Ranjan Chopra, Founder, Team Computers Pvt Ltd, India’s leading IT solution provider, shares the company’s focus on Regenerative Development and Business Leadership and the strong need for humans to live in harmony with animals and nature in an exclusive interview with India CSR. Excerpts:
What is your vision for society?
I strongly believe that we need to live in harmony with nature. We need to maintain a very fine balance with other living beings in our ecosystem. In my own experience, when we started taking care of animals and plants, we experienced positive returns that we could have never imagined. Since then we started focusing on not just business, but also animals, nature and the overall ecosystem. Gradually we realised the need to focus on creating a regenerative business. To serve with love is in the DNA of each of us working at Team Computers.
How do you define Regenerative leadership which has become a buzzword these days? What initiatives is Team Computers taking in this direction?
While different people describe it differently, for me regenerative leadership is a healthy and sustainable approach of doing business, which focuses not just on top line and end line, but also on various actors of our planet, including nature, animals and other creatures. Most of our interventions involve working in this direction. We are doing some excellent work on social forestry and animal welfare, among others. With regenerative leadership, we think about how we can create the conditions for stakeholders to profit from business – socially, economically, and environmentally. Performance gets measured by how much you’ve improved the social, economic, and environmental conditions in the places through your business activity.
As the World Environment Day 2022 is celebrated across the globe on 5th June, 2022, how do you see your environmental projects especially social forestry? Could you tell us more about it?
Going beyond metro cities, we started exploring alternative places in mountains, we found a place in Uttrakhand and named it Tatva Hills. We started with the idea that how we can live with nature? We started basic farming there and it is then we realised the stark reality of scarcity of water. We created large water-storage facilities and introduced new farming methods. We channelized water from the mountains and harvested it in our storage. We felt the urgency to create forests. We started re-wilding the nearby baron land and adopted Miyawaki forestation method in our intervention area and saw water coming out from the various plantation sites. It is unique experience for us. We are very encouraged to see that UNEP is celebrating World Environment Day, 2022 with the campaign slogan “Only One Earth” with the focus on “Living Sustainably in Harmony with Nature”. We will be happy to share our experience with anyone interested to learn from our experience.
What is Tatva Hills? Is it a resort or an experience centre?
Nestled in the lap of nature, Tatva Hills is the perfect getaway for city dwellers. Situated in the pristine hills of Uttrakhand, Tatva is moving a first of its kind- India’s first conscious regenerative hospitality resort. Ideal for off-sites, Tatva’s main building has a large conference hall, State of Art Kitchen and fine dining restaurant space coming in a few months.
When we conceptualized Tatva Hills, the idea was to look beyond as just a tourist destination and promote the idea of living with nature. The farm to table concept is a reality here, where each meal is a treat for the senses. Tatva Hills focuses on agritourism and ecotourism, among other things. We have grown Lakadong Turmeric, Black Turmeric, Apple, Kiwi, Strawberry, peach, pear and various fresh vegetables. Every day at Tatva, we do some research & development in farming, forestry and water conservation. There is lot more which we can offer to people to learn from us, in this way it is also an experience centre.
How are you spreading your learning of Tatva?
Recently, we consolidated our learning and experience about Tatva Hills. Through our various conscious initiative, Tatva Hills is evolving as light house by building climate resilience and living with nature concept for the region. We are promoting ideas that accelerate regeneration of the water supply in the region. Creation of job opportunity for youths which stops migration, promotion and dissemination of indigenous knowledge, engaging local community in contributing to landscape regeneration are some of the unique idea which we are doing in nearby region. We are calling this work as Beyond Tatva whichwill strengthen the connection among plants, animals, and humans in such a way that it will further contribute regeneration of people through nature. We want to help local farmers to grow products which the world values and earn decent income from this. We are helping them to grow high value products and calling eco-preneurs to come here to learn from us.
Who are eco-preneurs and how are you supporting them?
Eco-preneurs are entrepreneurs whose business efforts are not only driven by profit, but also by a concern for the environment and climate change. Tatva Hills is a design school and invites eco-pruners across the globe to search for innovative solution of pressing challenges in the area of regenerative development and climate change.. All entrepreneurs working on any aspect of ecology, climate change or agriculture can come to Tatva to learn, share their learnings, and create something substantial which benefit the larger world. We are not only bringing jobs to rural area but also building larger ecosystem in which local people can live with best livelihood opportunities and opportunities for decent education and health services.
