Art Appreciation (by Prof Anunaya Chaubey) is one of the courses that I am pursuing this term at the Young India Fellowship. One of the assignments is to visit the National Gallery of Modern Art, pick a painting and write about it, keeping in mind various criterion discussed in class.

I liked Satish Gujral’s Ecstasy, MF Husain’s Cyclonic Silence, an untitled work by SH Raza and a few other miniatures.

Upon returning to my hostel I thought these are big names, one could easily find their works online. Surely there must be scores of websites dedicated to their work.

How wrong I was.

Some of the foreign galleries have used technology and presented online viewers with a virtual tour of their paintings. Some other contemporary artists have their own websites showcasing their entire collection. The problem arises with artists, especially the Indian ones whose career span into decades. Websites are mostly maintained by fans, but there is again an inconsistency in the presentation, comprehensiveness or the regularity. And understandably so.

But I get a feeling that this must be the case with art in general. It is much easier to present music or text online. Paintings become a tough endeavor. The galleries don’t allow photography, and even if they are put up online, I am assuming the tagging done is so badly that it is virtually impossible to locate some of the earlier and relatively lesser known works online.

This however, might also be a worthy investment for a project. Perhaps by some like Soros’ Open Society Institute or perhaps Google itself. There should also be some crowdsourced medium where folks can upload the works of some of the great artists (to start with), so that there exist places, which aim to become the exhaustive catalog of these artists. And I think this is crucial especially from an Indian context.

Rishabh Kaul is Economics & Engineering student at BITS Pilani who is interested in entrepreneurship and social innovation. Check out his profile at Linkedin or buzz him at rishabhkaul[at]gmail[dot]com

In college, I was once the secretary of the English Language Activities Society. We were a merry bunch. Under the masquerade of a heavy literary/deb soc sounding title, we were pretty much just a group of friends who enjoyed quizzing. And most of the time that’s pretty much all we organized, save the occasional jam/scrabble/story writing contest.

For years it was debated (snigger) if these merry men (and a few women) would produce anything worthwhile  based on the skill sets they acquired in this club.

After 4 years of brainstorming, I present to you their bastard child.

Over Head Transmission (or OHT- oh ech tee). [The link has our impressive bios, past quizzes and all that tosh]

We’re a young bunch of testosterone packed quizzers who provide you with original tasty quizzes. The only unoriginal part I guess is the name of the start-up, which is derived from a popular event that takes place in a desert once a year. The event’s  legacy is far richer than ours.

Currently, we’re working on some cool programs to target the little ones who are still naive (or not so naive if they study in DPS RK Puram), but till then, we’re free to be summoned/commissioned to organize quizzes for your college/corporate quiz on any topic under the sun. These pay the bills.

That is all.

Rishabh Kaul is Economics & Engineering student at BITS Pilani who is interested in entrepreneurship and social innovation. Check out his profile at Linkedin or buzz him at rishabhkaul[at]gmail[dot]com

I considered myself lucky when I was amongst the first few folks to check out the youth information blog Letmeknow (Founded by my friend Nitin Rao), nearly 3 years ago. I loved the portal, it cut through the muck that other such blogs were churning. It also brought together exciting opportunities and events from various sectors, something which I couldn’t find on niche blogs (who would focus only on college festivals or essay competitions etc).

I immediately subscribed to the blog and would check it at least twice every day. I was a believer in the power of this simple idea. And there were many more like me who considered this their bible.

Soon as word spread, it became bigger and bigger and crossed 1 lakh visitors. The opportunities also started expanding.

Then something happened:

It started offering internship listings. At first I thought, oh wow, another value addition, probably because I was looking for internships, but after a while the internship fungus started to take over.  What irked me was that most of these internships didn’t seem very exciting to me and I am sure I am speaking for a larger community here. I would have to scroll a few pages till I got to an “internship free” post. When this would happen, I would come across college festivals. Sigh.

As the site became more mainstream, I think it started attracting a different kind of crowd. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but something changed and I started to frequent the site lesser and lesser.

I pleaded the executive team to not lose their indie cred

I think there is a great model that could’ve been incorporated. I personally think after attaining the mass cult status, they should have started a paid subscription model for selected exclusive information, which cut past these hazaar internships. Through their representatives or well wishers in various college they could have made a decent amount of money too (Rs 300 per year would’ve been enough IMHO).

Or maybe I am wrong. Maybe after introducing the paid model, a lot of people would’ve just lost interest.

So what then?

I guess Letmeknow would then just move back to its original cute self, where it wasn’t about page hits, it wasn’t about 500 updates in a day. It was about interesting opportunities.

