Entering College? Build your Moral Compass

Class 12 Graduation Ceremony | Mother’s Public School, Bhubaneswar

A very imp Day ☀️ — Good morning everyone! Thank you Mothers Public School for having me over, I’m excited to be here, and most importantly be with all of you graduating students of class 12 on this very important day in your life.

I congratulate you and I congratulate your parents and teachers who have played a most vital role in shaping you and bringing you to this day. This is a very important day for you boys and girls — from now on you will no longer be just boys and girls, but young women and young men, as you transition from school to college. Young women and men ready to conquer the world and leave your mark on it.

Be eternally grateful to your parents and teachers for all they’ve done to bring you till this day. Your foundations have been laid already, and as you go to college next and then in the next 4–8 years as you will start on your professional or work life — it is entirely up to you, how you shape the rest of of your student life, your working life, and destiny thereafter.

Moral Compass 🧭 — So, as you embark on this next phase of your life’s journey, I want to leave the thought of a small instrument that will help guide you in this voyage. I’m sure you know how we find directions so we move in the right way, we use a small device — what’s it called…. yes, a compass. But today I want to tell you about another such compass which will help you choose the right path in your journey — its called the Moral Compass.

There is always a right and wrong in everything that we do, from everyday small things — like what we might say or react to something said, or big things that come our way to decide upon at important times. Sometimes, its not entirely clear about what’s right and wrong, and its ok to choose what we think is right — as long as we truly believe it. And sometimes, its extremely tempting to chose the wrong thing in spite of knowing that it wasn’t right. In my moral compass, the values that are most important and help me be guided are Ethics & Integrity.

Milk Mantra 🐮 👨‍🌾 — Around 10 years back — I had a previous life. See how time flies… 10yrs back I had a life in London, living a rather nice life and jet setting all across the world doing merger & acquisition deals. But I felt that I wasn’t doing enough — back home in India there was a huge problem of trust deficit between people and food and I felt that I must solve it. You know what that means — right? …..Trust Deficit… when we do not trust the quality of the milk we are having, when we are very concerned about major issues like adulteration in our food…

Also, I felt that as someone from Odisha, I had do do something to change the lives of the millions of poor farmers in the state. So, I left my job and returned to India, to Odisha. But immediately people (all well intentioned as they probably had my own well being in mind!) were shocked and told me — ‘What, you’ve left a great life in London, a successful professional career that you built painstakingly, to come back to Odisha to become a Doodhwala!’

Anyways, I was convinced about what I wanted to do, and that there will be a Milk Mantra. More importantly — my moral compass told me to build a highly ethical company, an entrepreneurial. business that will not only solve the nutrition problem, but will do so with a focused ethical milk sourcing program that will impact the lives of thousands of poor farmers. Without my moral compass, may be I would’ve done it differently — not build a very complex, difficult, expensive sourcing network that would do justice to each and every small, poor dairy farmer.

It was extremely challenging to build it in this way — on our first day, when we launched our network we were expecting more than 100 farmers to join us — only 7 farmers came…. Then, when we launched Milky Moo we had just a few hundred households as customers, but we had a large plant to operate & needed at least 20,000 customers- btw, how many of you hv MilkyMoo everyday? You must — besides sorting out your nutrition needs, it will sort out your moral compass!

We had so many challenges — but we did not compromise on any single aspect — Ethical in every way, we tried and did — from our product, to our people, to investors and to our farmers. Today, from just 7 farmers we have 60,000 farmers, from just. three hundred households, today MilkyMoo is consumed by close to a million people each and every day. My Moral Compass guided me to stay steadfast, and we’ve reached this far because of it and I’m happy to have reached here in an ethical way which is changing the lives of a third of a million rural lives each and every day.

All this was made possible in many ways because of a clear moral compass and a strong belief in it — a belief that you can make a difference.

Invictus 🚢 — So, my very best wishes to you on your voyage as you move on from here, and would like to leave you with something that has inspired one of the greatest persons that walked this earth and who truly followed his moral compass — Nelson Mandela, and that’s the two last lines from a short but very powerful poem called Invictus by William Ernest Henley… the poem goes on to end saying:

I am the master of my fate

I am the captain of my soul.

You are the master and the captain from now on, build your moral compass, and as we say at Milk Mantra — #KeepMooing!