Tata Sampann brand of pulses and masalas. The company has recently thought about revamping its sustainability policy after the recent change of organization. When Tata Global Beverages became Tata Consumer Products, they also had Tata Salt joining them. With this new change, they are thinking about driving a huge rollout of a sustainability policy into all of their actions. They want to embed sustainability in their entire value chain and I’m lucky to be part of this exciting process together with the Global Sustainability Head of Tata Consumer Products, we are developing a new sustainability strategy for the company that will foresee climate change, water management, waste management, empowerment of communities and embed these in all their actions.
00:30:35
Harish: How does this affect individuals concerning their career choices or how they are thinking about their professional future? Are there cases where people should be thinking about the kind of jobs that they take up or the employers they work with? In case something happens in the future, where a company just goes out of business because they probably have not conformed to some regulations. All the people working for that company are going to go out of jobs. Is that something that’s an actual possibility or is it just in the realms of theoretical guesswork?
00:31:19
Ravina: Yeah. We are living in these days today where you do or you die. You adapt to the trains or you do not exist at all. I’ll give 2-3 examples over here. Firstly, in a lot of companies till a few years back, there used to be just one CSR head of sustainability head who was expected to do all the green work, plant some trees, give money to some NGOs, make sure that we are looking good on the books. That was it. To give you an example, the Tata Consumers wants to embed sustainability in every single action. Now, tomorrow if they want to hire a new person to look after their supply chain they have two options. One is excellent at the supply chain, great at academics, and has a demonstrated history of good, efficient supply chain management. Then there is another person with the same skills but who has developed an interest in embedding sustainability in supply chain practices, who can pack things in an environmentally friendly way, who can optimize operations in a way that can reduce carbon footprint. It is but natural that the company is going to hire the second person because today, sustainability and environment are not the jobs of only one person. It’s the job of every single person in the organization. This is something that all the students and people who are looking to make any advancements in their careers must keep in mind. You need to have an outlook towards sustainability in whatever you do. I have a really good friend, he was working in a power company. They would set up coal-powered power plants in developing countries like the Philippines. He would go there, stay for 2-3 years and help build the powerplant and come back and work on a new project. Now with the changing regulations and with the changing consumer demands and the pressure that society is putting on them, we are not having new coal plants getting erected. The world is moving towards renewable energy, as a result, if he continues to work in the same field, his job is not going to exist. His expertise is of no use going down the line. So this year, he’s going for a Masters’s in Renewable Energy, so that he can be job-ready for the new market that comes up. Every single person, even if we are talking about designers, artists. Artists are also under pressure to make sure that the sustainable actions of a company or an organization that they are working for are demonstrated effectively. Managers also have to make sure that their team is also thinking about sustainability and coming up with ideas that can contribute to the organization. A lot of small businesses are coming up in the sustainability space. Examples are a lot of tea, coffee brands which make sure that the profit margins are less and make sure that these profits are translated back to the community, their packaging is green, they are having local produce from local organic gardens being supplied to the customers. So these are all new career opportunities that are coming up, you take it either way. Either you upskill to meet career opportunities or you take this white space and start a new business proposition over there. Be ready that careers will have a big change with sustainability.
00:34:58
Harish: Right, yeah. Before we move to the next section, Ravina. I’m going to ask you one more question because the next question I had in mind segues from this quiz question that I want to ask you. In 2015, Rajendra Singh a.k.a the Water Man of India was awarded the _______ Water Prize, which is considered the Nobel Prize for water. So just fill in the blanks for me. Which city in the world are we talking about?
00:35:27
Ravina: Yeah. It’s the Stockholm Water Prize.
00:35:30
Harish: It is the Stockholm Water Prize, yes.
00:35:33
Ravina: I’m so relieved, Harish. That you are asking me questions I know.
00:35:36
Harish: There is some Sweden connection with you, you won some Sweden quiz.
00:35:42
Ravina: Yeah there used to be this Sweden India Nobel Memorial Quiz Contest which used to happen in colleges and I participated in it in my BTech as well as MTech days. We had a dream to win the award and go to Sweden and look at the beautiful country over there. But that never happened. Our team must have been the team to have gone to the national round, the maximum number of times. I’ve been there like 4 or 5 times so much so that the quizmaster over there is friends with me now.
00:36:16
Harish: I hope and wish that you will probably go there to accept your Water Prize someday.
00:36:24
Ravina: Yes, I hope what you said comes true!
