Mahindra Rise Blog » Tipping Point – Mahindra Rise

The Bots are Marching In

Rise Team — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 09:37:09 +0000

We’re combing the country to find examples of intelligent, scalable innovation – and we’re going to pick 20 of the best to be featured here, and on the pages of Tehelka. These are some of the most compelling and untold stories of our time – and they reflect another truth; that spirit and determination can master any challenge.

This article was originally published here.

WHEN FAHAD AZAD met Syed Ross Farooq, a senior at Mumbai University, he was blown away. Here was someone who shared his geeky passion for robotics, so nascent a field that he could barely find someone to have a conversation with.

THE CHALLENGE

TO ANYONE who spends the day in an ac office, the quality of air they breathe is not something they often think of. The air quality depends on how clean the ac system is. But peer inside the miles of ducting and you confront a staggering reality: it is cleaned only when there is a functional issue. That’s because ac ducts are virtually impossible to access. With hundreds breathing the same air, cleaning of the vents is critical for our lungs. Then there is the environmental aspect: the dirtier the ducting, the more energy air-conditioners consume. That’s where Fahad azad and his team at Robosoft Systems come in; using their passion for robotics to grapple with the functional challenges that office spaces tackle every day.

THE IDEA

DUCTBOT IS A robot that is arguably the single-point solution to the challenge dogging large commercial buildings. DuctBot is the size of a toy car, barely 23 cm in width and 9 cm in height. It weighs only 2 kg. Motors on both sides of this small vehicle control movement, and the device can be monitored wirelessly using a joystick.

A front camera relays a live feed, LED lights help navigate the system remotely and there are attachments for cleaning. The device is placed at one end of the duct, then compressed air is passed through the duct, enabling the filter at the other end to collect the debris.

It’s not the first device of its kind in the world, but it’s definitely a game-changer in the Indian context — not least because, while similar systems available globally cost in the region of Rs 5- Rs 6 lakh, DuctBot — for which Robosoft have filed a patent — costs approximately Rs 1 lakh.

Robosoft Systems is also heavily focussed on education and have set up state-of-theart facilities to train robotics students; with modular classrooms, fully networked and web-enabled workstations and cutting-edge equipment, they may well become not just forerunners in robotics implementation but education as well.

THE INNOVATOR

WHEN FAHAD AZAD met Syed Ross Farooq, a senior at Mumbai University, he was blown away. Here was someone who shared his geeky passion for robotics, so nascent a field that he could barely find someone to have a conversation with. Azad had already designed a sumowrestling robot in school, and Farooq designed a mobile robotic arm as his final year project — a device so refined, the judges couldn’t quite believe it was his own work. A year later, the duo entered a jointly designed robot and won the first prize at IIT’s prestigious Techfest. After college, they joined hands with two other friends and founded Robosoft Systems.

THE IMPACT

ROBOSOFT ALREADY supplies DuctBot to a host of clients, including Bluestar and epsco, and have orders from the Indian Navy. They are working on variants that will offer the product a wider reach: robots that can clean vertical vents, as well as those that can be miniaturised further for the narrower ducts found on ships and even submarines. For Azad & co, robots aren’t meant as a replacement for humans; rather, they are an alternative wherever it’s too dangerous, small or filthy to send someone in.

THE WAY FORWARD

AZAD IS excited about the potential that technology holds: the applications can range from the miniature device they are developing for NTpc to monitor radioactivity in power plants to surveillance drones — virtually anything that requires miniaturisation or stealth, or both. Reconnaissance robots can replace conventional patrolling, can cover hostile or difficult terrain — mountains, swamps and marshes — and aid in construction and design projects.

Making Every Voice Heard

Rise Team — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 08:10:58 +0000

This article was originally published here.

AN ENGINEER from IIT-Madras, Ajit Narayanan, 31, had worked with American Megatrends before returning to India where he founded Invention Labs and returned to a passion he had encountered while at his alma mater: developing communication devices for the disabled.

