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Sagar Gubbi
I am a techie by profession, an entrepreneur by spirit, a writer by interest, a traveler by ambition, but a fun-loving guy at heart. Based in Bangalore, I am writing about sustainable enterprise initiatives that have the power to bring economic development to the base of the pyramid.
2008-04-28
A visit to my hometown triggered me to explore the answer to the following questions: What do people at the base of the pyramid really want? Is it empathy or sympathy? What should a social entreprise aim to create?
About three weeks ago, I was in my hometown to spend a weekend with my family, as it was a long weekend to celebrate the Hindu New Year (called Ugadi in this part of India). There was also another reason for my visit – my nephew turned one that weekend. I always look forward to such regular, short visits to my hometown, not only for the time that I get to spend with my family but also for the gentle pace of life there. Davangere, a district headquarters located at the heart of the Southern Indian state of Karnataka, is a city of nearly 450,000 people. It serves as a commercial hub for the collection of smaller towns and villages around it. It used to be a textile hub once, but cheaper Chinese clothes put the local textile industry out of business. However, the city moved on to become a trading centre for agricultural products and more recently, an educational hub. The first thing that you would notice about the city is that it is always abuzz with a lot of activity – commercial or otherwise. A walk around the older and newer parts of the city makes one realize that its people are smart and savvy, if not as cosmopolitan or westernized as their counterparts in Bangalore.
I had read the Berkeley Bottom line’s posts about Skoll World Forum 2008 on their Social Edge blog and I was particularly intrigued by Mike and Omar’s posts on the session titled ‘Empathy and Ethics: Drivers of our Shifting Culture’. The posts triggered a lot of questions in my mind about what do people at the base of the pyramid really want. Is it empathy or sympathy? Of course, there are several answers to such questions in various books, but I decided to use my time during my hometown visit to find out if I can get the answers from people who comprise the ‘base of the pyramid’.
First up was the maid in my home. She hails from a nearby village and though she loved going to school as a child, she was forced to drop out by the time she was 12 and sent to work by her family. She, now in her 30s, has learnt quite a bit of English and is really good at everyday math. ‘I don’t need anybody’s sympathy’, she says, with an element of self-pride, ‘I only ask for enough opportunities so that I have a fair chance to lead a comfortable life’. She says she will happily move back to her village if there are enough opportunities there for her to make a decent living.
I then spoke to a man who works as a waiter in a small local eatery (which serves delicious ‘Benne Dose’ – Butter Dosa, a local speciality). He hails from a village in North Karnataka. He had the exact same things to say as my housemaid. I then spoke to a construction worker and a teenager who works as a helper in one of the numerous agricultural trading shops. Their opinions were the same.
I know that this exercise is not a systematic survey and it is hard to draw conclusions from it. However, the one thing that struck me was the fact that many people at the base of the pyramid want us to create only opportunities to them. They don’t ask for our sympathy. Western travellers and Indians raised mostly in urban centres carry a different image of the base of the pyramid – that of a group which expects sympathy. It’s probably not their fault. They only get to meet beggars in Indian cities and end up thinking that the entire base of the pyramid wants sympathy. However, empathy and a drive to create opportunities for them are the need of the hour. And this is what a social enterprise should am for. It is also probably true that a market-based approach to social entrepreneurship can bring in large-scale changes at the base of the pyramid and I shall explore that in a separate post.
I now appreciate C K Prahalad’s book on BOP – with all its perceived flaws - more than ever. I admire Muhammad Yunus and several others in the Microfinance sector. I now support social entrepreneurs even more strongly.
2008-03-24
What I will miss by not attending this year’s Forum
It’s that time of the year again, when hundreds of social entrepreneurs, development professionals, corporate executives, consultants, policy makers, researchers and students come together at Oxford University’s Said Business School, to discuss some of the world’s most critical social problems and try to find solutions to them through Social Entrepreneurship. The Skoll World Forum 2008 takes place this week and I am disappointed that, for several reasons, I won’t be there. However, I will be keenly following the event, through ‘edgy’ blog posts and updates from our pseudo-undercover journalist, Global X ;-).
