#129: Leveraging Loyalty Levers to Support COVID Education and Action in India

PAULA: Welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty, an industry podcast for Loyalty Marketing Professionals.

PAULA: I’m your host, Paula Thomas, and if you work in Loyalty Marketing, join me every week to learn the latest ideas from Loyalty Specialists around the world.

PAULA: Today’s guest has launched a marketing movement that I find truly inspiring.

PAULA: With India facing its toughest challenge yet with the COVID pandemic, Madan Padaki has created a task force of what he calls Young Warriors, leveraging loyalty mechanics, innovative technology and communication channels to mobilize the nation against the spread of COVID-19.

PAULA: Known as Yuwaah, Madan’s organization has already partnered with over 1,350 organizations, including the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and the Ministry of Youth Affairs, as well as some of India’s biggest companies.

PAULA: Together, their goal is to lead action and support over 50 million people through this most challenging time.

PAULA: Madan’s program, called Yuwaah, uses points and rewards, but for a social cause, rather than a commercial one.

PAULA: So today, I’m really happy to welcome Madan Padaki to Let’s Talk Loyalty.

PAULA: So, Madan, I’m super excited to hear the entire story of the Young Warriors movement.

PAULA: So before we get into all of it, obviously you’re not coming from a traditional loyalty background.

PAULA: But nonetheless, I know you’ve prepared some of your favorite loyalty statistics or performance statistics for me today.

MADAN: Thanks, Paula.

MADAN: Delighted to be on the show and look forward to this conversation.

MADAN: Yes, from the performance statistics of the reach for the Young Warrior movement, we were actually compiling our numbers as of yesterday.

MADAN: Glad to share that the Young Warrior movement in India has reached 431 million plus social media impressions.

MADAN: And we have 2.83 million young people who have now taken action in one way or the other in the Young Warrior movement.

MADAN: So in our run up to the target of 5 million, I think we are progressing fairly rapidly.

PAULA: That’s extraordinary, Madan.

PAULA: And just for listeners, you went live literally just eight weeks ago with this movement.

PAULA: I’m calling it, which I hope is a really good way because that’s the scale of what I feel that you’re creating, Madan.

PAULA: So what I think might be a really good place to start actually just with the chat about what you’re doing is, can you explain where did the Young Warrior movement come from?

PAULA: Because in fact, it seems to me that you’re perfectly positioned to lead something like this with all of its innovation and all of its ambition.

PAULA: So yeah, tell us exactly how did you end up starting this movement and where it came from?

MADAN: Sure.

MADAN: Young Warrior Movement is actually an initiative by an entity called Yuwaah, which operates under Unicef.

PAULA: Okay.

MADAN: Unicef actually launched along with the UN entities in 2018 at the United Nations General Assembly, a global initiative called Generation Unlimited.

MADAN: And the whole objective of Generation Unlimited was that, how do you put young people at the center of the universe and empower them and have a supportive ecosystem that will ensure that they’re able to take the decisions they want in terms of their own career pathways, learning across several skills, and also their own journey as changemakers.

MADAN: So the whole objective of Generation Unlimited is, how do you ensure that every young person has all the necessary skills and the support to progress in life to unleash their unlimited potential?

MADAN: So Generation Unlimited came to India.

MADAN: India was one of the first countries to take on this initiative, and we called it Yuwaah.

MADAN: In Hindi, Yuwaah means wow youth, right?

MADAN: So that’s what we called it.

MADAN: We took on three objectives.

MADAN: So we did a series of consultations across the country in 2019, trying to understand what do youth really want?

MADAN: We heard three things very, very strongly.

MADAN: One is that the future of work is rapidly changing and young people felt that they’re not adequately equipped to understand the future that is unfolding.

MADAN: And how do I deal with it?

MADAN: What kind of careers should I choose?

MADAN: What kind of skills should I have?

PAULA: That’s one.

MADAN: Two is, of course, there are deep aspirations to create economic opportunities for themselves.

MADAN: To say that, you know what, I need to not only support myself, but I need to ensure that my family is comfortable.

MADAN: And the third more interesting part was that several young people went beyond economic opportunities to say that I want to be a contributing member of my community, in my society.