I really hope I see that day soon. I love that site.

Rishabh Kaul is Economics & Engineering student at BITS Pilani who is interested in entrepreneurship and social innovation. Check out his profile at Linkedin or buzz him at rishabhkaul[at]gmail[dot]com

Articulation is a gift. So is clear construction of thought and so is presentation. When the three combine, it’s a killer combo.

I have heard tons of talks, few in person and many many more online.

During one of the Oscars (I think it was the 04 edition), there was a little 4 minute video playing in between the award presentation. One guy in that video said, “I think the wonderful thing about a good movie is that it reminds you of all the other good movies you have seen”.

That could be extended to good talks, or good books or amazing good.

Everytime I see a good talk, I am reminded of the talk delivered by Prof Robert Wolcott of Kellogg in front of my eyes at the World Business Dialogue.

Pay close attention to the Fort vs Ship analogy he uses, which is of tremendous importance when you try to figure the sort of work profile you would want in your job.

The number of people I have recommended this talk to, I cannot count.

Rishabh Kaul is Economics & Engineering student at BITS Pilani who is interested in entrepreneurship and social innovation. Check out his profile at Linkedin or buzz him at rishabhkaul[at]gmail[dot]com

I just arrived from an extraordinary trip from the city of Cologne. Apart from housing some wonderful museums and giving the world it’s water (That’s Eau de Cologne), it’s been host to one of the largest student run conferences in the world called the World Business Dialogue.

I was amazed by the level of professionalism the organizers showed. The speaker list was also fabulous. I would’ve liked had there been more interaction between the speakers and the students, but it seemed that most of them operated on tight schedules.

I was also happy at them embracing social entrepreneurship. This wave of thinking is still at a very nascent stage in Europe but its still heartening to see more students wanting to get involved in the social sector.

Another thing I noticed was that the German companies have started hiring big time. Though if you want to work in Europe, be sure to equip yourself with at least 1 foreign language apart from English if you want to work on the client side.

Coming to the educational scenario, things are pretty laid back in Europe with many students pursuing 2-3 degrees and taking a year off in between them. One interesting observation about Germany was that there were no elite institutions (unlike say UK), which doesn’t mean that the standard of education isn’t good, it merely means that the playing field is more leveled. Germany is definitely a very good option for higher education, especially for its emphasis on creativity, something which is lacking in most Indian schools.

Coming back to the conference, I loved it because of the international crowd. Sure there were too many Germans than previous editions, but I enjoyed hanging out with them too and learning amazing things from there such as the complex German digital tax system (Note: The licence fee has to be paid even if the device is not attached or has no immediate capabilities to connect to internet). The lectures/panels should be put up by now, I specially recommend (as will most people at the WBD) you to check out the talk By Robert Wolcott who apart from looking like Quentin Tarantino, spoke on innovation.

Some of the things (apart from many other) I gathered:

• The Germans and most of the western world were severely affected by the recession and most of them are still in the process of recovering.
• Most didn’t see this coming and as some of the CEO of major companies admitted during the panels didn’t have plans in case they were hit with such a scenario, which mean back to the drawing board when the recession came. They were prepared for growth but not for bust.
• One of the major challenges for businesses in the future is going to be maintanence of IT infrastructure. The future is going to be how well you can keep your data real time. No one wants to wait till the evening news.
• Numbers are important but so is recruitment is a major concern. Multi-disciplinary teams are going to become more prevalent. They are much more likely to hire “boy scouts”, whose Indian counter parts I suppose are Quizzers
• Companies need to invest in risk managers to position them better since booms and busts are part of a cycle.

There was very little talk about environmental sustainability with more emphasis on business sustainability. Then there was usual chatter of how one needs to improve customer relations etc etc, you know the drill of how the entire world is a service industry.

They had a forgettable career fair, but the workshops were interesting. On the first day we played the role of consultants, with actual management consultants sitting with us and working on a case for some of the worlds’ future problems. I picked the one of business ecosystems (there were about  to choose from) and it expected us to come up with challenges and solutions to a problems we envisioned will affect the business scenario in 2030. On the second day, the workshop was more of a broadcast with industry folks talking to us about what their company did.

One of the best parts of any conference is the people and this one had some of the more interesting people I have met. I loved how down to earth most of them were and how after a heavy days of attending lectures and workshops you could go downtown to grab a cold one (or many cold ones). It was inspiring to be around people who were involved with so many fascinating projects. While the average age of the WBD delegate was 23 point something, there were the odd 18 year olds who had founded successful human rights organizations, the odd 27 year old who was running three companies and people from South Africa who were interested in obtaining an MBA in Social Entrepreneurship and them going back to their homeland and bringing about change.