00:36:28
Harish: So Ravina, the question that I had was the developed countries have started talking a lot about sustainability at least in the mainstream media. It’s very fashionable and in many cases, it’s also true that a lot has happened. The reason why we are here is that a lot has happened with what developed countries did. Now you should not stop the developing countries from coming to the same level using the same means that they did. But there is this divide. Developed countries will say we didn’t know things were so bad then which is why we did them but why should you be doing them now. They are also denying an opportunity to the developing countries to get to that level in terms of GDP growth and all of that. Can you just talk about how companies in India should be looking at this? The whole sustainability part. Is it a valid business strategy that is also going to lead to economic growth? What are your thoughts on that?
00:37:40
Ravina: There was this research done by Prof Damodaran, I think he is a professor at Harvard School of Business or Stanford, I don’t remember. Yes, Aswath Damodaran. He had a research paper that spoke about if you embed sustainability or if a company takes up a sustainable strategy, will it necessarily translate to economic gain? Because when a lot of these companies are putting sustainability as their agenda, they are also sugar coating and saying if you include sustainability, it will lead to a profit for your companies. In that research paper, he proved that it is not true. There is no direct correlation that if you have sustainability, you’ll have profits. The reason why he said that was if profits are the reason why you are including sustainability in your actions then it’s not going to translate into a direct benefit. A company should not think that we need sustainability to drive profits. A company should think we need sustainability because that is the right thing to do. That is what the world needs. Tomorrow the kids or grandchildren of these CEOs are the ones who are going to experience climate change the most. They are going to be the ones most affected by what’s happening. If they don’t want to think about the entire community, they need to think about their grandchildren. Is this the world they are presenting to them? Now the next challenge that lies ahead is, you can’t include sustainability and become loss-making and say I’m doing good to society, so I’m going to stop getting profits for the company. That doesn’t work at the end of the day you have to feed your family. So the now important challenge ahead for businessmen and industrialists is how can they include sustainability and remain profitable at the same time. If not increase profits, that is still fine but it is important to remain profitable. And a lot of companies are demonstrating that. For example, Walmart has a policy that it only keeps sustainable beverages in its retail stores. We know Walmart is thriving so it’s one small action, but it is not affecting the profits of the company directly. Instead, it is rather putting pressure on the sources to make sure that they are sustainably procuring their products. Similarly, companies need to take some bold decisions. These decisions have to be supplemented, supported by sound strategies, sound business propositions that make sure that some way they look at efficiencies, innovations, and disruptions to balance out any problems that they might face due to sustainability.
00:40:37
Harish: In my mind, it is similar to regulation. A lot of regulatory requirements require you to spend a lot of money, which is eating away into your profit but you have to do it because that’s the regulation. So as more and more governments start making these and not just for optics’ sake but to make the right kind of policies. I think companies will start adapting.
00:41:07
Ravina: Yes and to this, I also want to add that any behavior pattern has a normal distribution. There are good people in this world and there are equally people with evil intentions. Similarly, when you are talking about sustainability too, some people genuinely want to embed sustainability in their actions like the Tata group. It has been doing that even before there was any kind of regulation in place. Tata group will continue to do it irrespective of the regulations, but at the same time there would be other groups who will not wait for regulations, or even if the regulation comes in they’ll wait till the last day. They’ll go to the court and be like what will happen in the worst case, they’ll keep releasing effluents in the water. So we need regulation for the second half of the people. But again, half of the people are wanting to do sustainability, so these actions are supported by a push from the consumers’ behavioral trends, push from the shareholders of the company, from the employees. The onus lies on the leader of the company to hear these needs, despite there being no regulatory framework, to process these needs into a good product or a good value proposition of the company.
00:42:28
Harish: And do you see or rather when do you foresee sustainability and climate change being part of the political narrative in India?
00:42:40
Ravina: I cannot comment on the politics of our country because they are so dynamic and unpredictable. But definitely, as I said again that if there is a push from the consumers, push from the population. If the politicians are seeing that the population is making healthier and sustainable choices in their ways of life. The industrialists are also having a lot of sustainability narratives. The government will again be forced to drive the push because at the end of the day the government is just a reflection of society. So it all depends on when we start making the change, that is when the government will start. But considering whatever has happened over the last few decades, we are seeing a positive shift in the government’s mentality towards sustainability. Even against the climate action plan, we are doing well. As you said, developing countries may feel like why should we change our operations just because the world is facing a calamity. The US has to do more, Europe has to do more about it. Although we as a country are still having that stand, it’s not a very rigid stand. It’s something like don’t put restrictions on us, we’ll do our best. We are doing our best. We need to be supportive of these decisions as well.
00:44:02
Harish: Yeah, so the big message that I’m taking out from this Ravina is that usually sustainability, climate change are seen at a very macro level. There is a very important role to play for the individual with our own choices and decisions. It is going to have a big impact on an individual’s career path, professional future relevance also. So not setting that aside is something that the governments need to worry about.
