My latest post on Nextbillion talks about HarVa. It’s an interesting new start-up that I found out about last year from my friend Manoj Vasudevan, whose start-up Source Pilani got acquired by these chaps. I have pasted the article below.

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In an era where enterprises working at the BoP are busy finding core competencies, a start-up named HarVa comes along with its sector agnosticism and pretty much says that they will do anything that harnesses the value of rural India. Currently, Harva is focusing on skill development, community based farming, waste management and outsourcing services.

The company is the brainchild Ajay Chaturvedi, a BITS Pilani/Univ of Penn Wharton entrepreneur who was earlier a VP at Citibank.  The concept of Harva stems from the belief that corporations today are still underestimating the potential of rural India. If the village populations can be trained adequately in specific skills as well as given management support, a lot of projects can find themselves coming to the hinterland. Fast Company placed the company at number 3 in their list of 10 most Innovative Companies in India, right below Tata Motors (the makers of Nano) and ahead of industry giants such as Godrej Group and FabIndia, possibly one of the most well known social enterprises to come out of India.

BPOs

HarVa’s BPOs offer a gamut of services (which employs mostly women), including litigation support and software testing apart from of course documentation. I asked Ajay to expand on the software testing bit, since it’s not common for rural BPOs to offer such services. He told me about the software skills were regularly imparted based on specific client’s needs, Black Box Testing and Grassroot level Test Bed creation in particular. Currently, HarVa is busy building a strong team to strengthen their rural XPOs (BPO/MPO/LPO/KPO) as is evident by their strategic acquisition of Source Pilani, a 55 seater BPO a few months ago.

Speaking of BPOs, Ajay is of the opinion that in the near future, mainstream Indian BPOs should act on getting higher quality work and pass on the relatively simple tasks to rural India and hence ensuring that bulk of the outsourcing works finds its way to India rather than Chinese/Philippines markets.

Community Based Farming

HarVa consolidates small fragmented farmlands while empowering the farmers with financial services, modern technical know-how, logistical support and most importantly profit distribution techniques. Calling it the Farm to Firm model, HarVa is ambitious of creating synergy since land consolidation will make investments in heavy machinery more feasible and hence increase the yield. This method also results in cutting down of middle men and efficient human resource management, since more people can now work on a larger piece of land.

On a separate yet related note: Land consolidation has existed in India since time immemorial, known as Chakbandi, however due to lack of legal understanding and technical/marketing/logistical assistance, its outcome isn’t the best always, hence HarVa’s model is a refreshing change.

There’s more: Waste Management, MFIs and rural Consultants

HarVa, from my conversation with the founder, is deeply passionate about waste management. While the website doesn’t give away information about this, in an email correspondence with Ajay he told me that the plan is to use electricity generated from waste to run their centers. They are currently experimenting with electricity generation and usage from crop waste, cow dung etc. thus making the center self sufficient through creation of an ecosystem comprising of such allied services.

Ajay also explained to me about the employee benefits they have in place. One such benefit is the HarVa Employee Loan Program (HELP) where the organization will facilitate microfinance services between its employees and MFIs. Involvement of HarVa according to Ajay will result in seamless operations that will benefit the employee; it would also help ease customer acquisition for the MFIs.

There’s of course a lot more cooking in HarVa’s kitchen which is probably beyond the scope of a blog post. One memory which remains though is of a conversation I had with Ajay:

I must admit I thought that he was a little out of his mind (of course I didn’t tell him that) when he suggested that in the future, HarVa would be consulting companies based on the input of their “consultants” who would probably be the Village head. I’d have thought he was joking, if he didn’t say it with a straight face. His reasoning was that a local resident of an area will be able to provide far greater insight to companies wanting to enter the hinterland than say someone from the big 3 consulting firms who would probably take longer to craft a nicely made report.

You might question the feasibility of such a proposition. However, the reason I mentioned that incident is because it shows the mindset of HarVa. HarVa is aiming to create an entire ecosystem by focusing on a myriad of activities with multiple stakeholders. While this does sound challenging to say the least, the team is very pragmatic in their approach and we at Nextbillion will be tracking their progress and wish them all the best.

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

First published on Nextbillion

Zari embroidered saree

Nearly a decade ago, I visited Australia with my mother for a conference that she was to attend:  the ISCEV. My mother’s colleague, Dr. LS Mohan Ram (he has since then shifted to Singapore) who was a young optometrist at that time, accompanied us and eventually won the Eberhared Dodt Award. This, I presumed was equivalent of the TED Prize (at least in fame, if not fortune) for those engaged in electrophysiology for vision.

