A birthday gift that became a boon

Birthdays are always special. The love showered on me, particularly on my birthdays multiplies every year. My immediate family, old associates, new colleagues and thousands of people connected to us through the Adani Group’s community empowerment initiatives – the collective warmth that touches me is unprecedented.

But amid all the laughter and celebrations, I unfailingly reflect upon a small incident that took place on June 24, my birthday, nearly a decade ago. The feeling is similar to endearing impressions left by a stranger met over a short bus ride. Today, I wish to talk about one such individual.

In 2011 we were in the midst of setting up our first solar farm at Bitta-Nalliya located in a remote part of Kutch. Given the stringent schedule any employee needed prior approval from Vneet Jaain, the CEO of our Power business to leave the site.

One fine day an employee called up Vneet and requested that he be allowed to travel to Bhuj on 12th June (that was a Sunday) as he wanted to donate a unit of blood as a mark of celebration for my birthday which fell on a working day. This way he would not lose a day of work and yet would be able to express his greetings. I was astounded by the sheer simplicity of the thought. The person chose the biggest gift to mankind to show his love towards me.

An adult human body has about 5 litres of blood. A loss of 20% or more can start putting the body into an immediate shock. India has a significant annual shortfall in blood supply of about 2 million units of blood. This translates to 60 tankers of blood that if available can save several thousands of lives and is equivalent to supporting 300,000 heart surgeries, or 50,000 organ transplants. To those of us that are healthy it is no loss but to those that need blood, this makes the difference between life and death. In other words, everyone one of us has the power to help save several of our fellow human beings in our lifetime. While modern systems of surgeries have reduced wastage of blood and cold chain has made all the blood groups easily accessible in urban areas, remote areas where majority of our installations exist continue to struggle for precious blood.

Coming back to the story, the phone call triggered a larger idea and the same evening there was a discussion amongst the leadership team of the Power business to consider the possibility of organising the blood donation camps at its different sites on June 24 to encourage people from the local communities as well as partners to come together for this cause. Cutting a long story short, what started as a small initiative inspired by one individual and led to the collection of 1386 units of blood in 2011, has today become a Group wide

phenomenon with blood collections on my birthday every year. This year we donated more than 8500 units towards the cause.

It is said that the smallest of pebbles cast into the water often create the biggest of ripples. The ripple created by the action of this one person has now become a movement across the entire Group and has translated to the savings of several thousands of lives. Total blood donated till date has exceeded a staggering 45,000 units and continues to rapidly grow.

Every birthday as I reflect on this story, I see so many learnings for us to take away. Our ability to build a culture wherein each one of our employees is given an opportunity to voice their thoughts and allowed a platform to give back to the society can be a defining differentiation. We are all inherently designed with a desire to build and add to our karma and it is this trait that makes us humans. Along with business success, it is this humane aspect that binds teams and can together move mountains far more than what transactional relationships between employees can do. Every single ripple has the ability to become a large wave if the leadership allows it to grow and therefore the job that leaders have is to ensure no voice within an organisation is lost. Increasingly, we are all looking for a purpose even within our work life and a common purpose that allows giving back to the communities we serve can make all the difference to the spirit and therefore success of a Group.

In closing, it was never about my birthday. Birthdays will come and go. It is about the learnings we can draw from the initiative of an individual in a remote location who had an idea that was allowed to bubble up to the top. Our blood groups may be all different, our cultures may be different, our religions may be different, our nationalities may be different – but what matters is the fact that the cause we are all standing up for is one.