00:44:34
Ravina: Yeah and even if you look at it from a company perspective. Let’s say I’m a company that releases lots of effluents in the water, tomorrow I want to hire some people from the best institutes of India. At that time, if there is any news out in the market that a company is releasing a lot of effluents, it’s causing harm to the environment around it, will students want to be part of such a company? If someone joins this company also that person will have a severe backlash from the people around. That also makes the company think about what kind of a company they want to be seen as in the future to attract the best minds.
00:45:19
Harish: Right, yeah. On that note, we’ll move to the last section, Ravina. What have been the big influences on your life? You mentioned your mother, but any other people? Books? Podcasts? TV shows?
00:45:37
Ravina: Oh God, this is like a big question. I’ll take these one by one. Talking about books, I’ll start with books because they have been my best friends since childhood. Interestingly, I learned how to make friends by reading books. So one of the biggest influencers has been Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, which I read in 11th standard. If you see there was a chart with the number of friends Ravina had before 11th and after 11th. You see it as a big spike over there. That book has played a big role in my life. Also, I had read The Alchemist when I was in 7th standard, and that time I was going through a rough phase but somehow the book opened up my mind to looking at life differently. Not taking life so seriously. Keeping in mind that there is a big picture ahead and small events don’t shape you up entirely. At the same time, 2-3 years back, I read this book called Feeling Good by Dr. David Burns, he’s an MD in Psychiatry. So he’s a medical doctor but he’s written a psychology book. It is a very interesting read so that book talks about the common thinking patterns that we are exposed to and what are the flaws in our thinking patterns. He calls it dysfunctional, behavioral traits. That book has helped me to rewire my mind from the inside. Also, this lockdown opened my doors, at the start of it there was this whole wave of Mahabharat and Ramayan memes and people watching it on TV, that is a trend I got hooked on. I’m reading the Bhagavad Gita these days. There is an amazing podcast on Mahabharat by HT and that is one of the best podcasts I’ve heard in my life. It has a very interesting take on Mahabharat with really good sound effects, really good narration. It takes you centuries back to what must have happened at that time. Has a very nice, sweet narrative. If anybody has the slightest interest in Mahabharat, I would highly recommend that podcast. Talking about the people who have influenced, had a very strong influence on my life, I would say Sheryl Sandberg is number one. I heard about her at a book club meeting that Manish Kulkarni hosts in Pune, the BDB Book Club. He used to host, lockdown has stopped all such nice meetings. Sheryl Sandberg came into my life when I was thinking that now is the time for me to get married and think about career options that will help me balance a married life. It’s a restrictive state of mind to be in. That book opened up those blocks and made me confident that, don’t think so much about pursuing career choices. Just do what you love, everything else will fall into place. Along with that, another person who has had the biggest influence in my life, you’ll find this funny, but my boss at TRDDC. His name is Dr Sachin Pawar. He’s a Ph.D. in computer science and he’s really smart in natural language processing. The best part about him as a boss and that’s something I would want to be when I become a boss in a corporate setting is, extremely knowledgeable so much so that whenever you go to him with any problem, he’ll have a solution for it or he’ll open up like check this out or do this. And you will find a solution to that problem. I think that’s the best quality of a boss, that a boss should know the answers to all your questions, or point you in the right direction. At the same time, a person with a high work ethic, not seen a person like that. I can talk about him for an hour or so but coming to the office on time, wearing formals every day, I don’t know how people do that but being extremely disciplined in following deadlines, meeting up plans. If something goes amiss which usually happens in research, then figuring out what to do next, being very patient about it, protecting your team in front of the super boss. Such traits are rarely found in just one person. So he’s taught me a lot about work ethics and that is something I hope to carry forward in the future. When I was reading to prepare for the Sweden India Nobel Global Memorial Quiz, I read about the lives of a lot of Nobel laureates, and selecting one amongst them would be unfair. But reading about them has brought about a huge change in my life.
00:50:50
Harish: Yeah, I think that’s a great list. I haven’t met Dr. Pawar, I hope I have an opportunity to interact with him, probably do a Smartcast with him given the glowing recommendation that you have given.
00:51:05
Ravina: He’s a very introverted person. So if you look at him, you won’t even think. That’s one thing again that you don’t always have to be in the limelight to be an inspiration for someone.
00:51:17
Harish: Correct, very true. Last question, Ravina. How do you connect the dots on all the things that you have done over the years and with your foreseeable future at TAS? How is it contributing to what you are and where you are going to be?