MADAN: I am not just a human resource.

MADAN: I want to be a leader.

MADAN: So those three elements we took and we conceived Yuwaah as three pillars.

MADAN: Pillar one, which will help young people create economic opportunities for themselves, either as entrepreneurs or job seekers, and we took a target to say we want to create 100 million opportunities in the next 10 years.

MADAN: Pillar two was about life skills and 21st century skills.

MADAN: How do you equip every young person with the relevant life skills or 21st century skills?

MADAN: And we said as a collaborative, as an ecosystem, can we enable 200 million young people to be, you know, to have the relevant set of skills?

MADAN: And third was about their own aspirations to be changemakers, to be societal leaders.

MADAN: And we said, let us lead with that and let us envision that to create 300 million young people as empowered changemakers.

MADAN: So those are the three themes we’re working at in Yuwaah.

MADAN: Now, as we were doing this, we started, you know, creating young people action teams across the country.

MADAN: We have a very vibrant set of young people who give us advice on what we should be doing.

MADAN: And it is in one such conversation sometime in April, as the pandemic in India started peaking, you know, as the second wave started, some of the young people told us that, why aren’t we doing anything?

MADAN: So we said, what do you want to do?

MADAN: Listen, no, we don’t have adequate information on what to, how to deal with it, you know, what is COVID appropriate behavior, where there are tons of sources, we don’t know what is right, what is wrong.

MADAN: We know we all have to take up vaccinations, but there’s a lot of hesitancy in my family on vaccinations, so on and so forth.

MADAN: So how do I dispel that?

MADAN: And third, how do I make sure that, you know, if somebody falls ill in my family, what are the five steps that I need to do?

MADAN: Right.

PAULA: Okay.

MADAN: So that’s how we said, what if we looked at each of you in your own homes as a young COVID warrior?

MADAN: And if we can equip you with tools and resources that can help you understand what’s happening, share it with your family, and perhaps you can go further, not just share it with your family, but share it with your neighbors, with your friends, then each of you are securing maybe 10 families, right?

MADAN: So if we can enable 5 million young warriors to take, you know, action in the country, and each of them impacting 10 families each, then we are securing 50 million people across the country in our three month campaign.

MADAN: And that’s how the Young Warrior campaign got started.

PAULA: My goodness, Madan.

PAULA: It’s super inspiring, first of all, that you’re dedicating your time and your expertise.

PAULA: I know you’re a very successful Indian entrepreneur.

PAULA: So to put your own weight and resources, energy and inspiration behind all of these people, I want to first of all acknowledge and congratulate you on all of that.

PAULA: I think it’s extraordinary.

PAULA: And what I also love actually, Madan, that you’re doing is thinking big, because something that I think a lot of us actually struggle, particularly when the world is struggling so much, is it’s hard to be hopeful, it’s hard to be positive, and it’s hard to think at the scale that you do.

PAULA: So I love the big numbers, you know, to mobilize five million Indian people, young Indian people in order to impact 50 million.

PAULA: And for listeners, certainly when I’ve been researching a bit about India in the past, I know that I think it’s by 2030, India will be the most populous nation.

PAULA: It will overtake China as the most people on the planet.

PAULA: So it really is an extraordinary country that you live in.

MADAN: Yeah.

MADAN: And we will have the youngest population in the world.

MADAN: We continue to have the youngest population in the world, you know.

MADAN: So yeah, it’s truly a blessing for me to be a part of initiatives like this because you can really contribute to making a dent to the universe as it goes.

MADAN: Yeah.

MADAN: And India is all about, you know, anything we do has to be large.

MADAN: It has to be at the population scale because we are like 10 continents in one country.

PAULA: You absolutely are.

PAULA: So given our audience, Madan is obviously loyalty professional.

PAULA: So I guess human beings first.

PAULA: So the story of inspiration will definitely appeal regardless.

PAULA: But when you and I first met, part of it was really around Generation Unlimited.

PAULA: In fact, we were going to have a conversation about that initially.

PAULA: And what I really liked, Madan, was you were tapping into loyalty mechanics.

PAULA: So things like, you know, identifying behaviors you wanted to change, incentivizing that behavior change and rewarding it.