The rest of the days were filled with city rallies, beerfests, visits to the museums and hanging outwith friends in pubs where everyone knew your name.

I would definitely recommend anyone to apply to the World Business Dialogue!

Enjoying lunch with friends from all over the world

On top the bridge overlooking the Rhein River. There were over a 10 thousand of these on the grill.

Latino lover

On one of the city rallies with the folks.

Rishabh Kaul is Economics & Engineering student at BITS Pilani who is interested in entrepreneurship and social innovation. Check out his profile at Linkedin or buzz him at rishabhkaul[at]gmail[dot]com

A recurring theme in romantic novels and movies is that you travel all over the world to finally find what you were searching for, right where you began. Could it be that the answer to malnutrition and self sustaining communities be a plant which has been growing in their back yard for all this time? This might be the case with Moringa Oleifera, often dubbed as the Miracle Tree, often discussed as being a savior of vulnerable communities especially in Africa and South Asia.

The plant, which grows in dry soils in tropical lands, is known primarily for the exceptional nutritional value of its leaves. Lowell Fuglie who has been researching abut the uses of Moringa for over a decade (and used to work for the Church World Service) says ”Gram for gram, Moringa leaves contain three times the iron of spinach, four times the vitamin A of carrots, seven times the Vitamin C of oranges, three times the potassium of bananas, and four times the calcium and twice the protein of milk” (a much larger list can be obtained here). “Nutritionally, you can’t beat it.” he adds.

But it doesn’t end here; Moringa Oleifera is known to be a really good water purifier, plant growth enhancer, biofuel (abstract only), and has plenty of medicinal uses. These address some of the most pressing issues faced at the BoP today: Enegry, water scarcity & agricultural yield and most importantly malnutrition. All this being said, one would expect entrepreneurs to jump at this opportunity and capitalize upon it. A Moringa-based idea submitted to the Ashoka’s Nutrition Competition was even adjudged as an early winner. However, we don’t see any major players trying to create an industry based on this wonder plant. Why so?

The opportunities and challenges in the commercialization of Moringa have been summed up well by in a paper written by J P Sutherland, who was involved with a biotech startup called Optima Environment SA based in Switzerland. He cites lack of extensive research, skepticism from the scientific community, barriers to entry in the form of government regulations as well as poor marketing as some of the factors which constraint the commercialization of Moringa products such as oil, water coagulants and packaged food. He emphasizes that if entrepreneurs can find a way to improve the extraction process, moringa oil has a potential to become a useful source of fuel (both industrial as well as domestic) in the years to come. However, it’s also up to the venture capitalists in the agro-health sector to realize it’s importance as a life saving plant and encourage investments in this domain.

What’s really fascinating about this plant is that it is locally available in areas that need it most. The tropical nations provide the temperature and soil requirements that is suitable for its growth.  Every part of the plant, be it the stems, the leaves, the pods are useful in one way or the other. Even if it takes time to commercialize it on a large scale, I can see this as a useful community run venture to meet the nutrient needs of villages that are struggling to meet their requirements.

Originally posted on Nextbillion

Rishabh Kaul is Economics & Engineering student at BITS Pilani who is interested in entrepreneurship and social innovation. Check out his profile at Linkedin or buzz him at rishabhkaul[at]gmail[dot]com

If something isn’t broken, do we still fix it? This is something one hears quite often and it’s importance in Base of the Pyramid contexts is often neglected. A recent talk at BITS Pilani by (Retired) Brigadier P. Ganeshan, Andhra Pradesh head of Honeybee (we have earlier covered Honeybee here), focused on just that. In a nutshell, Honeybee is a digitized compendium of rural innovations and local practices implemented by rural communities in Indian villages. It currently houses over 100,000 innovations from all over India. Talk about an idea pool huh?

The crux of his talk was the need for knowledge-based growth. Despite India being a knowledge-based economy, he said, it is surprising to see how the knowledge possessed by BoP populations is being neglected and not given the attention it deserves. He stressed that many social entrepreneurs, though willing to spend vast amounts of time lending an ear to the problems of villages, aren’t as willing to accept that these villages have come up with solutions to their own problems. The critical part, he believes, is optimizing these solutions to maximize their output.

He spoke of how India’s farmers usually follow 30-35 farming practices, but no initiative is in place to optimize these practices and introduce appropriate technologies. According to him, villages are the oldest and most natural and form of open source knowledge, with potential to be further improved for the benefit of the entire nation.

The best thing social entrepreneurs could do is understand local technologies already being used and optimize them with local knowledge gathered from the insight of their users. Local solutions in the villages are often the most eco-friendly and sustainable, and they are also locally made, cutting down on operation costs.