Who are your partners for Tatva Hills initiative? What activities have you undertaken to bring local stakeholders on board?
Tatva Hill has adopted a unique design thinking experience in which national and international experts from forestry, animal welfare and human development have collectively worked to suggest regenerative design experience for it. We have ensured that local communities, especially local women of the region, participate in this design journey. We are providing livelihood and employment opportunities for the local people and engaging them to design and contribute in local development.
Who are the target beneficiaries of Tatva Hills project? How will it become sustainable?
Tatva Hills looks for impacting 10,000 acres of land in its vicinity. We are creating an ecosystem in which local people are engaged in such a way that their capacities are built, they get to know best farming practices, receive higher return on their agriculture produce which further gives them sustainable livelihood opportunities. We call it Beyond Tatva. At the core, the question we ask ourselves is: How can Tatva Hills catalyse the ecological, social and economic regeneration of the local region, exponentially? What is our role in this ecosystem?
That’s great. What are the other key focus areas for TEAM Computers’ Corporate Social initiatives?
As an organization, we have consciously decided to contribute towards betterment of three sections of the larger ecosystem — human being, plant and animals. We have decided to divide our resources equally among these three groups.
When we started 10 year back, we supported organizations which worked for people with special needs and animal welfare. As an IT organization, we consider it our responsibility to contribute to bridging the digital divide prevalent in society. We are working on the Digital Literacy and Cyber Safety programme in Uttarakhand impacting more than 5,000 children each year. In another programme, we are working with five (5) prisons to provide their inmates with access to digital literacy, employment opportunities and social integration. Through this programme, we are reaching out to over 1,000 prisoners every year. We are also working to create livelihood and job opportunities for rural youth through building their capacity in IT domain and providing them decent jobs in rural areas. In another project, we are using technology to address health needs in rural remote areas through a telemedicine programme. Under our non-farm based livelihood initiative, we are supporting farmers to learn apiculture to substantiate their existing incomes.
Under our animal welfare programme, we are working with reputed organizations and supporting them on nutrition, health care and shelter facility. We are also starting India’s first Fellowship programme for veterinary doctors. The selected fellows will work with reputed animal welfare organizations and enhance their skills to deal with animals. We are also trying to create low-cost shelter prototypes which could be replicated in different parts of country.
What is the geographic focus for your social initiatives?
We started our intervention from Delhi NCR and now expanded it to Himalayan Region. We purposefully opted work in backward and remote areas where the development is still slow, migration is quite high along with pressure on natural resources and climate. However, we are adding more areas for intervention based on our learning. We follow the mantra of scale and velocity in our intervention!
How are your social initiatives currently being funded?
Investment of Social initiatives for us is not only related with CSR Compliance rather we see it as our responsibility to give back human, animal and nature. Our initiative are aimed to build capacity of local people with our own learnings, bringing technology in our intervention and nurturing new ideas which is challenging the existing status-Quo.
Team Computers will be utilizing its resources beyond the CSR compliance. We would need more support to grow exponentially from like-minded people who wants to contribute to regenerate the nature. Based on our learning, we are forming our Foundation and will seek support from others to join us, which will help it to further get the impact multiplied.
On other hand, Tatva Hills is a separate entity within our group company which aims to showcase a unique regenerative conscious hospitality industry which has never been thought of so far. We are creating an ecosystem in Tatva where human, animal and plant may live together in harmony. The facility will look for creating carbon negative interventions through it. We are working to regenerate and rewild the nature around.
We are committed to utilize profits of Tatva Hills to benefit its social, economic and climate ecosystem and creating positive change in the lives of people and locality through various interventions.
What is your plan for the next five years?
Our targets are evolving every month. Under our CSR commitment, we aim to positively impact the lives of 1 lakh people in the next 5 years through various thematic interventions in the areas of education, healthcare, livelihoods and rural development.
We also aim to plant five crore trees in the next five years in different parts of the country. We will continue to support animal welfare with nutrition support and healthcare facility. Through our upcoming scholarship programme for veterinary doctors, we aim to provide support to more than 1 lakh animals directly.