This year, the Forum will focus on the theme of ‘Social Entrepreneurship: culture, context and social change’ and aims to examine the role of cultural and contextual issues in the social change process. Sounds exciting, isn’t it? The impressive line-up of discussions and accomplished individuals – check out the Forum’s agenda – is as exciting as the theme itself. Here are a few sessions that I would have personally loved to attend at the Forum this year:
1. The opening plenary session, which will be addressed by Jeff Skoll, Stephan Chambers, Nobel laureate Jody Williams and a few other distinguished individuals.
2. The session named ‘Empathy and Ethics: Drivers of our Shifting Culture’, which includes Ashoka CEO Bill Drayton as one of the speakers.
3. The session named ‘The Internet, Mobile Technology and Cross-cultural Communication’, which has speakers such as our very own ‘edgy’ Victor and Kiva’s Premal Shah.
4. The Evergreen session on ‘Hybrid and For-profit models’ would have been especially interesting to me, since I believe that these models are the way forward for social enterprises.
5. The Evergreen sessions on ‘Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, What’s the Impact of this All’ and ‘Effective Models for Partnership’ seem to be interesting too. The second session has SustainAbility’s John Elkington (I am eagerly awaiting his book, ‘The Power of Unreasonable People’, to be released in India) as one of the speakers.
It would have been interesting to attend one of the ‘Consulting Clinics’ too. And of course, the Closing Plenary session, which will be addressed by Al Gore and Acumen Fund’s Jacqueline Novogratz, is not to be missed.
It would have been exciting to personally meet several people whom I know only through e-mail interactions. But then, given the optimist that I am, I am sure I will be able to make it to the Forum next year. All of you attending the Forum this year do write to me about your experiences!
2008-03-10
A unique fellowship program which connects budding engineers with for-profit social enterprises
A few weeks ago, Nitin Rao, a friend and a fellow Bangalorean, contacted me to inform about the launch of ‘Engineers for Social Impact’ (E4SI), a unique fellowship program which intends to connect talented Engineering students from some of the best Engineering schools in India with for-profit social enterprises. I should have posted about E4SI a couple of weeks earlier since the application deadline for this program was 2nd March 2008. Nevertheless, E4SI is an exciting program and I am sure many of you would be interested in reading about it.
Every year, more than 400,000 Engineers graduate from about 3500 Engineering schools in India. However, many of them tend to take up jobs in traditional sectors such as IT and Manufacturing and very few of them are aware of the exciting opportunities that are emerging in the social enterprise sector. E4SI, launched by a group of enthusiastic youngsters led by Nitin, is aimed at addressing the problem of talent crunch among for-profit social enterprises in India. The program is also aimed at providing hands-on social enterprise work experience for current engineering students and it creates awareness of emerging opportunities in the development sector.
E4SI is a highly selective program which accepted applications only from students of a selected group of top Engineering schools (five IITs – Delhi, Bombay, Madras, Kanpur and Kharagpur, three NITs – Surathkal, Warangal and Trichy, BITS Pilani and NSIT Delhi) this year. Five fellows will be selected out of the applicants and they will be placed in partner for-profit social enterprises – Vaatsalya Healthcare, SELCO, Ujjivan, Intellecap and iDiscoveri – for internships. The program boasts of a group of accomplished advisers and the selection process will be conducted by a panel of experts with degrees from London School of Economics, MIT, Yale and Michigan.
Nitin, who himself interned with a for-profit education start-up last summer, is yet to graduate from his Engineering program at NIT Surathkal but has already accomplished a lot in the social enterprise sector (check out his amazing profile). I wish him and his team the very best for this initiative.
2008-03-03
Exploring the colours of rural India
I know that I haven’t been fair to the blogger in me over the past couple of months. Work hasn’t been kind to me of late and several other activities, though exciting, have kept me busy. I will soon write about these activities in this space. Keep watching!