The pic is a washing machine cum exercising machine which was invented by Remya, young girl from Kerala and is now patented.

Moses Lee highlighted the notion behind the above in a previous post, calling it “survival entrepreneurship”. Similarly, Fast Company has referred to the overarching trend as “trickling-up innovations”. The sheer simplicity of this particular example amazed me. It doesn’t require any electricity, it is sustainable and, hey, it even keeps one fit. Ganeshan added that for a nation like India, it is production by the masses and notmass production which will alleviate poverty. Hence it’s critical to involve the community from where the idea is taken in the manufacturing of a product. This would ensure inclusive growth.

What about the innovators themselves? This question led Prof. Anil Gupta, founder of the Honeybee Network, went on to found the National Innovation Foundation, which then started the Grassroots Innovation Augmentation Network (GIAN). GIAN allows entrepreneurs to take ownership of technologies, commercialize products and scale production. As far as innovators are concerned, some want to simply be compensated for the technology while others are more entrepreneurial and desire venture funding. More about that can be read in their Business Opportunities section (North, West).

It’ll be interesting to see how entrepreneurs can utilize this goldmine. There’s huge potential for the knowledge of informal sectors to be leveraged and introduced into the formal economy. Once entrepreneurs and investors start realizing this and giving it due recognition, I’m confident that we’ll see India’s villages achieve growth at a much faster rates.

published originally at Nextbillion.net

Rishabh Kaul is Economics & Engineering student at BITS Pilani who is interested in entrepreneurship and social innovation. Check out his profile at Linkedin or buzz him at rishabhkaul[at]gmail[dot]com

Yep you heard it right. Just got the news that I have been selected as a student delegate for the 13th World Business Dialogue at the University of Cologne in Germany, one of the most prestigious student symposiums in the world.

So how is this one different from most of the symposiums out there?

Well for one, the speaker line is simply mind blowing. Yes I know that is what the brochure of every student symposium would say, but don’t take my word for it, check it out your self. Another important thing to look for in these student symposiums is the legacy and this one sure has a great one, 25 years strong.

This years theme is Crisis Demands: The End to Anything Goes”

The efforts demanded by crises are tremendous. Especially in the current global economic crisis this fact became obvious. The 13th World Business Dialogue wants to portray and discuss important questions and tasks dealing with this topic.

The conference will deal with the dynamic status of our world today, what has changed in the way we look at businesses, what needs to be done.

The application process was pretty simple but I suppose that made it all the more competitive. I am told the applicant pool was 1400 and about 300 were selected finally, which is a lower selection ratio as compared to other equally awesome symposiums such as St Gallens (whose application is also open, in case you’re interested).

The trip is in mid March(16-18), which also means that I don’t miss out on BITS Pilani’s tech fest APOGEE and the TEDxPilani, an event I am personally involved with and am really excited to attend.

Finally I would like to thank my buddy Abhishek Nayak, who has possibly made the largest impact on me here and is one of the coolest and smartest chaps I have come across during my college years.

Rishabh Kaul is Economics & Engineering student at BITS Pilani who is interested in entrepreneurship and social innovation. Check out his profile at Linkedin or buzz him at rishabhkaul[at]gmail[dot]com

Written a couple of days after the World Toilet Day, however this remained in the draft for a while, so without further delay, publishing it now

If you had been to the Chowpatty beach in Mumbai on 19th November, you would have found a group of people squatting. In fact you would also have found a couple of portable toilets in the vicinity. If you didn’t check the papers in the morning, you would think that it were a ritual of some bizarre cult. These people instead, were doing it to show support for the 2.5 billion people all over the world who lack basic sanitary facilities. And they weren’t the only ones. People all over the world were celebrating the “World Toilet Day” by taking part in “The Big Squat“. (click here for pictures from all over the world)

If there are five people in each family, then we require 500 million household toilets. Then, we require another 500 million away-from-home toilets – in the workplace, in schools, in religious places, in the marketplace, in transport centers. So in this market, we need 1 billion toilets.

says Jack Sim, founder of World Toilet Organization (WTO) (which conceptualized the World Toilet Day) in a interview with Beyond Profit.

The oft-avoided topic is becoming a major cause of worry for developing countries. According to a paper written by Rowshan Nantaz (Associate Professor, Department of Civil Engg, BUET), Dhaka City Corporation runs only 69 public toilets for a city whose population is beyond 10 million. And this isn’t half as bad as the condition in Nigeria (est 2008 pop:151.3 million), where reports suggest that there are less than 500 public toilets.

