Ashish:
00:00:00
And when I landed up in Bogota, I was just like,
Ashish:
00:00:03
"Wow, I have my own toilet."
Ashish:
00:00:04
You know, if you've not had that freedom, most people in
Ashish:
00:00:07
America can't relate to this.
Ashish:
00:00:08
But for me it was like this aha moment.
Ashish:
00:00:11
I'm like, ah, that's what freedom feels like.
Aaron - Narration:
00:00:14
Hi, I'm Aaron Miller.
Aaron - Narration:
00:00:17
And this is How to Help, a podcast about having a life and career with
Aaron - Narration:
00:00:22
meaning, integrity, and impact.
Aaron - Narration:
00:00:25
This is season two, episode seven: Expanding Access to Proof.
Aaron - Narration:
00:00:32
This episode of How to Help is sponsored by Merit Leadership, home
Aaron - Narration:
00:00:36
of The Business Ethics Field Guide.
Aaron - Narration:
00:00:40
Before we begin, I just want to say thanks to all of you who are listening.
Aaron - Narration:
00:00:44
The other day, someone shared this lovely compliment.
Aaron - Narration:
00:00:47
They said, quote, "By the way, I loved the podcast episode with Walter Shaub.
Aaron - Narration:
00:00:53
Definitely my new favorite episode.
Aaron - Narration:
00:00:55
I think I've shared it with a half a dozen people already."
Aaron - Narration:
00:00:59
You know, knowing that you enjoy the show and that you take the time to
Aaron - Narration:
00:01:02
share it, it just means the world to me.
Aaron - Narration:
00:01:05
So thank you for listening.
Aaron - Narration:
00:01:07
Thank you for leaving reviews.
Aaron - Narration:
00:01:09
And thank you especially for sharing the podcast.
Aaron - Narration:
00:01:13
How easily could you prove that you are, indeed, you?
Aaron - Narration:
00:01:18
For most of you, I think it would be no sweat.
Aaron - Narration:
00:01:22
In fact, you've probably done it hundreds of times.
Aaron - Narration:
00:01:25
You'd show me your driver's license or maybe your passport,
Aaron - Narration:
00:01:28
and it's as simple as that.
Aaron - Narration:
00:01:30
Other than waiting in line, maybe paying a fee or taking a test,
Aaron - Narration:
00:01:35
you didn't have to do too much for this incredibly useful little card.
Aaron - Narration:
00:01:40
Many of us are swimming in proof we didn't have to work to earn.
Aaron - Narration:
00:01:46
We get a birth certificate just for being born.
Aaron - Narration:
00:01:49
The same goes for a social security card if you're in the United States.
Aaron - Narration:
00:01:53
As we get older, if we don't want to take the test for a driver's license,
Aaron - Narration:
00:01:57
we can still get a government-issued photo ID just by showing someone a
Aaron - Narration:
00:02:01
few utility bills and that same birth certificate that we got for free.
Aaron - Narration:
00:02:07
When you want to open a bank account, a government-issued
Aaron - Narration:
00:02:10
ID is pretty much all you need.
Aaron - Narration:
00:02:12
You can then call the bank whenever you want and do business over the phone just
Aaron - Narration:
00:02:17
as long as you can share something simple like part of your Social Security number
Aaron - Narration:
00:02:21
and the name of your childhood pet.
Aaron - Narration:
00:02:23
Or you can just log in on the web with your password.
Aaron - Narration:
00:02:27
Thanks to programmers and encryption, you have all the proof you need.
Aaron - Narration:
00:02:32
Now think of what all this proof does for you, because it does a lot.
Aaron - Narration:
00:02:39
You can get a job more easily because of it, or rent an apartment.
Aaron - Narration:
00:02:43
Quick and simple access to proof makes it easier to get on a plane, to borrow
Aaron - Narration:
00:02:48
money from a bank, or to rent a car.
Aaron - Narration:
00:02:50
Proof, if you think about it, is like grease that makes the gears
Aaron - Narration:
00:02:55
of the economy turn more freely and it makes your life so much easier.
Aaron - Narration:
00:03:02
Like most things we have in abundance, it's easy to take proof for granted.
Aaron - Narration:
00:03:08
In much of the world, proof is much harder to come by.
Aaron - Narration:
00:03:12
The government agencies that provided are slow or the process is expensive.
Aaron - Narration:
00:03:18
You might be at the whim of people who cancel appointments on you or give
Aaron - Narration:
00:03:22
preference to people with more money.
Aaron - Narration:
00:03:24
And you might just not have a way to prove what's being asked for, like your income.
Aaron - Narration:
00:03:31
My guest this week, Ashish Gadnis, has two stories that powerfully
Aaron - Narration:
00:03:36
illustrate this difference.
Ashish:
00:03:39
When I came to the US I had $240, but at the end of the first week,
Ashish:
00:03:44
I was able to open a bank account.
Ashish:
00:03:46
There's a couple moments in life, at least for me, that have really shaped
Ashish:
00:03:49
my understanding and I'm still learning.
Ashish:
00:03:51
But it was a shock.
Ashish:
00:03:53
It was a shock because you know, here I was a kid with nothing, but I was
Ashish:
00:03:57
able to open a bank account because I was able to show my employment letter.
Ashish:
00:04:03
I was able to show a copy of my passport and I was able to show
Ashish:
00:04:08
that I had a pay stub, right?
Ashish:
00:04:10
And I was able to get a bank account, and that was kind of this massively
Ashish:
00:04:15
shocking aha moment for me because I didn't kind of exist up until that point.
Ashish:
00:04:20
If you fast forward, and this might seem disjointed because I have adhd,
Ashish:
00:04:24
but I'll make sense in a second here.
Ashish:
00:04:25
But this happened in 1994 and 2014, you know, 20 years later, almost
Ashish:
00:04:32
to the same date, I was retired.
Ashish:
00:04:34
I sold my last startup.
Ashish:
00:04:35
I'd spent a couple years in and out of the DRC in Congo.
Ashish:
00:04:39
And the women farmers that I was volunteering with as a part
Ashish:
00:04:43
of the USAID program wanted to open a bank account, right?
Ashish:
00:04:48
And, and a lot of people have heard the stories that the local bank refused to, to
Ashish:
00:04:53
let that mama farmer open a bank account.
Ashish:
00:04:56
And 20 years apart, right?
Ashish:
00:04:57
Two incidences, same incident, almost extremely different outcomes, right?
Ashish:
00:05:03
So I got a bank account and there was no issue.
Ashish:
00:05:07
I got it in 1994, began a great career, made money, blah, blah, blah.
Ashish:
00:05:13
Fast forward, here's this mama farmer who was not able to open a
Ashish:
00:05:19
bank account because she couldn't prove her harvest information.
Ashish:
00:05:23
She could not prove the land that she was using.
Ashish:
00:05:26
She couldn't prove that she was a farmer for the last 15, 20 years, and the horrors
Ashish:
00:05:31
of, you know, death and rape and violence that she had seen, yet the bank said no.
Ashish:
00:05:38
And, you know, I got in an argument and the guy finally said, look, I
Ashish:
00:05:41
can't bank her, but I'll bank you.
Ashish:
00:05:43
Right?
Ashish:
00:05:43
That's where the name comes from.
Ashish:
00:05:45
And that is kind of the bookends of, if you see, you know, where kind
Ashish:
00:05:49
of my life bounced around is here's 1994, where, you know, even though
Ashish:
00:05:53
I'm not white, I got a bank account.
Ashish:
00:05:55
Right.
Ashish:
00:05:56
Walked in.
Ashish:
00:05:56
Got it.
Ashish:
00:05:57
And fast forward in, in, in 2014, a woman who worked so hard is not bankable.
Ashish:
00:06:05
And, and you don't even have to think about 2014.
Ashish:
00:06:07
This happened to me two weeks ago.
Ashish:
00:06:09
I was in Tanzania with the Maasai farmers in a place called Monduli, about a hundred
Ashish:
00:06:17
kilometers south of um, Kilimanjaro.
Ashish:
00:06:20
And the local banking system doesn't let them open a bank account without
Ashish:
00:06:25
charging a 16% interest rate on a loan.
Ashish:
00:06:29
Forget 1994, forget 2014.
Ashish:
00:06:31
This is 2022 October of this year where smallholder farmers, especially women, are
Ashish:
00:06:39
still refused a bank account even though they do the most important work in our
Ashish:
00:06:44
supply chains, which is grow our crops.
Ashish:
00:06:47
The hardest working people in our global supply chain are our farmers,
Ashish:
00:06:51
our workers, our waste pickers, our miners, yet they are invisible, unbanked,
Ashish:
00:06:59
and cannot prove their existence.
Ashish:
00:07:02
Yet you and I, you know, we are claiming sustainability.
Ashish:
00:07:06
We're claiming this climate, romance, we're claiming suddenly this ethical radar
Ashish:
00:07:12
that we have trying to save the planet.
Ashish:
00:07:14
But I'm like, but wait a minute, you know that mother in Zambia and
Ashish:
00:07:20
Uganda and Tanzania is still unbanked
Ashish:
00:07:23
. Aaron - Narration: Ashish is the
Ashish:
00:07:28
It's a blockchain company helping bring the power of proof to those
Ashish:
00:07:32
who need it most, and it does this by adding transparency and simplicity
Ashish:
00:07:37
to everyone in a supply chain.
Ashish:
00:07:39
From the cocoa farmer in Ivory Coast to the waste picker who's recycling
Ashish:
00:07:44
your bottle of chocolate milk.
Ashish:
00:07:46
With BanQu, the mama farmer whom Ashish mentioned can finally have
Ashish:
00:07:51
proof of the success of her business.
Ashish:
00:07:54
BanQu is replacing a broken system where what proof there
Ashish:
00:07:57
is can be easily destroyed.
Ashish:
00:08:01
In 2019, you know, when we were like growing crazy and
Ashish:
00:08:04
everything, we were just starting to roll out BanQu for barley farmers.
Ashish:
00:08:07
And we hadn't yet gone to this one mama farmer, Agnes, her name was.
Ashish:
00:08:12
And we kind of overheard a conversation where the previous month
Ashish:
00:08:17
she had been given a paper receipt because they didn't have cash.
Ashish:
00:08:20
So she went home.
Ashish:
00:08:21
By the time she got home, it rained, the receipt disintegrated.
Ashish:
00:08:25
Think about that.
Ashish:
00:08:26
It disintegrated.
Ashish:
00:08:28
So she comes, four days--I'm not making it up--four days she waited for her money
Ashish:
00:08:37
because the receipt had disintegrated.
Ashish:
00:08:39
Now, fast forward, right?
Ashish:
00:08:41
She is on BanQu today.
Ashish:
00:08:42
She sells it.
Ashish:
00:08:43
But the point I'm trying to make is that that is the power
Ashish:
00:08:49
of restoring their rights.
Ashish:
00:08:50
It's not even pity.
Ashish:
00:08:51
It's not even help.
Ashish:
00:08:52
It's just they, we owe the mother a receipt, right?
Ashish:
00:08:55
Yeah.
Ashish:
00:08:55
And that's what blockchain does.
Aaron - Narration:
00:08:57
Now the mere mention of the word "blockchain"
Aaron - Narration:
00:09:00
might make your eyes glaze over like most technical mumbo jumbo.
Aaron - Narration:
00:09:04
Or instead it makes you think of the scams that are perpetrated by
Aaron - Narration:
00:09:09
Miami Crypto Bros who brag about their bored Ape Yacht Club NFT.
Aaron - Narration:
00:09:13
If you don't already know how blockchain works, then I am not the right person
Aaron - Narration:
00:09:17
to explain the technical details.
Aaron - Narration:
00:09:20
What I can say is that at its core, blockchain is a technology that allows
Aaron - Narration:
00:09:25
computers run by different people to all have verified copies of the same data.
Aaron - Narration:
00:09:32
Because of how it works, it's impossible to make changes to the
Aaron - Narration:
00:09:35
data without every other computer knowing what changed and how.
Aaron - Narration:
00:09:40
In BanQu's case, blockchain becomes a transparent way of documenting the
Aaron - Narration:
00:09:45
sale of things like cotton and cocoa.
Ashish:
00:09:48
So now put yourselves in the shoes of that farmer who has been growing cotton
Ashish:
00:09:53
for the last 10 years, or coffee or cacao, or picking up the bottles and selling
Ashish:
00:09:59
it in this unfortunate dance of buyer and seller, but cannot prove anything.
Ashish:
00:10:06
You are never gonna break that cycle, right?
Ashish:
00:10:08
And this is where the solution matters of blockchain, right?
Ashish:
00:10:11
So in the non-blockchain world, when that--staying with cotton,
Ashish:
00:10:16
right--when that bag of cotton changed hands, the person who buys it may
Ashish:
00:10:21
have an Excel spreadsheet, may have a smartphone, may have a database.
Ashish:
00:10:27
In that example, it's a one-sided transaction.
Ashish:
00:10:31
All the data goes into a repository, Excel, or whatever, right?
Ashish:
00:10:38
But that farmer did not have any say in terms of what was recorded
Ashish:
00:10:44
on that centralized system.
Ashish:
00:10:46
So that's the current world we live in, which is what I call the
Ashish:
00:10:49
world of data dictatorship, right?
Ashish:
00:10:51
Where somebody who owns the data controls, the data, dictates the data.
Ashish:
00:10:58
And then if you are in that base of the pyramid when it comes to
Ashish:
00:11:01
poverty, you don't have a say.
Ashish:
00:11:05
Blockchain.
Ashish:
00:11:06
What's the difference?
Ashish:
00:11:08
The very basic premise of blockchain is that if two parties participate in
Ashish:
00:11:14
one transaction, then both parties are owed a copy of the same transaction
Ashish:
00:11:22
in a way that it cannot be changed.
Ashish:
00:11:24
If the farmer sells a bag or a bushel of cotton, if I used blockchain, then
Ashish:
00:11:34
a copy of that transaction of 40 kilos of bushel at 16% moisture and 400
Ashish:
00:11:39
kwacha, price quality and quantity.
Ashish:
00:11:42
Both people should have a copy of the transaction in a
Ashish:
00:11:46
way that nobody can dispute.
Ashish:
00:11:49
And how do you do that?
Ashish:
00:11:51
If I use blockchain, the mother has an SMS phone.
Ashish:
00:11:55
And she's smart.
Ashish:
00:11:55
She knows how to use SMS.
Ashish:
00:11:57
What if, and this is kind of the premise of BanQu, right?
Ashish:
00:12:00
What if we could deliver that same history through SMS, write it on
Ashish:
00:12:04
blockchain so all parties have the same copy, but deliver it to her via SMS.
Ashish:
00:12:10
If I can do that, then she can interact or react with it
Ashish:
00:12:15
and say yes, no, or otherwise.
Ashish:
00:12:19
And that for us was the aha moment.
Ashish:
00:12:21
You know, when we started BanQu in 2016, we said, ah, why blockchain makes sense?
Ashish:
00:12:27
Because for the first time, this farmer or this waste picker will be given their
Ashish:
00:12:35
own copy of their data that they have always been owed for the last 300 years.
Ashish:
00:12:40
And that same copy will then propagate all the way upstream
Ashish:
00:12:47
so that nobody can deny it.
Ashish:
00:12:50
It is extremely simple, yet extremely powerful, and never been done before.
Ashish:
00:12:57
And that's the solution.
Aaron - Narration:
00:13:00
By now, you're probably wondering about Ashish himself.
Aaron - Narration:
00:13:04
As is the case with my other guests, he has a remarkable personal story
Aaron - Narration:
00:13:09
that brought him to this point.
Aaron - Narration:
00:13:11
Born and raised in poverty, Ashish learned to code, worked around the world, built
Aaron - Narration:
00:13:17
and sold multiple companies, and is now dedicated to spending the rest of his
working years on this problem:
00:13:21
helping 100 million people out of poverty.
working years on this problem:
00:13:28
His story begins in Mumbai, India.
Ashish:
00:13:32
Growing up, uh, late sixties, early seventies, you
Ashish:
00:13:36
know, we didn't have much.
Ashish:
00:13:37
Right.
Ashish:
00:13:37
You know, poverty was just what it was.
Ashish:
00:13:39
Me and my brother, we broke up the week in terms of who got to stand in the
Ashish:
00:13:44
ration line, and it wasn't, you know, it, we didn't know anything better, right?
