story

Backstory

My friend Brinda, Brinda’s connection Malini, Malini’s connection Mallika, Mallika’s connection Sen. Who needs LinkedIn when your friends and connections are advocates of your work. Chinese whispers, forest fires, whatever! Women take women along.

RePORT India, the Regional Prospective Observational Research for Tuberculosis, had a website developer who went AWOL when the website crashed. No backup. Dr. Senbagavalli Prakash Babu (Sen), the RePORT India Program Manager saw this as an opportunity to find some one new (me), trustworthy (me again) and with a high degree of ownership (how many times to say me!)

We spoke, she was apologising for not understanding the tech jargon, I was reassuring her that the work she was doing was lightyears ahead and beyond the scope of some DNS and Python name drops. She asked me to quote. I send her an email with a price range, since the scope of work was not yet fully defined. Then she dropped the bomb. It was to be a tender bid.

The RePORT India Consortium was supported with bilateral funding from the Government of India’s (GOI) Department of Biotechnology (DBT) and the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Division of AIDS (DAIDS), and Office of AIDS Research (OAR). CRDF Global administers and oversees the funding from the U.S. government. (sic)

I am one. They are countries. And agencies. And global. And giants.

I copy paste the email quote onto the tender format. Courier. Done. Months go by. Never will I ever….

CRDF Global emails the contract for approval and signature.

I think what tipped in my favour was that I didn’t speak tech, I spoke medical. Thank God for my doctor mother. I grew up with STAT and CLW (contused lacerated wound). The thing with most doctors, scientists, research and development people is that they are so immersed in the work that they do, they have no interest in anything else and hence stay out of other speciality domains, like design. And with such clients you go the extra mile to deliver more than what you have committed. They honour your expertise, your efforts and your experience. Sen and Daphne ticked all these boxes.

The 1/4th red in the logo was incidental but turned out to be accurate as that is India’s TB global burden. Some things just organically fall into place.