Grit & Growth

Meet Divya Yachamaneni, CEO of Naandi Community Water Services, a for-profit social enterprise bringing safe drinking water to rural communities across India. Hear how this mission-led company made a strategic pivot to get the “urban rich” to help subsidize and ultimately scale its impact.Coming from an urban environment, Yachamaneni had no idea how widespread and severe the problem of contaminated water really is. Visiting rural communities made the issue crystal clear. In one village, she recalls, “They were drawing water from almost a sewage canal, putting it in the sun for odor, filtering it with a cloth for dust, and once the odor was gone, they started to drink it.”Today, Naandi Water sets up water purification systems in such communities and sells the purified water back to families for a nominal charge, about $2.50 per month. The model relies on community ownership from day one so the villagers can ultimately run the water center themselves.Even with the company’s success, scaling on a national level proved difficult without increasing costs. That’s when Yachamaneni explored a new strategy: selling bottled water to urban consumers to subsidize their work. While she was met with intense resistance by those who thought the plan veered from the NCWS mission, she ultimately prevailed. And the tagline on each bottle reinforces the strategy: “One hundred percent of the profits will go to supporting those people in rural India who don’t have water to drink.”Listen to how Yachamaneni’s entrepreneurial persistence and Naandi’s strategic pivot have paid off, creating more opportunities for safe drinking water in rural communities.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to Grit & Growth’s masterclass on marketing, featuring Jonathan Levav, Stanford Graduate School of Business professor of, you guessed it, marketing. Levav provides insights and advice on the psychology of customer marketing so you can learn how to get into the heads and hearts of your customers, influence their decision-making, and get them to choose your brand over the competition.Professor Levav has a PhD in marketing with a passion for exploring the brains and guts of decision-making — digging deep into why customers gravitate to one brand over another. Talking to customers is the best (and according to Levav, the only) place to find the answers.“People think that their task is to make a product. Their task is to understand customer needs and to create a product that meets those needs. And I think that if you're the CEO of a company and you don't speak or interact with customers at least once a week, you're not doing your job,” advises Levav.His research and teaching focus on the psychological dimension of marketing — or why we consume. As he says, “If we just consume things because of functionality, there's no way we would pay what we pay for Apple phones, for Nike shoes, for clothes, like nobody would do it.”Top Six Masterclass Takeaways Entrepreneurship is personal. Levav encourages you to figure out what type of problems you like to solve. “Some people like construction, some people like rice, some people like technology, some people like chicken wire. There's plenty of needs you could potentially address — some more profitable, some less profitable. Ultimately, the decision is kind of: What do you like to do most?” he explains.Don’t be so literal. Levav encourages marketers to go beyond describing simply what a product or service does. He says, “You can appeal to people in lots of different ways, and you can create competitive advantages along values that are way beyond the very literal thing the product does.”Marketing is three-dimensional. The first is the functional dimension or what the product does. The second dimension is economic — how sensitive customers are to price. The third dimension is psychological. And according to Levav, this is the biggest opportunity: to explain how the product can make customers feel better.Get out of the office. Levav believes that observing customers is critical to figuring out what customers want … and why. “You're never going to solve these problems staying in the office,” he says. “And by the way, you, the boss, need to get out of the office. Not just your underlings, not just your marketing person. You need to feel it on your flesh.”Map your customer’s journey. It’s important to understand every interaction your customer has with your business — step by step and over time, what led them there and what actions they take next. This applies equally if you’re B2C or B2B. “As long as you're not selling to computers, you're selling to people, and people in this firm that are buying from you have a journey, too,” Levav says.Don't undervalue simplicity. Nobody buys things that are ambiguous, says Levav. So, make sure your message is crystal clear to you and your customers. If you don’t get it, they won’t either. Listen to Levav’s insights, advice, and strategies for how to better understand your customer and create a cohesive story to meet their needs.