School of Policy and Governance

Ruchir is the Founder of the School of Policy and Governance. He is also a Co-Founder & Chief Digital Officer at Distributed Energy (www.de.energy). Distributed Energy matches investors with renewable energy projects across Africa, the Middle East, and India. While he was a student, Ruchir founded Langoor (www.langoor.com) – which became one of APAC’s largest independent digital agencies. While he exited the business in 2019, he remains on the Board of Langoor. Passionate about social change, after the international student crisis in Australia in 2010, Ruchir created the Australia India Youth Dialogue, a Track II diplomatic dialogue between young leaders of Australia and India. Ruchir is also the Founder of Samarthan India.  Ruchir is a Computer Science graduate from Sydney University and a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. He serves as Director on a number of not for profit and business Boards.

India has one of the largest civil administration services in the world – at central, state, regional, local, rural level – servicing a population of over 1.2 billion people.  Public Policy education in the west has been created using western frameworks. Developing world public policy problems require developing world led thinking. India and the developing world lack a stand alone education facility that provides the necessary education, skills and tools to equip civil and public servants. The School of Policy and Governance (SPG) aims to be that facility that approaches developing world problems with developing world frameworks. By assembling a credentialled and expert faculty, curating cutting edge localised content and programs, and utilising the latest in technology and innovation, all of which will be tailored to meet the particular needs of a developing public sphere in India, SPG aims to deliver the leaders of tomorrow.

There are two specific problems we are trying to solve in India and the developing world - the first is a lack of quality localised public policy and governance education and upskilling. This means that there are millions of leaders in the public sphere servicing a mass of society without the necessary education or skills to adequately address their needs. The second is the need for developing world led public policy frameworks to solve developing world problems.

The civil society needs of the developing world are at a scale most developed countries, with all their resources and education, would struggle to address.

While there are a few public policy departments and schools at some Indian institutions, they are largely accessible only by the intellectual elite in India. The domino effect is then that the people of those constituencies led by leaders with no public policy tools are adversely impacted as the civil servants who service them have not had the benefit of appropriate public policy or governance education or innovation or localised research efforts. These local economies are then materially adversely impacted as the policies that apply to them are not tailored to their particular needs.

SPG is a non-profit entity that was established in May 2017 to facilitate the education and upskilling of the brightest in civil society to build a better India and world through high quality educational programs in public policy, law and governance.

Once fully established, the SPG will offer 3 Masters programs and be a research-based institution geared towards the developing world. We are aiming to establish a physical campus in India by 2023.

In the interim, we are delivering a series of 1-4 day Executive Education Programs, focused on niche topic areas. In the last 24 months we have delivered 20 physical programs across a number of cities in India in partnership with institutions such as the University of New South Wales Australia, Jindal School of Public Policy, the George Institute and UN Women on topics such as Building Online Communities for Civic Engagement, Gender Policy, Health Policy, Cyber Policy and Emerging Security Challenges in South Asia.

Currently, SPG is the only niche public-policy program institute in India.

We are preparing for the launch of our fully virtual programs scheduled in August 2020.

SPG services civil servants, aspiring politicians, graduate and post graduate students, public policy and governance professionals in India (and more recently, virtually, other developing countries such as Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal).

Ultimately, an educated, equipped and empowered public leadership base will result in a well understood, resourced and serviced civil society, that is each person who is impacted by the policy making and governance decision making of India's civil administration services. SPG expects that through its work, the greater civil society of India and later the developing world, its people at urban, regional, rural and local level - will enjoy a higher quality of life.

SPG undertakes research through its networks, agencies, alumni and stakeholder base to determine the particular needs of a local population, then curates the content for its programs to address those needs and brings to its students domestic and international subject matter experts that they would not otherwise have access to.

Some of our alumni have already taken their learnings back to their jobs
in governments and companies where they’ve made policy changes based on
what they learnt in our programs.

SPG communicates with its alumni and stakeholder base through newsletters and social media.

At SPG we have identified the gap in public policy and governance education in India and the developing world, and have sought through our executive education programs (in the first instance) to bridge that gap, with our plans for a full fledged university (or graduate school) to provide masters equivalent programs and a research base which will ultimately provide a solution that services the wider developing world. We will also focus on programs that offer training to the wider developing world virtually or in person.

During a conversation with a passenger (who happened to be a senior academic in India) sitting next to me on a flight in India, I came to understand that there was a dearth of research-driven public policy and governance education in India.

