My Journey from New Delhi to Oxford

 

My Journey from New Delhi to Oxford

Nikhil Dugal is a 2017-18 Skoll Scholar on the Oxford MBA. He’s a social entrepreneur working in the field of environmental sustainability, specifically towards establishing a circular economy. Here, Nikhil shares his story and inspiration up to becoming an Oxford Scholar.

My journey leading up to Saïd Business School has always been guided by one principle, to put the impact of the work I’m doing first, before anything else.

My journey started in 2014 when I had been working at a development economics research center in India for about two years. As a researcher, I became increasingly frustrated from working on multi-year, multi-million dollar projects that repeatedly unpacked major social challenges, without actually pairing them to actionable policy insights that could create change. It became clear that I enjoyed a more hands-on approach, and wanted take part in changing the problems I was working on. I set out to find opportunities to use what I’d learned to become part of building solutions myself.

While in college at New York University, I had taken a class on social entrepreneurship that first introduced me to the idea of establishing a business-for-good. I was immediately intrigued by the concept of a business designed to address a social or environmental problem, versus the traditional mode of CSR, which engages in philanthropy out of a percentage of profits made from the unsustainable systems themselves. This new breed of social –business instead leverages market-forces to implement change, without the constraint of relying on funding for their entire life-cycle.

It wasn’t long after first getting excited about social enterprise that I met a friend who had been inspired by the idea of repurposing shipping containers into infrastructure – and his inspiration really got me thinking. Having worked in the development sector, I understood there was an unmet need for organizations working on rented land, running operations in remote areas. I was also interested in working in the waste management space. I proposed that we focus on his expertise in manufacturing, and use my previous experience to start a company that provides custom container infrastructure to organizations in rural and urban India.

containers

Containers retired from use at a yard in Uttar Pradesh

Aadhan

Over the past two years, we’ve built a company that repurposes once unusable materials into beautiful classrooms, workspaces and more, anywhere in India. We provide an end-to-end service to any organization looking to build temporary infrastructure. Our facilities help up-cycle shipping containers that are over 20 years old and retired from use.

We’ve built a list of vendors who provide construction inputs made from waste, such as wall paneling made from Tetra-pak waste cartons or sustainably sourced wood, insulation made from PET bottles, and roofing sheets made from recycled plastic and aluminum. These are offered as a package to our clients, for each of whom we design a custom facility as per their requirement. We also offer off-grid solutions including solar-panels and dry-toilets.

tetra pak board

The interior of this facility is made from Tetra-pak Board

At Aadhan Infrastructure, we’ve helped recycle over 25 tons of steel, and built a diverse range of infrastructure including skill training classrooms for government programs, training facilities for rural healthcare workers, and even furniture showrooms for private companies. Over 400 children from disadvantaged communities have accessed skill training in rural Uttar Pradesh due to our classroom. We’ve also won grant funding, business competitions and were featured on national television.

four men stood on a container

Carrying out an inspection before dispatch

Why the Oxford MBA?

Despite our small and growing success in India, I feel there is so much more I need to learn in order to grow the company’s impact across India. We have faced innumerable challenges including an inability to scale up our work with the government, an inability to raise equity funding, the lack of an established market and low trust in the new building technology. I was able to receive significant peer support from organizations such as Unltd. Delhi; however, I realized I needed to build my skillset in order to successfully be able to run the business and change our model in order to scale up the impact of our work.

Coming from a background in economics and math, I wanted to study business in a place that was focused on supporting social entrepreneurs, and actively involved in the changing narrative on the nature of business. Due to this reason, I had a very specific list of MBA programs. Each one was a one-year program, focused on entrepreneurship, with a significant focus on social enterprise. Saïd Business School was at the top of this list, especially due to the countless resources they offer to social entrepreneurs and the presence of the Skoll Centre.

I had been looking at the scholarship for over a year, and once I knew I met the criteria, I reached out to a previous scholar from India, who was incredibly kind and helpful. It immediately gave me a sense of the community here and motivated me further to apply. One year later, I’m sitting in Oxford, and have been blessed to receive a Skoll Scholarship.

This opportunity has enabled me to pursue my goals and continue to engage in my mission. There are truly few organizations in the world that provide such significant support to social entrepreneurs, with only the intention of encouraging them to lead an impactful career. There is no chance that I would have had access to such a great program without the help of the Scholarship and I look forward to using every opportunity I get over the next year to learn as much as possible.

Over the next year I plan to use all the resources we are offered here, including programs such as Map the System, Skoll Academy and Skoll Venture Awards to refine the mission of my organization and explore levers for change to help us scale our impact. I’ve had the opportunity to attend a few sessions at the Skoll Academy already, and am extremely impressed with the program the Centre has been able to put together as an alternative to the Consulting Development Program and the Finance Lab offered to the rest of the MBA class.

I’ve also had the amazing opportunity to meet my peers, each of whom is as accomplished as the next. They are the greatest resource we have here, and they come from all over the globe, with about a third from the development sector. Although they’re from a diverse background, what they have in common is a sense of collaboration and community, and I feel certain I’ll learn more from them than I can begin to describe here and now.