Mr. Akshai Abraham (PFM 2004-06) is an entrepreneur. He went against traditional advice which says, ” Get a job. Any Job.” and did what most successful or at least most happy people in the world dares to do – that is to follow own’s passion and do what one loves. Akshai’s love and passion towards Sports led him to found Project KHEL in 2012. Project KHEL through various programs, workshops and training impart skills and learning in children outside classroom at playground. The core idea is playing and learning are not opponents and in fact playing is just another language that children has to learn as part of their school syllabus.
Q. How has been your journey from IIFM to this role?
A. After IIFM, I worked for 6 years in various capacities and across sectors including health, education, livelihoods, etc. The exposure from the 2 years at IIFM and these experiences gave me a holistic view of the various (and often inter-sectional) issues within what we call the “development sector”. The longest stint was at the Center for Development Finance (IFMR) at Chennai where I was in a leadership role which required me to interact with researchers and experts (many of them IIFM-ites) across various disciplines which taught me a lot.
Q. What were some of the key milestones/learning in this journey that you would like to share with us?
A. As mentioned earlier, the 3 years at CDF were a great learning experience in terms of personal and professional growth as a manager as well as in terms of equipping myself with knowledge and skills.
Q. What is the most satisfying part of your current role?
A. Before I started Project KHEL, most of my work was several steps removed from actual grassroots work. Interaction with the ultimate beneficiaries was limited and my work was either on the research end, data end, or management end. Now, though it has been 8 years since starting my own organization, I make it a point to be part of the field work and interact with children through our programmes every day that I am in Lucknow. The ups and downs of entrepreneurship are many and often lead to despair – but the satisfaction one gets from a small smile or a small incremental change seen in a child is more rewarding then the happiness of landing a deal, making a great presentation, writing a successful meeting or living the high life flying from one city to another for meetings and conferences. I like to think that I wouldn’t give up these daily interactions no matter how ‘senior’ I get in age/experience or responsibilities (though it gets much harder to remain rooted to these as your organization grows.
Q. Has your learning at IIFM helped in shaping how you approach your professional roles?
A. Definitely! I chose to study at IIFM for exposure to the sector and though I got a decent score of 98.4 percentile in CAT, much to the disappointment of many “well wishers” joined IIFM and haven’t regretted it a bit! In fact, I look at typical MBA graduates with a bit of amusement and sometimes irritation that they have little more to offer than jargon and models with little understanding of the real world. I had decided to work in the development sector after living for a year in Austria and IIFM made it possible to do that effectively instead of just as a well-meaning “social worker”. The academic rigor, field visits as well as 2 long internships that were built into the course provided a lot of exposure and clarity.
Q. Who (or what) are the biggest influences or drivers in your careers? What would be your advice to freshers and IIFM graduates who are looking to choose similar sectors/roles.
A. I think it is extremely important to know what areas of work you are interested in. Much too often we take the easy path or the most available path or whatever currently the most lucrative path. For example, in our time we had a lot of banking/ rural banking placements but though my father was himself a banker, I had zero interest in the sector. I could probably have converted an interview process and landed up in the sector and done a decent job also – but would not have really ever connected with my work. I don’t think it is possible to achieve a state of ikigai at a young age straight out of college or post grad, or land your first job that meets your needs, ambitions, interests, passions all at once. However, taking good initial decisions at placement time, at crucial junctures when you are changing jobs or making life decisions will help you reach closer to this ideal state. So my advice – irrespective of whether you know you want to start your own organization at some point or not – is to be careful of “pressures” including peer pressure and family pressure, to be careful of how attractive something looks and instead try to figure out whether what you are about to jump into is something you would enjoy. Over time, the salary figures which seem oh-so-important will equalize; also things like family, daily job satisfaction, knowing your purpose, etc. will far outweigh the importance of your bank balance.
Q. What are your favorite memories during your IIFM days?
A. My favourite memories all revolve around Sports. Moments on the Cricket field, Volleyball or Badminton court are the best memories. In fact, other than those and the daaru parties/ masti – there is little I remember from the classroom 😀
Q. In hindsight, what was the biggest contribution (courses, faculty, library, friends, alumni.. Anything else!!) or take away from IIFM that you think played a critical role in shaping you as an individual or professional?
A. Once again, I think it is the Sports, which contributed the most to where I am today. I always knew, I couldn’t live without playing some sport or the other through my school/ college/ work life before IIFM – but at IIFM, I was elected as Sports Secretary which had its own set of responsibilities and challenges along with doing what I love. So, along with a couple of life experiences, I am sure it shaped my decisions to start a Sport for a development organization that used the power of Sport and Play to achieve developmental outcomes. Other than that, the way in which life at IIFM was structured – academically and otherwise – left a lot of decision-making to students and student groups. I think much more important than what was taught in the classroom was the way in which we had to do group assignments – forcing us to collaborate, argue, choose to contribute or free-ride, meet (sometimes insane) deadlines – all of which prepares you for work life. Similarly, being in Students Affair and Alumni Council also popularly called as SAAC or Mess Committee or just being active in the GBMs exposed all of us to simulations of the kind of things we would have to deal with in real life after we graduated. I dare to say that half your professional life as an entrepreneur requires you to deal with things not going your way, managing conflicts, managing your emotions in group settings or when contemplating all alone, learning how to express negative opinions, and a whole lot more – all of which is a learning journey that began in IIFM (outside the classroom) and continues till date! In fact the first tagline for Project KHEL was “taking education beyond the classroom” which is what I feel was the most important part of my school and IIFM education (I never really attended college :-D) Another thing to mention here would be that even after the 2 years of IIFM – somehow for the few years IIFM-ites were always part of the professional work life and those developed in the “gang” and became friendships – with both juniors and seniors. For example, to this date, though interaction is now severely limited – people like Sreyamsa and Shweta would count as among friends before being “colleagues” from IFMR or “juniors” from IIFM.