Ashish:
00:13:47
So I stood in last line for three days and my brother got the other three days,
Ashish:
00:13:50
and it was for basic commodities, right?
Ashish:
00:13:53
Wheat, rice, and oil.
Ashish:
00:13:54
So we could eat.
Ashish:
00:13:56
And it left this tug in my heart or a punch if, depending how
Ashish:
00:13:59
you look at it, around poverty.
Ashish:
00:14:03
And that kinda shaped my thinking at an early age.
Ashish:
00:14:05
That was kind of like, someday I'm gonna get out.
Ashish:
00:14:08
And then someday when I do get out, I wanna find a way for other
Ashish:
00:14:11
people not to be a number standing in a ration line just to eat.
Aaron - Narration:
00:14:19
As a teenager, Ashish found that he had an interest and ability
Aaron - Narration:
00:14:22
for software coding, something he shared with a lot of kids around that time.
Aaron - Narration:
00:14:27
It was a skill that promised an escape from poverty.
Ashish:
00:14:32
You know, in those days you could learn programming and
Ashish:
00:14:35
my dad said, you can beg or code.
Ashish:
00:14:36
And you know, here I am.
Ashish:
00:14:38
Pretty stereotypical, nothing, you know, smart about me.
Ashish:
00:14:41
It just, everybody else had the same choices and I fell into that same bucket.
Aaron - Interview:
00:14:47
Learning coding and then sort of seeing the path,
Aaron - Interview:
00:14:49
what was your vision like as you were first picking up this skill?
Aaron - Interview:
00:14:52
I mean, what were you seeing ahead of yourself that way as
Aaron - Interview:
00:14:54
you were learning how to code?
Ashish:
00:14:56
To be honest, nothing.
Ashish:
00:14:57
You know, I'm lower than the doormat kind of guy, and no, I didn't have
Ashish:
00:15:00
any vision, nothing grandiose.
Ashish:
00:15:02
I was just like, I just don't wanna be poor.
Ashish:
00:15:04
And you know, if the word on the street was, if you could
Ashish:
00:15:07
code, um, you'll make money.
Ashish:
00:15:10
And hopefully with coding you'll be sent overseas.
Ashish:
00:15:15
So, you know, I was just like, oh, I wanna get out.
Ashish:
00:15:17
So gonna code and that's it.
Aaron - Narration:
00:15:21
You might have noticed the way that Ashish
Aaron - Narration:
00:15:23
hesitates taking credit for being especially smart or ambitious.
Aaron - Narration:
00:15:29
He really doesn't see himself that way, as being smarter or better than any
Aaron - Narration:
00:15:33
of those in his same circumstances.
Aaron - Narration:
00:15:35
Mostly he sees himself and his path as fortunate.
Ashish:
00:15:40
It's a straightforward path.
Ashish:
00:15:41
I think a lot of people, and I'll just speak for myself, right, give people
Ashish:
00:15:45
like me a lot of credit, and I don't, because it's not, it's nothing special.
Ashish:
00:15:48
If you were born instead of me in Mumbai, you would be in the same place.
Ashish:
00:15:53
It has nothing to do with intelligence, in my humble opinion.
Ashish:
00:15:56
So the path was simple, right?
Ashish:
00:15:57
You, if you learn how you, if you're decent at programming, a
Ashish:
00:15:59
good chance you'll get a scholarship to go to college, which I did.
Ashish:
00:16:04
And when I finished my university, I was hired, you know, I was hired by Tata.
Ashish:
00:16:09
Tata was all the rage.
Ashish:
00:16:10
You know, they were the largest software offshore company in those days.
Ashish:
00:16:14
I think they still are.
Ashish:
00:16:16
I graduated with an engineering degree with software programming as
Ashish:
00:16:20
one of my core skills, and next thing I know, I'm, you know, sitting in
Ashish:
00:16:24
a basement and writing code, and in early nineties, got a passport and
Ashish:
00:16:28
then landed up in Colombia as a coder?
Ashish:
00:16:31
As an offshore coder, I didn't speak Spanish.
Ashish:
00:16:33
I mean, it was nothing.
Ashish:
00:16:35
You know, it was no slum dog stuff.
Ashish:
00:16:36
It was just pretty basic.
Ashish:
00:16:38
Everybody did the same thing and so did I.
Aaron - Interview:
00:16:41
Yeah.
Aaron - Interview:
00:16:41
So Colombia, maybe you could tell what that was like
Aaron - Interview:
00:16:43
going from India to Colombia.
Ashish:
00:16:45
That was a big one.
Ashish:
00:16:46
Right?
Ashish:
00:16:46
So that I think, you know, that, uh, had nothing to do with coding.
Ashish:
00:16:49
I mean, honestly, that was kind of the first time I experienced freedom, right?
Ashish:
00:16:52
I had my own toilet.
Ashish:
00:16:53
I mean, you know, not to be crass or anything like that, but that's
Ashish:
00:16:55
a, you know, it's a big thing.
Ashish:
00:16:56
It's like, you know, I had to share a toilet growing up in India, and
Ashish:
00:16:59
when I landed up in Bogota, I was just like, wow, I have my own toilet.
Ashish:
00:17:04
You know, if you've not had that freedom, most people in
Ashish:
00:17:06
America can't relate to this.
Ashish:
00:17:09
For me, it was like this aha moment.
Ashish:
00:17:11
I'm like, ah, that's what freedom feels like, right?
Ashish:
00:17:13
To sit on a toilet seat and not be yelled at to vacate.
Ashish:
00:17:15
It is freedom.
Ashish:
00:17:17
That for me was this, oh, I am never leaving, right?
Aaron - Interview:
00:17:20
So, and when you say sharing a toilet, you
Aaron - Interview:
00:17:22
don't mean with your family?
Ashish:
00:17:23
Oh, I'm not talking about, you know, like...now
Ashish:
00:17:26
my kids have their own toilet.
Ashish:
00:17:27
One human being per toilet.
Ashish:
00:17:29
Right.
Ashish:
00:17:29
This is America, which is insane.
Ashish:
00:17:31
No, I'm talking about like other families.
Ashish:
00:17:34
My grandmother used to live in a, you know, where you have like 16 other
Ashish:
00:17:36
families, these are these little boxes or homes or whatever you want to call it.
Ashish:
00:17:39
And then all the families have a common toilet.
Ashish:
00:17:42
Well, it's like a public toilet, right?
Ashish:
00:17:44
And that's a big difference, right?
Ashish:
00:17:46
And, and for me, that kind of shaped kind of my thinking around freedom
Ashish:
00:17:51
and my thinking around, uh...you can or cannot take for granted.
Ashish:
00:17:57
I ask people like, what was their first experience of freedom,
Ashish:
00:18:01
and most people can't answer it.
Ashish:
00:18:03
I can.
Ashish:
00:18:04
I can tell you the minute and the moment because I sat on a toilet
Ashish:
00:18:07
seat and didn't get bothered.
Ashish:
00:18:09
You know, I was 22 years old.
Ashish:
00:18:10
So it's , you know, it's, it's what it is, right?
Aaron - Narration:
00:18:15
After working in Columbia for a few years, it was in 1994
Aaron - Narration:
00:18:19
that Ashish moved to the US to take a programming job in Boston, which then led
Aaron - Narration:
00:18:25
to work in other parts of the country.
Aaron - Narration:
00:18:27
And the timing was just right exactly as the internet boom began to take shape.
Aaron - Interview:
00:18:34
How did you pivot from just being a programmer, working for
Aaron - Interview:
00:18:37
paycheck, to becoming a startup founder?
Ashish:
00:18:41
So again, nothing crazy.
Ashish:
00:18:43
Pretty stereotypical, right?
Ashish:
00:18:44
It was the late nineties, it's 96, 97.
Ashish:
00:18:48
You know, internet was just coming to be, I wasn't poor anymore,
Ashish:
00:18:52
but now I wanted to be rich.
Ashish:
00:18:53
Right?
Ashish:
00:18:53
So kind of the, you know, , the pride and greed, you know, kicks in, right?
Ashish:
00:18:58
It's just, you know, we're all flawed.
Ashish:
00:19:00
I'm probably more flawed than most human beings.
Ashish:
00:19:02
And it was the right place at the right time.
Ashish:
00:19:04
I took the leap.
Ashish:
00:19:05
I knew there was a need for technology solutions that people
Ashish:
00:19:11
were willing to pay a premium on.
Ashish:
00:19:13
You know, developing a website, you could make 20, 30 grand.
Ashish:
00:19:16
You know, today you can do it for free.
Ashish:
00:19:17
And that's it, right?
Ashish:
00:19:19
So again, I'm being, being very honest with you, right?
Ashish:
00:19:21
I wish I could add a better story.
Ashish:
00:19:23
It like, I'm just, I didn't have any this great aha moment.
Ashish:
00:19:27
I'm just like, Hey man, you know, I can make some serious
Ashish:
00:19:30
money and, and be my own boss.
Ashish:
00:19:33
So I started a couple of companies got into the whole supply chain
Ashish:
00:19:40
side of things, you know, that that's kind of where I spent
Ashish:
00:19:44
most of my time in that period.
Ashish:
00:19:46
1994 through 2012 is kind of when I sold my last startup, and that
Ashish:
00:19:51
was the, the ticket out of not just poverty, but you know, this is kind
Ashish:
00:19:55
of where you start making money.
Aaron - Narration:
00:19:57
In my experience, successful startup founders
Aaron - Narration:
00:19:59
also have plenty of failures.
Aaron - Narration:
00:20:02
We don't often talk about these very much, so I made sure to ask Ashish about his.
Aaron - Narration:
00:20:08
I anticipated a story or two about a business idea that fell apart,
Aaron - Narration:
00:20:12
or that was too early for its time.
Aaron - Narration:
00:20:14
But instead it prompted a story that tells about how Ashish came
Aaron - Narration:
00:20:18
to the world of social impact.
Aaron - Narration:
00:20:20
This experience almost derailed him entirely from his ambitions to do good.
Ashish:
00:20:26
It's interesting you asked about failure.
Ashish:
00:20:28
One of my biggest failures was when the Haiti earthquake happened,
Ashish:
00:20:32
and this has kind of shaped my path out of the startup world.
Ashish:
00:20:38
If you may, you know, when the Haiti earthquake happened in 2010, we were
Ashish:
00:20:42
doing really good as a business.
Ashish:
00:20:43
I was running a company called Forward Hindsight, and you know, I always wanted
Ashish:
00:20:46
to do something in poverty, right?
Ashish:
00:20:48
Just going back to where I was born and everything.
Ashish:
00:20:50
So I was doing, you know, cutting checks for NGOs and everything.
Ashish:
00:20:53
But when the Haiti earthquake happened, my founder and I, and he's
Ashish:
00:20:57
even my founder today, Jeff Kaiser, I think you've met him, we decided
Ashish:
00:21:00
that we wanted to do something.
Ashish:
00:21:03
You know, basically shut down the company for two weeks and we raised
Ashish:
00:21:07
48 tons of supplies, you know, using our business network, right?
Ashish:
00:21:12
We leaned on our network and for Haiti in two weeks and man, it was an ego trip.
Ashish:
00:21:18
Amazing.
Ashish:
00:21:19
I mean, I was on every news cover, local channel, NPR.
Ashish:
00:21:24
I mean, I have a big head, and my head was like, 10 times its size.
Ashish:
00:21:27
It's this massive ego trip, right?
Ashish:
00:21:28
Like CEO of a company does this, this, and that.
Ashish:
00:21:31
Yet it's my biggest failure in life by far compared to anything else I've done
Ashish:
00:21:36
is because yes, we got all that into Haiti, but six months later, what we
Ashish:
00:21:42
found out was none of the stuff had moved.
Ashish:
00:21:44
And Haiti was worse off financially, even though $8 billion had poured into Haiti.
Ashish:
00:21:51
And people like me had taken a lot of credit for doing good work, yet
Ashish:
00:21:56
I had nothing to show for it, right?
Ashish:
00:21:59
And that's kind of when I realized that this whole notion of not really
Ashish:
00:22:03
understanding the last mile is bad.
Ashish:
00:22:06
You just take a philanthropy approach, which is what I had done.
Ashish:
00:22:10
It was a great ego feeder for me, but it was a complete disaster.
Ashish:
00:22:14
It was driven with so much pity and almost no dignity.
Ashish:
00:22:19
That, that's kind of when it really bothered me that I'm like,
Ashish:
00:22:22
oh my God, I failed so badly.
Aaron - Narration:
00:22:25
Ashish, around that time, sold his last company and found
Aaron - Narration:
00:22:29
himself wondering how he could really help in a way that actually made a difference.
Aaron - Narration:
00:22:34
It turned out the Haiti experience, as disappointing as it was, propelled him
Aaron - Narration:
00:22:39
to a better understanding of how to help.
Ashish:
00:22:41
Kind of that oh, oh no moment in life, right?
Ashish:
00:22:45
And I was just like, wait a minute.
Ashish:
00:22:47
You know, all the money and effort is just wasted, right?
Ashish:
00:22:50
It's, it's all driven by our need for pride and greed.
Ashish:
00:22:54
Yet, at the end of the day, we are not solving problems.
Ashish:
00:22:58
So when I sold the last startup in 2012, I always wanted to do
Ashish:
00:23:03
something, but I didn't want to give away my money or any of that.
Ashish:
00:23:06
I didn't wanna do an NGO thing.
Ashish:
00:23:08
Definitely wasn't doing a Haiti 2.0 again, right.
Ashish:
00:23:11
So I happened to know some friends who had mentioned to me about this USAID
Ashish:
00:23:18
guys, and I know about USAID obviously, and that they were looking to start
Ashish:
00:23:23
a social enterprise in the Congo and they were looking for a business CEO.
Ashish:
00:23:28
But they didn't have a lot of money and it was a thing that they wanted to
Ashish:
00:23:32
try and I didn't need the money, so I said, "Hey, you know, I'm, I'm happy to
Ashish:
00:23:38
be CEO, but I don't want to get paid.
Ashish:
00:23:41
So I'll be your volunteer CEO.
Ashish:
00:23:43
I'll sign up for a couple years and see what happens."
Ashish:
00:23:45
So one thing led to another, and I'm on a plane to the DRC as a, and
Ashish:
00:23:50
they don't actually call it CEO.
Ashish:
00:23:52
You know, it's like a goofy title.
Ashish:
00:23:54
It's called Chief of, Chief of Party, right, which is like an official
Ashish:
00:23:58
title that USAID uses for the guy or the woman who's in charge.
Ashish:
00:24:02
So I was the chief of party for the social enterprise.
Ashish:
00:24:07
So it was a public private partnership where, you know, USA puts an X amount
Ashish:
00:24:11
of money and then private enterprises put an X amount of money and then, you
Ashish:
00:24:15
know, you have somebody like me run it.
Aaron - Interview:
00:24:18
And what was the, what was the venture idea?
Ashish:
00:24:20
It's, it's a platform called Asili, A-S-I-L-I.
Ashish:
00:24:24
And the idea was to create opportunity linkages for farmers
Ashish:
00:24:30
and healthcare workers in a way that creates a job economy.
Ashish:
00:24:35
But you know, has a direct impact on reducing infant child mortality,
Ashish:
00:24:40
because of very high rates, right, in those parts of the world.
Ashish:
00:24:43
I had this massive giant ego.
Ashish:
00:24:44
I still do, but I'm much lower than the doormat today.
Ashish:
00:24:47
But in those days I was just like, Hey, sold a startup.
Ashish:
00:24:50
You know, how hard can it be?
Ashish:
00:24:52
I've always wanted to end poverty, so let's do it.
Ashish:
00:24:54
Right.
Ashish:
00:24:55
So stupid.
Ashish:
00:24:55
I mean, God, I look back at myself in 2013 and I'm like, you know, "idiot"
Ashish:
00:25:00
would not even begin to describe who I was, but it's what it is.
Ashish:
00:25:04
Right?
Ashish:
00:25:04
And, and so I jumped with both feet in, and honestly, it just,
Ashish:
00:25:08
it kind of destroyed me, you know.
Ashish:
00:25:10
Because I think most people are able to separate what they see, and then they take
Ashish:
00:25:16
this approach around charity and pity.
Ashish:
00:25:20
You know, it's kind of...I talked to a lot of people, I'd read a lot of books on
Ashish:
00:25:22
Congo and everything, and everybody had this kind of badge of honor of going and
Ashish:
00:25:27
doing work in Africa and then coming and telling their friends and family about it.
