NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Achyuta Samanta's pioneering work in social entrepreneurship has earned him global recognition and brought him awards galore. KISS (KIIT Institute of Social Sciences), a school for 25,000 tribal children, which Samanta founded in 1992, is his greatest passion for the moment. While KISS is acclaimed widely, its finance model still remains an enigma to many. In an interview with Dillip Satapathy and Jayajit Dash, Samanta shares his thoughts on future of KISS and KIIT and the status of education as a whole.

KISS has grown into a huge institution for tribal children. What is the finance model for running a non-profit institution of this scale?

The growth of KISS has followed the growth of KIIT (Kalinga Institute of Industrial Training). It's rare to see social service of this order where an organisation has Rs 500 crore of bank loan. We took this loan from nationalised banks for KIIT. From the beginning, we have made this resolution at the KIIT Society that five per cent of KIIT's turnover will go to KISS.

For this year, Rs 40 crore has come to KISS from KIIT's turnover estimated at Rs 600-700 crore.