PAULA: So as you know, this show is normally very commercial.

PAULA: We’re talking to brands and we’re trying to get people to buy more or sell more or do more stuff in a commercial world.

PAULA: So I think part of the reason I love this so much is that it’s a social cause rather than a commercial one.

PAULA: So tell me, how did you come across or start to believe in the power of loyalty mechanics to drive the kind of behavior changes, whether it’s for the Generation Unlimited project or for the Young Warriors COVID project?

MADAN: Yeah, absolutely.

MADAN: You know, I’m happy to share some thoughts and learn from you.

MADAN: It’s been fascinating chatting up with you and getting to understand the mechanics of how this space works, the loyalty space.

MADAN: But at a fundamental level, when we were chatting up with a whole lot of youth, one of the questions that we kept asking ourselves was what will nudge them to do more?

MADAN: And here in this case is to do more good, to become change makers.

MADAN: We realized there are three, two, three drivers, right?

MADAN: One is that there is a larger societal need to do something beyond just academics.

MADAN: If you’re in a school or a college in India or anywhere else, most likely, you’re just measured on one parameter.

MADAN: How many marks did you get?

PAULA: Yeah.

PAULA: Yeah.

MADAN: Right.

MADAN: And that’s the O-riding metric.

PAULA: Definition of success.

PAULA: Yeah.

MADAN: Exactly.

MADAN: But we all know that the correlation of marks to what you do in life is pretty, you know.

PAULA: It totally is.

MADAN: In many cases, there’s no correlation or there’s a negative correlation as well.

MADAN: Yeah.

MADAN: So the question that we asked was, what will make you feel good about yourself outside of the marks?

MADAN: And the first thing that came to us was, listen, if somebody recognizes my effort, my talent, my passion and say, you’ve used it for a societal good, was point number one.

MADAN: Point number two was, listen, you know, well, there are materialistic rewards that I can get, you know, a gift voucher from an e-commerce site or a coffee voucher or whatever.

MADAN: Can you do something that will, if I’m really good and I’m putting my effort, can you help me progress ahead in my life?

MADAN: Can it be a reward in the form of a scholarship?

MADAN: Can it be a reward in the form of an internship with one of the, you know, prestigious IT companies in India?

MADAN: Can it be, you know, if I’m interested in dance, can it be, you know, spend a day with a dance maestro, as an example?

PAULA: Yeah.

MADAN: Right.

MADAN: So what will, how can you, how can Generation Unlimited or Yuwaah help us to progress on our career paths?

MADAN: And third was that innate need to be able to help others.

MADAN: Right.

MADAN: So as I progress along the journey, how can I use the rewards that I’ve earned to help others come up on the same journey as well?

PAULA: Okay.

PAULA: Yeah.

MADAN: Right.

MADAN: So, so it’s almost like, you know, it’s almost like what we’ve seen happen in Gmail or now the latest trending fashion clubhouse, that if I do well, I get invites and I can invite other people in.

PAULA: Yeah.

PAULA: Yeah.

PAULA: Right.

MADAN: And it says invited by so and so.

MADAN: The other person feels good.

MADAN: So the third element that we’ve been toying around with is that if somebody has progressed well along a certain level, can that person then share some of his credits or her credits with another friend who’s not on the journey?

PAULA: Yeah.

MADAN: Absolutely.

MADAN: So those are the elements that we started designing a social credit system.

MADAN: We set for every action you take, you know, we will recognize you.

MADAN: It could be a simple certificate.

MADAN: So for example, the Young Warriors program, which is shipped out, maybe about 25 or 30,000 certificates of the first batch, which is a certificate from the school board.

MADAN: So interestingly, we’ve got the Central Board of Secondary Education, which is one of the largest school boards in the country.

MADAN: Saying and a certificate from them and Unicef.

MADAN: And of course, Yuwaah, we recognize you as a Young Warrior.

MADAN: Now, everybody is used to seeing a scorecard from CBSE and not a certificate.

PAULA: Yeah.

MADAN: So that has gotten people excited to say CBSE is recognizing me for something that I did outside my academic realm.

PAULA: Yeah.

PAULA: And it’s official and it’s global.

