Failure Files by IDR India Development Review

What should a nonprofit think about when planning for scale? In today’s episode, Sarita Upadhyay reflects on her initial years at Medha, a nonprofit that helps young people transition from the world of education to employment. She talks about the time the team got an opportunity to scale the organisation’s programme. However, decisions based on assumptions, gaps in internal communication, and an overall lack of preparedness resulted in the team at Medha losing out on almost two years of work.

Sarita Upadhyay is a seasoned professional with more than 16 years of experience in the social and corporate sectors. As a core team member of Medha, she has helped in building the organisation from the ground up over the last 10 years. Currently, she is leading the strategy team at Medha. Her responsibilities are developing and implementing strategies for influencing the public education system, programme design, strategic partnerships, and execution of large-scale projects. Sarita has an MBA in Human Resources.

Read more:


Read Sarita’s story on Failure Files.
Read more failure stories on Failure Files.
Check out some ideas and tools from Fail Forward to help your organisation take risks, learn, adapt, and fail intelligently.
Understand why the social sector must recognise and talk about failure.
Learn why talking about failure is crucial for growth.

Want to share your failure story? Learn more about what we’re looking for here, and share your pitch/story on writetous@idronline.org

The Failure Files podcast is produced by India Development Review (IDR), an online journal focused on the development sector. IDR publishes cutting-edge ideas, lessons, and insights, written by and for the people working on some of India’s toughest problems. To learn more, visit www.idronline.org

What happens when an organisation’s ambitious plans exceed its ability to execute them? On today’s episode we have Gaurav Singh, co-founder of Slam Out Loud, a nonprofit using the arts to build communication skills in children from vulnerable communities. Gaurav talks about the time when he and his co-founder took on more work than they had the capacity to manage. With their attention spread thin across multiple areas, they ended up losing the project of their dreams.

Gaurav Singh is a purpose-driven social entrepreneur with eight years of work experience in education and leadership development. He is the co-founder of Slam Out Loud and has been an entrepreneur incubatee at some of India’s most reputed social incubators. He was the winner of Unleash’s accelerator program in Shenzhen, China. He is also a certified action learning coach from the Action Learning Center, UK, and has shared his journey and learning through two TEDx talks and multiple leadership-based forums.

Read more:


Read Gaurav’s story on Failure Files.
Read more failure stories on Failure Files.
Check out some ideas and tools from Fail Forward to help your organisation take risks, learn, adapt, and fail intelligently.
Understand why the social sector must recognise and talk about failure.
Learn why talking about failure is crucial for growth.

Want to share your failure story? Learn more about what we’re looking for here, and share your pitch/story on writetous@idronline.org

The Failure Files podcast is produced by India Development Review (IDR), an online journal focused on the development sector. IDR publishes cutting-edge ideas, lessons, and insights, written by and for the people working on some of India’s toughest problems. To learn more, visit www.idronline.org

What does self-care mean for those who are fighting systems of oppression and discrimination that are set up against them? On this episode, Thenmozhi Soundararajan, founder and executive director of Equality Labs, a Dalit civil rights organisation, talks about how systems of oppression affect well-being, what healing looks like for individuals and communities, and why failure is an opportunity to build power.

Thenmozhi Soundararajan is a transmedia artist and activist. She is the founder and executive director of Equality Labs, a Dalit civil rights organisation dedicated to ending caste apartheid, gender-based violence, Islamophobia, white supremacy, and religious intolerance. Her work has been crucial in making many institutions and universities in America re-evaluate their discrimination policies and include caste as a protected category. Thenmozhi is also the force behind #DalitWomenFight, a community-led digital project to amplify the voices of Dalit women fighting for justice, and the co-founder of Dalit History Month. In her upcoming book The Trauma of Caste, Thenmozhi explores the trauma of Brahmanical social structures for caste-oppressed communities, and what healing and well-being can look like.

This episode is part of a special series, in partnership with The Wellbeing Project, where we look at the intersection of failure and well-being.

Read more:


Read more failure stories on Failure Files.
Dip into Centred Self, a series exploring the important but often overlooked connection between inner well-being and effective social change.
Check out some ideas and tools from Fail Forward to help your organisation take risks, learn, adapt, and fail intelligently.
Understand why the social sector must recognise and talk about failure.
Learn why talking about failure is crucial for growth.
Explore Alliance Magazine’s issue on learning from failure and how it can contribute to better philanthropy.

Want to share your failure story? Learn more about what we’re looking for here, and share your pitch/story on writetous@idronline.org

The Failure Files podcast is produced by India Development Review (IDR), an online journal focused on the development sector. IDR publishes cutting-edge ideas, lessons, and insights, written by and for the people working on some of India’s toughest problems. To learn more, visit www.idronline.org

In Part II of this conversation, Dream a Dream CEO Suchetha Bhat and co-founder Vishal Talreja talk about what it took to rebuild an organisation in crisis, and how that led to discovering a new kind of leadership—one that the world needs more of.

