Ashwamedh Foundation Trust Background Story

                      Ashwamedh Foundation Trust

AKDC-10 

         In October 2010; after the successful event of AKDC-10 (Ashwamedh Kalamanch's Drawing Competition 2010) we celebrated the success of event in King's Circle's Garnish restaurant. After having the cake & food; we went straight to Five Gardens, Wadala and sat in one of the garden. Every one was very much enthusiastic as they were very high on morales after a successful event for which everyone of us worked hard day and night for almost a month. All Mumbai level competition that too for children was not an easy task. Handling crowd of 650 students was huge responsibility and we were really happy that we did it successfully. 

        16 eyes were looking at me and 16 ears were eager to listen to me. Eight of those minds had only one question to ask me. "Deepak, what next?".That was for the first time I explained them everything about my concept of Ashwamedh Group. And to my surprise none of them understood anything. Reason was very simple, they were not confident enough to even run a single Group. And I was telling them about four ventures in same Organization at the same time. It was not at all necessary for me to discuss about entire concept with them at that stage. But I knew that if I will remain transparent with them from the beginning, then only I will be able to build a good team. After telling them briefly about Ashwamedh Kalamanch, Ashwamedh Knowledge Centre, Ashwamedh Financial Services and Ashwamedh Foundation Trust; I asked them whether they have any questions? We were just one event old and there were four different groups within one single group. Rahul Mahadik and Jitesh Bhilare were my MBA college Mates, Rakesh Dudwadkar, Ajay Kadam and Anant chavan were my drama friends, and Hakim, Jitendra and Rajendra were my students . So I had to address everyone according to their understanding level.

 I plainly told them; You will be running Ashwamedh Kalamanch after two years. I will help you to lend stepping stones of same. My main interest is Ashwamedh Knowledge Centre; so I will be starting it roughly after two years. All agreed to it,as none of them had any idea about other fields and so they didn't asked me anything more. I made them realize that AK and AFT are non-profit organizations and that's the reason I want full team, while AKC and AFS are businesses and so I will be forming altogether new teams/partnerships for starting those ventures in future.Rahul, Jitesh, Hakim understood my overall plan; but rest of all were looking at me with confusion. 

    Somehow I realized that it was too early to make them understand what we will be doing in future and so I concentrated my whole conversation only on next plans of Ashwamedh Kalamanch. We wanted to do more and more art related competitions, seminars, workshops etc. for children. But after first event itself we were aware that Events needs huge investments and man-power. During drawing competition we found it very difficult to search for sponsors;as we were completely new and Ashwamedh Kalamanch was not registered.During AKDC-10 we had to use our school's receipt books to collect donations and take sponsorship cheques on our school's Trust name.I and Anant, we both were ex-students of Mulanche Samarth Vidyalaya, so trustee of school had tremendous faith in us and he helped us in that. 

         We knew that this will not happen everytime; so we decided to register our business. But there was one big problem.Most of us were already doing some jobs and none of them wanted to leave their current job and everyone wanted to stay associated with Ashwamedh Kalamanch. So we dropped the plan of registration of Ashwamedh Kalamanch as business. Also 'Kalamanch' part in the name was not suitable for non profit trust as it would only restrict us to 'Art related activities' and hence we decided to form Ashwamedh Foundation Trust. I didn't had any problem with that because I knew that some day I would use same Trust to build my dream school in future.During my coaching classes we used to teach around 10% of students without taking any fees considering their very bad financial conditions and right from then (year 2005); I had always dreamed that a day will come when I will open Night School or School for Street children and formation of Trust was completely inline with my humble dreams.So we decided that we must keep Ashwamedh Kalamanch as Art and Cultural center under Ashwamedh Foundation Trust and carry out our activities. We started working on Ashwamedh Kalamanch projects one by one and somehow successfully created it's presence on Internet. You can very easily create brand recognition via internet. And so we made almost 40 videos including shortfilms, webseries, public ads etc. 

        An year later; on first anniversary of Ashwamedh Kalamanch we visited Titwala's Mahaganpati Mandir. After Ganesh-darshan we sat in the nearby garden and started chit-chat. Jitendra Patel asked "Sir, yeh saal drawing competition karna hai yaa nahi?" I said we will do it, but in the Christmas vacation. The registration part was slipped off our minds for so many months. Anant Chavan used to remind me many times, but I used to tell him "Let's do some more school events &; then we will go for registration".But when entire team showed strong wish for AKDC-11; we decided to meet some lawyer and start the registration process.

       One day when I was sitting with Jitesh Bhilare in Five Gardens; my phone ranged and  to my surprise an assistant of some lawyer was asking me "Sir, do you want to register Ashwamedh Kalamanch's logo?"; I answered, "I want to register Ashwamedh Kalamanch first". She laughed and gave me her office address. The next day Anant and I, we went to Dadar and met lawyer Deepa of Siddhakala Advisory. She explained us entire procedure of registration and advised us to register Society and Trust simultaneously. I agreed to it because I understood that events in which we use sponsorship can not be considered as social events, and so Society of Art was the only option under which Ashwamedh Kalamanch could have gained some donations.Laws are very complicated and if your lawyer doesn't explain them to you in simple language then those laws become rocket science for you. Unfortunately all lawyers are expert in frightening the clients without any reason. We are still waiting for court hearing of Ashwamedh Foundation Trust. "Kanoon Tarikh pe Tarikh, Tarikh par Tarikh diye jaa raha hai". Anyways;  I just shared some background story of Ashwamedh Foundation Trust. 

    Next post of AFT will be regarding Virar and socio-political culture of the city; where we will be going to run OUR trust.Thanks for reading this post.