This troubled me for some time, and after putting some effort into some research and statistics, I pulled together my founding team of the Australia India Youth Dialogue - Vidya Sagaram (director of investment, Victorian Government based in Bangalore), Monika Barthwal-Datta (senior lecturer, international security at the University of New South Wales Australia), Rishi Suri (senior journalist), Sanushka Seomangal (Partner, Thomson Geer, Sydney) - along with Manu Sundaram (lawyer and political media adviser), Chandra Natarajan (entrepreneur) and Preeti Herman (Global Director, Change.org Foundation) to see if we could take the necessary action to bridge the gap in public policy and governance education in India.

We then put together a blue print, financial model and business plan to make the School of Policy and Governance a reality.

We started with Executive Education to ensure we solve the problem on a smaller scale before enabling larger scale investment.

While I am now a global citizen, I was born and raised in Ahmedabad, India. I experienced first hand calamaties such as inter-faith riots and earthquakes and the response of local government. I saw it through the challenges experienced by my family and friends. I saw it through helpers in my father's small business and other members of the community. It is only through my not-for-profit work later on, and the impetus grown out of a conversation with a stranger, that I realised that I could actually make a difference to the daily challenges of Indians by educating and equipping the people who service them.

As someone who is internationally educated, I appreciate that I am in the very small percentage of Indians who has not just the ability but the resources and networks to effect the kind of positive change that a country like India and the developing world need. If I don't take this on, who will? I feel that I have not just a duty but a responsibility to see if the impact I hope we will have, actually bears the results to positively impact civil society and better a billion lives.

One of the most important skills I have developed is recruitment. The team at SPG comprises a group of highly skilled and experienced professionals from a range of industries, including education and technology. I have personally founded two other successful not-for-profit organisations, one of which was undertaken with the majority of people comprising the SPG team. In addition, I successfully founded two profitable international business enterprises, demonstrating my capability to lead SPG.  

The team includes:

• Monika Barthwal-Datta - a senior academic at the University of New South Wales Australia, and a leading scholar on international relations, who oversees content and programming.
• Chandra Natarajan, an entrepreneur who has founded a 1500+ people business and led the development of a campus through one of his many successful business ventures.
• Vidya Sagaram ,a director of strategic projects and investment for the Victorian Government based in Bangalore who oversees project management.
• Rishi Suri, a senior journalist, who oversees media and communications.
• Sanushka Seomangal, a senior lawyer, partner at national law firm, Thomson Geer in Sydney, who oversees risk, governance and compliance and assists with fundraising.
• Manu Sundaram, a lawyer and media spokesperson for the opposition in Tamil Nadu, who assists with program direction and co-ordination and political liaison.
• Preeti Herman, Global Executive Director, Change.org, who assists with strategic direction.
• myself, Ruchir Punjabi, Chair and CEO.

Further information our individual background and experiences is available at www.policyandgovernance.in. Together, we have the requisite skills, background and experience to successfully execute on our projects for SPG.

At SPG we rely on grant funding to ensure we are able to provide the quality content and programs to students. Despite representations to us as to availability of funding, based on which we curated a schedule of programs, one of our primary funders was not able to deliver the funding to us last year. We were then in a position where we would not be able to deliver the programs in the manner in which they had been curated.

Faced with the alternative of pulling the program schedule last year, I worked with the team to put together a bare bones low-cost model for the programs, effectively eliminating the frills, but not compromising on the quality of the content. I put together a plan to secure local partners to provide free conference and venue facilities in return for partnership rights. We had to eliminate international speakers (unless we were able to have them sponsored) so we sourced a high calibre domestic expert to deliver. We shortened the programs to reduce costs but ensured that the content was of the highest quality. With these new measures we were able to deliver high quality programs on short notice despite the setback.

In 2010 when I was an international student in Sydney, there were a number of racially motivated attacks against Indian students in Australia. During that crisis, Indian students in Australia were concerned for the physical safety, and felt unwanted and not taken care of by the universities at which they were studying. The international student crisis and its impact were exacerbated by irresponsible media coverage by both India and Australia, and slow action on the part of universities and government authorities to provide better protections and facilitate a culture of mutual respect and understanding. The relationship between Australia and India was at an all time low, and perceptions on the ground were skewed by the outrageous media coverage. I decided that something needed to be done to immediately educate people about the reality of the relationship, and out of this the Australia India Youth Dialogue was born (www.aiyd.org) - effectively a track II bilateral dialogue which brings together the highest calibre of young Indians and Australians on an annual basis to engage on issues of significance to the Australia India relationship, and develop recommendations to be made to government, business and other stakeholders to positively impact the bilateral relationship.

Most high quality public policy frameworks today are developed and led by the west, utilising western research. A lot of high quality education in this space is from the west. We are changing that, leading with a developing world school for developing world problems.

