By 1982, the founding members of Indian Grameen Services (IGS), Shri Vijay Mahajan, Shri Deep Joshi and Dr. Sankar Datta were already considering the importance of professionals engaging in development action. The initial work done with ASSEFA, a Gandhian NGO, helped the trio in establishing Pradan in 1983. In 1987, IGS was registered as a Section 25 not-for-profit company under the aegis of Pradan, to undertake research and development in livelihood promotion.

By 1996, IGS was transferred to the newly formed BASIX Group, initially as an incubator for the newly formed NBFC, Bhartiya Samruddhi Finance Ltd. (BSFL). Later, IGS evolved into the research and development arm of Basix Social Enterprise Group (SEG) to test new ideas for addressing contemporary livelihood challenges. Aligned with its mission, IGS evolved viable, scalable; replicable; and most importantly sustainable ideas. The products and services thus developed were scaled up, either by IGS itself or by other BASIX Social Enterprise Group (SEG) companies or hived off as new entities. Since its inception, IGS has incubated a number of market led innovations and piloted new concepts around livelihood issues.

Vision:

IGS envisions an equitable world where the poor and marginalized in rural and urban areas, have access to livelihood opportunities on a sustainable basis, are prosperous and happy. Thus, IGS describes its vision in Hindi as, ‘Kaayam Rozgar – Khush-haal Pariwar’

Mission

In pursuit of its vision to augment access of poor to sustainable livelihoods, IGS sees itself as a laboratory for incubating innovations and defines its mission as,

Incubating: initiatives by generating / adapting new ideas and mobilizing appropriate financial, human and technical resources for sustaining these ideas to prove their viability, replicability, scalability and sustainability, and hiving proven models into separate entities.

Innovations: Creating and / or improvising models and approaches which are novel and address contemporary livelihood challenges.

Pro poor: Livelihood promotion initiatives which by design (rather than default) have the potential to impact livelihoods for a large number of poor households, and which can be managed and owned by the poor.

Values

Key values underlying IGS’ culture include:

• -Equal opportunity employer: Ensuring that entry and growth at IGS is non discriminatory with respect to caste, colour, age, religious affiliations, gender.
• -Fair and transparent systems: Organizational processes adept at addressing employees’ grievances.
• -Key values underlying IGS’ culture include: Providing employees space to follow their religious beliefs.
• -Gender sensitive: Policies designed to attract and retain women professionals.
• -Compliant with all prevalent Statutory Norms.
• -Recognize and Reward performance: A well designed appraisal and reward system including performance pay.
• -Creating Innovating & Learning Platforms: Employee efforts on personal and professional fronts are appreciated.
• -Impact & Results: Non negotiable.