THE CHALLENGE

AN ESTIMATED 10 million people in India have speech impediments — those afflicted by autism, cerebral palsy, etc. — limiting not just their physical functioning but the core of all human engagement, communication. Yet, most autistic children are often bright, aware and equipped to learn and contribute effectively, if barriers to communication are stripped away. Autism, for instance, is a neural disorder impairing social and communication abilities significantly. Affected children or adults are often unable to string together complete sentences or express feelings and desires and moods openly. Those that can still take an inordinate amount of time to do so, making learning especially difficult.

THE IDEA

AJIT NARAYANAN’S Invention Labs partnered with Vidya Sagar (previously the Spastics Society of India) in Chennai to understand the needs and challenges of those with speech impediments. They also studied the available aids. Two key challenges emerged: cost and language. The devices available cost anywhere from $5,000 to $20,000, making them out of reach of anyone but the affluent. Second, they were available to English-speaking users only.

Narayanan and his team spent two years developing prototypes, working closely with students and teachers on a tablet-style device that they named Avaz, a portable, battery-operated gadget that constructs messages from rough muscle movements. Those messages are then converted into speech. The tablet is equipped with a touchscreen and sensors to detect body movements; these inputs then get converted into sentences, which the device speaks aloud. It uses a scanning technique to make these connections — the screen displays various options with a highlighter that moves between different options. When the highlighter is hovering on the option the child wishes to select, he or she can make the selection by making a strong muscle movement like shaking the head or touching the screen. Once the full sentence has been framed, it is converted into speech.

For more able users, the functionality includes being able to type full words, predictive text input via the touchscreen, and an image bank where users can click on pictures to communicate visually.

THE INNOVATOR

AN ENGINEER from IIT-Madras, Ajit Narayanan, 31, had worked with American Megatrends before returning to India where he founded Invention Labs and returned to a passion he had encountered while at his alma mater: developing communication devices for the disabled. With a Master’s in electrical engineering, he had already won a couple of prestigious prizes before Avaz, but the recognition for his work has propelled him into a select legion of innovators who have won the National Award for the Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, along with MIT’s TR35 award for Innovator of the Year.

THE IMPACT

AS AVAZ GETS widely adopted, thanks to its relatively accessible cost ( 25,000), feedback has poured in. Innovation Labs has also partnered with the Cerebral Palsy Institute of Kolkata and the Spastics Society of Karnataka. Educators have found Avaz most effective for autistic students — its customisable visual templates addressed a critical discovery during the development process: that autistic children respond much better to visual cues than spoken ones. Avaz’s true impact is not as a device as much as a technology that can alter the landscape of special needs education.

THE WAY FORWARD

NARAYANAN HAS big plans for Avaz. There’s a software version available for those who don’t want the physical device but want to use its functionality on a PC. But the biggest and potentially most gamechanging innovation came with the development of the Avaz app for the iPad and Android, which promises to reinvent special needs education. Taking the genius of the app to devices the user may already own gives it great reach and accessibility.

Printing a Green Future

Rise Team — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 06:43:01 +0000

This article was originally published here.

KG SINGH AND Sidhartha Bhimania set up EnNatura. By outsourcing the manufacturing to small companies, they got by without making major capital investments. But getting companies to use the ink was another matter. They paid companies to use the product. The gamble paid off.

The Challenge

THE OFFSET printing business — think media, publishing, advertising and packaging, to name a few industries — consumes more than 3 million tonnes of hydrocarbon-based printing ink and chemicals, and emits over 5 lakh tonnes of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) annually. Apart from posing a serious threat to workers in the printing industry, VOCs are massive contributors to global warming. The key health and environmental challenge is posed by the petroleum component of ink, released as emissions during the drying and washing process. The resulting photochemical smog not only depletes the ozone layer, it can be linked to respiratory ailments in workers, including tuberculosis and an increased risk of cancer.

