Great leaders have often rebelled the conventional laws of the society and businesses; have garnered the support of the masses in the process and leveraged the whole mass to greater heights. Jaipur Rugs’ founder Nand Kishore Chaudhary, the father of Modern social enterprises has achieved all of this and more in 36 years as described by Prof. Jagdish Sheth.
In 1978, he started a very humble beginning, reaching out to Indian artisans living in Rural India to provide them livelihood, skills, and training so that the very uneducated but very artistic people can contribute back to the society and that little venture which he started in 1978, today provides sustainable livelihood to 40,000 artisans at their door-step across 600 far flung villages in 5 states in India.
The either or dichotomy that you have to be a “non-profit” to be charitable but you have to be a “for profit” for the shareholders is a misassumption. Jaipur Rugs has become a role model that shows how a business can serve the society and at the same time also be a capitalistic institution. Jaipur Rugs is a successfully scaled global social enterprise that connects the richest of richest with the poorest of poorest through its luxurious quality carpets. As he explains in simple words “I tried bridging the gaps between the two worlds, viz. the grassroots and the global markets.”
His widely acclaimed leadership style has transpired into numerous features such as a globally acknowledged case study in C.K. Prahlad’s ‘The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid’, in which Jaipur Rugs is acclaimed to be the best success story of eradicating poverty at grassroots.
NKC has been invited as a guest speaker in various esteemed universities like Harvard, Wharton, Stanford, TISS, IIT Mumbai and many more. The company has also garnered prestigious accolades like Social Impact Award 2012 by Times Of India in partnership with J.P Morgan, Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2010, NASSCOM Social Innovation Honors 2014 and CNBC TV 18 Emerging India Awards 2014 to name a few.
During the American India Foundation’s (AIF) Annual Atlanta Fundraising Gala in the US, he was described as “father of moral social enterprises” by noted professor Jagdish N. Sheth.
A visionary and truly a man of the masses, NK Chaudhary’s revolutionary idea of democratizing the value chain has made him the” Gandhi of the Carpet Industry”.