Q.The best buddies / seniors /faculty at IIFM? Some memorable tidbits that you like to share?
A. Of course we had our small groups within our batch so naming them would be the first obvious answer to this. However, I think I’ll name two guys – Anup Singh and Shyam Patro – both of whom I didn’t always get along with – but both were great buddies and competitors on the Sports field. In fact something they said stuck with me all these years and must have influenced my decisions when I was making the big life decisions of starting Project KHEL with full knowledge that I might fail and at the very least would probably be without salary for a year or so. These guys once passed a comment (I’m sure they don’t remember now) which was something like Akshai you are always so serious – sirf court ya ground pe tumhara smile ya khushi ka side dikhta hai. (link to what I said about Ikigai earlier) Among the faculty also my fondest memories would be of Prof. Rathore or Prof. Biswas for the informal interactions OUTSIDE the classroom – be it on class trips, just some interaction in passing or longer interactions related to the SAAC or on the badminton court or cricket field. This is probably not the answer needed for publication but I am a firm believer that more than 90% of what we learn in the classroom is ultimately useless and have said so in my TEDx Talks. Educators who are willing to go the extra mile to give time or energy to interactions outside the classroom are always, in my book true educators who understand that their job is not the 45 mins in the classroom – it extends way beyond that and that they are responsible for shaping young lives – not just teaching subject matter.
Q. As an alumni, what’s your advice to freshers or those are joining IIFM to get best out of the 2 years there?
A. In one line – just participate whole-heartedly in everything to get the complete IIFM experience. To expand – if you spend most of your time with your nose stuck in your books – sure you will do well academically and even your group interactions will be awesome (because everyone in your various study/assignment group will love you for doing their work for them 😀 ) – but if you participate in all the meetings, take up positions of responsibility, debate, get into uncomfortable situations, participate in co-curriculars be it Sports, Music, or dance – only then would you be uthaoing full fayda or doing paisa vasool of the fees you are paying to study at IIFM.
Q.What is your typical day at the office?
A. I start the day coaching Ultimate Frisbee to my players – sometimes as early as 5 am depending where we are in the season. Most of the time I try to end my day also with some interaction with players or with children from our Made in Maidaan programme – but this is more difficult to do because each day brings its own issues and I end up fire-fighting. The morning interactions with kids provides me the energy and motivation to get through the excel sheets, finance, networking, dealing with the never-ending team issues on a daily basis.
Q. You would like share about your typical weekends.. Hobbies.. Family..
A. Weekdays and weekends are more or less the same. In fact much before I started Project KHEL I read Ricardo Semler and aspired to create/ work at an organization such as his. I tried the same at Project KHEL and failed miserably but applied the concepts to myself religiously. This often leads to 18-20 hours “work days” along with the associated burnout over the last few years – but it also means that now I am at a place where going to work on Sunday means going to play /coach Ultimate Frisbee for 4 hours thoroughly enjoying myself. My wife equally passionate about Project KHEL and kids so, more often than not, everything is just merged into one big mess of work and life – which is equally liberating and frustrating depending on the situation 😀
Q. Favorite Books, movies, authors, ..
A. Too many to list because I read / watch across genres and don’t really get hooked into things – so I’ll skip this. Nowadays it is Netflix, a few years back I was reading 3 books a week.
Q. IIFM is driven by alumni’s passion and commitments towards its goal. How would you like to contribute to IIFM or IIFM alumni, students?
A. I will be the first to admit I am not a good alumnus – be it in terms of keeping in touch with alumni or on what is happening back in the institute on top of the hill where we learned so much. Open to suggestions on this one. Does writing this post count?
Q.What do you think is different at IIFM now vs when you studied there? What do you think is a positive change and what is not?
A. I think the batch size is far larger which I’m not sure is a good move. There has been a lot of debate about the name of the institute, the courses, etc etc. over the years – but in the end I think whatever direction the institute has gone – if they have been able to retain things like co-curricular activities, leaving decisions and powers in the hands of student groups, the traditions and norms along with the academic rigor – IIFM will always remain a place where students will emerge equipped to deal with professional life in their area of study/ work ( be it forestry, banking, environment, health or education).
Q. Any suggestions on who from our alumni you want to get profiled/interviewed here?
A. Vijay Pratap Singh Aditya, Bigsna Gill