OLPC India Foundation with Satish JHA (MBA 1990)

Portrait :

Satish Jha, a graduate of the EDHEC in 1990, is the Chairman of OLPC India Foundation.
One Laptot Per Child is a worldwide educational project centered around a laptop computer named XO.
The foundation has the mission to improve the education of the poorest children by supplying to every child a laptop computer endowed with a rugged, low-cost, low power (1 watt), with contents and software designed for collaboration, enjoyable and self-learning . Children with access OLPC find learning about learning enjoyable and become committed to their own education. They learn, teach, share, create and collaborate together and become critical thinkers and problem solvers.
For Satish Jha, distributing to the Indian children an economic, sustainable and enjoyable laptop computer began at first in a collaboration with the Indian State Governments and the states of Kerala, Manipur, Himachal, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan included it in their education policy. He began with the vision "If a country could buy 8 million mobile phones in one month, they can buy 3 million laptop computers in one year ".

 Interview

- Why did you choose EDHEC and the programme?
 
“At that time, the EDHEC Global MBA was called the Theseus Institute, it was clearly an exceptional institute on the horizon. Its advertisement in The Economist was very appealing. I was new to Geneva where my wife worked for the World Health Organization (WHO) and I was advising Dr Manmohan Singh, then the Secretary General of the South Commission and currently the Prime Minister of India on technology policy. I also consulted for ILO, worked as a correspondent for AsiaWeek and the Geneva representative of the Economic & Political Weekly but all that did not fill my day. The advertisement in The Economist encouraged me to think of it and I checked with my friends in Geneva who all seemed optimistic about the future of information technology management. The sponsors of the program were very credible large corporations and Mel Horwitch and Charles Wiseman as faculty members already had international recognition at the time. I was fortunate enough to get the financial support as well and that clinched it.”
 
- Your experience in the classroom?
 
“A class of 18 from 11 countries and diverse backgrounds in age (26 to 48 years), profession (telecom, banking, insurance, media, manufacturing, utilities, technology, software development, consulting etc) with some 70 professors from various continents and acclaimed schools meant that there was no dull moment. Everyone seemed to approach challenges the best way they could and the learning from colleagues was as important as what the professors had to share.”
 
What is your best “souvenir” (remembrance) ?

“Just the location was a blessing with its sheer beauty, agreeable climate, enjoyable weather, variety of seasons, ocean touching the foothills of little mountains and winters bringing a clear day, blue sky, blue ocean and white mountains together! Who could ask for more? The beaches, the village of St Paul de Vence, the pyramids of Nice, living in Ville Neuve Loubet, convocation on a yacht, the new Institute building designed to be timeless.. How much more could one ask for?”
 
- What about the student life at EDHEC?

Learning was living. We seemed immersed in it. Sheer diversity of the group, magnified by the faculty that dwarfed all that the students represented in most respects, not leaving the school until later at night, often going someplace in groups to dine and then brushing up until past midnight to be in the only class there was in the morning! It was the kind of environment that could make anyone creative!
 
What did you get from EDHEC experience ?

“It was so intangible, on the one hand, and so rewarding, on the other. Leaving the Institute was akin to carrying a huge jigsaw puzzle with unlimited pieces with some ways to put it together and the knowledge that there may be many other ways possible to solve it! There was a sprint in our gait to navigate the world that seemed to wait for us and knowing well that the window to share what we had learned and show our skills was rather small. If we made it, there was no stopping. If the world did not relate to us, we still had the confidence to create a new world. In other words, we were going to create value, whichever way things turned out.”
 
What has been your professional life since EDHEC ?

“Its always win some lose some. Before coming to do my MBA, I was a CEO, a chief editor with the national press, much more in public space than I was going to be. But learning management turned me into a global citizen in my journey, though I did not get back to the power and visibility I had before I took the turn to South France. Altogether, a very interesting journey indeed! “
 
What was your first job ?

“I joined Hoffmann-La Roche where in about a year I was appointed to lead the Global Information Technology for the Vitamins and Fine Chemicals Division. “
 
What is your current job ? What is your vision about being a CEO of an ONG ?

“I currently run a mission called One Laptop per Child and my focus is India and neighboring countries and that has stretched from Vietnam to Mauritius. Reaching out to some 300 million underprivileged children as a goal is a daunting aspiration and while I have travelled most of the territory, success has been slow. That said, whatever it may have been, its very satisfying indeed.

I am also the social investor with no goal of a personal reward. I have used up my savings, pension funds, borrowings etc to make it work. I managed to personally donate to several hundred children an opportunity to create a future they may find interesting and I hope to do to ignorance what my former wife did to Polio in India. She founded the Polio Eradication program called PolioPlus and the program brought down the incidence of polio infection from about 600,000 children to zero! I hope something of that dimension happens to ignorance in my life time.”
 
How did your project develop ?

“As the Chairman of James Martin & Co I had opportunities to explore what technologies could do for corporations. Coming from a socially oriented profession that was media, it was a short stretch to begin imagining how that could change the lives of the underprivileged. I got engaged in transforming Tarahaat.com and one thing led to another and suddenly I found myself busy with several social ventures that could be transformed with the help of technologies. What one needed was an ability to imagine the future and a capacity to craft it. Along the way we learnt that cell phones had begun doing what was unimaginable just a couple of years before that. The poor folks in villages had begin using them enthusiastically. At least the communication divide was getting narrower a bit and that still quite dramatic. Could we do something similar in the field of education? Learning? Despite all the constraints? Negroponte's work in the field made it possible to take the next big leap.”
 
Some key figures about this project ?

OLPC is running in 50 countries with 3 million children learning with it. Uruguay has complete saturation with every single child learning with it. Peru devised a strategy of using one laptop for more than 1 students to saturate it. Rwanda used its own funds to reach out to 210,000 children so far and South Africa's Zuma is going for 250,000 children, Mexico's Sonora state for 350,000 children. Even in India we have 5 state governments that have agreed to have OLPC for their children in the primary and middle schools.
 
What are your link with EDHEC and EDHEC Alumni ?

“Very early on I created a group on yahoogroups to connect everyone. Still that is the one platform that connects about 500 MBAs that passed out with specialization in strategy, innovation and information technology. It remains ready to help us all connect. I joined India-Japan Global Partnership Summit as a Board member along with two former Prime Ministers of Japan and the forum helped me connect with alums in Tokyo. I have met them in NY, Washington DC, Miami, Europe and India and its fun to connect with them with a sense of belonging to a larger community indeed! I am often seen as a resource person for EDHEC alums who graduated with an MBA.”
 
One recommandation for current students ?

“The world is changing every day, much faster than we can imagine. Its in how we assimilate learning about how to learn and leverage our experience that we will find unchartered paths to create new frontiers, meet new challenges, satisfaction that we did not image. Please keep your mind open, develop better judgment without being judgmental and you may find that the world will figure out how to reward you.”

More informations about One Laptot Per Chil

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