PAULA: So again, whether they go international, the fact that the Unicef brand is on something, again, just add something in a super competitive world.

MADAN: Absolutely.

MADAN: And it’s always been there, Paula, maybe you haven’t recognized it.

MADAN: So several US universities, for example, look at not just your academics, but what change making have you done, right?

MADAN: What contributions have you made to your society?

PAULA: Okay.

MADAN: We want to bring something similar to admissions into Indian universities.

MADAN: Why should only scores matter?

MADAN: Right.

MADAN: Why can’t your stature as a leader matter?

PAULA: Yeah.

MADAN: And can you then be given pathways because you excelled at something?

PAULA: Absolutely.

PAULA: So moving it into Yuwaah and the Young Warriors movement then, Madan.

PAULA: So what type of activities, what type of tasks, what are you asking of these young warriors?

PAULA: Because I know you have extraordinary communications campaign.

PAULA: You’ve mentioned 431 million impressions on social media and again over eight weeks.

PAULA: So that’s exactly what I think we call a heavyweight campaign.

PAULA: But what are those communications saying and what are you asking the young warriors to actually do in terms of taking action?

PAULA: Sure.

MADAN: So the message is pretty simple.

MADAN: One of the learnings that we’ve had in this campaign is that if you want to scale something fast and big, keep the messaging very simple.

PAULA: Music to my ears.

PAULA: Absolutely.

MADAN: You can’t complicate it.

MADAN: For a young person who’s between, we’ve got young warriors from 12 to 24 years of age, we’re simply saying, hey, if you want to be a young warrior, WhatsApp is very prevalent in our country.

MADAN: We’ve actually created a WhatsApp chatbot.

MADAN: So there’s a simple number.

MADAN: We’re saying, hey, just send Young Warrior to that number and the chatbot will walk you through a series of steps.

MADAN: So we’ve got several tasks for the young person on the chatbot.

MADAN: We’ve got a task called Vaccine Buddy.

MADAN: So in a series of conversations, we are exposing the young person to what is the vaccine, why should you get vaccinated, benefits of vaccination, myths around vaccination, so on and so forth.

MADAN: And then we are asking the young person to go speak to five people and explain these facts and they come back and say, hey, we’ve done this.

MADAN: So it’s a series of tasks, subtasks that we provide.

PAULA: Okay.

MADAN: Similarly, there’s a task around fake news and fake news police.

MADAN: How do you verify news that comes to you on WhatsApp or Facebook or whatever?

MADAN: What are the two, three things you must do to check whether it is valid or not?

MADAN: We have another task around COVID appropriate behavior.

MADAN: We have a fourth task around what to do when somebody in your home falls ill.

PAULA: Yeah.

PAULA: Yeah.

MADAN: So the call to action is simple.

MADAN: Just send a message to WhatsApp and we will take you on from there.

MADAN: So that is one way.

MADAN: Obviously, there are media dark areas in India and you can’t rely only on a technology and a smartphone and WhatsApp.

MADAN: So we actually rolled this out campaign through an IVR as well.

PAULA: Oh, okay.

MADAN: So the second thing is that we’ve got an IVR phone number where you can dial in.

MADAN: And on the IVR, we’re having the same level of interactions.

PAULA: Lovely.

MADAN: Right.

MADAN: And of course, the third thing that we’ve done is there are many people and kids, especially in the tribal areas and marginalized communities where the phone availability itself is a challenge.

MADAN: We have partnered with 200-odd community radio stations.

PAULA: Wonderful.

MADAN: Which are beaming straight to radios and radios are available in many communities.

MADAN: And we’re running a campaign on the radio as well.

MADAN: Right.

MADAN: Where we’re talking about these and stuff like that.

MADAN: So we’ve covered all modes of engagement and we’re walking them through a funnel.

MADAN: So you do task one, we nudge you to do task two, then task three and task four and task five.

MADAN: And at the end of task five, you get a certificate.

PAULA: Yeah.

MADAN: In fact, just this afternoon, we launched a fairly large campaign with the All India Council for Technical Education, the entity that runs all the universities, all the engineering colleges and engineering universities in India, about 450 of them, roughly about a million and a half students.

