By Visi R. Tilak

    Leila Janah
    Pictured, Ms. Janah.


    In December, Ms. Janah was chosen by Forbes Magazine as one of 30 Rising Stars under 30.

    Ms. Janah, whose mother is half Belgian, half Bengali and father is from Kerala, grew up in the U.S. She started visiting India during her college years, and says she felt an overwhelming sense of belonging on these trips.

    “When I first arrived at Chatrapati Shivaji Airport (in Mumbai), an immigration official smiled at me and said, ‘Welcome, madam, you are home.’ For a quiet moment before the haggling and hustling began with the baggage handlers, I felt deeply connected to my roots,” Ms. Janah told The Wall Street Journal’s India Real Time.

    The idea for Samasource began in high school, where she was already interested in social justice and involved with the American Civil Liberties Union and a couple of local organizations. At 17, Ms. Janah went to Ghana on a scholarship to teach English. She then studied African development at Harvard, and later worked for the World Bank, getting frustrated with the large-scale development approach in places like Africa.

    She had her “eureka” moment after college when working for a consulting firm that sent her to India to help a large outsourcing company. If outsourcing could generate billions of dollars for a few entrepreneurs in India and the Philippines, then, she asked herself, why couldn’t the model be inverted to generate a few extra dollars for billions of people? And thus Samasource was born.

    The company takes work that is given to big outsourcing firms and instead assigns it to youth and women who have been trained by Samasource to perform these jobs. The work includes transcription services and content moderation. Clients typically pay per task and prices vary depending on the complexity and volume of work.

    We spoke with Ms. Janah about her organization, her achievements and her goals. Edited excerpts:

    The Wall Street Journal: What are your thoughts on being one of Forbes 30 Rising Stars under 30? 

    Leila Janah: I guess I don’t think of myself as very successful. Poverty is a huge problem, and according to the latest data on the Millenium Development Goals, it’s not getting eliminated as fast as we’d like. Samasource has added a helpful new voice to the chorus, but we’re still quite small. There are miles to go. 

    WSJ: There are a lot of people out there trying to do noble things… You are one of the luckier ones. What do you attribute your success to?

    Ms. Janah: I think people are hungry for new ideas and leadership in the world of poverty alleviation. Most development programs are started and led by people with Ph.Ds in economics or policy. Samasource is part of a cadre of younger organizations headed by entrepreneurs from non-traditional backgrounds. It helps that I started when I was 25 and had a fresh take.

    Another factor is the core idea behind Samasource: that poor people want the same things that everyone does – a decent job that pays a living wage and offers some stability. Giving people work instead of, or as a complement to, aid is appealing to pretty much everyone.

    WSJ: With outsourcing taking a lot of flak, how is the political environment going to affect your organization?

    Ms. Janah: We don’t do outsourcing. We do impact sourcing. This is a new term that refers to employing individuals with limited opportunity for sustainable employment as principal workers in Business Process Outsourcing centers.

    Impact sourcing will then become for outsourcing what impact investment was for investing. It will take a high-growth sector with billions of dollars behind it and make it work for poor people.  A recent study projected that by 2020, the market for impact sourcing services will grow to employ 2.9 million people. We are excited to be at the vanguard of this movement.

    WSJ: What work are you doing specifically with India and South Asia? Projects in the works or planned?

    Ms. Janah: We currently partner with delivery centers in India (Jharkhand, Bangalore, Kolkata, Pula and Mangalore) and in Pakistan (Lahore).  We call these partners “delivery centers.” Samasource works with local delivery center partners who recruit, hire and train poor women and youth.

    These partners work with local community-based organizations, government organizations, schools and other non-government organizations to source agents (workers). Additionally, these delivery center partners may use radio advertising or ﬂyers to source local agents.  The criteria for selecting agents is that they must be between the ages of 18 and 30, have no formal work experience, and are currently earning less than a living wage. Agents are then provided free, specialized technology training, soft skills training, and project-speciﬁc training before beginning work. From there, agents report to these delivery centers each day to work.

    WSJ: What are your goals for the near future?

    Ms. Janah: Right now, our team is working on scaling Samasource to several thousand more workers in Africa and Asia, and launching a domestic pilot here in San Francisco called SamaUSA. I am looking forward to the day we’ve moved over 100,000 people out of poverty through Samasource.

    I also dream of turning Sama into an organization with many different business lines, each using technology to tackle poverty in a different way. After a trip to Sierra Leone last year where I learned that one in eight women die in childbirth, I launched another venture. Samahope is the world’s first crowdfunding site for life-saving surgeries – think of it as Kickstarter for medical treatment. We’re just getting off the ground but believe this could be huge.

    ‪I’ve also started angel investing and advising other startups, and recently joined the board of CARE, one of the world’s largest humanitarian organizations. I’m trying to squeeze in a book, but that’s looking like it might take a while.


    Follow India Real Time on Twitter @indiarealtime.