In a recent article by Reuters Sim was quoted saying “You see it long enough, and there is a basic acceptance that dirt is normal. But being repulsed by dirt, it’s smell and sight is a natural defence against disease”. He estimates that the sanitation market is in excess of 1 trillion USD (just for the sake of comparison, this also happens to be India’s GDP). Yet, it’s interesting to note there have been times in the past where investors have hesitated to invest in this sector. Case in point being Saraplast, which is one of the fastest growing portable public toilets company in India today. They had a tough time attracting investors despite having made record profits for the last three years. Aavishkar finally saw sense in the business and bought a 21% stake for an undisclosed amount this August. Saraplast will be tying up with the New Delhi municipality for the Commonwealth Games in Delhi next year.

Ecotact is another interesting organization working in the sanitation industry which has received a lot of media publicity off late. It’s Ikotoilet brand works on the build-operate transfer principle of public-private partnership and plans to open another 200 facilities in Kenya in the near future. An interesting variation to the standard pay per use toilet model here is that it complements the toilet facility with additional service such as shoe shining, soft drinks and newspapers, which apart from keeping the customers occupied also bring in additional revenue.

The Pee Poo bag, made by a Swedish architect provides an effective solution to the problem for its low cost, biodegradable and since its lined with urea, it sanitizes the feces and doubles up as fertilizer when buried. However, such solutions can at best be a short term measure to a problem which is closely related to the water and sewage industry.

In a lot of rural areas, the sanitation is suffering due to the poor state of the water works and the high costs involved as an initial investment. Also, once the public toilets are setup, the major challenge then becomes to maintain the establishment. Issues such as keeping the toilet dry, ensuring there is adequate water supply and that the flush is working become issues of prime importance. An interesting idea that I came across which could be implemented in public toilets was the concept of a tap which could be operated using one’s foot. By pressing a lever somewhere, one could obtain the water. Having seen the condition of public toilets at least in India, I marveled at this simple solution which could help in preventing a lot of diseases.

A Nextbillion article sometime back emphasized on the need to provide (and where applicable improve upon) sanitation, while covering the Clinton Global Initiative 2008. Do check that out as well.

Crossposted on the Nextbillion blog with a few minor edits

Rishabh Kaul is Economics & Engineering student at BITS Pilani who is interested in entrepreneurship and social innovation. Check out his profile at Linkedin or buzz him at rishabhkaul[at]gmail[dot]com

I am currently on a 2 week tour of Italy and am in love with the place. One of the coolest stores that I noticed in Rome, nicely squeezed in between some of the biggest fashion labels in the world was this store called Re(f)use.

As is evident from the name, everything in the store was reused from something or the other and made into a novelty. In the picture below those bags are made from polythene if I am not wrong and the bags behind from some scrap cloth. Quite a simple idea!

I have seen a similar venture in India as well but somehow can’t remember the name.

Rishabh Kaul is Economics & Engineering student at BITS Pilani who is interested in entrepreneurship and social innovation. Check out his profile at Linkedin or buzz him at rishabhkaul[at]gmail[dot]com

Three days into my internship, and I can already get a feel of how hectic it’s going to be in the coming 2 months. But maybe that’s not how I should’ve started this post because it might mislead some of you.

The projects undertaken by the center are also massive. At present they have some 12-13 projects running which include Community Linkage for Integration of Primary Health, Rapid Assessment of Refractive errors, Sight for Kids, Diabetes prevention programmes amongst many others. The projects (a lot of which are CSR initiatives) are funded by some of the biggest organisations in the health as well as financial services.

Apart from that, I am also brushing up with a lot of statistical and econometric models to further assist me in the project that I take up. Some pretty exciting projects are lined up for me here, the trouble being I can take up only one due to the time constraint.

Rishabh Kaul is Economics & Engineering student at BITS Pilani who is interested in entrepreneurship and social innovation. Check out his profile at Linkedin or buzz him at rishabhkaul[at]gmail[dot]com

Arvind, a friend of mine recently started his venture where he helps students all over India to prepare for BITSAT and answers all their queries.

As far as BITS is concerned at least, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of information about it online. Ofcourse there is BITS 360, which according to me is one of the best sources available online for any doubts or queries related to BITS. I did try to write a couple of posts about admission to this prestigious institution, however Arvind has put in some serious effort into this site. He’s got practice papers and answers queries, so in case you know someone who is giving the BITSAT soon, do head over to his site. It might be of great help to you.

Rishabh Kaul is Economics & Engineering student at BITS Pilani who is interested in entrepreneurship and social innovation. Check out his profile at Linkedin or buzz him at rishabhkaul[at]gmail[dot]com