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How do you market your product? And who are you marketing to? Those two questions go hand in hand as Nick Musyoka of Sonar Imaging Center learned. Hear how he targeted his marketing messages and increased revenues by 500% in just six years. And, gain insights from Jonathan Levav, professor of marketing at Stanford Graduate School of Business, on how customer segmentation can help you find and market more effectively to your customers.Standing out is never easy, especially when the product you and your competitors provide is virtually the same. That was the situation for Nick Musyoka when he returned to Kenya to lead marketing for Sonar Imaging Center, a chain of radiology clinics in Kenya. According to Professor Levav, understanding who your customer is is harder than it seems. “For starters, you need to distinguish between the user and the decision-making unit” he explains. Using the toy company model as an example, the child is the ultimate user, but the parent is the decision-making unit. Who you prioritize and how you market to each matters.That distinction between user and decision-making unit is essential to Sonar Imaging. Musyoka’s research revealed that patients were the users and doctors were the decision-making units, so the company’s marketing needed to focus on a group that would probably never set foot inside a clinic. Levav says the next step after identifying each of your customers, is figuring out how to solve their unique problems. “You want the user to understand that the solution you have is the best thing since sliced bread and it’s going to solve their problem. That’s positioning,” he explains. And finding your differentiation is key to that process. So, Musyoka asked himself “What is the key thing that we can talk about to differentiate ourselves?” Quality was too hard to prove. Unquestionable customer service was the answer for all of his customer segments. Even though his marketing campaigns have been incredibly successful, Sonar continues to evolve its customer segmentation and marketing. Levav couldn’t agree more. “You don't just go out there in the world, assess the needs, walk away and just go hibernate and do your product, and then hope to sell it,” he says. “This is something that has to be done on a regular basis because people's tastes change. Market realities change, competition changes, culture changes, macroeconomic conditions change, microeconomic conditions change.”Listen to Musyoka’s first-hand marketing experiences and Levav’s insights on the importance of customer segmentation and positioning for every company that wants to stand out from the crowd.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Is it possible to be virtuous in a sea of corruption? Indian entrepreneur Rajah Koppala of Avis Vascular Centers is trying to do just that. Hear how he and his team are strategically and realistically fighting against the tide of corruption. And, gain insights from Saumitra Jha, an associate professor of political economy at Stanford Graduate School of Business, on what it takes to understand and navigate challenging ecosystems. Rajah Koppala trained and practiced medicine in the United States before returning to India in 2013 to create a chain of vascular surgical centers which he calls “mini hospitals within hospitals.” As chairman and managing director of Avis Vascular Centers, he had to learn a lot about operating, quite literally, in a very different ecosystem. In the healthcare industry, much of the corruption is rooted in immense amounts of regulation and red tape. For every license that’s required, 23 in Koppala’s case, there’s an interaction with a public official, and therefore an opportunity for corruption. Koppala has decided that some things are negotiable and others aren’t. In this moral gray area, he has had to acknowledge what’s realistic for his business and has developed a set of consistent, intentional criteria to help him decide when he’ll pay and when he won’t. “You just have to understand corruption is not going to go away. This goes all the way up to the very top. Everybody has their own self-interest. And to a degree, when the legal system is a little weak, when the wages of a lot of these officers is very low to start with, headwinds make this happen,” Koppala explains.Saumitra Jha advises that there are certainly risks to giving bribes, even small ones, because once people become aware, he says, “They can ask for more and keep holding you up.” He advocates for strong, consistent leadership, making sure your employees are on board with “doing the right thing,” and finding partners in your industry to face obstacles together.“Oftentimes in economics, companies might be competing with each other in an industry, but at the political level, they have a lot in common. And so thinking about how to do things at an industry level can often be much more beneficial,” Jha explains.Rajah Koppala has also learned that relationships with public officials really matter. He encourages his team to have a cup of coffee and talk to the officials so they understand the gravity of the law that’s being broken, while still treating them with dignity. “Relationships equal money,” he says. “When you want to pay less, maintain a relationship.”Listen to Koppala’s first-hand experiences navigating corruption in India and Jha’s strategies for surviving and thriving in these challenging and turbulent waters.Resources:Analyzing Political Risks in Developing Countries: A Practical Framework for Project Managers, by Saumitra JhaSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Corruption is an unfortunate fact of business life. How can you remain ethical and still survive when it seems that everyone else is playing the game? Soji Apampa is one entrepreneur who believes there are ways to strategically navigate a corrupt system. Hear how his NGO in Nigeria is helping entrepreneurs to keep their hands clean. And listen to true stories from business owners across Africa and South Asia about the real cost of corruption on lives and livelihoods.When it comes to dealing with corruption, you are definitely not alone. Which is a key reason why Soji Apampa created an NGO dedicated to the issue. In 1995 the Integrity Organization was born and later the Convention on Business Integrity for the sole purpose of dealing with the issue of corruption in Nigeria. The organization’s early goal was simple according to Apampa: “We would like to be that matchstick that starts the bush fire. And even if the matchstick gets extinguished, so long as the fire spreads, we will have achieved something.” Twenty-five years later, they’ve achieved far more, studying corruption and explaining how it actually operates to help others avoid it — in Nigeria and beyond. “The reasons why people