To fully understand the impact of his discovery, let’s excavate one of the articles published by The Hindu soon after he won the award:

PART OF the every day duties of an optometrist, working in an eye hospital involves checking whether the retina of the patient is working satisfactorily. This is done by measuring the electrical signals that are generated when light falls on the retina and transmitted from there to the brain by the optic nerve. Called electroretinograms or ERG, these signals are measured using a special type of material called the DTL electrode.

L. S. Mohan Ram, optometrist at the L. V. Prasad Eye Institute, Hyderabad, was concerned about the cost of importing the DTL electrode (Rs. 2500 per metre of the fibre), and set out to find an inexpensive, but equally efficient indigenous replacement.

The replacement Mohan came up with was Zari.

Embroidering silk sarees with zari, which simply put, is the art of wrapping silk threads with flattened gold or silver strips, is an age-old practice in India.

The result? Mohan brought down the cost of the DTL electrode from Rs 2500 ($55 USD) to a little over $1 USD.

Now comes the interesting part. I asked my mother about whether this innovation spurred the growth of the zari electrode industry and she said “no.” Eye institutes even today (a decade since this discovery) still make their own zari electrodes (or import the DTL or alternative electrodes), since there are no wholesale suppliers in this market. Organizations such as LV Prasad are even willing to train folks in zari electrode making (the technique obviously fine-tuned to suit their requirements) who could in turn make this into a business. The technique of making a zari electrode, I’ve been told, is quite simple.

I see this as a tremendous opportunity, not only to provide employment to the unskilled labor force in the future but also add direct value to large eye care organizations such as Arvind, LV Prasad Eye Institute & Sankara Netralaya. The trained zari electrode makers could reap up to 10x the return on their investment.

The reason I say “in the future” is because, the ERGs are mainly used to detect hereditary retinal degeneration, which currently doesn’t have any cure. But with stem cell research in progress, the future will see many more uses for these ERG tests and hence will have a much greater use for zari electrodes. Currently the zari electorde market is about 300 patients/day all over India.

The bigger point I am trying to make is that, there are hundreds such frugal innovations (or Jugaad as we Indians love to call it) that are taking place in India (and around the world).

These frugal innovations interest me for two reasons. Firstly, they are bringing the cost of products and services down, and hence democratizing them. But secondly and more importantly, also expanding the B2B market of the raw/finished materials that are used to drive these innovations. And more often than not, the power of the next billion can be harnessed to drive production of these materials.

Pic courtesy: rx_kamakshi via flickr

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

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 few weeks ago, a couple of folks on the Acumen Fund online community decided to meet up. This would be the second such meet in Delhi. As the date got nearer, the details spread through word of mouth and by the end of it we had nearly 20 people turning up at Blancos, a wonderful lounge in Khan Market. 

The meet kick started with everyone introducing themselves and briefly mentioning the projects they were involved with. A gamut of responsible businesses sprouted, there were folks running their own enterprises that sold kits to tackle inadequate lighting, access to clean drinking water and pest control affecting the remote areas , guys who were working on unique models of private education under the aegis of liberal think tanks, Fulbright scholars working on understanding India’s retail supermarkets, sustainability specialists, founders of fair trade startups in the handicraft sector, even Acumen’s investees and many more.

Karthik Chandrasekar who manages the energy portfolio at Acumen Fund spoke briefly on what Acumen did and the values it believed in.  

I loved the event. The reason for that would be because it wasn’t a “always be closing” sort of networking event. People listened with interest when someone spoke and it all made for a very healthy discussion. One could sense that this had the foundations of a group that was genuinely interested in meeting other interesting folks, a place where everyone knew your name (over time of course).

Delhi has a vibrant culture and a very enthusiastic community in the development/responsible business space. One interesting aspect of the community here is that one comes across many high-impact individuals who are involved with the public sector (given the number of such offices in the Capital). The next meet is scheduled to take place sometime in the final week of October at Lauren Finzer’s place. Do keep checking the India for Acumen page on the Acumen Community website nearer to that date to find out the exact details.

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 recently wrote an article on rural BPOs for Triple Pundit, one of the bigger blogs outthere that focus on the triple bottom line approach. Jen, the managing editor was extremely responsive (Thanks Jen!).