Anyway, I was at the Fireflies Festival of Sacred Music here in Bangalore last weekend, along with my friends. The dusk-till-dawn festival, into its fifth year now, showcased a wide range of musical talent from India and abroad. Performances at this year’s festival included a folk dance called Puje Kunitha (Worship Dance), Bengali fakiri songs, Indian fusion music from bands such as Esperanto and Swarathma, popular Qawali numbers, Jazz and many more. The festival, which showcased Indian and Western art to an urban crowd (a few Western music lovers were also present), reminded me of a blog topic that I had thought about sometime ago – Rural Tourism.
Tourism in India has been growing at a steady pace over the past few years and every year, thousands of foreign tourists throng India’s tourist destinations to experience ‘Exotic India’. The elegantly done ‘Incredible India’ campaign by the Indian Government’s Tourism Ministry has been successful in attracting more tourists to India. However, Western tourists to India typically visit popular destinations such as Agra (Taj Mahal), Khajuraho, Mysore, Goa, Udaipur etc and the big cities. All these destinations have become quite expensive these days and many of them are not very well maintained. A better way to experience the culture and heritage of India is to visit its rural heartland. The Tourism Ministry realized this and hence, launched the ‘Explore Rural India’ campaign a couple of years ago, in association with UNDP India. The initiative showcases a few selected villages in different states of India, which offer a wholesome village experience, complete with home-stays and cultural shows. In addition to providing a new dimension to Indian tourism, this initiative intends to bring about inclusive tourism and bring economic benefits to rural India.
Of course, rural tourism initiatives will have to try hard to convince a hygiene-conscious Western (and urban Indian) tourist to visit rural India. And there is also the danger of environmental degradation of rural India from tourism. However, ‘ecotourism’ is increasingly becoming popular and several attractive rural tourism packages are being offered nowadays (I have heard about a low-cost rural tourism initiative near Bangalore, which I intend to try out soon). I hope to see many more such initiatives becoming popular in the near future.
2008-02-03
A ‘vehicle’ of change in the lives of rural artisans
Bosch Vaahan is an initiative of the Power Tools division of Bosch (not many people know that Bosch is not only about Automotive Technology). Launched in April 2006, the ‘Vaahan’ (which translates into a ‘vehicle’ in Hindi) is a mini-bus which carries sophisticated Power Tools to rural areas. A wide range of woodworking, construction and metalworking tools catering to the needs of rural carpenters, metalworking artisans, plumbers etc are carried by the ‘vaahan’, which visits different villages. Product demonstrations and information sessions are conducted by the ‘vaahan’ officials in rural areas. Rural artisans can try out these tools for their work. The tools are available for purchase to rural artisans at subsidized prices. Bosch has tied up with several banks, including Canara Bank and Andhra Bank, to offer attractive loan schemes for the rural folk to buy these tools.
The ‘vaahan’ traveled extensively in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh states of Southern India in its first phase and became quite popular. This popularity encouraged Bosch to launch a similar vaahan in North India last year. Plans are afoot to launch more vaahans to cater to the Western, Eastern and Central parts of India.
The Vaahan is a wonderful initiative since it creates win-win situations for all the stakeholders involved – Bosch has found a new market for its products; rural artisans get access to the latest tools to enhance their skills and products; banks can disburse more loans in rural areas. This is a novel way of market creation at the base of the pyramid and blends well with the Bosch tag line: ‘Invented for Life’!
Technorati Profile
2008-01-14
Organized retail in rural India
‘Retail’ is the new tale to tell in India nowadays. Organized retail has been the business buzzword in India for the past 3-4 years and every big Indian industrial house has made a foray into retail. Mumbai-based Future Group was among the first to make a successful foray into retail, with its chain of lifestyle (Pantaloons) and supermarket (Big Bazaar) shopping malls. There have been a spate of new chains coming up recently, most notably the Reliance Group’s Fresh and Jewellery outlets, the Tata Group’s Star India Bazaar and the Aditya Birla Group’s ‘More’ hypermarkets. Everyone seems to be in a tearing hurry to cash in on this retail boom before global majors like Walmart, Tesco and Carrefour make their entries into India. There are several other smaller and niche chains too. However, as with all high growth industries in the past, the retail industry has ignored rural and semi-urban India so far. Or, so I thought until I found out about 3A Bazaar.