fall prey is, number one, they don't know the rules. So, you don't know the rules, you do the wrong thing, they just charge you. If you do the right thing in the first place, you can avoid those petty charges to start with,” Apampa suggests.Apampa encourages people to do the right thing from the start to avoid the “slippery slope” of corruption. “For many wise organizations, they just bite the bullet from the start and do the right thing, and they can avoid the bulk of it. But if you pay once, they keep coming. And imagine you do that with four or five agencies, then you're totally at their mercy,” he says.Unfortunately, the only way many small businesses can avoid corruption is to stay small and under the radar, but this ends up hampering their growth. So, one of Apampa’s goals is to help educate people on how to be ethical within an unethical environment. Leadership, he believes, is the best place to start.“If you're trying to be ethical as a small business, it starts from the posture of the leader,” Apampa explains. “Everyone takes a cue from there. It's not enough for you as the chief executive to be a moral person or an ethical person if you cannot put in the systems for compliance to ensure that even those who want to act immorally or unethically cannot.”Apampa believes there can be upsides to operating ethically within a corrupt system. “The whole anti-corruption thing is not always all bad, because if you are trying to survive by doing it ethically, you have to be more innovative than those who are willing to do the bad things.”Listen to Apampa’s advice on how to develop strategies and structures for avoiding or navigating corruption in your business environment.This episode is based on research and materials developed by Ken Shotts and Neil Malhotra. To learn more about regulation, corruption, and leading with values, check out these resources, featuring the two of them:Are You an Ethical Leader? | Stanford GSB (Article)Leading with Values - Class Takeaways | Stanford GSB (Video)Leadership and Ethics: How to Communicate Your Core Values | Think Fast Talk Smart (Podcast)Psaltry International Ltd: Challenges Refining Cassava Starch in Rural Nigeria | Ken Shotts, Geoffrey Otieno (Case Study)Thank you to the voice actors who brought this episode to life: Sirish Dhurjety, Malick Diallo, Kassahun Yimer Kebede, Wangui WambuguSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What are the obstacles and opportunities of franchising in Africa? While this business model is still in its infancy there, entrepreneurs like Grace Munyirwa of Vine Pharmaceuticals in Uganda are embracing it to grow and scale, while experiencing significant challenges along the way. Hear a story of struggle and success and gain insights from Chiagozie Nwizu, a franchise expert in Africa who has dedicated his career to educating entrepreneurs and investors on the power and pitfalls of the franchise model.Grace Munyirwa is a self-educated entrepreneur without any formal business training. But that didn’t stop him from growing his pharmacy business to 36 shops across the African continent. Unfortunately, overexpansion, credit mismanagement, and success got the best of him. “We were walking on water and everything we were touching was turning to gold; pride got ahead of us. And so we opened locations that were not sustainable. We opened locations that were not supposed to open at all,” Munyirwa recounts.As a last-ditch effort to save Vine Pharmaceuticals, Munyira turned to franchising. While franchising is hugely popular around the world, in Africa it’s still very early days, with little to no formal legal structures, franchise associations, training, or local history to build from. Chiagozie Nwizu is trying to close that knowledge gap.“For us to make progress with the franchise model in Nigeria, we will need to begin to have the smart franchiser and the smart investor — and being smart is being franchise-literate,” Nwizu explains.Munyira had to build his franchise model from scratch in Uganda, adapting it to meet his specific needs. One way he did that was by taking on more of the financial burden than is usual for a franchiser. Instead of asking his franchisees to pay rent on their stores, he kept that responsibility. And he had to carefully choose the type of franchisees he wanted to work with — people who already knew and cared about the culture vs. investors.“Sometimes people with money don't understand that you take a long time to make good money. They want to simply invest the money and maybe leave a son or the wife there and then expect this to grow. That couldn't work. So I chose not to go that route,” he explains.Nwizu calls Munyira’s approach a micro franchising model which allows franchisees to slowly build their equity in the business. Supporting franchisees is another key element to success, according to Munyira. “The team at headquarters is really a support team. Their role is not just to drink pina coladas. Their role is to look out and see what can really help the shops perform better. When these shops win, we win,” he explains.Nwizu believes franchising is an important tool for the future of African business, where a high percentage of family-run businesses fail after the first generation. Franchising can change that. Munyira agrees. “What really, really hurts me, and that may be peculiar to this part of the world, is that many businesses die after the founder dies. I want to have a story that can really help the company survive way beyond its founder, that Vine is still existing way beyond my lifetime.”Listen to Munyira’s first-hand experience with franchising and Nwizu’s insights on what it takes to build a franchise model that works for your business.Resources:Tackling Access to Finance: The Potential of Franchising in NigeriaSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to Grit & Growth’s masterclass on the effectiveness of small business interventions in