Here’s the post, that’s titled Rural Development with Internation Business Outsourcing. I have also starting contributing articles to a host of other really great blogs dedicated to responsible enterprises and development, more on that as and when things roll out.

Coming back to rural BPOs I am doing a more detailed post for Nextbillion, which should come out in sometime. If you or anyone you know can add value to this post by sharing opinions, just shoot me a mail at rishabhkaul at gmail dot com and we’ll get talking.

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

At the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership’s Rural Entrepreneurship Development(RED) division we’re on the look out for market based approaches to helping rural communities (often right outside the campus).

However, what is also important is to educate the college community regarding the pressing social issues that plague our nation (and the world) and how enterprises (often community lead) can help uplift sections of society. RED would like to help create a class of more responsible BITSians who are socially conscious and use their technological and business acumen to find solutions to alleviating poverty and help generate income for rural communities.

It is for this reason that we’re creating a RED resource section which will contain information on the emerging sectors, case studies of success stories (and sometimes failure) of models that worked at the Base of Pyramid, books that inspire on to get their hands dirty, reports that show figures and business models, important articles from credible sources. Hopefully, more and more BITSians will skim through it and realize the incredible opportunities that lay in front of them in the responsible business sector.

We’re in the middle of the compilation, which should be completed anytime next week. We also plan to publish this resource on one of the top blogs on social entrepreneurship in India.

If you can contribute to this resource in anyway (articles, books, reports, case studies), please shoot me a mail at rishabh at celbits dot org

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

Net Impact recently released a report titled Undergraduate Perspectives: The usiness of changing the world. Some findings:

88% of the students believe that for profit organizations should take into consideration the societal and environmental issues.

37% believe corporations are working towards that (this number doubled from 2007) and only 24% feel business leaders are responsible.

73% feel that responsible actions lead to business profits

84% want to seek employment opportunities that are socially relevant.

82% think their schools are doing a fair job of preparing them for their post-graduate interests. 75% of students are also confident their colleges are preparing them to specifically do good in the world, a signifi cant increase from only46% in 2007.

Do check out the report for other interesting stats.

However one important thing to keep in mind is that the majority of these responses are from Net Impacts’ undergraduates’ nearly all of which belong to US. It would be interesting to see how people from other emerging economies respond to this, especially China, which practices nationalistic capitalism.

In my university I notice a handful of people who want to get into this sector. Not a lot, but a decent number. A lot of them have the interest but either can’t find the resources to further their interest about the sector or don’t know how to look for opportunities in this sector. While there are a lot of opportunities within the campus to look for opportunities too (such as the Rural Entrep Division at CEL, Nirmaan, NSS etc), there aren’t enough linkages between the social enterprises in the region and the college (with the exception of maybe Source Pilani).

I would love to see some social enterprises come to Pilani for recruitment, or involve some students through the TIC projects. As with regard to the TIC projects, currently the college demands some money from the enterprises, perhaps in case of social enterprises, the money demanded can be waived off, or decreased (again depending on their revenue stream).

End note: Would 3/4th of the students from my university agree that the college is doing a good job to help them find their interests for their post graduate degree?

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

[Photo credit ericcastro]

The Economist recently carried an article on The Halo Effect.

when a company is growing and profitable, we tend to infer that it has a brilliant strategy, a visionary CEO, motivated people, and a vibrant culture. When performance falters, we’re quick to say the strategy was misguided, the CEO became arrogant, the people were complacent, and the culture stodgy … At first, all of this may seem like harmless journalistic hyperbole, but when researchers gather data that are contaminated by the halo effect – including not only press accounts but interviews with managers – the findings are suspect.

Happens so many times, doesn’t it? The same feeling was hinted in Gurcharan Das’ India Unbound, which according to me is one of the best books written about India. There while speaking about the fruits of liberalisation, he also at one instance tell us about how CEOs wereshifted from one company to another and these managers were put in a totally new field and were recruited based on their past successes alone. As one could imagine, they didn’t do too great a job in their new avatar.

A similar feeling is also echoed in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s books where he says that averages aren’t something that would fascinate him too much. Just because something has been doing well for the last decade shouldn’t affect your judgement to discard it, if there’s a slightest bit of chance of it failing, rpovided the risks upon failing are enormous.

