EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

I. Title: Organizational Understanding

II. Organisation: Center for Collective Development (CCD)
III. Reporting Officer: Shri S. Trilochan Sastry
IV. Faculty Guide: Prof. Arvind Gupta
V. Students’ Name: Arun Kumar Venkta, Kanti Kiran Bejavarappu, M Lokesh, Satish
Chandra, Sudarshan Reddy, Vinod Kumar Singh
Objectives: To develop an understanding of what an organisation is all about, to know about
its evolution, to learn about its functioning in the nascent stage. To understand about its
structure, activities, resource mobilisation, strengths and weaknesses, stake holders and also,
strategies adopted over a period of time and the emerging dimensions. To understand the
lifeline of the organisation
Methodology and Source of data: A simple framework comprising of five basic questions
was developed to understand the organisation. Few Existing frameworks were used to
understand the issues of leadership, emergence of organization and nascent organization’s
future based on the policies adopted towards employees. Insights were gathered from
interaction and observation, and from interviews with various staff. Both primary and
secondary sources were used to obtain information. The primary sources comprised of
information obtained from the employees of the organization and the beneficiaries of the
organization. On the other hand, the secondary sources consisted of books, organization’s
documents and information available on the Internet.
Major findings: The CCD is an NGO, working for creation of wealth for the poor. It was
promoted by seven founding trustees and registered as a Society under the AP Societies Act.
Trilochan Sastry is the founder, secretary and CEO. The organization began operations in
August 2004 with the objective of replicating for agricultural commodities something akin to
what NDDB accomplished for the dairy sector. The organization has a simple flat structure.
The organization is small and flexible with high quality professionals with a strong interest in
development. It has thirteen employees in total. Out of which three people are based at
headquarters in Hyderabad and remaining working at field level in the districts of Adilabad
and Anatapur. Each district has a spearhead team that works with the community to catalyze
the formation of the cooperative. It began operations with modest funding from HIVOS, and
token grants from the Ratan Tata Trust, Cooperative Development Foundation (CDF),
FWWB and one of the founders. The organization is intervening in the villages by the
promotion of thrift cooperatives initially and developing farmers’ cooperative later. The
Leadership of the CEO is playing an important role in the running of the Organization. The
main inspiration for most of the employees in the organization is working under a renowned
person coupled with the type of work done by the organization. The relationship of the CEO
and the employees is comparable to a teacher-student relationship. The CEO explains about
the work to be done and assigns to the teams keeping the deadlines.
Conclusion and Recommendations: The organization’s success depends upon the
performance of the farmers’ cooperatives and the benefits returned to the small and marginal
farmers. The organization needs to develop a clear model for these cooperatives so that it can
move smoothly towards its vision. Presently, the organization while promoting the
cooperatives has to keep an eye on the targets given by the donor agencies. The organization
can avoid these targets and work independently by creating its own corpus fund. The
employees need to be given more freedom to get their maximum towards the work.