MADAN: And we are now asking these young people in the universities to go beyond this and saying, hey, supposing you are a singer, right?

MADAN: Can you write a song and render it around being a young warrior?

MADAN: If you are an artist, can you post a very interesting poster online?

MADAN: Right?

MADAN: And tag people.

MADAN: So we’re running a competition, we’re running a week long initiative with the ACTE.

PAULA: Yeah.

MADAN: Around several themes, right?

MADAN: What can you do on your talent?

MADAN: What can you do?

MADAN: So if I am the student leader in my college, can I organize 100 guys to come and attend the seminar?

MADAN: And for every action, we are now giving out points.

MADAN: So you do a poster, you get a set of points, you post it on social media, you get points, you amplify it, you get points.

MADAN: So we’re not trying to track all of that through a simple tech backend.

PAULA: And are you actually validating, Madan?

PAULA: Because it’s so appealing, and we’ve talked about how competitive it is in academia and in life.

PAULA: So clearly these certificates are becoming increasingly aspirational.

PAULA: So are you allowing them to self-report and self-manage?

PAULA: Or are you saying, well, look, we need to see the five tags, for example, if it’s a social media tagging task.

PAULA: So what approach are you taking?

MADAN: It’s a very pertinent question, especially as we go deeper and deeper into the tasks, right?

MADAN: Where the certificate starts becoming more and more valuable.

PAULA: Of course.

MADAN: Which is the journey that we have now in the next few months.

MADAN: We are now getting into a validation phase.

MADAN: One of the things that we are trying to do is to set up a peer review validation process.

MADAN: Right.

MADAN: So if I’ve got, so I will have people, some of the young people sign up as validators as well.

MADAN: And maybe we give them a certificate for being the validators.

PAULA: Of course.

PAULA: It’s a virtuous circle, Madan.

MADAN: Exactly.

MADAN: And then we will keep passing on all the people who apply, who are self-certified them or applying for validations to say, hey, I’ve completed the task, we’ll just assign these tasks to these volunteers, to the team of validators.

MADAN: And then say, hey, you’re certifying.

MADAN: So maybe out of the five people whom we’ll assign, if three of them certify, we are in.

PAULA: Absolutely.

MADAN: That’s one.

MADAN: The second thing that we are taking an example or trying to build it, and this is underway, it’s almost like Amazon, for example, long ago had a tool called MTurk, it was called Mechanical Turk, which could break up a series of tasks into smaller images.

MADAN: And then you could have people taking those images to say whether it’s a cat or not a cat as an example.

PAULA: Of course.

MADAN: So it’s an AI ML tagging now.

MADAN: So we’re now trying to talk to a few technology companies to say, hey, if there are, let’s say, somebody has said, I have uploaded this post, my five posters, can we then take each poster and give it to one one task runner who then says, is it a poster?

MADAN: Is it is it not a poster?

PAULA: Yeah.

MADAN: Right.

MADAN: So and the guy clicks, yes, then it goes to the validation.

MADAN: So we’re trying to figure out because, as you rightly said, Paula, we have to think of population scale, right?

MADAN: So we ought to think about what if 10 million people tomorrow applied to us for a validation?

MADAN: How will we manage it?

PAULA: Exactly.

PAULA: Exactly, yeah, because in order to retain the integrity of the certificate, it has to be something that is that is trusted and known to be, you know, valid.

PAULA: So so and I think it’s fabulous because I think what you’ve managed to combine is, you know, speed to market in terms of get it up and running, get the partnerships, whether it’s with radio or the chat bot, for example, and get moving and then, you know, build in the artificial intelligence and the, you know, the validation piece as you get the scale piece in there.

PAULA: So so I think it’s a perfect balance between, you know, let’s get started, but, you know, let’s make sure we keep an eye on it properly as well.

MADAN: Yeah, I mean, that’s probably the only entrepreneurial way to operate this.

MADAN: Because, you know, as I say, there are known unknowns and there are unknown unknowns.

MADAN: So we’re figuring out a lot of these unknown unknowns as we go along.

PAULA: Brilliant, brilliant.

PAULA: But and again, I suppose the audience are very familiar with loyalty fraud, for example, is a theme.

