What does ‘improving the quality of life of citizens’ mean? Does it refer to incremental changes in the immediate circumstances of people or would it be a transformation that completely redefines status quo? The former is useful but not enough to address the pressing development challenges plaguing Indians across the country. The latter, which is holistic system transformation, is necessary to ensure maximum benefits for the maximum number of people. This is the change India needs fast. And when you have to deliver change at scale and speed, you commit to it as a mission.

Here at Samagra, we have committed ourselves to the mission of improving the quality of life of citizens through better governance. In essence, it entails working with the government system to solve complex governance problems across domains such as education, agriculture, health, employment, public service delivery, to name a few.

Choosing Samagra

The development sector in India is evolving at a rapid pace. Young professionals therefore have many diverse paths towards creating meaningful impact. Given the available choices, why should you choose Samagra?

We work with the political and bureaucratic leadership of states to solve some of the most challenging issues affecting citizens in those states. This could be improving learning outcomes for 1.2 crore students in Uttar Pradesh, creating jobs for 10 lakh+ young people in Haryana or improving the income of 1 crore farmers in Odisha. To solve these challenges, we combine a top-down management consulting approach for problem structuring with a bottom-up understanding of the governance ecosystem, while leveraging data and technology to enable the implementation of our solutions. Our objective is to make governments accountable and deliver with minimum delays and maximum efficiency.

For a professional, the ownership of solutioning and implementation from the get-go, guarantees a steep learning curve and the creation of a comprehensive toolkit of skills, which includes problem solving and structuring, communication (written and oral), stakeholder management, qualitative and quantitative analysis, among other things. While building these critical, transferable skills is important, working with the government system and citizens also brings about strong perspective building. This is only possible when you experience governance at the grassroots level and get your hands dirty to solve problems and implement solutions end-to-end.

Commitment to professional development

While we believe in on-the-job-training and in skills that can be gathered by implementing various initiatives, Samagra places a lot of importance on dedicated professional development of team members. For team members at each level there are structured processes set in place to identify, improve and track hard and soft skills required to be an effective governance professional. Every team member has regular professional development conversations with her program coordinator/ manager/ lead as per a defined cadence. These conversations are anchored in a professional development framework. The focus of these conversations is to facilitate skill building by identifying opportunities for growth jointly identified by the manager and team member.

Team of driven and passionate individuals

Today we are a growing team of 45+ professionals. Our team members come from diverse academic and professional backgrounds. You can find an engineer, a public policy graduate, a lawyer and an economics graduate all in one team, building on each other’s expertise to find creative solutions to governance problems. It is this commitment to create impact at scale that unites all of us.

How Samagra chooses you

We have a four-step recruitment process. We conduct an initial profile screening based on a resume and video submission on our website. Candidates are required to answer two predefined questions in the video. In the next round, a governance problem statement is shared with the candidates, and they are required to create a PPT and excel output as a part of their response. Post this, the candidates interview with our leadership in two rounds. These interviews involve case solving and an assessment of the candidate’s organisational fit.

Your life post Samagra

Over the years, Samagra has been able to mould dynamic young professionals with the right consulting tool-kit, strong work ethic and above all a bias for action, towards creating impact. After a stint at the Samagra team members have either continued to grow within the firm to assume leadership roles, or have pursued other academic/ professional aspirations where they continue to apply learnings from Samagra. “Samagra is the right place for anyone who cares about using their skills to create systemic change and tangible impact at scale. What makes the work meaningful to me is the number of lives it touches. It offers a great platform to solve pressing problems alongside a community of colleagues aligned in personal values and passion towards creating impact.” - Shivika Bhasin (Samagra alumni currently at Tony Blair Institute for Global Change).

Our country is at a critical juncture in its development trajectory. And we all have the option of contributing to its betterment. Samagra is the opportunity you need to exercise that option.