Ashish:
00:25:31
I couldn't do that.
Ashish:
00:25:32
I, I just went toe deep and deep and deep and deep that
Ashish:
00:25:36
I just, it kept eating at me.
Ashish:
00:25:39
That we live in a world where there is disparity, but disparity to this extent
Ashish:
00:25:45
that's intertwined with supply chains.
Ashish:
00:25:48
That's the motivation that drives me today and, and then the live examples
Ashish:
00:25:52
are the child labor that happens in places like Congo, even today.
Ashish:
00:25:59
Yet, we would use a smartphone for $800, right?
Ashish:
00:26:03
I'm guilty.
Ashish:
00:26:03
I'm one on one right now.
Ashish:
00:26:05
You know you'll pay $12 for a latte that says a hundred percent
Ashish:
00:26:09
ethically sourced Congolese coffee.
Ashish:
00:26:12
It's not true.
Ashish:
00:26:13
Right, right.
Ashish:
00:26:14
Uh, you know, or you will, you will basically buy a bottle of water that
Ashish:
00:26:18
says a hundred percent recycled PET that I know is being picked up at a landfill
Ashish:
00:26:23
outside of Lusaka, Zambia, right?
Ashish:
00:26:27
And I think the, the two years, honestly, I did not do any
Ashish:
00:26:33
good in my humble opinion.
Ashish:
00:26:34
I just unlearned everything that I thought I knew and kind of really when that
Ashish:
00:26:42
incident happened with the mama farmer, it was the lowest point in my life because I
Ashish:
00:26:46
was just like--and I get emotional about it because I was just like--it just does
Ashish:
00:26:51
not make any sense here is that if, if we cannot even let this mother have a bank
Ashish:
00:26:59
account that establishes her existence as a human being, who is actually the
Ashish:
00:27:06
most productive person of this supply chain at the end of the day, right?
Ashish:
00:27:09
Right.
Ashish:
00:27:09
And her children are being forced into child labor, then all of
Ashish:
00:27:14
our, you know, victory that philanthropists or corporations
Ashish:
00:27:20
claim of progress we've made...
Ashish:
00:27:25
Yes, we've made progress.
Ashish:
00:27:27
But man, if you're standing next to that mother, you will feel
Ashish:
00:27:31
that you are in middle Earth and you have made zero progress.
Ashish:
00:27:34
And that's the piece that kind of hit me.
Ashish:
00:27:37
And then I quit.
Ashish:
00:27:38
You know, I'm, I'm not a quitter, but I quit.
Ashish:
00:27:40
I just, I couldn't deal with it.
Ashish:
00:27:41
I just quit at the end of 2014 and I said, um, I just can't
Ashish:
00:27:46
look these people in the eye.
Ashish:
00:27:48
Because we were getting awards.
Ashish:
00:27:49
I mean, we won awards.
Ashish:
00:27:51
I mean, we won the Battery Ventures Award, we won the Design Thinking Award, and I
Ashish:
00:27:56
won the Clinton Global Initiative Award, and I'm like, man, I, I feel ashamed here.
Aaron - Interview:
00:28:04
Your story about Haiti and your story
Aaron - Interview:
00:28:05
about working in the Congo too.
Aaron - Interview:
00:28:06
It's the same, it's the same story in the sense that a lot of resources and a
Aaron - Interview:
00:28:11
lot of good intentions are not enough.
Aaron - Interview:
00:28:13
We need better and deeper understanding of the problems we're trying to tackle.
Aaron - Interview:
00:28:18
And it sounds like your time, there was just a really intense sort of like
Aaron - Interview:
00:28:23
advanced degree, right, in what the issues of poverty are really about.
Ashish:
00:28:29
Yeah.
Ashish:
00:28:29
And it turns out it was never about resources, right?
Ashish:
00:28:33
And for me, that is the piece that I struggle with even today.
Ashish:
00:28:36
It's like, you know...you hear a lot of these commitments and pledges.
Ashish:
00:28:39
And I'm honestly like extremely vanilla, right?
Ashish:
00:28:43
I try to de-complex everything.
Ashish:
00:28:45
I just ask a very, very, very basic question.
Ashish:
00:28:48
If that sweater is 100% ethically sourced then the CEO of the company that made it
Ashish:
00:28:55
needs to sit down with me and show me the one or two or three farmers that grew the
Ashish:
00:29:00
cotton, show me their last three years worth of income and that it has gone up.
Ashish:
00:29:09
That's it.
Ashish:
00:29:09
I'm not asking for anything more.
Aaron - Narration:
00:29:12
Let's take a break here for a word from our sponsor.
Aaron - Narration:
00:29:16
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Aaron - Narration:
00:29:21
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Aaron - Narration:
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Aaron - Narration:
00:29:27
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Aaron - Narration:
00:29:30
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Aaron - Narration:
00:29:32
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Aaron - Narration:
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Aaron - Narration:
00:29:39
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you through the 13 most common ethical dilemmas that people face.
Aaron - Narration:
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Aaron - Narration:
00:29:52
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Aaron - Narration:
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Aaron - Narration:
00:30:00
You can find the Business Ethics Field Guide at Amazon, Apple Books,
Aaron - Narration:
00:30:04
Audible, and meritleadership.com.
Aaron - Narration:
00:30:10
-- The problem that BanQu is tackling
Aaron - Narration:
00:30:15
By that I mean to say that we have all the tools we need for
Aaron - Narration:
00:30:18
truly transparent supply chains.
Aaron - Narration:
00:30:21
We could, for example, know the name of the farmer who grew the cotton in
Aaron - Narration:
00:30:25
the jeans that we wear, or the cocoa in the chocolate bar that we eat.
Aaron - Narration:
00:30:31
The problem instead is that opaque supply chains serve the people who control them.
Aaron - Narration:
00:30:36
It allows them to hide what they don't want us to see.
Aaron - Narration:
00:30:39
This is what BanQu is working to change.
Aaron - Interview:
00:30:42
So supply chain issues are fascinating because they become
Aaron - Interview:
00:30:45
really murky and blurry really quickly.
Aaron - Interview:
00:30:48
Companies will buy massive amounts of inputs into their business, right?
Aaron - Interview:
00:30:53
Whether it's like cobalt to go into cell phone batteries or, or cotton to go into
Aaron - Interview:
00:30:58
the the sweater that you're wearing.
Aaron - Interview:
00:31:00
But they don't even necessarily know where that comes from.
Aaron - Interview:
00:31:02
Why don't they know?
Ashish:
00:31:04
So I think why they don't know the simpler answer is that they
Ashish:
00:31:10
are accustomed to not knowing and making a lot of money on not knowing.
Ashish:
00:31:15
So let me unpack that.
Ashish:
00:31:17
Okay?
Ashish:
00:31:17
Yeah.
Ashish:
00:31:17
And this part is important.
Ashish:
00:31:19
I'm a big believer, right?
Ashish:
00:31:20
If you, if you really cannot explain the problem, then the solution is useless.
Ashish:
00:31:25
Okay?
Ashish:
00:31:26
So, so let's unpack the cotton piece.
Ashish:
00:31:29
A smallholder farmer in Ghana, Uganda, Zambia, Pakistan, Uyghur
Ashish:
00:31:35
region in China, wherever, right.
Ashish:
00:31:37
When a smallholder farmer brings the first bale of cotton and gives it
Ashish:
00:31:42
to a cooperative, or a trader, or a buyer--chain of custody, classic
Ashish:
00:31:47
supply chain 101-- the problem is very simple to define, articulate, and
pinpoint, which is:
00:31:55
that farmer has no ability to prove their existence
pinpoint, which is:
00:32:02
when it comes to quality, quantity, and price in a way that both parties
pinpoint, which is:
00:32:10
have agreed, and in a way, everybody upstream agrees that that happened.
pinpoint, which is:
00:32:17
Okay.
pinpoint, which is:
00:32:18
And nothing to do with technology.
pinpoint, which is:
00:32:19
It is basic human trade 101 going back 500 years.
pinpoint, which is:
00:32:24
Right?
pinpoint, which is:
00:32:25
And now the, the black box begins.
pinpoint, which is:
00:32:29
Okay.
pinpoint, which is:
00:32:30
Yeah.
pinpoint, which is:
00:32:30
The black box begins when that middle man then says, I'm gonna buy from five
pinpoint, which is:
00:32:35
other farmers at different qualities, commingle it and it sell it upstream
pinpoint, which is:
00:32:43
where now there is no transparency of price, quality, and quantity.
pinpoint, which is:
00:32:49
So then what happens?
pinpoint, which is:
00:32:50
A certifying agency shows up, you know, fair trade or whatever, right?
pinpoint, which is:
00:32:54
Everybody shows up and they start certifying saying It's ethical cotton,
pinpoint, which is:
00:32:59
it's sourced good environmental practices and things like that.
pinpoint, which is:
00:33:03
And everybody's looking at that black box.
pinpoint, which is:
00:33:06
The problem with the black box is that that black box cannot tie back
pinpoint, which is:
00:33:14
to the individual farmer, right?
pinpoint, which is:
00:33:16
So if I have five farmers that are coming into one cooperative or one aggregation
pinpoint, which is:
00:33:23
point, these farmers crop is co-mingled.
pinpoint, which is:
00:33:26
So if I'm the middle man, I can squeeze them and because
pinpoint, which is:
00:33:31
they have to feed their child.
pinpoint, which is:
00:33:33
What leverage do you have as a farmer in that conversation on the Zambia/Congo
pinpoint, which is:
00:33:39
border on the Uganda/Tanzania border?
pinpoint, which is:
00:33:40
Your leverage is zero.
pinpoint, which is:
00:33:42
If you're Uyghur Muslim in China, your leverage is zero.
pinpoint, which is:
00:33:44
Okay?
pinpoint, which is:
00:33:46
But then everybody shows up in the middle.
pinpoint, which is:
00:33:49
They certify it.
pinpoint, which is:
00:33:50
You walk into a store and buy ethically sourced cotton, feeling really
pinpoint, which is:
00:33:55
good about it as a consumer, right?
pinpoint, which is:
00:33:59
So the problem now is very simple to describe, which is that there are at
pinpoint, which is:
00:34:03
least a billion people, maybe 750 million people in the world today, who are those
pinpoint, which is:
00:34:09
farmers, who are those waste pickers--it's the same thing when it comes to recycling,
pinpoint, which is:
00:34:15
no different on just on the other side of the supply chain--who on a daily
pinpoint, which is:
00:34:19
basis are providing the raw materials for global supply chain, yet cannot
pinpoint, which is:
00:34:27
prove their existence in that global supply chain beyond the measure of doubt.
pinpoint, which is:
00:34:32
And, and that is why these people continue to be unbanked and in extreme poverty and
pinpoint, which is:
00:34:40
no rights, human rights violations and everything, because they have no proof.
Aaron - Narration:
00:34:48
I called this episode Expanding Access to Proof, but it really
Aaron - Narration:
00:34:51
is referring to two kinds of proof.
Aaron - Narration:
00:34:54
One of them is the proof that the mama farmer deserves to show how much she
Aaron - Narration:
00:34:58
made and why she deserves a bank account.
Aaron - Narration:
00:35:01
But the other way that BanQu expands access to proof is providing proof
Aaron - Narration:
00:35:05
to customers to know that the products they're buying really
Aaron - Narration:
00:35:09
have the impact that they claim.
Aaron - Narration:
00:35:12
BanQu is essentially offering a product to companies that helps them to prove it.
Aaron - Narration:
00:35:18
So with this explanation of the problem, how is BanQu going to fix this?
Aaron - Narration:
00:35:23
Humanity creates black boxes because somebody uses them to profit.
Aaron - Narration:
00:35:27
What are the incentives for those running our supply chains to start
Aaron - Narration:
00:35:30
adding transparency in a way that allows everyone to be treated with dignity?
Ashish:
00:35:35
Great question.
Ashish:
00:35:36
In my opinion, the way to disrupt the black box, it relies on the shoulders of
Ashish:
00:35:41
CEOs, boards, investors, and corporations.
Ashish:
00:35:46
I love NGOs.
Ashish:
00:35:47
I love government agencies, but the commerce piece, which is directly
Ashish:
00:35:51
tied to the last mile, at least 75% of that is moving through global
Ashish:
00:35:58
brands of their everyday products.
Ashish:
00:36:01
Coffee, cacao, maize, corn, wheat, rice, plastic paper, cardboard, cobalt.
Ashish:
00:36:05
Right?
Ashish:
00:36:07
So the CEOs of these companies who are at the top end, right?Tier, tier
Ashish:
00:36:12
zero, and the tier five is downstream.
Ashish:
00:36:15
They have to have the courage to tell the black box that I won't buy from you
Ashish:
00:36:22
if you can't show me the visibility.
Ashish:
00:36:24
Look, 20% of the middlemen are gonna be horrible.
Ashish:
00:36:27
I've had a couple of death threats, but I think 80% in my opinion, like I always
Ashish:
00:36:31
look at the good side, 80% or 75% of the middle men are also poor people.
Ashish:
00:36:35
They're just, you know, do a good living.
Ashish:
00:36:38
The gap is that the CEOs are not really enforcing this level
Ashish:
00:36:46
of traceability because they're getting away by saying, I'm gonna
Ashish:
00:36:50
make a pledge for sustainability.
Ashish:
00:36:51
I'm gonna say everything is gonna be great by 2030.
Ashish:
00:36:55
Have an awesome brochure.
Ashish:
00:36:56
Go to COP 27, tell the world a hundred percent of my farmers
Ashish:
00:36:59
are gonna be regenerated by 2030.
Ashish:
00:37:01
Get a awesome pat on the back.
Ashish:
00:37:04
Nobody's really asking the question "But how?"
Ashish:
00:37:08
So this is, disruption has to happen at the leadership level.
Aaron - Interview:
00:37:12
Are there examples of CEOs that are doing it right?
Aaron - Interview:
00:37:15
I know you work with some.
Aaron - Interview:
00:37:17
Are there examples that come to mind that illustrate the right way to approach
Aaron - Interview:
00:37:21
this sort of transparent supply chain?
Ashish:
00:37:23
Oh, absolutely.
Ashish:
00:37:24
I mean, you know the one second share with you publicly, right?
Ashish:
00:37:27
So like you look at Solvay.
Ashish:
00:37:28
It, it's a big chemical company, and their CEO, Ilham, their Chief
Ashish:
00:37:33
Sustainability Officer, Lynn.
Ashish:
00:37:35
You know, we started working with them a couple years ago and they're like, "Hey,
Ashish:
00:37:38
you know, we sell gum to L'Oreal, right?"
Ashish:
00:37:40
The shampoo company and the cosmetic company.
Ashish:
00:37:42
"But we wanna be able to prove that the farmers that we buy, the base seed,"
Ashish:
00:37:48
It's called guar, that makes it gum.
Ashish:
00:37:50
"We wanna know who they are.
Ashish:
00:37:51
We wanna know if they're being paid.
Ashish:
00:37:52
We wanna know if their income's growing up."
Ashish:
00:37:56
And they have now rolled us out in India, right?
Ashish:
00:37:59
For thousands of farms.
Ashish:
00:38:00
So you have a CEO of a chemical company who is a for-profit company--so is BanQu
Ashish:
00:38:06
right, we're a for-profit company--but recognizes that I wanna actually do what
Ashish:
00:38:12
I'm gonna tell the world I'm gonna do.
Ashish:
00:38:13
Right.
Ashish:
00:38:14
You know, we work with Coca-Cola, we work with Wilmer, AB and Bev, right?
Ashish:
00:38:18
But honestly, I also tell people, right, look for every Solvay that we run,
Ashish:
00:38:24
there's 15 of them out there that will tell the world that they're gonna have
Ashish:
00:38:29
a hundred percent of their farmers, uh, doing regenerative agriculture,
Ashish:
00:38:33
but they couldn't name one farmer and show their income history right?
Ashish:
00:38:37
And that's the piece that unfortunately hasn't happened.
Ashish:
00:38:40
The scale hasn't happened.
Aaron - Narration:
00:38:42
There are forces at work to incentivize
Aaron - Narration:
00:38:44
companies to be more sustainable.
Aaron - Narration:
00:38:47
The ESG movement is part of this.
Aaron - Narration:
00:38:49
ESG stands for "environment, social and governance," and it describes efforts
Aaron - Narration:
00:38:55
to account for the impact that companies have outside of their financial returns.