PAULA: So particularly if there’s commercial incentives, for example, like if you did start giving coffees or giving drinks or who knows what you might get into in the future.

PAULA: And then, of course, things like, as you said, scholarships and internships.

PAULA: So the motivation perhaps to try and beat the system will increase.

PAULA: So again, you’re taking, as you said, the proper tech solution in place.

PAULA: And the next thing I wanted to ask you about is, I think, you know, it’s my favorite topic.

PAULA: And many of my listeners, I’m sure, will know as well.

PAULA: But it’s around the chat bot and the functionality, because I did use your WhatsApp chat bot, because again, it’s obviously global.

PAULA: And you’d kindly set me on the number for Yuwaah.

PAULA: I was playing with your chat bot yesterday and I thought it was incredible.

PAULA: So I’d love to hear, like, how did you build it?

PAULA: Was this something, like, it felt like you built it actually very quickly and it’s still very comprehensive and very professional, has a points system.

PAULA: So do you have a loyalty engine behind it or is everything managed in WhatsApp?

PAULA: How do you do it?

MADAN: Yeah, so we built this pretty fast.

MADAN: It’s still getting done underway.

MADAN: So Unicef has a global partnership with WhatsApp and we have a tool called Reuport, which was used primarily for surveys.

MADAN: So you could do surveys of any sort using the chatbot.

MADAN: That’s been on for the last couple of years.

MADAN: But we envisioned something called as a WhatsApp University.

MADAN: It’s like, what will it take for young people to learn on WhatsApp?

MADAN: So we called it FUNDU, F-U-N-D-O-O.

MADAN: And how do you have fun with doing stuff and learning by doing?

PAULA: Yeah.

MADAN: Right.

MADAN: So which is why you will see in the chatbot, you know, some tasks are go talk to your parents about this, go talk to five friends, go talk to 10, you know, strangers, so on and so forth, right?

MADAN: So the whole idea of using the chatbot was to drive interactivity, but to drive young people to do some stuff and come and report back.

PAULA: Okay.

MADAN: Of course, as we spoke in the previous question, we need to have a validation proof point there, which we’ll come to, you know, which we’re trying to build.

MADAN: The idea was that how do you get, how do you keep nudging it?

MADAN: The beauty of the chatbot is that it is very conversational, it is very easy.

MADAN: You’re not dumping them like in our typical examination process, a question with 100 marks, a question paper and saying, you’ve got to solve for all of this.

MADAN: You know, we can walk them along the journey one step at a time.

MADAN: We are having a data dump at the back end, with all the points.

MADAN: And as we speak, we are now working with a bunch of loyalty experts in India on how do you make sense of the data that’s coming out?

MADAN: Again, from a loyalty standpoint, there are various nuances to this.

MADAN: So do you give a higher rating to a person who’s been consistent every week?

MADAN: Or do you give, so even though the end result may be the same, how do you track consistency versus sporadic performance?

MADAN: And can you then give a better incentive for somebody who’s been consistent rather than spikes up and down?

MADAN: And how do you then indicate this to the system, to everybody else, that this is what we’re looking for in you as an example.

MADAN: So we’re trying to figure out a bunch of rules engine here.

MADAN: In fact, at this point, I must share that we’re also very fortunate to be working with PWC, the Global Confirming Powerhouse.

MADAN: And we are trying to create a massive platform, which will then take every young person and create a portfolio of engagement that they’ve done with Yuwaah or with any other partner.

MADAN: And this portfolio will be validated, verified, etc.

MADAN: And you can then share this portfolio, and the portfolio will come with a bunch of credit points.

PAULA: Wonderful.

MADAN: So hopefully, in the next couple of years, we should be able to build out this massive platform, which is a youth engagement, social credit tracking and portfolio system.

PAULA: Yes.

PAULA: Yeah.

PAULA: But as you said, with data at the individual level, something they can share, and I guess something that Unicef globally and Generation Unlimited globally, because I know it’s in multiple markets, can also perhaps leverage in the future as well.

MADAN: Oh, absolutely.

MADAN: You know, we are trying to envision a future where there should be an exam to find out how good you are.

PAULA: Exactly.

PAULA: Yes.

MADAN: Can you arrive at the model, which will continuously provide you feedback and incentives to keep claiming.