00:51:37
Ravina: Yes, when I started I did not have a plan that I’ll do these, these, these things and connect them to do this one thing. But now that we are sitting over here, I can try to give a justification of how my skills will help me. The stuff you say to your interviewer when you are applying for a new job. Since childhood, when I was in 1st standard I had a big passion for computers and tech and I would see them as devices that increase your efficiency and productivity. This also translated into my love for machine learning which also ends up doing the same. I see tech playing a big role in whatever decisions I make. How can we automate, digitize and put things into processes, and use tech to make our lives easier? It’s something that will shape up my life. The sustainability perspective that was brought about by the 2016 droughts had a big influence on me. It started from water but has expanded to all fields of sustainability, not just environmental sustainability but also the sustainability of livelihoods, education, human rights. I hope that I make every decision in my life considering all these aspects of sustainability and also work towards making our country, starting from the Tata group, net-zero by the time I’m at the end of my life. If I’m able to do anything in that direction, I would say I’ve given back to the descendants of today’s generation. While these are technical skills that will help me, some values that I have incorporated will shape me up going ahead is one of having a strong focus on fitness and health. Mental health and physical health, both are extremely important. Not just for you as an individual, but even for your team. Whichever team I’m part of I always ask them what are exercising these days, are you going for walks, are you eating well, so this is also a push that will be there from my side. Building a nice, loving community and a healthy culture. A culture that pushes you to achieve your dreams and helps you overcome roadblocks, whether in personal or professional life, is something I’m lucky to have been a part of throughout my years at MIT, COEP, Bookwallah, Tahaan, TRDDC, and even at TAS. Having these amazing sets of people around you who are full of positivity and who also have the same amount of excitement for your dreams has gotten me to where I am today. So this is also a culture I would love to provide to all the people around me in the future. I think connecting the dots, tech, sustainability, fitness, and a loving community are things that have gotten me to where I am. Coupled with a sense of passion and drive to achieve my dreams and these are values and skills that I continue to take ahead.
00:54:56
Harish: On that note, Ravina. I think this was a fantastic one-hour of conversation that we had. A lot of things for me to pick up and talk about with my children as well. About what they should be thinking of and I see a lot of resonance with what we call future relevance in terms of what you’ve been thinking about your life, your career. We usually end these CTQ Smartcasts with a couple of questions about the future relevance of certain topics. But I think you’ve covered most of it around the future relevance of circular thinking and climate change. But I’m going to ask you one last question, what do you think is the future relevance of books?
00:55:40
Ravina: Wow. Just yesterday I was thinking about this, thank God I thought about it yesterday. I used to be a big fan of books and I have more than 1000 books in my house. I have not read all of them but I do. There has been a shift in my reading pattern from reading physical paper books. I've started reading things on kindle now. So that’s been one change of pattern. I also have started listening to a lot of podcasts. If there are some books that I feel like I want to know the gist of but I don’t want to give too much time to, I’ve started resorting to book summaries which I earlier used to not. Because I used to feel that it only provides a compressed version, lousy compression also happens. A shift to mini books has also been happening and even from the publishers’ end. Earlier, someone wrote a big book with 30-40 chapters and you were advised to read 2-3 chapters of that book. You needed to purchase the entire book to read those chapters. But just yesterday I read one chapter of Harish Bhat’s book on the Penguin Portal. Just that one chapter was available for around Rs 20 for a digital read. I feel that it is fantastic, that’s what consumers want sometimes, they just want to read a part. Such innovations are also coming up in books. Unfortunately a lot of my friends these days are not reading books because they are consumed in the Instagram world of reels. But I hope that an interactive version of these books that give more reel feels or have like an audio-video effect to it like Audible or Amazon Echo, Alexa also provides. These would be really interesting trends to come up with. At the end of the day, these short reels or short articles may give you good gratification but to understand a subject, to develop a perspective around it, you do need to read books. So this need is going to remain forever, I feel.
00:57:59
Harish: Yeah. On that note, we did cover some of what we spoke about in an earlier CTQ Smartcast with Niranjan Pednekar, where he spoke about the AR, VR around books, and all the work that he has been doing. So I’m going to link to that episode also in the show notes, again from the world of TRDDC. Thanks a lot, Ravina. Lots for me to chew on, for me to pick up. I wish you all the best in all the possible futures that you have.
00:58:36
Ravina: Thank you Harish. At the same time, I would also like to drop a special note of appreciation for Choose To Thinq, I’ve been involved with the activities, not very closely, but I have had intersections like attending Ramanand’s quiz at IIT Bombay or your quizzes at BDB Book Club sessions, listening about it from those who work for you, looking at your social media posts also. This is one of the most privileged interviews I’ve been a part of. I would say that the kind of perspectives that you folks bring to the table is something very unique and fresh. The world needs this perspective right now because you cannot think in the traditional patterns like you've been thinking so far. There is a lot of disruption happening, not just in the space of AI, tech, and business, but even in the space of thinking. I think that the contribution to this field by your organization is immense. Thank you so much.
00:59:38
Harish: Thanks a lot Ravina, for those kind words.