A New Ledger. Measuring Success One Transformed Life at a Time.

---

My NoSmalltalk session with Prerna Mishra

by Albert Schiller

In the world of business, we are conditioned to measure success through a specific, unyielding vocabulary: monthly run rate, customer retention, sales figures, profit margins. "When we come from business school, the 1st thing is that we look at our numbers," founder Prerna Mishra acknowledges. This ledger is how a venture is judged viable. Yet, what if this ledger is incomplete? What if the most profound, most durable measure of a company’s impact cannot be captured in a spreadsheet at all? Prerna's work with Natureship suggests that for ventures operating at the human level, a different kind of accounting is required, one where the primary metric is the tangible transformation of a single human life.

Prerna is clear that when working with communities, "you need to be very patient... you have to see a bigger picture". This bigger picture is not an abstract ideal; it is a verifiable outcome demonstrated through human stories. The most powerful proof of her model’s success, and the metric she is most proud of, is the story of Ambika Upadhyay, the manager of her workshop.

When Prerna first met her, Ambika was a woman with a tenth-grade education emerging from "A very bad marriage, a very rough marriage", facing the immense "social stigma" that exists in a village environment. In the beginning, she was "hardly understanding anything. She was just trying to learn so many things". She was, by all conventional measures, an unlikely candidate for a managerial role in a growing enterprise. This is where the standard ledger fails. It can account for educational qualifications and work history, but it cannot measure dormant potential or a "drive to prove herself".

Prerna’s model created a stage for that drive. Today, she describes a different person entirely. "Now she opens the laptop, she checks orders on Amazon, and she by herself can manage all the orders, dispatch orders," Prerna states. This transformation was fueled by Ambika's own will, but it required an opportunity that the conventional job market would have never provided. The true ROI of Prerna's work is captured in this final observation: "She has grown out of that definition that you know she is a lady who has been left by her husband," Prerna says. "She now represents possibility. A better life".

The creation of a single role model who "represents possibility" is an act of scaling that is more profound than simply increasing sales. Prerna notes that the experiences of the first women she worked with "became the anchor" for the community, proving the model’s worth and creating the trust needed for others to join. This story forces a critical question: what kind of business model and personal philosophy is required to generate such a powerful, human-centric return on investment?

5 Lessons I Learned from this Encounter:

Open Questions for Discussion

1. Our society often celebrates success measured in financial terms. How can founders and leaders effectively communicate the value of non-numerical, human-centric impact to investors and stakeholders who are conditioned to prioritize profit?

2. Prerna created a "stage" for Ambika's potential. What are the key responsibilities of a leader in ensuring that such a stage is a space for genuine empowerment and not just another form of exploitation, however well-intentioned?