MADAN: So it’s almost like how many of our children will play games, right?

MADAN: So you go from one level to another, and each level has a certain level of difficulty, tasks, etc.

MADAN: So that’s the kind of thinking that we’re trying to attempt.

PAULA: Wonderful.

PAULA: And it’s also multi-language as well, Madan.

PAULA: I think it’s Hindi.

PAULA: Am I right?

PAULA: I’m looking at…

MADAN: No, the chat pod is now in about 11 languages.

PAULA: Oh my goodness.

PAULA: And which are the two that I see?

PAULA: So obviously for listeners, Madan, I’ll make sure that the WhatsApp number is shared in our show notes and even in the email campaign.

PAULA: So hopefully you’re happy for loyalty professionals to play with it as well.

MADAN: And I love the feedback from all of you.

PAULA: Oh, I’ll definitely be telling you all of my…

PAULA: I love it.

PAULA: I really love it.

PAULA: But what is the second language that I see coming through?

PAULA: I don’t recognize the script.

MADAN: So we have English and Hindi, and then we have a bunch of languages.

MADAN: We have Kannada, Malyardam, Telugu.

PAULA: Yes, it did offer me.

MADAN: Yes.

PAULA: Yeah.

MADAN: You can choose any of the languages.

PAULA: Yeah.

PAULA: So it’s super clever, captures all of the location, all of the demographics and awards points immediately just for kind of signing up.

PAULA: And then there’s I can see a referral model, which I went into is the next step.

PAULA: And also what I really loved, Madan, as well was, it was asking me how worried I was about COVID, which is obviously the main topic today and of the young warriors.

PAULA: So you’ve connected in obviously then with social support mechanics, things like helplines.

PAULA: So they can actually get kind of emotional support as well if they need it.

MADAN: So we’ve done I think one of the other feedback that we got very actively was creating safe spaces for the mental well-being of the young people themselves.

MADAN: So one dimension is we’re asking them to become warriors and take care of themselves and their families.

MADAN: But more importantly, they’re also saying, listen, we also need to be taken care of in the sense that we need to ensure our own emotional well-being.

MADAN: So we’re doing a lot of workshops, we are lining up a lot of partners to provide safe spaces for young people to come and talk about their own emotional well-being.

MADAN: And so that’s a big part of the campaign as well.

PAULA: Yeah, for sure.

PAULA: And you’ve mentioned some of your partners as well, for example, in terms of certainly the public sector, for example.

PAULA: I know there’s a number of ministries you work with.

PAULA: I know you’ve also mentioned academia.

PAULA: You’ve also mentioned media partnerships and also the private sector.

PAULA: You mentioned PwC, but I know Tech Mahindra, for example, and some other very big companies.

PAULA: So what way are you interfacing with the private sector?

PAULA: Is it around the kind of internships idea you mentioned earlier?

PAULA: Or what’s your intention with those types of partnerships?

MADAN: Private sector is a very critical ecosystem partner, Paula.

MADAN: And sometimes at Yuwaah, we end up being the bridge between all of these types of partners.

MADAN: The private sector participation in Yuwaah and specifically now in the Young Warriors movement has been phenomenal.

MADAN: For example, we’ve got folks like Tech Mahindra, who have now reached out to their entire employee population of young people to say, hey, all of you should become Young Warriors and encourage your neighbors and your friends to become Young Warriors as well, because IT is still a very young workforce that we have.

MADAN: Technology workforce in India.

MADAN: Several of these corporate partners are also helping us amplify the message.

MADAN: One of the things that you might be aware of is India has something called as a Corporate Social Responsibility Act, where 10% of the profits of every corporate must be given to social causes.

PAULA: That I did not know.

PAULA: That’s extraordinary.

MADAN: Oh, it’s extraordinary.

MADAN: We get like a couple of billion dollars worth of grants go out every year.

MADAN: Wow.

MADAN: From all corporates in India.

MADAN: It’s a mandatory act.

PAULA: Legally required.

PAULA: Legally.

MADAN: By hundreds and thousands of NGOs in the country.

MADAN: So there’s an interesting interface between NGOs and the corporate.