Aaron - Narration:
00:39:00
But ESG has a long way to go.
Ashish:
00:39:03
So I think, I think honestly the ESG trend is the right thing.
Ashish:
00:39:07
It's the right, you know, wake up call.
Ashish:
00:39:10
Where it is headed in my humble opinion is in the absolute wrong direction.
Ashish:
00:39:14
And, and that's why, you know, I call it this unfounded climate
Ashish:
00:39:17
romance where yes, we wanna save every plastic bottle, but oh, by the
Ashish:
00:39:22
way, a poor mother on the shores of Port-Au-Prince in Haiti is picking up
Ashish:
00:39:26
the bottles and not gonna make $1.90.
Ashish:
00:39:29
People are like, oh, I don't wanna worry about that right now.
Ashish:
00:39:32
I am saving the planet because this bottle is 100% recycled.
Ashish:
00:39:36
That's an absolute lie, right?
Ashish:
00:39:38
What happened to the families?
Ashish:
00:39:41
Were they compensated?
Ashish:
00:39:43
If you are saying 100% of our cacao farmers in Ghana are gonna be regenerated
Ashish:
00:39:49
farmers, and you are gonna charge me 14% premium at a Whole Foods on a bag of
Ashish:
00:39:55
cacao that says that, then show me the income rise of those smallholder farmers
Ashish:
00:40:02
in Ghana has not happened since 2018.
Ashish:
00:40:06
So yes, you can put out an awesome ESG brochure that says region regenerative
Ashish:
00:40:12
agriculture, water conservation, carbon credits, but if you can't
Ashish:
00:40:18
back it...I'm yet to find one.
Ashish:
00:40:20
You know, we've lost clients, right?
Ashish:
00:40:22
We've lost clients because they'll say, "Hey, you're opening a can
Ashish:
00:40:25
of worms that I can't handle."
Ashish:
00:40:27
And that's the piece that, that what I call is the green
Ashish:
00:40:30
washing, which is a danger, right?
Ashish:
00:40:32
Because we are not solving the actual problem....
Ashish:
00:40:37
Recycled batteries.
Ashish:
00:40:38
Here's another one.
Ashish:
00:40:40
Look at the amount of ESG press we're getting for recycled batteries because
Ashish:
00:40:45
cobalt is going, you know, low.
Ashish:
00:40:48
But where are these batteries being picked up at?
Ashish:
00:40:50
They're being picked up at landfills across India and Nigeria
Ashish:
00:40:53
by children under the age of 10!
Aaron - Narration:
00:40:57
As consumers, we also benefit from the black box supply chains.
Aaron - Narration:
00:41:01
It's because we can buy what we want without having to know the
Aaron - Narration:
00:41:04
consequences of our choices.
Aaron - Narration:
00:41:07
There's a movement pioneered by companies like Ben and Jerry's, Method,
Aaron - Narration:
00:41:11
Allbirds, and others to change this, to make us all more ethical consumers.
Aaron - Narration:
00:41:16
Ashish is a skeptic though of both the power and the behavior
Aaron - Narration:
00:41:19
of consumers in wealthy countries.
Aaron - Interview:
00:41:22
Consumers want to live ethically.
Aaron - Interview:
00:41:24
I mean, you talk about the example of buying a, you know,
Aaron - Interview:
00:41:26
an ethically sourced sweater.
Aaron - Interview:
00:41:28
Ethical consumption, today in the modern world with supply chains the
Aaron - Interview:
00:41:33
way they are, feels nearly impossible because it feels like every time you
Aaron - Interview:
00:41:37
buy a product that makes a promise of some kind, you really have no way of
Aaron - Interview:
00:41:42
knowing if that promise is being kept.
Aaron - Interview:
00:41:44
So what thoughts do you have for the people who want to be ethical consumers?
Aaron - Interview:
00:41:48
What are the things that you wish they were focusing on, the questions they
Aaron - Interview:
00:41:51
were asking, the benchmarks they were looking for to add more pressure to the
Aaron - Interview:
00:41:57
brands and the suppliers to improve this?
Ashish:
00:41:59
Man.
Ashish:
00:42:00
Great question.
Ashish:
00:42:00
I'm gonna give you unpopular answer.
Ashish:
00:42:02
I think the, the, there's a misnomer that the consumer has a voice.
Ashish:
00:42:08
Um, and this is gonna piss off some listeners here, uh, and I, I'll
Ashish:
00:42:12
give you a simple example, right?
Ashish:
00:42:13
If you ask a group of teenagers, right, "Here's a hundred dollars, and go
Ashish:
00:42:18
purchase a ethically sourced pair of jeans or lipstick in Provo, Utah, right?
Ashish:
00:42:25
Or you can buy four pairs of jeans at H&M."
Ashish:
00:42:29
Okay.
Ashish:
00:42:30
What do you think they'll do?
Ashish:
00:42:31
Right?
Ashish:
00:42:32
And, and yes, there's a lot of noise around, you know, the consumer's voice.
Ashish:
00:42:37
Consumers are buying ethically sourced.
Ashish:
00:42:38
But you know, I, I ask myself or ask anybody, you walk into a Whole Foods, you
Ashish:
00:42:42
see a bag of coffee that says ethically fair-trade, organic source, right?
Ashish:
00:42:47
Do you actually just buy it and go feeling good about it?
Ashish:
00:42:50
Or you say, wait a minute, right?
Ashish:
00:42:52
I'm gonna take the next three days, start calling and find out "What's
Ashish:
00:42:58
the income stream of the Guatemala farmer that is on this bag of coffee?"
Ashish:
00:43:03
You're not gonna do that, right?
Ashish:
00:43:05
So, so I'm not saying...I love the consumer angle, right?
Ashish:
00:43:10
But I don't think the consumer has a strong enough voice.
Ashish:
00:43:15
It's just because our, our buying habits are tied to shiny objects.
Aaron - Interview:
00:43:20
Yeah.
Aaron - Interview:
00:43:21
And we don't have the three days to go do the research to make sure the
Aaron - Interview:
00:43:24
farmer in Guatemala has been paid well.
Ashish:
00:43:25
Exactly.
Ashish:
00:43:26
I'm just trying to shine a reality light, right?
Ashish:
00:43:28
The problem needs to be solved at the CEO purchasing and, and corporate
Ashish:
00:43:34
governance and the board level, right?
Ashish:
00:43:36
If, if CEOs can stand up and say, "If I said that 100% of my plastic is recycled
Ashish:
00:43:43
and my packaging, then I need to know over the next five years, every single
Ashish:
00:43:49
landfill where my plastic's coming from, and I wanna know if the waste
Ashish:
00:43:52
pickers are getting out of poverty."
Aaron - Narration:
00:43:54
BanQu is now operating in 58 countries and 13 languages.
Aaron - Narration:
00:44:00
It's also won awards or praise from the UN, the International Finance Corporation,
Aaron - Narration:
00:44:05
Fortune Magazine, and host of others.
Aaron - Narration:
00:44:08
Its clients include Coca-Cola, Anheuser-Busch, and Mars.
Aaron - Narration:
00:44:12
So what's next for the company and for Ashish?
Ashish:
00:44:16
I, I think the unique problems we are wrestling with right now is getting
Ashish:
00:44:21
people to recognize that ESG and supply chains are intertwined and the blind
Ashish:
00:44:28
spot is at the source, not upstream.
Ashish:
00:44:34
So that's a big challenge, right?
Ashish:
00:44:36
I mean, I mean, I have emails from CEOs who say, "Love what you're
Ashish:
00:44:40
doing, but you know, right now we're focusing on our ESG commitments."
Ashish:
00:44:45
I mean, think about that for a second.
Ashish:
00:44:46
I have emails from CEOs saying that, and I'm like, "Am I like
Ashish:
00:44:50
completely losing my mind?"
Ashish:
00:44:51
Right?
Ashish:
00:44:52
But, but in, in their mind, the ESG commitment is the end game, not the work.
Ashish:
00:45:00
Okay.
Ashish:
00:45:01
So that's, that's a challenge.
Ashish:
00:45:02
Uh, the second challenge is that, you know, in a, in a recession economy, right,
Ashish:
00:45:06
do people really follow through, right?
Ashish:
00:45:09
In a recession economy, you are going to hunker down and squeeze
Ashish:
00:45:13
downstream your suppliers.
Ashish:
00:45:16
And the minute you do that, the suppliers are gonna say, "Hey,
Ashish:
00:45:19
they're not really gonna care if I bought it ethically or unethically."
Ashish:
00:45:22
Right?
Ashish:
00:45:22
So that's, that's a challenge.
Ashish:
00:45:24
And then the last challenge I always run into, which is this personal to
Ashish:
00:45:27
me, is that oftentimes I find myself in conversations where people will
Ashish:
00:45:33
go, "What are you talking about?"
Ashish:
00:45:37
Right?
Ashish:
00:45:37
Because they have not taken the time to understand their own supply chain.
Ashish:
00:45:42
So when I say there's a farmer on the Zambia/Congo border who reads SMS uses
Ashish:
00:45:46
mobile money and wants to prove that this is the cotton she sold her, they're like,
Ashish:
00:45:54
"That's not on our radar for this year."
Ashish:
00:45:58
And I'm going, whoa, whoa.
Ashish:
00:46:00
So that's the challenge.
Ashish:
00:46:01
I think.
Ashish:
00:46:02
What's next?
Ashish:
00:46:03
Is in my humble opinions, continue the fight, right?
Ashish:
00:46:07
It's, you know, our goal is a hundred million people and
Ashish:
00:46:09
a hundred million business.
Ashish:
00:46:10
We're coming up about 15 million people by the end of this year,
Ashish:
00:46:14
about 4 million in revenue.
Ashish:
00:46:16
So it's still a long way to go, right?
Ashish:
00:46:18
But a hundred million is a drop in the bucket, man.
Ashish:
00:46:20
I mean, it's like, you know, we'll get to a hundred million.
Ashish:
00:46:23
That's not an issue.
Ashish:
00:46:24
The bigger problem is, you know, we need, we need more BanQus out there.
Aaron - Interview:
00:46:28
What advice do you have for the people out there
Aaron - Interview:
00:46:30
who aspire to tackle the big, complex problems like you are?
Ashish:
00:46:34
Man, I'm nobody to give any advice.
Ashish:
00:46:36
I'm a big believer in the power of one, right?
Ashish:
00:46:40
Which is that no matter how complex your supply chain is, right, if you can go
Ashish:
00:46:48
all the way to the one waste picker, or the one farmer, or the one worker, and
Ashish:
00:47:00
ensure that over the next three years that you have step changed without any pity,
Ashish:
00:47:05
with all dignity and commerce, right?
Ashish:
00:47:08
That's the power of one.
Ashish:
00:47:10
Help if it has an undertone of pity is the worst thing you can do to somebody.
Ashish:
00:47:15
Help without pity is really dignity, and I think that's, it's
Ashish:
00:47:21
a hard, hard thing to do, right?
Ashish:
00:47:23
Because we were all raised with this, you know, "Let's help somebody."
Ashish:
00:47:27
But it comes from this place of pity, and that's, in my opinion,
Ashish:
00:47:31
pity then ties to your own pride and greed, and it's very hard to unwind.
Aaron - Narration:
00:47:37
What is it that keeps Ashish and his team motivated
Aaron - Narration:
00:47:40
to reach a hundred million people?
Aaron - Narration:
00:47:43
What is it about BanQu that makes all of these people wake up and
Aaron - Narration:
00:47:46
work so hard at this every day?
Aaron - Narration:
00:47:49
Well, it's stories like this one.
Ashish:
00:47:51
About three or four years ago, I met this young
Ashish:
00:47:55
woman in Colombia, in Colombia.
Ashish:
00:47:57
And she had a little child, maybe three or four years old.
Ashish:
00:48:00
And she's a waste picker.
Ashish:
00:48:01
And we were rolling out, you know, same software except on the recycling side.
Ashish:
00:48:05
And I saw her at the corner, she was sitting, she had a book in her hand.
Ashish:
00:48:08
And I walked up to her and I said, "Hey, what's in the book?"
Ashish:
00:48:11
Right?
Ashish:
00:48:12
And it was a notebook.
Ashish:
00:48:13
It was a very neat leader in handbook.
Ashish:
00:48:15
And it had three years worth of every single kilo of every single
Ashish:
00:48:22
material that she has sold at that buyback center, the landfill.
Ashish:
00:48:28
And you know, I still get the chills and I'm like, "You know, you are so smart."
Ashish:
00:48:33
Right?
Ashish:
00:48:33
She's like, "But it's useless because no bank is willing to give me a decent loan
Ashish:
00:48:40
so I can take my kid out of the slum and we can buy a, you know, one room place.
Ashish:
00:48:45
Because this book doesn't really validate who I am."
Ashish:
00:48:49
You know?
Ashish:
00:48:49
Now fast forward, she's on BanQu and everything, but I think the point is
Ashish:
00:48:52
that I think that is the inspiration.
Aaron - Narration:
00:48:58
Ultimately, this is what it means when
Aaron - Narration:
00:49:00
we have the luxury of proof.
Aaron - Narration:
00:49:03
We can prove that we're a person who matters in this huge
Aaron - Narration:
00:49:06
complex world that we navigate.
Aaron - Narration:
00:49:08
We can get the loan, or rent the car, or buy the apartment because
Aaron - Narration:
00:49:12
we can prove that we belong.
Aaron - Narration:
00:49:15
When Ashish describes the power of the one, he's saying that nobody
Aaron - Narration:
00:49:19
should be denied the right to proof.
Aaron - Narration:
00:49:21
Blockchain for BanQu is just an efficient way to make that happen.
Aaron - Narration:
00:49:25
But all the systems, tools, programs, or strategies we deploy in making
Aaron - Narration:
00:49:30
the world a better place will fail if we don't make everyone count.
Aaron - Narration:
00:49:38
I am so grateful to Ashish Gadnis for his time and for sharing his experiences.
Aaron - Narration:
00:49:43
Talking with him is energizing, and I hope you felt the same thing listening to him.
Aaron - Narration:
00:49:48
In the show notes, you can find links for all the things that we discussed, and
Aaron - Narration:
00:49:52
there's also a transcript on our website.
Aaron - Narration:
00:49:56
Next episode, we'll hear from the veteran science and tech journalist David Pogue.
Aaron - Narration:
00:50:01
He's been reporting on human innovation for decades and has won multiple
Aaron - Narration:
00:50:05
Emmys and other awards for his work.
Aaron - Narration:
00:50:08
You've seen him over the years in programs and outlets like PBS's, Nova,
Aaron - Narration:
00:50:11
CBS Sunday Morning, The New York Times, and his new podcast, Unsung Science.
Aaron - Narration:
00:50:18
Our discussion will be on science and tech for good.
Aaron - Narration:
00:50:21
We'll be talking about everything from AI to climate change,
Aaron - Narration:
00:50:24
from sharks to space travel.
Aaron - Narration:
00:50:26
It's going to be a fun and enlightening episode.
Aaron - Narration:
00:50:31
If you enjoy How to Help, please take a moment to give us a positive
Aaron - Narration:
00:50:34
review in your podcast app.
Aaron - Narration:
00:50:36
This helps us immensely to reach more listeners.
Aaron - Narration:
00:50:39
And the other thing that helps is to share.
Aaron - Narration:
00:50:42
If you have a favorite episode, please put it on social media, send it to friends.
Aaron - Narration:
00:50:47
It means a lot to us.
Aaron - Narration:
00:50:49
If you want to stay up to date with the podcast and my other work, subscribe
Aaron - Narration:
00:50:53
to the How to Help email newsletter where I share ideas for how to have more
Aaron - Narration:
00:50:57
meaning in your life and in your work.
Aaron - Narration:
00:50:59
You can subscribe or read the archives how-to-help.com.
Aaron - Narration:
00:51:04
This episode is written and recorded by me.
Aaron - Narration:
00:51:07
Our production team for this season has included Ty Bingham,
Aaron - Narration:
00:51:10
yours truly, and Joseph Sandholtz, who also mixes our audio.
Aaron - Narration:
00:51:14
Our amazing music comes from the Pleasant Pictures Music Club, and if
Aaron - Narration:
00:51:18
you want to use their music in your projects, you can find a link and
Aaron - Narration:
00:51:21
a discount code in our show notes.
Aaron - Narration:
00:51:24
Finally, as always, thank you so much for listening.