Suchetha Bhat is the CEO of Dream a Dream, a nonprofit that empowers children from vulnerable backgrounds to thrive. Since starting her career in 2001, she has worked both in the corporate and social sectors. Under her leadership, Dream a Dream has grown from working with 10,000 young people in Bengaluru to more than one million children across five states. NITI Aayog has listed Suchetha among the 75 Women Entrepreneurs Transforming India in 2021.

Vishal Talreja co-founded Dream a Dream with 11 other people. He is an Ashoka Fellow, an Eisenhower Fellow, a Kamalnayan Bajaj (Aspen) Fellow, a Salzburg Global Fellow, and a board member at Goonj. Vishal was also the founder-director of UnLtd India and a board member of PYE Global and India Cares Foundation. He has been recognised as an ‘Architect of the Future’ by the Waldzell Institute in Austria and as ‘Innovator of the Year’ in 2019 by HundrED.

This episode is part of a special series in partnership with The Wellbeing Project where we look at the intersection of failure and well-being.

Read more:


Read more failure stories on Failure Files.
Dip into Centred Self, a series exploring the important but often -overlooked connection between inner well-being and effective social change.
Check out some ideas and tools from Fail Forward to help your organisation take risks, learn, adapt, and fail intelligently.
Understand why the social sector must recognise and talk about failure.
Learn why talking about failure is crucial for growth.
Explore Alliance Magazine’s issue on learning from failure and how it can contribute to better philanthropy.

Want to share your failure story? Learn more about what we’re looking for here, and share your pitch/story on writetous@idronline.org

The Failure Files podcast is produced by India Development Review (IDR), an online journal focused on the development sector. IDR publishes cutting-edge ideas, lessons, and insights, written by and for the people working on some of India’s toughest problems. To learn more, visit www.idronline.org

In Part I of this conversation with IDR, Dream a Dream’s co-founder Vishal Talreja and CEO Suchetha Bhat share the story of the organisation’s implosion, Vishal’s burnout, and how owning up to failure was the first step in figuring out the way to build back up.

Vishal Talreja co-founded Dream a Dream with 11 other people. He is an Ashoka Fellow, an Eisenhower Fellow, a Kamalnayan Bajaj (Aspen) Fellow, a Salzburg Global Fellow, and a board member at Goonj. Vishal was also the founder-director of UnLtd India and a board member of PYE Global and India Cares Foundation. He has been recognised as an ‘Architect of the Future’ by the Waldzell Institute in Austria and as ‘Innovator of the Year’ in 2019 by HundrED.

Suchetha Bhat is the CEO of Dream a Dream, a nonprofit that empowers children from vulnerable backgrounds to thrive. Since starting her career in 2001, she has worked both in the corporate and social sectors. Under her leadership, Dream a Dream has grown from working with 10,000 young people in Bengaluru to more than one million children across five states. Niti Aayog has listed Suchetha among the 75 Women Entrepreneurs Transforming India in 2021.

This episode is part of a special series in partnership with The Wellbeing Project where we look at the intersection of failure and well-being.

Read more:


Read more failure stories on Failure Files.
Dip into Centred Self, a series exploring the important but often-overlooked connection between inner well-being and effective social change.
Check out some ideas and tools from Fail Forward to help your organisation take risks, learn, adapt, and fail intelligently.
Understand why the social sector must recognise and talk about failure.
Learn why talking about failure is crucial for growth.
Explore Alliance Magazine’s issue on learning from failure and how it can contribute to better philanthropy.

Want to share your failure story? Learn more about what we’re looking for here, and share your pitch/story on writetous@idronline.org

The Failure Files podcast is produced by India Development Review (IDR), an online journal focused on the development sector. IDR publishes cutting-edge ideas, lessons, and insights, written by and for the people working on some of India’s toughest problems. To learn more, visit www.idronline.org

How much is too much? Reflecting on this question is Nisha Subramaniam, one of the four co-founders of Kanavu, an education nonprofit working in rural Tamil Nadu. On today’s episode, Nisha talks about an online initiative they launched to meet the needs of the community during COVID-19. She shares how their failure to think through the feasibility of the project ended up stretching the team too thin and almost jeopardised the future of their organisation.

Nisha Subramaniam is the co-founder of Kanavu, a nonprofit that leads efforts in education and community development in rural Cuddalore, Tamil Nadu. She also runs a social enterprise, Sura, which trains and recruits rural women to stitch affordable lifestyle products for a global audience. Deeply passionate about elementary education, gender, and leadership, she believes that challenging the current status quo lies at the intersection of these themes.

Read more:


Read Nisha Subramaniam’s story on Failure Files.
Read more failure stories on Failure Files.
Check out some ideas and tools from Fail Forward to help your organisation take risks, learn, adapt, and fail intelligently.
Understand why the social sector must recognise and talk about failure.
Learn why talking about failure is crucial for growth.

Want to share your failure story? Learn more about what we’re looking for here, and share your pitch/story on writetous@idronline.org

The Failure Files podcast is produced by India Development Review (IDR), an online journal focused on the development sector. IDR publishes cutting-edge ideas, lessons, and insights, written by and for the people working on some of India’s toughest problems. To learn more, visit www.idronline.org