emerging markets — with hard data to back it up. Thanks to researcher Stephen J. Anderson’s studies with African entrepreneurs, you’ll hear why having a coach, getting classroom training, and learning how to delegate can drive growth and impact your bottom line.Stephen J. Anderson has spent his entire career trying to bring rigorous research to international development efforts, whether at the World Bank, Stanford Graduate School of Business, or his current post at McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin.Anderson makes his case for research on the effectiveness of growth interventions. He explains, “In the development sector someone says, “I have this great program,” and then they show you the best cases. But did this program or intervention really lead to that increase in firm sales and profits? I can't just cherry-pick or look at it anecdotally.”Top Six Masterclass Research-Based Takeaways Remote coaching works. The study of 930 Ugandan businesses proved that those companies that received coaching over six months  increased sales, profits, and employment — by up to 50 percent!Coaching on your value proposition had the biggest effect. Anderson advises entrepreneurs to ask themselves, “What am I offering? Who am I offering it to? And why should they buy from me?” Think about your business model, think about the strategic shifts that you might have to make in the value proposition. Coaching or access to coaching can help you do that.In-person classroom training increases profits. The study of small firms in South Africa showed that those who received training — whether finance & accounting or marketing — increased profits by about 25 to 30 percent.  Networking with other entrepreneurs enhances learning. “We’re social beings,” explains Anderson, “and we still want to network. I learn a concept, I take it out to my business. I come back a week later and share what worked and what didn't work. I'm also going to hear from 10 or 15 other entrepreneurs. And so I'm going to learn the theory from whatever the instructor's telling me, but I'm also going to  learn practically from others.” Entrepreneurs need to delegate to scale. Anderson’s study of hundreds of businesses in Nigeria proved that to scale up, you need to let go. Anderson says, “Providing entrepreneurs with access to the expertise they need, that they can insource or outsource, grows the team, the managing team, and eventually grows the sales and profits of those firms.”Try not to hire family or friends. Anderson urges entrepreneurs to think hard before they hire and to look for ways to professionalize their workforce with the specific skills they really need to grow the business.Hear more about how Anderson’s research can be the basis for more effective entrepreneurship programs across the world and apply his findings to your own entrepreneurial journey.Research Links:Pathways to Profits: the Impact of Marketing vs Finance Skills on Business Performance, by Stephen J. Anderson, Rajesh Chandy, Bilal Zia.Do Marketers Matter for Entrepreneurs? Evidence from a Field Experiment in Uganda, by Stephen J Anderson, Pradeep Chintagunta, Frank Germann, and Naufel Vilcassim. 2021. Journal of Marketing 85(3), 78-96.Improving Business Practices and the Boundary of the Entrepreneur: A Randomized Experiment Comparing Training, Consulting, Insourcing and Outsourcing, by Stephen J. Anderson and David McKenzie. Journal of Political Economy.Additional research support was provided by Stephen Kagera, Janine Titley, and Christy Lazicky.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What kind of people and culture do you want in your company? How will you engage with employees and lead effectively? And how do you figure all that out while growing revenues? Human resources are rarely the first priority of leaders, but they should be. Just ask Sachin Dhanani, co-founder of Kenyan-based Danco Capital, and his HR adviser Claudia Salvischiani.Leadership styles are as varied as entrepreneurs. And they certainly change over time as companies grow. But the very best leaders put their people first, create meaningful ways to engage, get out of the way so others can step in, and establish a culture where values are reinforced—day in and day out. That’s what Sachin Dhanani learned firsthand (sometimes with difficulty), thanks to expert HR help from Claudia SalvischianiDhanani clearly had a lot on his plate, growing his manufacturing company from four to 240 employees in seven years. And HR issues always moved to the back burner as a startup. Salvischiani helped Dhanani evolve as a leader, developing different qualities to meet the “grown-up” company he was running.Salvischiani explains that lack of employee engagement is often at the top of a leader’s concerns. But she goes on, “People behave in the way they're being managed. I'm absolutely convinced about this.” She believes communication is essential for engagement, explaining your strategy, your goals, and how people can contribute. Creating effective meeting structures, she says, “can have a really transformative impact on how people feel within an organization.”Dhanani put this advice into practice and saw immediate benefits. “So every year we'll have a strategy meeting with about 15 key people within the organization. Although as a leader, you know where you want to go, I think it's important for them to feel as if they contributed to that strategy. And when they do that, then the buy-in is so much greater,” he explains. For companies experiencing hyper growth, culture is often neglected, according to Salvischiani. She continues, “There is basically no link between day-to-day operations and values. So, they have these values, but they haven't thought about how to implement those values.”Salvischiani understands how hard it is for CEOs to shift their roles and move into unknown territory. Implementing objectives and key results (OKRs) as part of a management feedback process can help. As she explains, “CEOs don't let go because they're comfortable in the operational work.” Dhanani now recognizes that “delegation is an artwork. It's a form of leadership. It’s a muscle that we really need to exercise and we need to learn. And what's important is that the person that we're delegating to is not going to do it in the same way that we are, but if we can measure how they do it, then it enables us to build confidence. And I think that's key.”Hear how Dhanani altered his leadership as his company grew and get practical advice from Claudia Salvischiani on the value of implementing key HR practices and strategies to create the culture you want and the performance you need. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What’s the greatest resource for a fast-growing company? If you answered human resources, you’ve got a great head start on scaling for success. Sachin Dhanani, co-founder of Kenyan-based Danco Capital, learned firsthand the importance of having a strategic HR plan. Hear his story and get essential guidance from HR expert Claudia Salvischiani as you grow and scale your own company.Sachin Dhanani paid little attention to org charts as he took his manufacturing company in just seven years from four to 240 employees and zero to 30 million dollars in revenue. Dhanani describes Danco Capital as a classic startup with everyone doing everything: “We had no org chart. We had no real job descriptions. So, when it came to things that were sort of in-between, it would be like, who's got the time, or who's done it in the past, and let's just do it.”By the time Dhanani realized he needed help from Claudia Salvischiani, they had over 160 employees. Too late, according to Salvischiani. She advises, “If you have 50 people, you must have HR. When I say you need HR, you need strategic HR. You need somebody who understands the business strategy and helps you translate that business strategy into organization, people, and culture.”Dhanani began by structuring the organization and creating formal job descriptions. And that, as Salvischiani describes, creates changes for the CEO as well. She says, “When companies scale, they need to rethink the role of the CEO. And the CEO or the founder needs to think about: How is my role going to change? Because typically the CEO is doing everything. And when you scale, you have to let go. This is a big jump for a lot of CEOs.”Listen to Dhanani’s real-world struggles and successes creating and executing an HR strategy and get practical advice from Claudia Salvischiani on why and how to make HR a priority as you grow and scale.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to Grit & Growth’s masterclass on talent — finding it and keeping it — featuring Claudia Salvischiani, an expert on all things HR. From workforce trends and interview techniques to structuring incentives and performance evaluations, Salvischiani gives candid advice and insights on how to attract and retain the best people to help your business thrive.It takes people to run a business, and the better they are, the better your business. So what can you do to not just get, but also keep, the very best? Claudia Salvischiani has a lot of strong opinions on how to do just that, grounded in real-world experience helping companies across India and Africa for over 25 years. Salvischiani believes that leaders play an essential role in keeping people happy. “When people leave, they are actually leaving their boss, not their organization,” she explains. “Your task as a leader is to develop people. Leaders are the ones who give meaning to your work. They explain to you why things happen.”Top Seven Masterclass Takeaways Create a sense of community, especially with remote workers. Salvischiani believes that having a sense of belonging is especially important for remote workers. Organizations need to change and she recommends communicating a lot and not just one-on-one. To find the best candidate, you need to prepare. “Be very systematic about what you're looking for in all aspects,” she advises. It’s extremely important to have the right profile for the position before you start sorting through resumes or else you’ll waste everyone’s time.When interviewing, don't let the candidate speak too much. “At the beginning, you speak, you set the tone, you set the structure, you explain how it's gonna be,” Salvischiani recommends. “You steer the interview, so you're not steered by the candidates.”Be honest when hiring. Salvischiani suggests being extremely honest about the context the person is going to be working in. Recruiting is a selling process, but you still have to be very clear about the challenges ahead.Higher salaries don’t earn you higher loyalty. While compensation is key, “you are not keeping people with the money. You're just postponing their leaving,” Salvischiani says. And she believes creating a salary structure is “absolutely necessary” for transparency, equity, and morale.Don’t incentivize individual performance. Incentivizing organizational performance over individual performance gets the entire department or organization to collaborate and intervene if others don’t perform. Give feedback honestly and frequently. Even though it’s one of the hardest things for managers and leaders to do, giving frequent feedback, even if it’s bad news, is essential. People actually feel valued when you give them feedback. According to Salvischiani, quick quarterly check-ins help with retention. Listen to Salvischiani’s recommendations and strategies for acquiring and retaining talent. It’s a delicate balance of understanding what you need as an employer and what your employee needs to develop and grow.The following music was used for this media project:Music: Toccata and Fugue in D Minor by Kevin MacLeodLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseArtist website: https://incompetech.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.