Aaron - Narration:
00:51:29
I'm Aaron Miller, and this has been How to Help.
00:00:00
And when I landed up in Bogota, I was just like,
Ashish:
00:00:03
"Wow, I have my own toilet."
Ashish:
00:00:04
You know, if you've not had that freedom, most people in
Ashish:
00:00:07
America can't relate to this.
Ashish:
00:00:08
But for me it was like this aha moment.
Ashish:
00:00:11
I'm like, ah, that's what freedom feels like.
Aaron - Narration:
00:00:14
Hi, I'm Aaron Miller.
Aaron - Narration:
00:00:17
And this is How to Help, a podcast about having a life and career with
Aaron - Narration:
00:00:22
meaning, integrity, and impact.
Aaron - Narration:
00:00:25
This is season two, episode seven: Expanding Access to Proof.
Aaron - Narration:
00:00:32
This episode of How to Help is sponsored by Merit Leadership, home
Aaron - Narration:
00:00:36
of The Business Ethics Field Guide.
Aaron - Narration:
00:00:40
Before we begin, I just want to say thanks to all of you who are listening.
Aaron - Narration:
00:00:44
The other day, someone shared this lovely compliment.
Aaron - Narration:
00:00:47
They said, quote, "By the way, I loved the podcast episode with Walter Shaub.
Aaron - Narration:
00:00:53
Definitely my new favorite episode.
Aaron - Narration:
00:00:55
I think I've shared it with a half a dozen people already."
Aaron - Narration:
00:00:59
You know, knowing that you enjoy the show and that you take the time to
Aaron - Narration:
00:01:02
share it, it just means the world to me.
Aaron - Narration:
00:01:05
So thank you for listening.
Aaron - Narration:
00:01:07
Thank you for leaving reviews.
Aaron - Narration:
00:01:09
And thank you especially for sharing the podcast.
Aaron - Narration:
00:01:13
How easily could you prove that you are, indeed, you?
Aaron - Narration:
00:01:18
For most of you, I think it would be no sweat.
Aaron - Narration:
00:01:22
In fact, you've probably done it hundreds of times.
Aaron - Narration:
00:01:25
You'd show me your driver's license or maybe your passport,
Aaron - Narration:
00:01:28
and it's as simple as that.
Aaron - Narration:
00:01:30
Other than waiting in line, maybe paying a fee or taking a test,
Aaron - Narration:
00:01:35
you didn't have to do too much for this incredibly useful little card.
Aaron - Narration:
00:01:40
Many of us are swimming in proof we didn't have to work to earn.
Aaron - Narration:
00:01:46
We get a birth certificate just for being born.
Aaron - Narration:
00:01:49
The same goes for a social security card if you're in the United States.
Aaron - Narration:
00:01:53
As we get older, if we don't want to take the test for a driver's license,
Aaron - Narration:
00:01:57
we can still get a government-issued photo ID just by showing someone a
Aaron - Narration:
00:02:01
few utility bills and that same birth certificate that we got for free.
Aaron - Narration:
00:02:07
When you want to open a bank account, a government-issued
Aaron - Narration:
00:02:10
ID is pretty much all you need.
Aaron - Narration:
00:02:12
You can then call the bank whenever you want and do business over the phone just
Aaron - Narration:
00:02:17
as long as you can share something simple like part of your Social Security number
Aaron - Narration:
00:02:21
and the name of your childhood pet.
Aaron - Narration:
00:02:23
Or you can just log in on the web with your password.
Aaron - Narration:
00:02:27
Thanks to programmers and encryption, you have all the proof you need.
Aaron - Narration:
00:02:32
Now think of what all this proof does for you, because it does a lot.
Aaron - Narration:
00:02:39
You can get a job more easily because of it, or rent an apartment.
Aaron - Narration:
00:02:43
Quick and simple access to proof makes it easier to get on a plane, to borrow
Aaron - Narration:
00:02:48
money from a bank, or to rent a car.
Aaron - Narration:
00:02:50
Proof, if you think about it, is like grease that makes the gears
Aaron - Narration:
00:02:55
of the economy turn more freely and it makes your life so much easier.
Aaron - Narration:
00:03:02
Like most things we have in abundance, it's easy to take proof for granted.
Aaron - Narration:
00:03:08
In much of the world, proof is much harder to come by.
Aaron - Narration:
00:03:12
The government agencies that provided are slow or the process is expensive.
Aaron - Narration:
00:03:18
You might be at the whim of people who cancel appointments on you or give
Aaron - Narration:
00:03:22
preference to people with more money.
Aaron - Narration:
00:03:24
And you might just not have a way to prove what's being asked for, like your income.
Aaron - Narration:
00:03:31
My guest this week, Ashish Gadnis, has two stories that powerfully
Aaron - Narration:
00:03:36
illustrate this difference.
Ashish:
00:03:39
When I came to the US I had $240, but at the end of the first week,
Ashish:
00:03:44
I was able to open a bank account.
Ashish:
00:03:46
There's a couple moments in life, at least for me, that have really shaped
Ashish:
00:03:49
my understanding and I'm still learning.
Ashish:
00:03:51
But it was a shock.
Ashish:
00:03:53
It was a shock because you know, here I was a kid with nothing, but I was
Ashish:
00:03:57
able to open a bank account because I was able to show my employment letter.
Ashish:
00:04:03
I was able to show a copy of my passport and I was able to show
Ashish:
00:04:08
that I had a pay stub, right?
Ashish:
00:04:10
And I was able to get a bank account, and that was kind of this massively
Ashish:
00:04:15
shocking aha moment for me because I didn't kind of exist up until that point.
Ashish:
00:04:20
If you fast forward, and this might seem disjointed because I have adhd,
Ashish:
00:04:24
but I'll make sense in a second here.
Ashish:
00:04:25
But this happened in 1994 and 2014, you know, 20 years later, almost
Ashish:
00:04:32
to the same date, I was retired.
Ashish:
00:04:34
I sold my last startup.
Ashish:
00:04:35
I'd spent a couple years in and out of the DRC in Congo.
Ashish:
00:04:39
And the women farmers that I was volunteering with as a part
Ashish:
00:04:43
of the USAID program wanted to open a bank account, right?
Ashish:
00:04:48
And, and a lot of people have heard the stories that the local bank refused to, to
Ashish:
00:04:53
let that mama farmer open a bank account.
Ashish:
00:04:56
And 20 years apart, right?
Ashish:
00:04:57
Two incidences, same incident, almost extremely different outcomes, right?
Ashish:
00:05:03
So I got a bank account and there was no issue.
Ashish:
00:05:07
I got it in 1994, began a great career, made money, blah, blah, blah.
Ashish:
00:05:13
Fast forward, here's this mama farmer who was not able to open a
Ashish:
00:05:19
bank account because she couldn't prove her harvest information.
Ashish:
00:05:23
She could not prove the land that she was using.
Ashish:
00:05:26
She couldn't prove that she was a farmer for the last 15, 20 years, and the horrors
Ashish:
00:05:31
of, you know, death and rape and violence that she had seen, yet the bank said no.
Ashish:
00:05:38
And, you know, I got in an argument and the guy finally said, look, I
Ashish:
00:05:41
can't bank her, but I'll bank you.
Ashish:
00:05:43
Right?
Ashish:
00:05:43
That's where the name comes from.
Ashish:
00:05:45
And that is kind of the bookends of, if you see, you know, where kind
Ashish:
00:05:49
of my life bounced around is here's 1994, where, you know, even though
Ashish:
00:05:53
I'm not white, I got a bank account.
Ashish:
00:05:55
Right.
Ashish:
00:05:56
Walked in.
Ashish:
00:05:56
Got it.
Ashish:
00:05:57
And fast forward in, in, in 2014, a woman who worked so hard is not bankable.
Ashish:
00:06:05
And, and you don't even have to think about 2014.
Ashish:
00:06:07
This happened to me two weeks ago.
Ashish:
00:06:09
I was in Tanzania with the Maasai farmers in a place called Monduli, about a hundred
Ashish:
00:06:17
kilometers south of um, Kilimanjaro.
Ashish:
00:06:20
And the local banking system doesn't let them open a bank account without
Ashish:
00:06:25
charging a 16% interest rate on a loan.
Ashish:
00:06:29
Forget 1994, forget 2014.
Ashish:
00:06:31
This is 2022 October of this year where smallholder farmers, especially women, are
Ashish:
00:06:39
still refused a bank account even though they do the most important work in our
Ashish:
00:06:44
supply chains, which is grow our crops.
Ashish:
00:06:47
The hardest working people in our global supply chain are our farmers,
Ashish:
00:06:51
our workers, our waste pickers, our miners, yet they are invisible, unbanked,
Ashish:
00:06:59
and cannot prove their existence.
Ashish:
00:07:02
Yet you and I, you know, we are claiming sustainability.
Ashish:
00:07:06
We're claiming this climate, romance, we're claiming suddenly this ethical radar
Ashish:
00:07:12
that we have trying to save the planet.
Ashish:
00:07:14
But I'm like, but wait a minute, you know that mother in Zambia and
Ashish:
00:07:20
Uganda and Tanzania is still unbanked
Ashish:
00:07:23
. Aaron - Narration: Ashish is the
Ashish:
00:07:28
It's a blockchain company helping bring the power of proof to those
Ashish:
00:07:32
who need it most, and it does this by adding transparency and simplicity
Ashish:
00:07:37
to everyone in a supply chain.
Ashish:
00:07:39
From the cocoa farmer in Ivory Coast to the waste picker who's recycling
Ashish:
00:07:44
your bottle of chocolate milk.
Ashish:
00:07:46
With BanQu, the mama farmer whom Ashish mentioned can finally have
Ashish:
00:07:51
proof of the success of her business.
Ashish:
00:07:54
BanQu is replacing a broken system where what proof there
Ashish:
00:07:57
is can be easily destroyed.
Ashish:
00:08:01
In 2019, you know, when we were like growing crazy and
Ashish:
00:08:04
everything, we were just starting to roll out BanQu for barley farmers.
Ashish:
00:08:07
And we hadn't yet gone to this one mama farmer, Agnes, her name was.
Ashish:
00:08:12
And we kind of overheard a conversation where the previous month
Ashish:
00:08:17
she had been given a paper receipt because they didn't have cash.
Ashish:
00:08:20
So she went home.
Ashish:
00:08:21
By the time she got home, it rained, the receipt disintegrated.
Ashish:
00:08:25
Think about that.
Ashish:
00:08:26
It disintegrated.
Ashish:
00:08:28
So she comes, four days--I'm not making it up--four days she waited for her money
Ashish:
00:08:37
because the receipt had disintegrated.
Ashish:
00:08:39
Now, fast forward, right?
Ashish:
00:08:41
She is on BanQu today.
Ashish:
00:08:42
She sells it.
Ashish:
00:08:43
But the point I'm trying to make is that that is the power
Ashish:
00:08:49
of restoring their rights.
Ashish:
00:08:50
It's not even pity.
Ashish:
00:08:51
It's not even help.
Ashish:
00:08:52
It's just they, we owe the mother a receipt, right?
Ashish:
00:08:55
Yeah.
Ashish:
00:08:55
And that's what blockchain does.
Aaron - Narration:
00:08:57
Now the mere mention of the word "blockchain"
Aaron - Narration:
00:09:00
might make your eyes glaze over like most technical mumbo jumbo.
Aaron - Narration:
00:09:04
Or instead it makes you think of the scams that are perpetrated by
Aaron - Narration:
00:09:09
Miami Crypto Bros who brag about their bored Ape Yacht Club NFT.
Aaron - Narration:
00:09:13
If you don't already know how blockchain works, then I am not the right person
Aaron - Narration:
00:09:17
to explain the technical details.
Aaron - Narration:
00:09:20
What I can say is that at its core, blockchain is a technology that allows
Aaron - Narration:
00:09:25
computers run by different people to all have verified copies of the same data.
Aaron - Narration:
00:09:32
Because of how it works, it's impossible to make changes to the
Aaron - Narration:
00:09:35
data without every other computer knowing what changed and how.
Aaron - Narration:
00:09:40
In BanQu's case, blockchain becomes a transparent way of documenting the
Aaron - Narration:
00:09:45
sale of things like cotton and cocoa.
Ashish:
00:09:48
So now put yourselves in the shoes of that farmer who has been growing cotton
Ashish:
00:09:53
for the last 10 years, or coffee or cacao, or picking up the bottles and selling
Ashish:
00:09:59
it in this unfortunate dance of buyer and seller, but cannot prove anything.
Ashish:
00:10:06
You are never gonna break that cycle, right?
Ashish:
00:10:08
And this is where the solution matters of blockchain, right?
Ashish:
00:10:11
So in the non-blockchain world, when that--staying with cotton,
Ashish:
00:10:16
right--when that bag of cotton changed hands, the person who buys it may
Ashish:
00:10:21
have an Excel spreadsheet, may have a smartphone, may have a database.
Ashish:
00:10:27
In that example, it's a one-sided transaction.
Ashish:
00:10:31
All the data goes into a repository, Excel, or whatever, right?
Ashish:
00:10:38
But that farmer did not have any say in terms of what was recorded
Ashish:
00:10:44
on that centralized system.
Ashish:
00:10:46
So that's the current world we live in, which is what I call the
Ashish:
00:10:49
world of data dictatorship, right?
Ashish:
00:10:51
Where somebody who owns the data controls, the data, dictates the data.
Ashish:
00:10:58
And then if you are in that base of the pyramid when it comes to
Ashish:
00:11:01
poverty, you don't have a say.
Ashish:
00:11:05
Blockchain.
Ashish:
00:11:06
What's the difference?
Ashish:
00:11:08
The very basic premise of blockchain is that if two parties participate in
Ashish:
00:11:14
one transaction, then both parties are owed a copy of the same transaction
Ashish:
00:11:22
in a way that it cannot be changed.
Ashish:
00:11:24
If the farmer sells a bag or a bushel of cotton, if I used blockchain, then
Ashish:
00:11:34
a copy of that transaction of 40 kilos of bushel at 16% moisture and 400
Ashish:
00:11:39
kwacha, price quality and quantity.
Ashish:
00:11:42
Both people should have a copy of the transaction in a
Ashish:
00:11:46
way that nobody can dispute.
Ashish:
00:11:49
And how do you do that?
Ashish:
00:11:51
If I use blockchain, the mother has an SMS phone.
Ashish:
00:11:55
And she's smart.
Ashish:
00:11:55
She knows how to use SMS.
Ashish:
00:11:57
What if, and this is kind of the premise of BanQu, right?
Ashish:
00:12:00
What if we could deliver that same history through SMS, write it on
Ashish:
00:12:04
blockchain so all parties have the same copy, but deliver it to her via SMS.
Ashish:
00:12:10
If I can do that, then she can interact or react with it
Ashish:
00:12:15
and say yes, no, or otherwise.
Ashish:
00:12:19
And that for us was the aha moment.
Ashish:
00:12:21
You know, when we started BanQu in 2016, we said, ah, why blockchain makes sense?
Ashish:
00:12:27
Because for the first time, this farmer or this waste picker will be given their
Ashish:
00:12:35
own copy of their data that they have always been owed for the last 300 years.
Ashish:
00:12:40
And that same copy will then propagate all the way upstream
Ashish:
00:12:47
so that nobody can deny it.
Ashish:
00:12:50
It is extremely simple, yet extremely powerful, and never been done before.
Ashish:
00:12:57
And that's the solution.
Aaron - Narration:
00:13:00
By now, you're probably wondering about Ashish himself.
Aaron - Narration:
00:13:04
As is the case with my other guests, he has a remarkable personal story
Aaron - Narration:
00:13:09
that brought him to this point.
Aaron - Narration:
00:13:11
Born and raised in poverty, Ashish learned to code, worked around the world, built
Aaron - Narration:
00:13:17
and sold multiple companies, and is now dedicated to spending the rest of his
working years on this problem:
00:13:21
helping 100 million people out of poverty.
working years on this problem:
00:13:28
His story begins in Mumbai, India.
Ashish:
00:13:32
Growing up, uh, late sixties, early seventies, you
Ashish:
00:13:36
know, we didn't have much.
Ashish:
00:13:37
Right.
Ashish:
00:13:37
You know, poverty was just what it was.
Ashish:
00:13:39
Me and my brother, we broke up the week in terms of who got to stand in the
Ashish:
00:13:44
ration line, and it wasn't, you know, it, we didn't know anything better, right?
