When Agni Bhattacharya and Arjun Gandhi first visited a school in the drought-prone village of Kalliapatti in Tamil Nadu, they were only 13 years old and had no clue as to what they might find there. The principal of the school they visited took them to a computer lab, a hallowed place that people seldom set foot in. “When we asked him if the children used the computers, he hesitated,” recalls Agni. The computers were in a state of disrepair, most had keyboards and mice that were not working any more. Agni and Arjun decided to do something about this.
This was in 2010. Today, they’re both twelfth graders, having just returned from the Harvard Model United Nations in Hyderabad, and their organisation is two years old. “We were both pretty disappointed with the education system. We were doing CBSE and were part of the guinea pig batch, really. We went to affluent schools, so we knew we had a lot that other kids didn’t,” said Agni.
They noticed an excess supply of computers in relatively good condition that were being thrown away by corporate companies, while there was a lot of demand coming in from rural schools for up-to-date technology. They decided to be the bridge between the two. They named their organisation Ouroboros, which is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent eating its own tail. The symbol represents the eternal cycle, how things start anew as they end. “The idea was to create a system that was completely self-sustaining,” said Agni.
The organisation follows a five-step business model that ensures the cycle will continue. Agni and Arjun, who were classmates and good friends, start out by surveying the situation in rural areas. They go to a village where they or a friend of theirs has relatives and get one of the villagers to take them to his old school, where they meet the principal and pitch their plan.
Next, they meet with a computer technician living in the area and make an agreement with him. The computers will come from the city and the technician will send them to the schools after making minor repairs. When the schools are done with the computers, the technician can strip the computer and sell the parts at his own profit. This way, no money changes hands.
“Meeting the corporates is the next step,” says Agni. “We go to companies and meet with the CSR (corporate social responsibility) department. They always understand our mission.” The next part of the agreement has now been made. In return for tax cuts, which are organised by their affiliate, Shanti Ashram in Coimbatore, corporate companies will give all their old computers to Ouroboros.
Then there are the sheer logistics of the thing. Transporting two dozen computers is no mean task. “If we have a very large batch, we hire a van, otherwise we organise the least expensive pickup,” Agni explained. Once every two or three months, whenever they get a weekend or a few weeks off, they visit more villages and do surveys. This way, they take care of maintenance and expansion without having to miss out on their schooldays or having to give up all the things teenagers love to do.
Recently, the two boys took a trip to Sri Lanka to see if they could expand their operations to the Tamil schools there. Corporates were interested in their tax cuts, of course, but as soon as they understood that Ouroboros was an Indian organisation, they backed off. “Nobody wanted to be involved with an Indian organisation,” said Agni. They did, however, convince corporations to donate computer peripheries like keyboards, mice and speakers, which they then donated to Tamil schools there. “We want to expand to Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal by 2016,” they say.
Both boys want to do their undergraduate degrees abroad, but intend to fly back at least three times a year for a fortnight to see to what should by then be a registered trust. It isn’t too hard to manage, they both say, as they successfully juggle school and their hobbies with the very big responsibility they have taken upon themselves.
There is a lot of phone coordination involved, of course, but that is handled with ease. Their overhead costs are negligible as they have only ever spent on travel expenses and accommodation. The simplicity of the scheme is quite ingenious. We can all wonder why we didn’t think it up ourselves. Agni, Arjun and Harsha — their Creative Director —never let themselves get bogged down by cynicism and have already done far more than most adults have accomplished in a lifetime. Perhaps it’s time society stopped chasing its own tail, trying to undo the mistakes it has made and managing to bungle that up too. The world is being left in very good hands!