MADAN: And we are trying to reach out to various NGOs through the corporate network as well.

MADAN: And lastly, of course, corporates are seeing this as a way to engage with the young people because the young people of today will be their employees of the future or workers of the future or customers of the future.

MADAN: So corporates are also looking at a way to understand the minds of the young people and to build a brand by providing a variety of benefits.

MADAN: So we’ve just begun, but lots and lots of action to do on the corporate side.

PAULA: Yeah, yeah.

PAULA: And as you mentioned that as well, Madan, I wanted to pick up on something which I’ve always again admired when I hear what you’re doing.

PAULA: You actually always ask young people what they want.

PAULA: Like you’re not making these decisions from your side.

PAULA: You’re very much talking to these advisors and people of the profile that you’re trying to impact.

MADAN: Well, that’s been one of the most difficult learnings because it’s so easy to sit in our own ivory towers and say this is what young people want.

MADAN: Unfortunately, most of the policies and directions are written by people who have way past their roots in the face saying this is what we think young people need.

MADAN: One of the conscious decisions that we made at Generation Unlimited and specifically at Yuwaah, is to say that how do we make sure that everything we do comes as a need or as a feedback from the young people.

MADAN: And we have a fascinating group of about 20-odd youth whom we have formed at the national level called the Young People Action Team.

MADAN: As a governance structure, whenever we have our board meeting, which has a variety of our partners, it’s always preceded by a board meeting with these young people, two of them attend the main board meeting and represent their views there.

PAULA: Okay.

MADAN: And they take the board conversations back to the young people.

MADAN: So that’s the whole idea.

MADAN: How do you build a super collaborative system which really puts young people at the center of this?

PAULA: Yeah.

PAULA: I can hear it coming through.

PAULA: And yes, as you said, it’s an incredible learning, but it’s fundamental, it’s foundational.

PAULA: And that’s, I think, what people hear when they see something like a Young Warriors movement.

PAULA: They feel like it’s in their language, it’s in their technology, it’s in their style of communication.

PAULA: So that’s obviously coming through from your task force.

MADAN: Exactly.

MADAN: And I think it’s easy to slip back into being the stage on stage and saying this is what we need.

MADAN: Yeah.

MADAN: The good part is the Yuwaah team, we have a fairly strong Secretariat in Delhi.

MADAN: And the good part is several of them are young people.

MADAN: So they become our conscience keepers within the team as well.

PAULA: Oh, very good.

PAULA: We all need a conscience keeper, eh?

PAULA: Well, listen, Madan, I think that’s all of the questions that I have from my side.

PAULA: I will certainly make sure, as I said, to have links to Yuwaah so people can look up the organization for Young Warrior and obviously for Generation Unlimited.

PAULA: But are there any other points that you want to make for this audience before we wrap up our conversation?

MADAN: Nothing specific, Paula, except that we are still in our early stages of the journey.

MADAN: There’s a lot of learnings that we need.

MADAN: So love to get feedback from all of you listening in on what we can do, what we can do better.

MADAN: And if there’s any which way to collaborate in any form or fashion, especially to kind of build better engagement models with our young people.

MADAN: I would really appreciate that.

PAULA: OK, OK.

PAULA: Well, that’s a beautiful invitation, Madan.

PAULA: I’ll make sure again that everybody knows where to find you.

PAULA: So I know you’re very active on LinkedIn, for example.

PAULA: So if we look up you, Madan Padaki, on LinkedIn, I think you’re fairly easy to find.

MADAN: Yes, fairly easy to find and it’s not a very common name in India.

MADAN: So you won’t find too many Madan Padakis in India.

PAULA: OK, well, again, I’ll make sure on Let’s Talk Loyalty, you’re linked there as well, Madan.

PAULA: So from my side, as I said at the very beginning, it’s a super inspiring story.

PAULA: And the loyalty points, rewards, changing behavior.

PAULA: It’s exactly what we’re all about.

PAULA: You know, it’s actually making a difference.

PAULA: And I love you’re doing something for social cause at this particular challenging time.

PAULA: So I want to really say thank you so much from our side and best of luck from Let’s Talk Loyalty.

MADAN: Thank you so much for having me on the show and really enjoyed this conversation.

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