Ashish:
00:13:47
So I stood in last line for three days and my brother got the other three days,
Ashish:
00:13:50
and it was for basic commodities, right?
Ashish:
00:13:53
Wheat, rice, and oil.
Ashish:
00:13:54
So we could eat.
Ashish:
00:13:56
And it left this tug in my heart or a punch if, depending how
Ashish:
00:13:59
you look at it, around poverty.
Ashish:
00:14:03
And that kinda shaped my thinking at an early age.
Ashish:
00:14:05
That was kind of like, someday I'm gonna get out.
Ashish:
00:14:08
And then someday when I do get out, I wanna find a way for other
Ashish:
00:14:11
people not to be a number standing in a ration line just to eat.
Aaron - Narration:
00:14:19
As a teenager, Ashish found that he had an interest and ability
Aaron - Narration:
00:14:22
for software coding, something he shared with a lot of kids around that time.
Aaron - Narration:
00:14:27
It was a skill that promised an escape from poverty.
Ashish:
00:14:32
You know, in those days you could learn programming and
Ashish:
00:14:35
my dad said, you can beg or code.
Ashish:
00:14:36
And you know, here I am.
Ashish:
00:14:38
Pretty stereotypical, nothing, you know, smart about me.
Ashish:
00:14:41
It just, everybody else had the same choices and I fell into that same bucket.
Aaron - Interview:
00:14:47
Learning coding and then sort of seeing the path,
Aaron - Interview:
00:14:49
what was your vision like as you were first picking up this skill?
Aaron - Interview:
00:14:52
I mean, what were you seeing ahead of yourself that way as
Aaron - Interview:
00:14:54
you were learning how to code?
Ashish:
00:14:56
To be honest, nothing.
Ashish:
00:14:57
You know, I'm lower than the doormat kind of guy, and no, I didn't have
Ashish:
00:15:00
any vision, nothing grandiose.
Ashish:
00:15:02
I was just like, I just don't wanna be poor.
Ashish:
00:15:04
And you know, if the word on the street was, if you could
Ashish:
00:15:07
code, um, you'll make money.
Ashish:
00:15:10
And hopefully with coding you'll be sent overseas.
Ashish:
00:15:15
So, you know, I was just like, oh, I wanna get out.
Ashish:
00:15:17
So gonna code and that's it.
Aaron - Narration:
00:15:21
You might have noticed the way that Ashish
Aaron - Narration:
00:15:23
hesitates taking credit for being especially smart or ambitious.
Aaron - Narration:
00:15:29
He really doesn't see himself that way, as being smarter or better than any
Aaron - Narration:
00:15:33
of those in his same circumstances.
Aaron - Narration:
00:15:35
Mostly he sees himself and his path as fortunate.
Ashish:
00:15:40
It's a straightforward path.
Ashish:
00:15:41
I think a lot of people, and I'll just speak for myself, right, give people
Ashish:
00:15:45
like me a lot of credit, and I don't, because it's not, it's nothing special.
Ashish:
00:15:48
If you were born instead of me in Mumbai, you would be in the same place.
Ashish:
00:15:53
It has nothing to do with intelligence, in my humble opinion.
Ashish:
00:15:56
So the path was simple, right?
Ashish:
00:15:57
You, if you learn how you, if you're decent at programming, a
Ashish:
00:15:59
good chance you'll get a scholarship to go to college, which I did.
Ashish:
00:16:04
And when I finished my university, I was hired, you know, I was hired by Tata.
Ashish:
00:16:09
Tata was all the rage.
Ashish:
00:16:10
You know, they were the largest software offshore company in those days.
Ashish:
00:16:14
I think they still are.
Ashish:
00:16:16
I graduated with an engineering degree with software programming as
Ashish:
00:16:20
one of my core skills, and next thing I know, I'm, you know, sitting in
Ashish:
00:16:24
a basement and writing code, and in early nineties, got a passport and
Ashish:
00:16:28
then landed up in Colombia as a coder?
Ashish:
00:16:31
As an offshore coder, I didn't speak Spanish.
Ashish:
00:16:33
I mean, it was nothing.
Ashish:
00:16:35
You know, it was no slum dog stuff.
Ashish:
00:16:36
It was just pretty basic.
Ashish:
00:16:38
Everybody did the same thing and so did I.
Aaron - Interview:
00:16:41
Yeah.
Aaron - Interview:
00:16:41
So Colombia, maybe you could tell what that was like
Aaron - Interview:
00:16:43
going from India to Colombia.
Ashish:
00:16:45
That was a big one.
Ashish:
00:16:46
Right?
Ashish:
00:16:46
So that I think, you know, that, uh, had nothing to do with coding.
Ashish:
00:16:49
I mean, honestly, that was kind of the first time I experienced freedom, right?
Ashish:
00:16:52
I had my own toilet.
Ashish:
00:16:53
I mean, you know, not to be crass or anything like that, but that's
Ashish:
00:16:55
a, you know, it's a big thing.
Ashish:
00:16:56
It's like, you know, I had to share a toilet growing up in India, and
Ashish:
00:16:59
when I landed up in Bogota, I was just like, wow, I have my own toilet.
Ashish:
00:17:04
You know, if you've not had that freedom, most people in
Ashish:
00:17:06
America can't relate to this.
Ashish:
00:17:09
For me, it was like this aha moment.
Ashish:
00:17:11
I'm like, ah, that's what freedom feels like, right?
Ashish:
00:17:13
To sit on a toilet seat and not be yelled at to vacate.
Ashish:
00:17:15
It is freedom.
Ashish:
00:17:17
That for me was this, oh, I am never leaving, right?
Aaron - Interview:
00:17:20
So, and when you say sharing a toilet, you
Aaron - Interview:
00:17:22
don't mean with your family?
Ashish:
00:17:23
Oh, I'm not talking about, you know, like...now
Ashish:
00:17:26
my kids have their own toilet.
Ashish:
00:17:27
One human being per toilet.
Ashish:
00:17:29
Right.
Ashish:
00:17:29
This is America, which is insane.
Ashish:
00:17:31
No, I'm talking about like other families.
Ashish:
00:17:34
My grandmother used to live in a, you know, where you have like 16 other
Ashish:
00:17:36
families, these are these little boxes or homes or whatever you want to call it.
Ashish:
00:17:39
And then all the families have a common toilet.
Ashish:
00:17:42
Well, it's like a public toilet, right?
Ashish:
00:17:44
And that's a big difference, right?
Ashish:
00:17:46
And, and for me, that kind of shaped kind of my thinking around freedom
Ashish:
00:17:51
and my thinking around, uh...you can or cannot take for granted.
Ashish:
00:17:57
I ask people like, what was their first experience of freedom,
Ashish:
00:18:01
and most people can't answer it.
Ashish:
00:18:03
I can.
Ashish:
00:18:04
I can tell you the minute and the moment because I sat on a toilet
Ashish:
00:18:07
seat and didn't get bothered.
Ashish:
00:18:09
You know, I was 22 years old.
Ashish:
00:18:10
So it's , you know, it's, it's what it is, right?
Aaron - Narration:
00:18:15
After working in Columbia for a few years, it was in 1994
Aaron - Narration:
00:18:19
that Ashish moved to the US to take a programming job in Boston, which then led
Aaron - Narration:
00:18:25
to work in other parts of the country.
Aaron - Narration:
00:18:27
And the timing was just right exactly as the internet boom began to take shape.
Aaron - Interview:
00:18:34
How did you pivot from just being a programmer, working for
Aaron - Interview:
00:18:37
paycheck, to becoming a startup founder?
Ashish:
00:18:41
So again, nothing crazy.
Ashish:
00:18:43
Pretty stereotypical, right?
Ashish:
00:18:44
It was the late nineties, it's 96, 97.
Ashish:
00:18:48
You know, internet was just coming to be, I wasn't poor anymore,
Ashish:
00:18:52
but now I wanted to be rich.
Ashish:
00:18:53
Right?
Ashish:
00:18:53
So kind of the, you know, , the pride and greed, you know, kicks in, right?
Ashish:
00:18:58
It's just, you know, we're all flawed.
Ashish:
00:19:00
I'm probably more flawed than most human beings.
Ashish:
00:19:02
And it was the right place at the right time.
Ashish:
00:19:04
I took the leap.
Ashish:
00:19:05
I knew there was a need for technology solutions that people
Ashish:
00:19:11
were willing to pay a premium on.
Ashish:
00:19:13
You know, developing a website, you could make 20, 30 grand.
Ashish:
00:19:16
You know, today you can do it for free.
Ashish:
00:19:17
And that's it, right?
Ashish:
00:19:19
So again, I'm being, being very honest with you, right?
Ashish:
00:19:21
I wish I could add a better story.
Ashish:
00:19:23
It like, I'm just, I didn't have any this great aha moment.
Ashish:
00:19:27
I'm just like, Hey man, you know, I can make some serious
Ashish:
00:19:30
money and, and be my own boss.
Ashish:
00:19:33
So I started a couple of companies got into the whole supply chain
Ashish:
00:19:40
side of things, you know, that that's kind of where I spent
Ashish:
00:19:44
most of my time in that period.
Ashish:
00:19:46
1994 through 2012 is kind of when I sold my last startup, and that
Ashish:
00:19:51
was the, the ticket out of not just poverty, but you know, this is kind
Ashish:
00:19:55
of where you start making money.
Aaron - Narration:
00:19:57
In my experience, successful startup founders
Aaron - Narration:
00:19:59
also have plenty of failures.
Aaron - Narration:
00:20:02
We don't often talk about these very much, so I made sure to ask Ashish about his.
Aaron - Narration:
00:20:08
I anticipated a story or two about a business idea that fell apart,
Aaron - Narration:
00:20:12
or that was too early for its time.
Aaron - Narration:
00:20:14
But instead it prompted a story that tells about how Ashish came
Aaron - Narration:
00:20:18
to the world of social impact.
Aaron - Narration:
00:20:20
This experience almost derailed him entirely from his ambitions to do good.
Ashish:
00:20:26
It's interesting you asked about failure.
Ashish:
00:20:28
One of my biggest failures was when the Haiti earthquake happened,
Ashish:
00:20:32
and this has kind of shaped my path out of the startup world.
Ashish:
00:20:38
If you may, you know, when the Haiti earthquake happened in 2010, we were
Ashish:
00:20:42
doing really good as a business.
Ashish:
00:20:43
I was running a company called Forward Hindsight, and you know, I always wanted
Ashish:
00:20:46
to do something in poverty, right?
Ashish:
00:20:48
Just going back to where I was born and everything.
Ashish:
00:20:50
So I was doing, you know, cutting checks for NGOs and everything.
Ashish:
00:20:53
But when the Haiti earthquake happened, my founder and I, and he's
Ashish:
00:20:57
even my founder today, Jeff Kaiser, I think you've met him, we decided
Ashish:
00:21:00
that we wanted to do something.
Ashish:
00:21:03
You know, basically shut down the company for two weeks and we raised
Ashish:
00:21:07
48 tons of supplies, you know, using our business network, right?
Ashish:
00:21:12
We leaned on our network and for Haiti in two weeks and man, it was an ego trip.
Ashish:
00:21:18
Amazing.
Ashish:
00:21:19
I mean, I was on every news cover, local channel, NPR.
Ashish:
00:21:24
I mean, I have a big head, and my head was like, 10 times its size.
Ashish:
00:21:27
It's this massive ego trip, right?
Ashish:
00:21:28
Like CEO of a company does this, this, and that.
Ashish:
00:21:31
Yet it's my biggest failure in life by far compared to anything else I've done
Ashish:
00:21:36
is because yes, we got all that into Haiti, but six months later, what we
Ashish:
00:21:42
found out was none of the stuff had moved.
Ashish:
00:21:44
And Haiti was worse off financially, even though $8 billion had poured into Haiti.
Ashish:
00:21:51
And people like me had taken a lot of credit for doing good work, yet
Ashish:
00:21:56
I had nothing to show for it, right?
Ashish:
00:21:59
And that's kind of when I realized that this whole notion of not really
Ashish:
00:22:03
understanding the last mile is bad.
Ashish:
00:22:06
You just take a philanthropy approach, which is what I had done.
Ashish:
00:22:10
It was a great ego feeder for me, but it was a complete disaster.
Ashish:
00:22:14
It was driven with so much pity and almost no dignity.
Ashish:
00:22:19
That, that's kind of when it really bothered me that I'm like,
Ashish:
00:22:22
oh my God, I failed so badly.
Aaron - Narration:
00:22:25
Ashish, around that time, sold his last company and found
Aaron - Narration:
00:22:29
himself wondering how he could really help in a way that actually made a difference.
Aaron - Narration:
00:22:34
It turned out the Haiti experience, as disappointing as it was, propelled him
Aaron - Narration:
00:22:39
to a better understanding of how to help.
Ashish:
00:22:41
Kind of that oh, oh no moment in life, right?
Ashish:
00:22:45
And I was just like, wait a minute.
Ashish:
00:22:47
You know, all the money and effort is just wasted, right?
Ashish:
00:22:50
It's, it's all driven by our need for pride and greed.
Ashish:
00:22:54
Yet, at the end of the day, we are not solving problems.
Ashish:
00:22:58
So when I sold the last startup in 2012, I always wanted to do
Ashish:
00:23:03
something, but I didn't want to give away my money or any of that.
Ashish:
00:23:06
I didn't wanna do an NGO thing.
Ashish:
00:23:08
Definitely wasn't doing a Haiti 2.0 again, right.
Ashish:
00:23:11
So I happened to know some friends who had mentioned to me about this USAID
Ashish:
00:23:18
guys, and I know about USAID obviously, and that they were looking to start
Ashish:
00:23:23
a social enterprise in the Congo and they were looking for a business CEO.
Ashish:
00:23:28
But they didn't have a lot of money and it was a thing that they wanted to
Ashish:
00:23:32
try and I didn't need the money, so I said, "Hey, you know, I'm, I'm happy to
Ashish:
00:23:38
be CEO, but I don't want to get paid.
Ashish:
00:23:41
So I'll be your volunteer CEO.
Ashish:
00:23:43
I'll sign up for a couple years and see what happens."
Ashish:
00:23:45
So one thing led to another, and I'm on a plane to the DRC as a, and
Ashish:
00:23:50
they don't actually call it CEO.
Ashish:
00:23:52
You know, it's like a goofy title.
Ashish:
00:23:54
It's called Chief of, Chief of Party, right, which is like an official
Ashish:
00:23:58
title that USAID uses for the guy or the woman who's in charge.
Ashish:
00:24:02
So I was the chief of party for the social enterprise.
Ashish:
00:24:07
So it was a public private partnership where, you know, USA puts an X amount
Ashish:
00:24:11
of money and then private enterprises put an X amount of money and then, you
Ashish:
00:24:15
know, you have somebody like me run it.
Aaron - Interview:
00:24:18
And what was the, what was the venture idea?
Ashish:
00:24:20
It's, it's a platform called Asili, A-S-I-L-I.
Ashish:
00:24:24
And the idea was to create opportunity linkages for farmers
Ashish:
00:24:30
and healthcare workers in a way that creates a job economy.
Ashish:
00:24:35
But you know, has a direct impact on reducing infant child mortality,
Ashish:
00:24:40
because of very high rates, right, in those parts of the world.
Ashish:
00:24:43
I had this massive giant ego.
Ashish:
00:24:44
I still do, but I'm much lower than the doormat today.
Ashish:
00:24:47
But in those days I was just like, Hey, sold a startup.
Ashish:
00:24:50
You know, how hard can it be?
Ashish:
00:24:52
I've always wanted to end poverty, so let's do it.
Ashish:
00:24:54
Right.
Ashish:
00:24:55
So stupid.
Ashish:
00:24:55
I mean, God, I look back at myself in 2013 and I'm like, you know, "idiot"
Ashish:
00:25:00
would not even begin to describe who I was, but it's what it is.
Ashish:
00:25:04
Right?
Ashish:
00:25:04
And, and so I jumped with both feet in, and honestly, it just,
Ashish:
00:25:08
it kind of destroyed me, you know.
Ashish:
00:25:10
Because I think most people are able to separate what they see, and then they take
Ashish:
00:25:16
this approach around charity and pity.
Ashish:
00:25:20
You know, it's kind of...I talked to a lot of people, I'd read a lot of books on
Ashish:
00:25:22
Congo and everything, and everybody had this kind of badge of honor of going and
Ashish:
00:25:27
doing work in Africa and then coming and telling their friends and family about it.