3A Bazaar is India’s first mobile retail company which was launched in early 2007. The company is owned by the Paramount Trading Corp Pvt Ltd, an exporter of metal handicrafts and primarily operates in the Jyotiba Phule Nagar district of Uttar Pradesh in Northern India. The company is the brainchild of Mr. Asad Shamsi, who was inspired by a few similar retail chains in Europe. ‘3A’ represents the first letters of the names of the three Shamsi brothers, all of whose names begin with ‘A’. Before starting 3A Bazaar, Mr. Shamsi conducted extensive research in rural India and found out that India’s rural population does have disposable income, but not regularly. However, value for money, good quality and a product’s criticality were some of the factors that were to be considered. There are about 5 vans which carry goods worth 2-2.5 lakhs of rupees everyday from Mr. Shamsi’s storehouse to about 700 villages in JP Nagar district. However, most of the villages are visited weekly or fortnightly or monthly. This fits with the irregularity of incomes of villagers and the mobility eliminates the drawbacks of a static rural retail shop. The daily average sales are in the range of 8-10 thousand rupees and Mr. Shamsi is looking at increasing the size of his fleet. It will be very interesting to follow the progress of 3A Bazaar.
Meanwhile, Tata Nano, Tata Motors’ ambitious Rs. 1 lakh car ($2500), was launched at the Delhi Auto Expo last week, amid much fanfare. Even though doubts remain about safety and environmental impact of the ‘people’s car’, coming out with a full-fledged car at this price is an achievement nevertheless.
2008-01-02
Develops affordable medical diagnostic equipment and solutions
First of all, I apologize for my ‘no-show’ on Social Edge over the last couple of weeks. These two weeks have been hectic and fun at the same time. They were hectic since I travelled a lot, scooted around to meet people and managed some work too. And these two weeks were fun since I met a lot of friends (some of them visiting from abroad), attended a wedding in my hometown and spent a rollicking new year’s eve with friends in Goa. w00t!
This week, I am posting about a Bangalore-based technology company called NeuroSynaptic Communications, which develops affordable medical diagnostic equipment and solutions. NeuroSynaptic was started by Sameer Sawarkar and Rajeev Kumar, both alumni of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and the company works closely with the TeNet (Telecommunication and Computer Network) Group at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras to develop low-cost telemedicine solutions. The company currently offers a range of medical diagnostic kits and solutions, known as ReMeDi (Remote Medical Diagnostics). The kit and the related software cost as little as Rs. 10,000 (~ $250) and this can be used to measure some physiological parameters like body temperature, blood pressure, pulse rate and electrocardiogram (ECG). A patient’s measured parameters can then be communicated to the doctor sitting in a remote location, either through a videoconferencing application running on the computer (which is a part of the ReMeDi solution) or by uploading them to web-based databases. The low-cost and multi-tasking aspects of the ReMeDi kit make it very attractive to rural healthcare providers and the kit is already being used extensively. NeuroSynaptic’s success and innovation were recognized by the World Economic Forum recently, when it featured the company among the 39 Technology Pioneers from all over the world. NeuroSynaptic is the only Indian company to be featured in this elite list. It is also the only Asian company outside Israel to be featured in this list.
Here’s wishing all of you a very happy new year!
2007-12-18
Celebrating entrepreneurial spirit at the base of the pyramid
Sonalben Rajebhai Parmar’s life story seems to be taken straight out of a ‘70s Bollywood masala movie with a quintessential rags-to-riches story. From being a wandering daily wage labourer to running a successful retail business in Gujarat’s remote Nani Rabdal village, Sonalben has not only turned around the fortunes of her family but has also become a role model to several women in the village. Shaheeda Begum, a resident of the holy city of Banares in North India, turned her husband’s struggling cloth weaving shop into a profitable, branded apparel-making business. Nipu Bhattacharjee of Assam was once a school drop out but now runs a highly successful oil manufacturing business. Krishna Amin from Udupi in Karnataka, who once struggled to support his family due to his meagre income, not only runs a successful construction material supplier business now but also funds eye surgeries and healthcare for the poor.
