Dakshana Foundation: Helping the poor to crack IIT-People-Sunday ET-Features-The Economic Times

Dakshana Foundation: Helping the poor to crack IIT-People-Sunday ET-Features-The Economic Times

6 Jun 2010, 0143 hrs IST,Ishani Duttagupta,ET Bureau

Back in June 2007, Mohnish Pabrai was a newsmaker when he bid $650,100, along with a friend, for a charity lunch with legendary investor Warren Buffett. And now, Pabrai’s own charity is making an impact in the highly competitive arena of engineering entrance examinations in India.

The Indian American investor and managing partner of Pabrai Investment Funds, along with his wife Harina Kapoor, has set up Dakshana Foundation, which is focused on providing resources and support for poor students in rural and semi-urban government schools—under the Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya (JNV) system—to help them crack the IIT Joint Entrance Examination and the All-India Engineering Entrance Examination.

Pabrai, who likes to call himself the founder and catalyst of Dakshana, has a vision of 2020 students from the JNV system going to India’s premier tech schools by 2020.

“They don’t all necessarily have to be through Dakshana,” he says, and has no issues about acknowledging the Fantastic Forty programme, run by FIITJEE, one of the largest coaching institutes in India, and the Super 30 programme run by Anand Kumar in Patna.

“Other coaching service providers such as Resonance, Career Point and TIME, too, are showing interest in the model of offering free coaching for IIT-JEE to poor students,” he says.

Dakshana started operations in 2007 with about half a million dollars in cash and investments and the passion of its founders to make the world a better place. The model is simple—the foundation works with the government-run Jawahar Navodaya Vidalayas. Gifted students from these schools are funded for intensive coaching for the IIT-JEE examinations through various coaching service providers.

“We ended our first year with 291 Dakshana scholars located in seven states across India. Over the course of 2007, we established a strong relationship with 570 residential JNVs across India through a memorandum of understanding,” Pabrai says.

Dakshana had spent over $1 million by the end of 2007, with cash and investments exceeding $2.8 million. “We have never, and will never, pay a bribe,” says Pabrai, who is deeply inspired by Buffett’s charitable activities.

In fact, during his lunch with Buffett, Pabrai had asked for guidance and direction from him. “I had sent a copy of Dakshana’s 2007 annual report to Warren before the lunch. He had read it cover to cover and said that he had even sent copies of it to his partner Charlie Munger and Bill Gates,” says Pabrai.

The core focus is simple—helping the poorest of poor students get accepted as students at IIT and other top institutions in India—and thus helping families come out of poverty.

The goals are obviously being realised and this year, 90 Dakshana scholars have got through to the IIT merit list.

“The success rate is higher than last year when 75 kids had made it through the IIT-JEE. Last year 21% of kids made it. This year it is 31%. And we have three kids in the Top 500 ranks. T Ashok Kumar is our topper with an all-India IIT-JEE rank of 63. His father is a tailor who makes a meagre Rs 2,100 a month in the outskirts of Hyderabad,” says Pabrai, who has no reservations in acknowledging that the heavy duty work to execute the Dakshana model in India is being done by the foundation’s CEO Colonel Ram Sharma and his team in Pune.