Ashish:
00:25:31
I couldn't do that.
Ashish:
00:25:32
I, I just went toe deep and deep and deep and deep that
Ashish:
00:25:36
I just, it kept eating at me.
Ashish:
00:25:39
That we live in a world where there is disparity, but disparity to this extent
Ashish:
00:25:45
that's intertwined with supply chains.
Ashish:
00:25:48
That's the motivation that drives me today and, and then the live examples
Ashish:
00:25:52
are the child labor that happens in places like Congo, even today.
Ashish:
00:25:59
Yet, we would use a smartphone for $800, right?
Ashish:
00:26:03
I'm guilty.
Ashish:
00:26:03
I'm one on one right now.
Ashish:
00:26:05
You know you'll pay $12 for a latte that says a hundred percent
Ashish:
00:26:09
ethically sourced Congolese coffee.
Ashish:
00:26:12
It's not true.
Ashish:
00:26:13
Right, right.
Ashish:
00:26:14
Uh, you know, or you will, you will basically buy a bottle of water that
Ashish:
00:26:18
says a hundred percent recycled PET that I know is being picked up at a landfill
Ashish:
00:26:23
outside of Lusaka, Zambia, right?
Ashish:
00:26:27
And I think the, the two years, honestly, I did not do any
Ashish:
00:26:33
good in my humble opinion.
Ashish:
00:26:34
I just unlearned everything that I thought I knew and kind of really when that
Ashish:
00:26:42
incident happened with the mama farmer, it was the lowest point in my life because I
Ashish:
00:26:46
was just like--and I get emotional about it because I was just like--it just does
Ashish:
00:26:51
not make any sense here is that if, if we cannot even let this mother have a bank
Ashish:
00:26:59
account that establishes her existence as a human being, who is actually the
Ashish:
00:27:06
most productive person of this supply chain at the end of the day, right?
Ashish:
00:27:09
Right.
Ashish:
00:27:09
And her children are being forced into child labor, then all of
Ashish:
00:27:14
our, you know, victory that philanthropists or corporations
Ashish:
00:27:20
claim of progress we've made...
Ashish:
00:27:25
Yes, we've made progress.
Ashish:
00:27:27
But man, if you're standing next to that mother, you will feel
Ashish:
00:27:31
that you are in middle Earth and you have made zero progress.
Ashish:
00:27:34
And that's the piece that kind of hit me.
Ashish:
00:27:37
And then I quit.
Ashish:
00:27:38
You know, I'm, I'm not a quitter, but I quit.
Ashish:
00:27:40
I just, I couldn't deal with it.
Ashish:
00:27:41
I just quit at the end of 2014 and I said, um, I just can't
Ashish:
00:27:46
look these people in the eye.
Ashish:
00:27:48
Because we were getting awards.
Ashish:
00:27:49
I mean, we won awards.
Ashish:
00:27:51
I mean, we won the Battery Ventures Award, we won the Design Thinking Award, and I
Ashish:
00:27:56
won the Clinton Global Initiative Award, and I'm like, man, I, I feel ashamed here.
Aaron - Interview:
00:28:04
Your story about Haiti and your story
Aaron - Interview:
00:28:05
about working in the Congo too.
Aaron - Interview:
00:28:06
It's the same, it's the same story in the sense that a lot of resources and a
Aaron - Interview:
00:28:11
lot of good intentions are not enough.
Aaron - Interview:
00:28:13
We need better and deeper understanding of the problems we're trying to tackle.
Aaron - Interview:
00:28:18
And it sounds like your time, there was just a really intense sort of like
Aaron - Interview:
00:28:23
advanced degree, right, in what the issues of poverty are really about.
Ashish:
00:28:29
Yeah.
Ashish:
00:28:29
And it turns out it was never about resources, right?
Ashish:
00:28:33
And for me, that is the piece that I struggle with even today.
Ashish:
00:28:36
It's like, you know...you hear a lot of these commitments and pledges.
Ashish:
00:28:39
And I'm honestly like extremely vanilla, right?
Ashish:
00:28:43
I try to de-complex everything.
Ashish:
00:28:45
I just ask a very, very, very basic question.
Ashish:
00:28:48
If that sweater is 100% ethically sourced then the CEO of the company that made it
Ashish:
00:28:55
needs to sit down with me and show me the one or two or three farmers that grew the
Ashish:
00:29:00
cotton, show me their last three years worth of income and that it has gone up.
Ashish:
00:29:09
That's it.
Ashish:
00:29:09
I'm not asking for anything more.
Aaron - Narration:
00:29:12
Let's take a break here for a word from our sponsor.
Aaron - Narration:
00:29:16
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Aaron - Narration:
00:29:21
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Aaron - Narration:
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Aaron - Narration:
00:29:27
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Aaron - Narration:
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Aaron - Narration:
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Aaron - Narration:
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Aaron - Narration:
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Aaron - Narration:
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Aaron - Narration:
00:29:52
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Aaron - Narration:
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Aaron - Narration:
00:30:00
You can find the Business Ethics Field Guide at Amazon, Apple Books,
Aaron - Narration:
00:30:04
Audible, and meritleadership.com.
Aaron - Narration:
00:30:10
-- The problem that BanQu is tackling
Aaron - Narration:
00:30:15
By that I mean to say that we have all the tools we need for
Aaron - Narration:
00:30:18
truly transparent supply chains.
Aaron - Narration:
00:30:21
We could, for example, know the name of the farmer who grew the cotton in
Aaron - Narration:
00:30:25
the jeans that we wear, or the cocoa in the chocolate bar that we eat.
Aaron - Narration:
00:30:31
The problem instead is that opaque supply chains serve the people who control them.
Aaron - Narration:
00:30:36
It allows them to hide what they don't want us to see.
Aaron - Narration:
00:30:39
This is what BanQu is working to change.
Aaron - Interview:
00:30:42
So supply chain issues are fascinating because they become
Aaron - Interview:
00:30:45
really murky and blurry really quickly.
Aaron - Interview:
00:30:48
Companies will buy massive amounts of inputs into their business, right?
Aaron - Interview:
00:30:53
Whether it's like cobalt to go into cell phone batteries or, or cotton to go into
Aaron - Interview:
00:30:58
the the sweater that you're wearing.
Aaron - Interview:
00:31:00
But they don't even necessarily know where that comes from.
Aaron - Interview:
00:31:02
Why don't they know?
Ashish:
00:31:04
So I think why they don't know the simpler answer is that they
Ashish:
00:31:10
are accustomed to not knowing and making a lot of money on not knowing.
Ashish:
00:31:15
So let me unpack that.
Ashish:
00:31:17
Okay?
Ashish:
00:31:17
Yeah.
Ashish:
00:31:17
And this part is important.
Ashish:
00:31:19
I'm a big believer, right?
Ashish:
00:31:20
If you, if you really cannot explain the problem, then the solution is useless.
Ashish:
00:31:25
Okay?
Ashish:
00:31:26
So, so let's unpack the cotton piece.
Ashish:
00:31:29
A smallholder farmer in Ghana, Uganda, Zambia, Pakistan, Uyghur
Ashish:
00:31:35
region in China, wherever, right.
Ashish:
00:31:37
When a smallholder farmer brings the first bale of cotton and gives it
Ashish:
00:31:42
to a cooperative, or a trader, or a buyer--chain of custody, classic
Ashish:
00:31:47
supply chain 101-- the problem is very simple to define, articulate, and
pinpoint, which is:
00:31:55
that farmer has no ability to prove their existence
pinpoint, which is:
00:32:02
when it comes to quality, quantity, and price in a way that both parties
pinpoint, which is:
00:32:10
have agreed, and in a way, everybody upstream agrees that that happened.
pinpoint, which is:
00:32:17
Okay.
pinpoint, which is:
00:32:18
And nothing to do with technology.
pinpoint, which is:
00:32:19
It is basic human trade 101 going back 500 years.
pinpoint, which is:
00:32:24
Right?
pinpoint, which is:
00:32:25
And now the, the black box begins.
pinpoint, which is:
00:32:29
Okay.
pinpoint, which is:
00:32:30
Yeah.
pinpoint, which is:
00:32:30
The black box begins when that middle man then says, I'm gonna buy from five
pinpoint, which is:
00:32:35
other farmers at different qualities, commingle it and it sell it upstream
pinpoint, which is:
00:32:43
where now there is no transparency of price, quality, and quantity.
pinpoint, which is:
00:32:49
So then what happens?
pinpoint, which is:
00:32:50
A certifying agency shows up, you know, fair trade or whatever, right?
pinpoint, which is:
00:32:54
Everybody shows up and they start certifying saying It's ethical cotton,
pinpoint, which is:
00:32:59
it's sourced good environmental practices and things like that.
pinpoint, which is:
00:33:03
And everybody's looking at that black box.
pinpoint, which is:
00:33:06
The problem with the black box is that that black box cannot tie back
pinpoint, which is:
00:33:14
to the individual farmer, right?
pinpoint, which is:
00:33:16
So if I have five farmers that are coming into one cooperative or one aggregation
pinpoint, which is:
00:33:23
point, these farmers crop is co-mingled.
pinpoint, which is:
00:33:26
So if I'm the middle man, I can squeeze them and because
pinpoint, which is:
00:33:31
they have to feed their child.
pinpoint, which is:
00:33:33
What leverage do you have as a farmer in that conversation on the Zambia/Congo
pinpoint, which is:
00:33:39
border on the Uganda/Tanzania border?
pinpoint, which is:
00:33:40
Your leverage is zero.
pinpoint, which is:
00:33:42
If you're Uyghur Muslim in China, your leverage is zero.
pinpoint, which is:
00:33:44
Okay?
pinpoint, which is:
00:33:46
But then everybody shows up in the middle.
pinpoint, which is:
00:33:49
They certify it.
pinpoint, which is:
00:33:50
You walk into a store and buy ethically sourced cotton, feeling really
pinpoint, which is:
00:33:55
good about it as a consumer, right?
pinpoint, which is:
00:33:59
So the problem now is very simple to describe, which is that there are at
pinpoint, which is:
00:34:03
least a billion people, maybe 750 million people in the world today, who are those
pinpoint, which is:
00:34:09
farmers, who are those waste pickers--it's the same thing when it comes to recycling,
pinpoint, which is:
00:34:15
no different on just on the other side of the supply chain--who on a daily
pinpoint, which is:
00:34:19
basis are providing the raw materials for global supply chain, yet cannot
pinpoint, which is:
00:34:27
prove their existence in that global supply chain beyond the measure of doubt.
pinpoint, which is:
00:34:32
And, and that is why these people continue to be unbanked and in extreme poverty and
pinpoint, which is:
00:34:40
no rights, human rights violations and everything, because they have no proof.
Aaron - Narration:
00:34:48
I called this episode Expanding Access to Proof, but it really
Aaron - Narration:
00:34:51
is referring to two kinds of proof.
Aaron - Narration:
00:34:54
One of them is the proof that the mama farmer deserves to show how much she
Aaron - Narration:
00:34:58
made and why she deserves a bank account.
Aaron - Narration:
00:35:01
But the other way that BanQu expands access to proof is providing proof
Aaron - Narration:
00:35:05
to customers to know that the products they're buying really
Aaron - Narration:
00:35:09
have the impact that they claim.
Aaron - Narration:
00:35:12
BanQu is essentially offering a product to companies that helps them to prove it.
Aaron - Narration:
00:35:18
So with this explanation of the problem, how is BanQu going to fix this?
Aaron - Narration:
00:35:23
Humanity creates black boxes because somebody uses them to profit.
Aaron - Narration:
00:35:27
What are the incentives for those running our supply chains to start
Aaron - Narration:
00:35:30
adding transparency in a way that allows everyone to be treated with dignity?
Ashish:
00:35:35
Great question.
Ashish:
00:35:36
In my opinion, the way to disrupt the black box, it relies on the shoulders of
Ashish:
00:35:41
CEOs, boards, investors, and corporations.
Ashish:
00:35:46
I love NGOs.
Ashish:
00:35:47
I love government agencies, but the commerce piece, which is directly
Ashish:
00:35:51
tied to the last mile, at least 75% of that is moving through global
Ashish:
00:35:58
brands of their everyday products.
Ashish:
00:36:01
Coffee, cacao, maize, corn, wheat, rice, plastic paper, cardboard, cobalt.
Ashish:
00:36:05
Right?
Ashish:
00:36:07
So the CEOs of these companies who are at the top end, right?Tier, tier
Ashish:
00:36:12
zero, and the tier five is downstream.
Ashish:
00:36:15
They have to have the courage to tell the black box that I won't buy from you
Ashish:
00:36:22
if you can't show me the visibility.
Ashish:
00:36:24
Look, 20% of the middlemen are gonna be horrible.
Ashish:
00:36:27
I've had a couple of death threats, but I think 80% in my opinion, like I always
Ashish:
00:36:31
look at the good side, 80% or 75% of the middle men are also poor people.
Ashish:
00:36:35
They're just, you know, do a good living.
Ashish:
00:36:38
The gap is that the CEOs are not really enforcing this level
Ashish:
00:36:46
of traceability because they're getting away by saying, I'm gonna
Ashish:
00:36:50
make a pledge for sustainability.
Ashish:
00:36:51
I'm gonna say everything is gonna be great by 2030.
Ashish:
00:36:55
Have an awesome brochure.
Ashish:
00:36:56
Go to COP 27, tell the world a hundred percent of my farmers
Ashish:
00:36:59
are gonna be regenerated by 2030.
Ashish:
00:37:01
Get a awesome pat on the back.
Ashish:
00:37:04
Nobody's really asking the question "But how?"
Ashish:
00:37:08
So this is, disruption has to happen at the leadership level.
Aaron - Interview:
00:37:12
Are there examples of CEOs that are doing it right?
Aaron - Interview:
00:37:15
I know you work with some.
Aaron - Interview:
00:37:17
Are there examples that come to mind that illustrate the right way to approach
Aaron - Interview:
00:37:21
this sort of transparent supply chain?
Ashish:
00:37:23
Oh, absolutely.
Ashish:
00:37:24
I mean, you know the one second share with you publicly, right?
Ashish:
00:37:27
So like you look at Solvay.
Ashish:
00:37:28
It, it's a big chemical company, and their CEO, Ilham, their Chief
Ashish:
00:37:33
Sustainability Officer, Lynn.
Ashish:
00:37:35
You know, we started working with them a couple years ago and they're like, "Hey,
Ashish:
00:37:38
you know, we sell gum to L'Oreal, right?"
Ashish:
00:37:40
The shampoo company and the cosmetic company.
Ashish:
00:37:42
"But we wanna be able to prove that the farmers that we buy, the base seed,"
Ashish:
00:37:48
It's called guar, that makes it gum.
Ashish:
00:37:50
"We wanna know who they are.
Ashish:
00:37:51
We wanna know if they're being paid.
Ashish:
00:37:52
We wanna know if their income's growing up."
Ashish:
00:37:56
And they have now rolled us out in India, right?
Ashish:
00:37:59
For thousands of farms.
Ashish:
00:38:00
So you have a CEO of a chemical company who is a for-profit company--so is BanQu
Ashish:
00:38:06
right, we're a for-profit company--but recognizes that I wanna actually do what
Ashish:
00:38:12
I'm gonna tell the world I'm gonna do.
Ashish:
00:38:13
Right.
Ashish:
00:38:14
You know, we work with Coca-Cola, we work with Wilmer, AB and Bev, right?
Ashish:
00:38:18
But honestly, I also tell people, right, look for every Solvay that we run,
Ashish:
00:38:24
there's 15 of them out there that will tell the world that they're gonna have
Ashish:
00:38:29
a hundred percent of their farmers, uh, doing regenerative agriculture,
Ashish:
00:38:33
but they couldn't name one farmer and show their income history right?
Ashish:
00:38:37
And that's the piece that unfortunately hasn't happened.
Ashish:
00:38:40
The scale hasn't happened.
Aaron - Narration:
00:38:42
There are forces at work to incentivize
Aaron - Narration:
00:38:44
companies to be more sustainable.
Aaron - Narration:
00:38:47
The ESG movement is part of this.
Aaron - Narration:
00:38:49
ESG stands for "environment, social and governance," and it describes efforts
Aaron - Narration:
00:38:55
to account for the impact that companies have outside of their financial returns.
