I was born and raised in the comfortable suburbs of Chicago. My parents are originally from India, and I first remember visiting India when I was 11 years old. It was also my first experience witnessing gross, extreme poverty. Surprisingly, 30% of the world’s extreme poor live in India. Poverty in India is something that is far removed from poverty in the United States. It is literally everywhere. Rich areas, middle class areas, villages, cities, etc. The destitute in India are incredibly diseased. Some have limbs missing. Many are blind. Countless are completely emaciated. Today, India is one of the world’s strongest economies, yet it is rife with extreme social issues.
While I was in India, I remember being on a coach bus. At a certain point, the bus stopped due to heavy traffic. Outside my window, I saw an emaciated teenaged boy with diseased feet swollen to the size of soccer balls. He came to the bus, and with his hollow eyes, stared inside. He then held up a toy craft. With a desperate look, he begged the people to buy it. Inside the air-conditioned bus, people refused to acknowledge the boy’s existence. With his enlarged feet, the boy limped around the bus. Still nothing. He limped around and around until he became tired. I sat there in awe of human indignity, and tears started to roll down my cheeks. For that young man, humanity had failed him.
16 years later, I remember suddenly waking up in a suit on an airplane. I was on my early 6 AM flight from DC to Dallas heading to my client, a large banking institution. I was 27 years old and was working for PwC. Working at a large consulting company came with many perks. I had a corporate card I could use to pay for most of my expenses. I had platinum membership with hotels and airlines. And, I was developing my career at an amazing rate. However, as I looked out of the airplane window, I thought about the boy I saw in India. I grimly wondered if he was still alive. I thought about the veterans that I saw every day on the streets of all the major cities I would visit for work. I thought about the plethora of Syrian refugee children I saw living on the streets of Istanbul when I visited Turkey in 2014. I thought about the juxtaposition of countless homeless people sleeping only two blocks from the manicured lawns of The White House in McPherson Square. My work in consulting was fun and challenging but something was missing. I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to own something. But, I was afraid to jump.
It was Friday, August 7, 2015, and I was still working at Citigroup. My role at Citi was amazing. It had a wonderful team, offered great career growth, and I was learning a great deal about analytics within the financial space. However, something inside me still felt like I needed to fully experience the social entrepreneurship space. I sat one day in front of the window of the Citi skyscraper in Long Island City, New York, and looked outside towards the sun beautifully setting on the west side of Manhattan. I realized that I was holding myself back. I realized that if I wanted to really make a difference in the social entrepreneurship space, I needed to be in it completely. I needed to change everything.
Once the sun fully set, I thought back to a conversation I had with Kevin Barrow, the CEO of MARK Labs. A few months back, Kevin inspired me with his passion of solving the world’s biggest problems using finance and technology. After reflecting on our conversation, I picked up the phone, and I asked him for a job at MARK. There were 5 seconds of silence. Kevin responded with “Absolutely, I was hoping you’d ask.” The following Monday, I spoke with Glenn the Director of my group at Citi. I told him about my dreams of joining a social startup and that I found a great opportunity to work with MARK in disrupting the social finance space. Glenn was extremely supportive of the endeavor and told me it would be great for my personal growth. With bittersweet feelings, I left Citi, and started my career at MARK 3 weeks later.
Fast forward 5 months, MARK Labs is now one of eleven teams chosen by Techstars/Barclays to participate in a highly selective accelerator. My team and I are building out a product that solves the world’s biggest problems in a sustainable and holistic way. We are doing this so we no longer have to find bandaid solutions to issues such as extreme poverty, we don’t have to be accepting of today’s status quo. No one will have to turn a blind eye to a sick and hungry child.
There are enough resources in the world to help everyone. However, the current systems of helping others are outdated and ineffective. The word “philanthropy” is Greek for “love of mankind.” I joined MARK because the way we love each other needs to be disrupted.
-Faraaz Farooq is the Director of Strategy and Product at MARK Labs. He is interested in social entrepreneurship, financial innovation, and pastel shirts and cardigans.