Closer home,take the scenario of a university. In my university, the professors are also allotted administrative posts. Now just because a professor might have years of experience in the academic circle, one can’t conclude that he might do that impressive a job in the administrative department. That’s because that requires a completely different skill set.

I’d be fascinated to understand the Halo effect with respect to the non-profit/responsible business sector. Does your expertise in one domain help you get a job in another domain. And once you do get a job there, do you perform equally well? Can a person who has spent years in the health sector, start working in microfinance? Obviously the job profile matters to an extent here, but I was speaking on a more general sense.

One thing that I have noticed in this sector is that one requires a lot of experience to end up with a good profile. But does the relevant experience matter or is it the experience in any social activity that counts?

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

Sometime in summer while surfing channels (for that is the only time I get to watch TV) I came across a CNN feature on Give Water. Each bottle has a colorful label, each donating the money to a cause (there are four in all).

Almost parallel thoughts ran through my head which look at it from another angle. Bottles made of plastic, thousands of them being sold for a cause.  When I asked Sasha what he felt about the issue, he too echoed similar concerns saying that there’s no right answer.

Tree Hugger on the other hand had blogged a little more vociferously about another similar initiative called H to O where they say how getting water from the glaciers and then selling them in plastic bottles (even if 100% of it goes to feed hunger) isn’t very treehuggerly.

Coming to the point, social enterprises (especially) mostly come up as trying to find a solution to an existing problem and then deliver value to customers. That’s how they roll. A niche within this niche are enterprises that use charity as a business model, where the product isn’t really the thing that’s being marketed, rather its the cause, the story associated with it. Now when you’re thinking of a business model, will you take the impact your actions are having on the environment?

Another way of asking the question is, we all talk about sustainable growth, so where does this fit in? Yet another way of asking the question can be, is there any way to achieve pure sustainable growth (probably not), so in that case, how far are you willing to compromise?

(I would like to make a disclaimer that I did mail Give asking them about the material which they used to make their bottles and am awaiting their reply).

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

Nitin Rao, a NIT Surathkal alumnus started E4SI (while still in college!), a unique fellowship program that helps the engineers from top institutes to spend their summer interning in an organization that’s working for a social cause.

Now in its second year, the number of applications that the folks at E4SI received this year increased by a phenomenal amount. Most of the publicity was word of mouth. But the point I am trying to address is a different one.

Now that E4SI is expanding, it will start receiving even more number of entries. With 400-500 people fighting for the 24 coveted slots, many good (and deserving) candidates are bound to lose out. Clearly after a point of time even the judges can’t be objective.

At such a juncture it would be a great idea to create a group (say on Facebook) with the profiles of the candidates who just missed out. These are high potential candidates who would fit in other similar organizations as well. Social enterprises looking for high potential talent will find this resource highly beneficial. The students will also be grateful for its only the facilitation that is lacking in this space. The students are willing and the organizations I am sure are in need of brain power.

This is something world famous marketer and Acumen Fundsupporter Seth Godin did when he announced his internship for college students. This helped spread goodwill as well as showed the candidates that Seth cared for the initiative they took to apply for his internship. Obviously the Seth Godin brand name helped the others find decent offers for their summer as well.

And that’s something Taya over at Next Billion has blogged about.

What strikes me most about the opportunities at these organizations is their exclusivity-in the sense that they cull the “best of the best” through limited edition fellowships. Just to be clear, I have no problem with the notion of wielding the power of the “best and brightest” to tackle the world’s problems. In fact, it’s a rather poignant reversal of fortune; usually the least powerful members of society are stuck with the worst resources. However, after the superstars are chosen, I wonder what happens to the “best of the rest” and the “rest of the rest.” Presumably, the folks who apply to these programs are smart, ambitious, values-driven, change makers in the making. What I wonder is, “what happens to these people?” Is their energy and enthusiasm lost or is it simply redirected? How can we tell? Do we care?

While I have taken E4SI as an example, I would extend the suggestion to other similar initiatives as well such as Kiva, Acumen Fund etc. Using an already existing brand name to indirectly vouch for equally deserving candidates to enter into the developmental sector.

Cross posted on the Mutiny

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

Though I can’t really hand pick the “best” moment from my trip, there are parts which stand out. And meeting Stan Thakaekara was surely one of them. (More about him Here).

When you look at Tribals, the first things that come to your mind are that they are uncivilised, they live on trees, eat leaves, go around strutting, illiterate and so on.

-Stan Thakaekara

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