Aaron - Narration:
00:39:00
But ESG has a long way to go.
Ashish:
00:39:03
So I think, I think honestly the ESG trend is the right thing.
Ashish:
00:39:07
It's the right, you know, wake up call.
Ashish:
00:39:10
Where it is headed in my humble opinion is in the absolute wrong direction.
Ashish:
00:39:14
And, and that's why, you know, I call it this unfounded climate
Ashish:
00:39:17
romance where yes, we wanna save every plastic bottle, but oh, by the
Ashish:
00:39:22
way, a poor mother on the shores of Port-Au-Prince in Haiti is picking up
Ashish:
00:39:26
the bottles and not gonna make $1.90.
Ashish:
00:39:29
People are like, oh, I don't wanna worry about that right now.
Ashish:
00:39:32
I am saving the planet because this bottle is 100% recycled.
Ashish:
00:39:36
That's an absolute lie, right?
Ashish:
00:39:38
What happened to the families?
Ashish:
00:39:41
Were they compensated?
Ashish:
00:39:43
If you are saying 100% of our cacao farmers in Ghana are gonna be regenerated
Ashish:
00:39:49
farmers, and you are gonna charge me 14% premium at a Whole Foods on a bag of
Ashish:
00:39:55
cacao that says that, then show me the income rise of those smallholder farmers
Ashish:
00:40:02
in Ghana has not happened since 2018.
Ashish:
00:40:06
So yes, you can put out an awesome ESG brochure that says region regenerative
Ashish:
00:40:12
agriculture, water conservation, carbon credits, but if you can't
Ashish:
00:40:18
back it...I'm yet to find one.
Ashish:
00:40:20
You know, we've lost clients, right?
Ashish:
00:40:22
We've lost clients because they'll say, "Hey, you're opening a can
Ashish:
00:40:25
of worms that I can't handle."
Ashish:
00:40:27
And that's the piece that, that what I call is the green
Ashish:
00:40:30
washing, which is a danger, right?
Ashish:
00:40:32
Because we are not solving the actual problem....
Ashish:
00:40:37
Recycled batteries.
Ashish:
00:40:38
Here's another one.
Ashish:
00:40:40
Look at the amount of ESG press we're getting for recycled batteries because
Ashish:
00:40:45
cobalt is going, you know, low.
Ashish:
00:40:48
But where are these batteries being picked up at?
Ashish:
00:40:50
They're being picked up at landfills across India and Nigeria
Ashish:
00:40:53
by children under the age of 10!
Aaron - Narration:
00:40:57
As consumers, we also benefit from the black box supply chains.
Aaron - Narration:
00:41:01
It's because we can buy what we want without having to know the
Aaron - Narration:
00:41:04
consequences of our choices.
Aaron - Narration:
00:41:07
There's a movement pioneered by companies like Ben and Jerry's, Method,
Aaron - Narration:
00:41:11
Allbirds, and others to change this, to make us all more ethical consumers.
Aaron - Narration:
00:41:16
Ashish is a skeptic though of both the power and the behavior
Aaron - Narration:
00:41:19
of consumers in wealthy countries.
Aaron - Interview:
00:41:22
Consumers want to live ethically.
Aaron - Interview:
00:41:24
I mean, you talk about the example of buying a, you know,
Aaron - Interview:
00:41:26
an ethically sourced sweater.
Aaron - Interview:
00:41:28
Ethical consumption, today in the modern world with supply chains the
Aaron - Interview:
00:41:33
way they are, feels nearly impossible because it feels like every time you
Aaron - Interview:
00:41:37
buy a product that makes a promise of some kind, you really have no way of
Aaron - Interview:
00:41:42
knowing if that promise is being kept.
Aaron - Interview:
00:41:44
So what thoughts do you have for the people who want to be ethical consumers?
Aaron - Interview:
00:41:48
What are the things that you wish they were focusing on, the questions they
Aaron - Interview:
00:41:51
were asking, the benchmarks they were looking for to add more pressure to the
Aaron - Interview:
00:41:57
brands and the suppliers to improve this?
Ashish:
00:41:59
Man.
Ashish:
00:42:00
Great question.
Ashish:
00:42:00
I'm gonna give you unpopular answer.
Ashish:
00:42:02
I think the, the, there's a misnomer that the consumer has a voice.
Ashish:
00:42:08
Um, and this is gonna piss off some listeners here, uh, and I, I'll
Ashish:
00:42:12
give you a simple example, right?
Ashish:
00:42:13
If you ask a group of teenagers, right, "Here's a hundred dollars, and go
Ashish:
00:42:18
purchase a ethically sourced pair of jeans or lipstick in Provo, Utah, right?
Ashish:
00:42:25
Or you can buy four pairs of jeans at H&M."
Ashish:
00:42:29
Okay.
Ashish:
00:42:30
What do you think they'll do?
Ashish:
00:42:31
Right?
Ashish:
00:42:32
And, and yes, there's a lot of noise around, you know, the consumer's voice.
Ashish:
00:42:37
Consumers are buying ethically sourced.
Ashish:
00:42:38
But you know, I, I ask myself or ask anybody, you walk into a Whole Foods, you
Ashish:
00:42:42
see a bag of coffee that says ethically fair-trade, organic source, right?
Ashish:
00:42:47
Do you actually just buy it and go feeling good about it?
Ashish:
00:42:50
Or you say, wait a minute, right?
Ashish:
00:42:52
I'm gonna take the next three days, start calling and find out "What's
Ashish:
00:42:58
the income stream of the Guatemala farmer that is on this bag of coffee?"
Ashish:
00:43:03
You're not gonna do that, right?
Ashish:
00:43:05
So, so I'm not saying...I love the consumer angle, right?
Ashish:
00:43:10
But I don't think the consumer has a strong enough voice.
Ashish:
00:43:15
It's just because our, our buying habits are tied to shiny objects.
Aaron - Interview:
00:43:20
Yeah.
Aaron - Interview:
00:43:21
And we don't have the three days to go do the research to make sure the
Aaron - Interview:
00:43:24
farmer in Guatemala has been paid well.
Ashish:
00:43:25
Exactly.
Ashish:
00:43:26
I'm just trying to shine a reality light, right?
Ashish:
00:43:28
The problem needs to be solved at the CEO purchasing and, and corporate
Ashish:
00:43:34
governance and the board level, right?
Ashish:
00:43:36
If, if CEOs can stand up and say, "If I said that 100% of my plastic is recycled
Ashish:
00:43:43
and my packaging, then I need to know over the next five years, every single
Ashish:
00:43:49
landfill where my plastic's coming from, and I wanna know if the waste
Ashish:
00:43:52
pickers are getting out of poverty."
Aaron - Narration:
00:43:54
BanQu is now operating in 58 countries and 13 languages.
Aaron - Narration:
00:44:00
It's also won awards or praise from the UN, the International Finance Corporation,
Aaron - Narration:
00:44:05
Fortune Magazine, and host of others.
Aaron - Narration:
00:44:08
Its clients include Coca-Cola, Anheuser-Busch, and Mars.
Aaron - Narration:
00:44:12
So what's next for the company and for Ashish?
Ashish:
00:44:16
I, I think the unique problems we are wrestling with right now is getting
Ashish:
00:44:21
people to recognize that ESG and supply chains are intertwined and the blind
Ashish:
00:44:28
spot is at the source, not upstream.
Ashish:
00:44:34
So that's a big challenge, right?
Ashish:
00:44:36
I mean, I mean, I have emails from CEOs who say, "Love what you're
Ashish:
00:44:40
doing, but you know, right now we're focusing on our ESG commitments."
Ashish:
00:44:45
I mean, think about that for a second.
Ashish:
00:44:46
I have emails from CEOs saying that, and I'm like, "Am I like
Ashish:
00:44:50
completely losing my mind?"
Ashish:
00:44:51
Right?
Ashish:
00:44:52
But, but in, in their mind, the ESG commitment is the end game, not the work.
Ashish:
00:45:00
Okay.
Ashish:
00:45:01
So that's, that's a challenge.
Ashish:
00:45:02
Uh, the second challenge is that, you know, in a, in a recession economy, right,
Ashish:
00:45:06
do people really follow through, right?
Ashish:
00:45:09
In a recession economy, you are going to hunker down and squeeze
Ashish:
00:45:13
downstream your suppliers.
Ashish:
00:45:16
And the minute you do that, the suppliers are gonna say, "Hey,
Ashish:
00:45:19
they're not really gonna care if I bought it ethically or unethically."
Ashish:
00:45:22
Right?
Ashish:
00:45:22
So that's, that's a challenge.
Ashish:
00:45:24
And then the last challenge I always run into, which is this personal to
Ashish:
00:45:27
me, is that oftentimes I find myself in conversations where people will
Ashish:
00:45:33
go, "What are you talking about?"
Ashish:
00:45:37
Right?
Ashish:
00:45:37
Because they have not taken the time to understand their own supply chain.
Ashish:
00:45:42
So when I say there's a farmer on the Zambia/Congo border who reads SMS uses
Ashish:
00:45:46
mobile money and wants to prove that this is the cotton she sold her, they're like,
Ashish:
00:45:54
"That's not on our radar for this year."
Ashish:
00:45:58
And I'm going, whoa, whoa.
Ashish:
00:46:00
So that's the challenge.
Ashish:
00:46:01
I think.
Ashish:
00:46:02
What's next?
Ashish:
00:46:03
Is in my humble opinions, continue the fight, right?
Ashish:
00:46:07
It's, you know, our goal is a hundred million people and
Ashish:
00:46:09
a hundred million business.
Ashish:
00:46:10
We're coming up about 15 million people by the end of this year,
Ashish:
00:46:14
about 4 million in revenue.
Ashish:
00:46:16
So it's still a long way to go, right?
Ashish:
00:46:18
But a hundred million is a drop in the bucket, man.
Ashish:
00:46:20
I mean, it's like, you know, we'll get to a hundred million.
Ashish:
00:46:23
That's not an issue.
Ashish:
00:46:24
The bigger problem is, you know, we need, we need more BanQus out there.
Aaron - Interview:
00:46:28
What advice do you have for the people out there
Aaron - Interview:
00:46:30
who aspire to tackle the big, complex problems like you are?
Ashish:
00:46:34
Man, I'm nobody to give any advice.
Ashish:
00:46:36
I'm a big believer in the power of one, right?
Ashish:
00:46:40
Which is that no matter how complex your supply chain is, right, if you can go
Ashish:
00:46:48
all the way to the one waste picker, or the one farmer, or the one worker, and
Ashish:
00:47:00
ensure that over the next three years that you have step changed without any pity,
Ashish:
00:47:05
with all dignity and commerce, right?
Ashish:
00:47:08
That's the power of one.
Ashish:
00:47:10
Help if it has an undertone of pity is the worst thing you can do to somebody.
Ashish:
00:47:15
Help without pity is really dignity, and I think that's, it's
Ashish:
00:47:21
a hard, hard thing to do, right?
Ashish:
00:47:23
Because we were all raised with this, you know, "Let's help somebody."
Ashish:
00:47:27
But it comes from this place of pity, and that's, in my opinion,
Ashish:
00:47:31
pity then ties to your own pride and greed, and it's very hard to unwind.
Aaron - Narration:
00:47:37
What is it that keeps Ashish and his team motivated
Aaron - Narration:
00:47:40
to reach a hundred million people?
Aaron - Narration:
00:47:43
What is it about BanQu that makes all of these people wake up and
Aaron - Narration:
00:47:46
work so hard at this every day?
Aaron - Narration:
00:47:49
Well, it's stories like this one.
Ashish:
00:47:51
About three or four years ago, I met this young
Ashish:
00:47:55
woman in Colombia, in Colombia.
Ashish:
00:47:57
And she had a little child, maybe three or four years old.
Ashish:
00:48:00
And she's a waste picker.
Ashish:
00:48:01
And we were rolling out, you know, same software except on the recycling side.
Ashish:
00:48:05
And I saw her at the corner, she was sitting, she had a book in her hand.
Ashish:
00:48:08
And I walked up to her and I said, "Hey, what's in the book?"
Ashish:
00:48:11
Right?
Ashish:
00:48:12
And it was a notebook.
Ashish:
00:48:13
It was a very neat leader in handbook.
Ashish:
00:48:15
And it had three years worth of every single kilo of every single
Ashish:
00:48:22
material that she has sold at that buyback center, the landfill.
Ashish:
00:48:28
And you know, I still get the chills and I'm like, "You know, you are so smart."
Ashish:
00:48:33
Right?
Ashish:
00:48:33
She's like, "But it's useless because no bank is willing to give me a decent loan
Ashish:
00:48:40
so I can take my kid out of the slum and we can buy a, you know, one room place.
Ashish:
00:48:45
Because this book doesn't really validate who I am."
Ashish:
00:48:49
You know?
Ashish:
00:48:49
Now fast forward, she's on BanQu and everything, but I think the point is
Ashish:
00:48:52
that I think that is the inspiration.
Aaron - Narration:
00:48:58
Ultimately, this is what it means when
Aaron - Narration:
00:49:00
we have the luxury of proof.
Aaron - Narration:
00:49:03
We can prove that we're a person who matters in this huge
Aaron - Narration:
00:49:06
complex world that we navigate.
Aaron - Narration:
00:49:08
We can get the loan, or rent the car, or buy the apartment because
Aaron - Narration:
00:49:12
we can prove that we belong.
Aaron - Narration:
00:49:15
When Ashish describes the power of the one, he's saying that nobody
Aaron - Narration:
00:49:19
should be denied the right to proof.
Aaron - Narration:
00:49:21
Blockchain for BanQu is just an efficient way to make that happen.
Aaron - Narration:
00:49:25
But all the systems, tools, programs, or strategies we deploy in making
Aaron - Narration:
00:49:30
the world a better place will fail if we don't make everyone count.
Aaron - Narration:
00:49:38
I am so grateful to Ashish Gadnis for his time and for sharing his experiences.
Aaron - Narration:
00:49:43
Talking with him is energizing, and I hope you felt the same thing listening to him.
Aaron - Narration:
00:49:48
In the show notes, you can find links for all the things that we discussed, and
Aaron - Narration:
00:49:52
there's also a transcript on our website.
Aaron - Narration:
00:49:56
Next episode, we'll hear from the veteran science and tech journalist David Pogue.
Aaron - Narration:
00:50:01
He's been reporting on human innovation for decades and has won multiple
Aaron - Narration:
00:50:05
Emmys and other awards for his work.
Aaron - Narration:
00:50:08
You've seen him over the years in programs and outlets like PBS's, Nova,
Aaron - Narration:
00:50:11
CBS Sunday Morning, The New York Times, and his new podcast, Unsung Science.
Aaron - Narration:
00:50:18
Our discussion will be on science and tech for good.
Aaron - Narration:
00:50:21
We'll be talking about everything from AI to climate change,
Aaron - Narration:
00:50:24
from sharks to space travel.
Aaron - Narration:
00:50:26
It's going to be a fun and enlightening episode.
Aaron - Narration:
00:50:31
If you enjoy How to Help, please take a moment to give us a positive
Aaron - Narration:
00:50:34
review in your podcast app.
Aaron - Narration:
00:50:36
This helps us immensely to reach more listeners.
Aaron - Narration:
00:50:39
And the other thing that helps is to share.
Aaron - Narration:
00:50:42
If you have a favorite episode, please put it on social media, send it to friends.
Aaron - Narration:
00:50:47
It means a lot to us.
Aaron - Narration:
00:50:49
If you want to stay up to date with the podcast and my other work, subscribe
Aaron - Narration:
00:50:53
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Aaron - Narration:
00:50:57
meaning in your life and in your work.
Aaron - Narration:
00:50:59
You can subscribe or read the archives how-to-help.com.
Aaron - Narration:
00:51:04
This episode is written and recorded by me.
Aaron - Narration:
00:51:07
Our production team for this season has included Ty Bingham,
Aaron - Narration:
00:51:10
yours truly, and Joseph Sandholtz, who also mixes our audio.
Aaron - Narration:
00:51:14
Our amazing music comes from the Pleasant Pictures Music Club, and if
Aaron - Narration:
00:51:18
you want to use their music in your projects, you can find a link and
Aaron - Narration:
00:51:21
a discount code in our show notes.
Aaron - Narration:
00:51:24
Finally, as always, thank you so much for listening.
Aaron - Narration:
00:51:29
I'm Aaron Miller, and this has been How to Help.
