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Do What You Love interview – Dhairya Pujara

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Today we meet Dhairya Pujara, Founder and CEO of Y-Center, a social innovation enterprise that connects university students with a unique study abroad program which gives them the opportunity to solve global challenges.

Dhairya was so motivated by his entrepreneurial dreams that three years ago he quit his very first job after just one day – and he’s never looked back. We were excited to find out more about his motivations for going it alone and how doing what he loves led him to start a business that is creating real social impact…

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1. How are you doing what you love?

I love to solve problems. It keeps me alive and fulfils my purpose of being. I get to do exactly that at Ycenter. I get to work with people from all over the world solving problems from healthcare to education. In 2015, I spent three months in Mozambique, two months in India and the rest in USA and in all of these places I worked with hundreds of university students, many organisations either through a workshop or a hackathon solving real issues.

2. What’s your background?

I was born and raised in Mumbai, India. I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. India is an interesting place that served as an inspiration for my aspirations. My mother teaches in a Municipal school and while growing up, she took me to her school that made me see the difference between private schools and the state of public schools in India. We have a country that has all the tools to do whatever we need to do, despite which there is a huge section of population that has no access to basics like education, healthcare, hygiene and sanitation needs. This disparity made me obsessed about solving issues. After getting my bachelors in India, I moved to Philadelphia, USA to get my Masters in Biomedical Engineering from Drexel University. This is where I got an opportunity to travel to Mozambique, Africa, which then led me to start Ycenter. And in 2015, we expanded our work in Mumbai as well, bringing back the loop to where it all started.

10577170_10154551745600193_1888091831298106643_nDhairya’s business cards

3. What inspired you to start Ycenter?

After quitting my corporate job on first day (Yes that’s right. I love this part of my story so much, I printed it on the back of my business card), my five-month trip to Mozambique in 2012/13 helped me see the world from a different perspective. I saw communities living so remotely that for getting access to basic health service they had to walk, or hitchhike for miles and miles.

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The three ‘whys’ for Ycenter came from my experience in this trip.

  • This leads me to the second why – projects are not always inclusive. The community was never asked about their actual needs and wants, and hence the accountability and ownership for these projects are very poor.
  • Traditional models of donations and charity do not create an impact if there is no capacity building within the community. For example, the medical equipment that the hospitals receive is often unused due to lack of training. So what’s the point of giving something to a community, when they can’t even use it or worse they don’t even need it?
  • Finally, there are thousands of students who go to Africa and India everywhere from other developed countries. But how much impact do they really create in communities? Our classroom education is not enough for them to create real world impactful solutions. We need to back it up with on-field learning experiences that provide cultural awareness, learning languages and empathy. And this led me to connect the dots at Ycenter, where we created a non-traditional study abroad kind of a program for young people to travel to these communities and make an impact.

4. Tell us about the vision, mission and philosophy behind Ycenter…

Our big vision is to solve global challenges through innovative projects and community collaboration. And the mission is to create community projects in Africa and India to improve social conditions through better healthcare and education. Offer these projects in the form of experiential learning programs.

The philosophy behind Ycenter is our belief in the power of social capital. Businesses are ideally meant to create solutions that impact people and that’s exactly what we do. We shift the conversation for development from donations to technology and entrepreneurship.

5. We love your quote: “As an entrepreneur, you either have a dream or a job. I chose the dream.” How would you describe your relationship with entrepreneurship?

Entrepreneurship helps me define who I am as a professional and as a human being. It has taught me so much more than what I have learnt from textbooks. It has taught me to love unconditionally, to accept failure, to stick to my beliefs, values and ethics in the toughest times, and most importantly to live my life to the fullest.

10641068_1597823267121822_2391160716144308995_nDhairya organized and co-founded the first ever TEDx conference at Drexel University 

6. What’s the difference between social entrepreneurs and regular entrepreneurs?

In an ideal world, there should be no difference. I believe every entrepreneur’s role is to create a solution that solves real problems for people. Few believe that that definition is strictly limited to social entrepreneurs while attributing the making money definition to regular entrepreneurs. Money in both cases is a fringe benefit. Because if it was only about money, its easier to earn money through a regular job than pursue an entrepreneurial venture with high stress and risk (in the initial months, years).

_DSC1775_Dhairya at work

7. What was the first lesson you learnt as a social entrepreneur – and what are the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the journey so far?