What is common to all these men and women? They are all successful Micro Entrepreneurs who built sustainable businesses using micro-credit and are also recipients of the 2007 Micro Entrepreneurs Awards presented by Citibank’s Citi Foundation in collaboration with a Delhi-based NGO named Partners in Change. A ceremony to honour the 2007 awardees was held in Mumbai recently.
Since its inception in 2004, the Citi Micro Entrepreneurs Awards program has recognized and awarded several entrepreneurial talents at the base of the pyramid. This year, 11 worthy winners were chosen from an applicant pool of more than 1000 micro entrepreneurs. Women accounted for nearly 50% of all the applicants, indicating micro-credit’s popularity among them. Among the winners, apart from Kusum Tanwar of Delhi, all the others come from semi-urban and rural areas. A press release from the Citi Foundation says: “The awards were classified in three distinct categories- National Winner, National Runner-up and Social Responsibility. Keeping in mind the social, cultural and economic challenges in different parts of the country, awards in each category were presented to winners from four regions- East, West, North and South. Each National Winner of the 2007 Citigroup Micro Entrepreneur Awards received a cash prize of Rs.200,000/-. The National Runners-Up and winners in the Social Responsibility category received prize money of Rs.100,000/- each. NGOs, which nominated the awardees, received a special citation commending their efforts”.
The Citi Micro Entrepreneurs Awards program is a fantastic initiative that encourages entrepreneurship as a driver of social and economic change at the base of the pyramid. The program also provides us with real-life examples to understand the tremendous amount of impact that micro-credit can have at the base of the pyramid.
Here’s wishing everyone a happy holiday season! Merry Christmas!
2007-12-11
A week of Climate Change Co-incidences
It has been a week of co-incidences (or deliberate incidents?) with respect to the ‘climate change’ initiative. First, it is the ongoing United Nations Climate Change Convention in Bali, Indonesia, which I have been following with utmost interest. Then, Al Gore and R K Pachauri (of the UN Climate Change Panel) accepted their Nobel Peace Prize 2007 in Oslo earlier this week. Bangalore, which is known to have a fine weather throughout the year (supposedly comparable to the salubrious Californian weather), recorded unusually low temperatures due to a cold wave and some experts, surprisingly, attributed this also to the climate change phenomenon (I thought the climate change initiative’s focus was on rising temperatures and not the falling ones). And of course, after several ‘false starts’, I finally watched An Inconvenient Truth. The movie is truly incredible and deserves every bit of the adulation that it has received (a lesser known fact, at least in India, is that Jeff Skoll is one of the movie’s executive producers). Also, 8th Dec was celebrated as the ‘Global Day of Action against Climate Change’ and more than 1000 Greenpeace activists descended on Bangalore’s Chinnaswamy Cricket Stadium (where an India vs. Pakistan Test cricket match is currently on) and cheered loudly, attracting viewers’ attention to take action against climate change. Phew! It’s hardly surprising then, that I am writing about SELCO this week.
Solar Electric Lighting Company (SELCO) is a Bangalore-based social enterprise which provides sustainable energy solutions, such as solar energy-driven products, to underserved communities in rural India. Established in 1995, SELCO has provided affordable and environmentally sustainable energy to more than 75,000 homes in rural India. SELCO not only provides solar energy solutions but also facilitates income generation at the base of the pyramid through sustainable energy-based micro-enterprises. SELCO has more than 25 energy service centres in rural areas of Southern Indian states of Karnataka, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh and these centres serve as one-stop-shops for all the energy needs of rural communities. SELCO, which is a profit-making enterprise today, is unique because it believes that poverty alleviation and climate change are inter-related. Very inspiring, indeed!
I will leave you all with this neatly done little green e-book from Morgan Stanley, which describes a few simple, day-to-day disciplines that can help the world tackle climate change!
