Vertical Head – Sustainable Rural Development – A.T.E Chandra Foundation

A.T.E. Group: Established in 1939, by the illustrious Bhagwati family, and was founded as a part of India’s freedom movement to sell high-quality German textile machinery in India to challenge the prevailing British monopoly. A.T.E.’s businesses encompass manufacturing, industrial sales, distribution, and service and have gained expertise in handling turnkey projects. A.T.E. is deeply committed to doing business in the best interest of society and the environment which is reflected in their choice of businesses.

A Little Bit About A.T.E Chandra Foundation (ATECF)

ATECF is one of India’s leading philanthropic foundations in terms of its scale, but highly differentiated in terms of the nature of work it does. It manages the charitable giving of Archana & Amit Chandra (#43 on Hurun India Philanthropy List, #2 amongst Professionals) and the A.T.E. Group. We strategically invest in ideas that generate highest SROI (social return on investment) because we believe in the power of ‘multiplier’ and are work hard to maximise our philanthropic impact by innovatively leveraging our resources. Our approach towards problem-solving any societal issue is four fold wherein:

1. we deeply engage in understanding the root cause by investing in R&D

2. we work with partners on disruptive solutions, and document evidence of success while capturing failures and learnings

3. aiming for systemic change, we build knowledge templates to disseminate widely for greater good of society

4. we invest in capacity of partners, and strengthening the ecosystem, including helping build missing pieces that will drive systemic change

Our efforts are distributed between implementation and advocacy so as to play a catalytic role in solving for the issues at scale that impacts the sector at large. Our founders spend substantial amount of their time working very closely with a small, tight knit team to collectively impact the below mentioned focus areas:

1. Social Sector Capacity Building (SSCB) focused to drive investments in building ecosystem capabilities of the sector and organizational effectiveness

2. Sustainable Rural Development [SRD] focused at addressing key rural issues and supports initiatives such as rejuvenation of water bodies and natural farming

3. Goodwill supporting various projects but largely focused on (i) domestic violence against women (ii) urban governance (iii) afforestation. We have also supported important legacy projects such as SRCC Children’s Hospital, Ashoka University, IDR, and Give India under this portfolio.

A.T.E. Chandra Foundation Values

1. Passion: We work with a commitment to make a meaningful difference. We show pride, enthusiasm and dedication in everything that we do.

2. Excellence: We hold ourselves to high standards of professional practice and integrity, working compassionately and creatively to respond to the complex needs of the people and communities we support. We will do what we do with humility. We will not let our egos get in the way, as we strive to be true partners to the people we serve, our grantee organizations and with other like-minded foundations and/or organizations with whom we collaborate.

3. Learning: We believe we are always a work in progress. We will be strongly focused on accountability – there will always be a good culture of defining goals, measuring outcomes and the efficiency of deployment of our human and financial capital. We will objectively assess our own performance and be willing to be independently and objectively assessed in the interest of our own development as well as fairness to the social sector. This will not always result in reports we desire but we will be objective about the conclusions.

4. Open communication: We value candour and believe in honest and timely communication. All communication should be mindful, taking into account each other’s time. Our team is supportive of each other’s efforts, and care for each other’s growth both personally and professionally.

5. Fostering a respectful, ethical and joyful environment: We have respect for individuals both within the Foundation and within our grantee partner organizations. We will seek diverse points of view. We will not tolerate discrimination on the basis of status, gender, religion, caste, sexual orientation or community. Work at the Foundation must be enjoyable – the journey must be fun and people should not just be focused on the destination.

Work at the Foundation will be rewarding intellectually while being financially fair when bench-marked to who we consider as appropriate comparable. We will endeavor to provide personal growth and learning and where we can’t, we will be honest about it.

Organization: A.T.E Chandra Foundation

Role: Vertical Head – Sustainable Rural Development

Location: Mumbai (Kala Ghoda) with travel to rural areas

This role might be for you IF:

• You are passionate about designing and driving transformative programs impacting farmers – at scale?
• You have 10+ years of experience in the development sector, including a few in a managerial role, ideally with a focus on agriculture/ water/rural development
• You are analytical, strategic, have the ability to project manage very well with a deep sense of accountability, have a sense of connect with multiple stakeholders, especially farmers, enjoy working with people and desire to partner with NGOs, and will push hard to achieve outcomes in the lives of millions of farmers
• You are proficienct in guiding your team to design and evaluate assessments, rubrics, collect and analyse large set of complex data across different work streams and partners, and build evaluation frameworks & dashboards
• You have excellent verbal and written communication skills, along with relationship skills and problem solving ability
• Care about competitive remuneration; inclusive but women dominated team that has fun in and outside the office; Opportunity to work to some extent with our founders

Overview of the Sustainable Rural Development Vertical

In this role, you will oversee two sub-verticals as the vertical head – Water for Farmers and Natural Farming, both ultimately focused on materially improving the livelihoods of small and marginal farmers at scale.

The team at ATECF has been involved in water conservation since 2016 when Maharashtra was reeling under a severe drought. Looking for ways to provide a sustainable solution instead of a “tread-mill” approach, led the team to focus on rejuvenation of water bodies across Maharashtra by working with NGOs who partner with communities to remove accumulated silt in order to increase water storage capacity (both above and below the ground) and reduce the dependence on rain for agriculture. The silt was carted away by the farmers at their cost, which was offer by massive benefits on account of productivity gains and cut in fertilizer expense. A consortium of ATECF and other donors, created a scalable template, and worked closely with NGOs spread across the state to rejuvenate thousands of bodies over the 2016-2019. This model was then piloted in Rajasthan in 2020 and in Karnataka in 2021.

Based on our experience and the need for rejuvenation of water bodies, in rainfed areas across many other parts of the country, we and other partners intend to take this up across 3-4 states in the 2022 season at large scale. In order to achieve this, we believe, it will be critical to build execution capacities of the partners, be involved in robust planning, invest and monitor R&D to drive systemic change, ensure high quality M&E and dashboards, and coordinate closely with other stakeholders – such as co-donors, NGO partners, vendors providing support, government where needed.

The second sub-vertical is Natural Farming. ATECF was responsible for supporting the launch of the National Coalition for Natural Farming, which is a largest such collective of over 800 organisations working in the space. We also work closely with RySS, the largest non profit working with over 500,000 lakh farmer who practice natural farming in Andhra Pradesh. Along with RySS, we helped develop a vision for natural farming in India, which identified 5 big shifts that will be required to realise this vision. At ATECF, we would like to find ways to facilitate these big shifts through those we partner.