That I can’t emulate any other entrepreneurs. I have to find my own style and walk my own path. Being inspired is fine, but I have to try new things, spend less time chasing investment dollars and more time on focusing on developing my own products and services.

I’ve faced many challenges – some common ones like the ability to pay my monthly rents to raising initial capital to team building. My biggest was overcoming the legal challenges of starting an organisation in USA while being an Indian citizen. Fortunately, by 2015 my work was so well recognised that American Immigration granted me a special category work visa reserved for “an individual of extra-ordinary abilities” called O1A VISA (Google this, seriously!).

8. What does failure mean to you and why has it been so vital for your success?

Failure always reminds me to not celebrate too soon. It keeps me grounded and motivates me to get up on a Monday morning. Failure itself is terrible but I find that the period afterwards – when I have time to reflect on why something happened, and what I could have done differently – is always what helps me to grow as an entrepreneur. One of the best parts about failure is that once you’ve failed, and you’re at the lowest level, you can’t go below it. When you’re at rock bottom you can only rise upwards. And for all you know the experience and the lessons learned can make for an amazing story or inspire your next big thing.

9. Why should young people be encouraged to focus on their passions and interests when it comes to deciding on a career path? What advice do you give them in your talks?

Do not wait until you get a job, you get enough work experience, you save enough money and then start chasing your dreams. How about reversing the hierarchy. Start with chasing the dreams, because it takes a long time before you crack it, so the earlier you start the better chance of making it longer. And worst case of all is if you fail, you will still have a great story and can always go back looking for a job. The other thing to remember is also that your passions and interests may not sound sane to everyone around you, but at the same time, its important for you to find enough people around you to believe in your mission. Because when you eventually set out on this journey, these are the people who will support you in getting you through. Could be family, friends, your partner or your crowd-funding supporters.

10. How do our current education systems need to change in order to ensure that every school leaver or college graduate is able to live a life doing what they love?

Every college you go to tells you that they are going to help you to become successful in your life. That sounds good at first. But I really hope they start teaching how to deal with failures – that’s more like how the world works, once you graduate out of school. I hope that we stop creating divisions like science, technology, and engineering on one side and humanities, arts on the other. We need to start taking a multi-disciplinary approach for education and start teaching empathy. To sum it up, here is one of my favourites quotes from Dalai Lama, “When educating the minds of our youth, we must not forget to educate the hearts.”

11. How do you find the right people for your team? 

It’s important to stay true to myself and my values because this ultimately attracts the right kind of people to my mission. then, besides people having the skills required for completing a particular job, I definitely look for drive and determination – people who are passionate about brining about change. People need to be willing and able to wear multiple hats, and most importantly they must believe in the larger vision of the organisation. I try to work with people who are not exactly like me as I can learn from them and it’s always interesting to get new perspectives.

12. How does Ycenter help aspiring entrepreneurs? 

We help in two ways:

  • If you are a student from US or UK or anywhere from Europe, Australia and looking to solve global challenges in developing countries, we offer international programs in Mozambique, Africa and Mumbai, India where you can travel for 3 months and we will teach you how to apply your classroom theory into practice. Right from a new healthcare service program to educational program for kids in slums and more.
  • We collaborate with various universities, organisations to offer our in-house designed methodology of using design thinking and analytical thinking to create solutions topped with a feasible business model. We have had students create amazing solutions in as little as 24 hours in our workshops. You can have us come to you and organise one such event. We are open to traveling to almost any country where we can.

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13. What’s your advice to anyone who wants to get out there and make a difference?

People say I took a huge risk by quitting my 9 to 5 and starting my own venture. My response is that it is far more risky to be glued to a desk from 9 to 5 for the rest of my life, thinking ‘what if I had actually tried to focus on my passion and interests?’. I just want to give all the budding entrepreneurs out there this one piece of advice  – do no wait until you have to ask yourself the question yourself: What if…? Just f***ing do it.

14. What’s next for you? What’s your ultimate dream?

I want Ycenter to be a global organization that’s truly creating an entrepreneurial educational experience for young people to change the world. Enough of studying inside the walls of classroom and wondering – how am I ever going to be using this knowledge this in the real world? We have many problems in this world that need our attention and I want to intersect them with the curiosity and passion of young minds. A true amalgamation of education and social change.

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All images courtesy of Dhairya Pujara. For more information about Ycenter visit the websiteFacebook or twitter or connect with Dhairya on Facebook or twitter.

For more interviews with inspiring people doing what they love click here.

 

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