Our approach has three key factors: education, research and reach:
a) Educating the leadership in the public sphere about various tools and frameworks available
b) Researching problems and finding solutions that make sense from a developing world perspective
c) Reaching everyone in the public sphere to drive change through knowledge

We have been running education programs (a) for three years and have already received tremendous feedback on change our participants are making through what they learn in our programs.

We have recently started virtual programs that are enabling us to reach (b) participants from Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka as well as rural India.

Our research (c) currently is mainly through partnerships. However we intend to do more in-house on this front by building a physical campus.

Our vision is to impact a billion lives through their leaders.

Until now our programs have been attended by over a 1,000 people. Some of these people are in charge of programs that affects millions of humans. Our first virtual program in August will reach 500 participants on our own. This will enable us to reach 10,000 participants in the next year. Our five year vision is to educate and empower 500,000 people that enables us to improve a billion lives in the next 10 years through the education of a million people in the same time.

Our five year vision is to educate and empower 500,000 people that
enables us to improve a billion lives in the next 10 years through the
education of a million people in the same time.

Our primary barrier at the moment is the difficulty we are experiencing with fundraising. We are working on securing a cornerstone grant to facilitate the acquisition of land, and provide a base to secure more funding to construct the university campus and establish a physical presence in India. The difficulty we have had to date is that despite our best efforts, we have not been able to leverage our connections to facilitate the entry into of the right networks to put ourselves in front of the potential cornerstone funders.

We will continue to pursue who we consider to be the right connections to help us to obtain access to the cornerstone funders. To this end, we will continue to leverage our networks, and extend ourselves into other networks, including through professional networks unconnected to SPG.

We currently partner with:

• the University of New South Wales Australia (primarily for funding).
• Jindal School of Public Policy (primarily for conferencing and related facilities).
• the George Institute (primarily for partnerships on health policy related programs).

In the past we have also partnered with:

• Jain University (primarily for conferencing and related facilities).
• NLS Bangalore (primarily for conferencing and related facilities).
• UN Women India (primarily for promotion of gender policy related programs).

We have a business plan and financial model in place.

The financial model is based on the establishment of a physical campus (and faculty), and essentially requires approximately US$15 million to get us off the ground.

The business plan is focussed on our current activities being the provision of executive education programs. For physical programs we charge a fee for service (and this includes the provision of a certificate on completion of the program). Roughly the fees are between INR2,500 and INR25,000 per student depending on the length and topic area of the program. Operating on a lean base (with sponsored conferencing and related facilities, and catering), and taking into account a spend of INR15,000 on speaker gratuities, and a marketing and promotion spend of INR 50,000, in order for us to break even we need a minimum of 26 full fee paying students per program.

We are foraying into fully virtual programming in August 2020 with a significantly lower cost base, which has allowed us to try a different model and extend the programs into Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka. While it is still early days, the take up in those countries has been encouraging, and we will revisit this with a more developed financial model later this year. We believe the virtual model will enable us to re-imagine our program delivery.

Our financial model sets out that in order for us to establish a physical presence, we will need to spend approximately US$15 million. We will need to raise this money through grants, cornerstone investors, and if necessary investment capital.

Once established, SPG expects, based on its model that the revenue generated from its fee based will sustain the day to day operation of the university with development programs or proposed acquisitions to be funded through additional fundraising.

Since the beginning we have received $200,000 (AUD) in sponsorship revenue. $150,000 has been from UNSW towards promoting their brand in India alongside SPG.

In the last 12 months, SPG has received $5,000 (USD) towards launching virtual programs through a grant from the Australian government.

We have a small amount of fee revenue we have received since the beginning of SPG.

We are in the process of seeking funds to establish our physical presence. As disclosed previously we will required approximately US$15 million in order to do so. At this stage we are looking at grant funding (for a cornerstone at least) with a combination of debt or equity as may be required for the balance.

We are currently structuring our plans for virtual programs and looking to scale SPG through online program delivery. Our 2020 priorities will primarily focus on this.

We are applying for The Elevate Prize in the hope that it will provide us with:

• a buffer of funding to continue to develop high quality executive education programs, develop a test run masters equivalent program (virtually), work on the development of partnerships and obtain professional advice with respect to structure and fundraising.
• access to high quality pedagogical advice on virtual programs
• access to networks and connections to assist with fundraising and development of SPG.
• access to a like minded alumni network.

We would like to partner with the likes of MIT, international schools of policy and governance, corporate giants and foundation giants (such as Tata, Reliance) to assist us with lifting the education profile and fundraising.