As a part of the webinar series on “Perspectives in Development”, KIIT School of Rural Management (KSRM) organized a talk for the students of MBA (RM) and MBA (ABM) on 30th July 2021.

The speaker for the webinar was Dr. Sanjeev Kumar, Founder, The Goat Trust. Mr. Kumar initiated his talk with the idea of fear to freedom and shared that the less fear you have, the more free you are.  He then shared his journey from BHU to setting up the Goat Trust. He highlighted the role of management professionals like identifying the problems, cause of the problems, finding out solutions and testing the solutions before scaling up. Mr. Kumar shared about the technology breakthrough by the organization. Further, he stressed on what it takes to scale up like partnership, collaboration, demystification of technology, making it cost affordable, learning from the context, valuing local wisdom and nurturing team.  In the livelihood context institutions, technology market and financial services are crucial areas. Mr. Kumar emphasized that it is important to innovate to transform and sustain.

Mr. Kumar graduated from Banaras Hindu University (BHU) and did his post graduation from National Dairy Research Institute (NDRI), Karnal. He founded the Goat Trust in 2008, which is a techno-managerial resources organization on goats working in 18 Indian States.  Mr. Kumar was elected as Ashoka Fellow in 2013 and was a finalist as Social Entrepreneur of the year, 2019 by World Economic Forum. He received Krushi Bhushan by Asian Consortium and Gandhi Award apart from felicitations from various Universities. Mr. Kumar promoted 2 start ups Pashu Bazaar and TGT Global, an online training platform for livestock. He also established the International Institute of Goat Management (IIGMA) with a purpose to bring in livestock business management in academic courses in partnership with various prominent institutions. Besides, he also co founded Pashudhan Bank for establishing micro leasing of livestock as a financially viable pro poor financial service.