🪷 Time for a corporate fairy tale
This story comes from a personalised book I created to honour Vineet Nayar, then CEO of HCL Technologies.
In this story, HCL employees didn’t just admire the Bodhi Tree. They grew a part of it.
Here it goes -
In 2007, as the Japanese Prime Minister prepared to visit India, leaders at a tech company debated what gift would befit the occasion.
Ideas flew — Nachiarkoil brass lamp, Pashmina silk shawl, Swamimalai bronze statue …..
And then, one voice — a business head and environmentalist — asked:
“What if we give him something alive? A piece of India’s spirit?”
🌱 His idea was a Bodhi tree sapling — a symbol of enlightenment, peace, and rooted wisdom.
At first, people laughed it off. But he persisted.
The team collaborated with scientists. They cloned the tree through tissue culture.
Vineet, the CEO, backed it fully.
🇯🇵 The Japanese PM bowed to the sapling. Not out of politeness — but reverence.
That single act sowed a forest of impact.
🌍 Over one million Bodhi saplings were distributed across Buddhist nations.
👩🌾 Employees and families joined organic farming and tree planting.
🌾 Rural self-help groups blossomed around the idea.
🪴 What began as “just a gift” became Project Bodhi — an ecosystem of culture, commerce, and consciousness.
This wasn’t just CSR.
It was an innovation in gifting that grew roots.
🌳 It turned gifting into storytelling.
🌏 Diplomacy into ecology.
💡 And an overlooked idea into a legacy that still grows today.
🌟 What gifts are your people planting — that might grow into movements?
***
The synopsis above is only a sliver of the magic — the rest is in the book I created for Vineet.
If you're curious, you know who to ask. 😉
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