2007-12-04
Infusing the ideas of inclusion and sustainability into India’s mainstream psyche
Arun Maira, Chairman, Boston Consulting Group India, has very strong interests in the ideas of inclusive development and sustainability. He has written several thought-provoking articles in India's national newspapers and I think that his efforts to infuse the ideas of inclusion and sustainability into the minds of Indian policymakers and businessmen deserve to be better recognized in the social enterprise circles.
Mr. Maira’s article in the Times of India dated 14th June 2007, which is called "Takes Three to Tango" is excellent and provides a ready recipe for inclusive economic development in India. According to Mr Maira, inclusive development can be brought about only when the three stakeholders - the Government, the private sector and NGOs - work together. His article in today’s (04th December 2007) Times of India is called “It’s a three-legged race” and he insists that environmental and social indicators, together with financial indicators, are integral to any economic growth story and the performance of any economic model should be measured not just by the financial value created but also by the social and environmental value created by it. Of course, measuring the social and environmental value creation, unlike measuring financial value creation, is not easy (a related topic – social, economic and environmental impact assessment - has bothered me for a long time but more on that later). However, Mr. Maira makes a strong point in this article and urges Indian policymakers and corporate setups to holistically manage the ‘triple bottom line’.
2007-11-26
A sustainable energy solution for rural Indian households
Rural Indian households typically have a joint family structure wherein each household consists of at least 5-6 members. Women in such households typically spend a lot of time in the kitchen, cooking with energy sources such as kerosene. This means that they have to deal with hazardous smoke throughout the day. Cost is also an issue, since the amount of kerosene that one can obtain from the Government-subsidized public distribution system is hardly enough and villagers have to buy kerosene from the market, paying high prices. Kerosene’s alternative, LPG, is quite expensive and both kerosene and LPG are inflammable.
British Petroleum India Energy Ltd realized that solving this energy problem of rural India can be a business proposition too. It partnered with Bangalore-based Indian Institute of Science to come up with low-cost, smokeless cooking stoves which run on pellets made from agricultural waste. Aptly named ‘Oorja’ (which means ‘Energy’), this stove was pilot-tested in the rural areas of the Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra in 2006. The success of this pilot led to BP introducing ‘Oorja’ on a commercial scale and it now has more than 25,000 customers. The stove costs Rs. 675 (about $17) and provides a low-cost, clean and safe solution to the energy needs of rural Indian kitchens. ‘Oorja’ has a chamber for burning pellets and a mini-fan, powered by rechargeable batteries and controlled by a regulator, blows air to fan the flames. This technology increases combustion efficiency.
About 5000 rural households in Madurai and Virudhnagar districts of Tamil Nadu have adopted ‘Oorja’ into their kitchens. Most of these families have reported a 50% reduction in their cooking costs due to ‘Oorja’. Additionally, cooking with ‘Oorja’ doesn’t create irritation in the eyes and utensils are cleaner since there is no smoke generated. Of course there are a few problems with ‘Oorja’ – it doesn’t generate enough heat to make Indian breads (chapattis, dosas) and it cannot be refuelled while it is lit. But, I am sure that these problems will be sorted in due course.
2007-11-19
Adds value to the lives of informal sector workers by linking their skills to saleable products and services
Every summer, when I was a kid, my school would close for a two-month break and my mother (who probably had enough of having me around for the rest of the year ;-)) would pack me off to her native village where my grandparents lived. The village had two distinct areas: the upper caste area where people like my grandparents lived and the lower caste area where a nomadic group called ‘lambani’, which had migrated from North India, lived. The lambani women were always elaborately dressed, complete with intricately woven dresses and huge amounts of jewelry. I have thought several times that if properly marketed, lambani art can be of huge commercial value in India and abroad.
Last year, when I was attending an NGO meet in Bangalore, I met a couple of volunteers who were working for an organization called Maya Organic, which helps skilled artisans from the informal sector, such as traditional toy-makers, obtain commercial value for their skills. Maya is a Bangalore-based development organization which was setup in 1989 to work towards eliminating poverty and child labor. Maya&rs |