The Idea

KRISHNA GOPAL SINGH, a chemical engineer from IIT Delhi, and his friend Sidhartha Bhimania were brainstorming ideas for a start-up when they discussed it with their professor, who, it turned out, was working on ink. The solution seemed obvious: develop an ink that had negligible emissions. The challenge wasn’t just in developing eco-friendly ink though; it was in ensuring that this ink gave the same spectacular printing results and vivid colours as the conventional variety.

The real issue? Resin. The duo realised that they needed to develop their own resin to control emissions. Soon, they created a pH-sensitive resin from renewable feedstock, enabling them to create a biodegradable ink that causes zero emissions.

The next step? To do away with the use of hydrocarbon solvents. The unique chemical formulation of the ink also makes washing easier when recycling waste paper; the pH-sensitivity of the resin means the ink can be washed off with a mildly alkaline, aqueous wash solution, doing away with the need for hydrocarbon-based solutions that use kerosene. Not only does this dramatically reduce the environmental and energy footprint, it can be a game-changer in altering the economics of recycling. Singh estimates that washing costs are cut by as much as 85-90 percent compared with traditional methods.

The result? A fundamentally different printing process that has taken VOC emissions down to zero and makes recycling less expensive.

The Innovator

KG SINGH AND Sidhartha Bhimania set up EnNatura. By outsourcing the manufacturing to small companies, they got by without making major capital investments. But getting companies to use the ink was another matter. They paid companies to use the product. The gamble paid off. But they didn’t have enough money to produce quantities to meet the demand. They switched strategies by going to publishers and NGOs who were interested in green issues rather than printers themselves. With funding from the government and a venture capitalist, they have been able to get their dream off the ground.

The Impact

IT’S EARLY DAYS yet but having ironed out chemical issues, they have 10 printers now using their ink in varying quantities. “It’s a slow process,” says Singh. “Ink is a small cost vis-à-vis the cost of paper but its impact is very high; the wrong ink can lay waste very expensive paper. So adoption is slow and printers wait a long time, often months, to check how the ink deals with fading and other post-printing issues. But the fact that we have got 10 printers who now work with us is, in many ways, the end of stage 1 of the project. It’s time now for scale.”

The Way Forward

CHALLENGES OF SCALE are almost invariably linked to funding: no different for EnNatura. To meet the large-scale demand, they need to invest in manufacturing and marketing. “There’s actually been no barrier to trials,” says Singh. “People try the product easily enough. But to switch to using this in serious quantities requires commitment from printers. We have got the product right after trials and reformulations for around 18 months with printers. Now we need to look at the business and operations end of it.”

Nanotubes for Nano Prices

Rise Team — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 06:10:06 +0000

This article was originally published here.

VIVEK NAIR MAY already be a serial innovator and entrepreneur at 23, but his involvement with carbon nanotubes started entirely by accident, when he stumbled upon the subject at a seminar. Today, it’s a career choice even as he continues his education (he’s currently studying for a double doctorate at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University as well as at the Institute of Sports Research).

THE CHALLENGE

CARBON NANOTUBES (CNT) are unique, light carbon molecules that have extraordinary strength and are excellent heat conductors, making them crucial to cutting-edge developments in nanotechnology, electronics, optics and architecture. A host of innovations that were earlier impossible have become credible thanks to the development of these nanotubes. CNT can also be used in future medical developments, like the creation of artificial muscles as well as in developing superconductors and even in the proposed creation of a space elevator to replace rocket launchers. If there is one impediment to adopting CNT, it is the cost — they can sell at anywhere up to $400 a gram, making mass or large-scale adoption unviable. Until now.

THE IDEA

ODDLY, NAIR wasn’t originally interested in CNT as an end — they were merely a means to experiment within some projects he had in mind, while studying bioengineering. When he tried to buy nanotubes online, he was stun-ned to find that they could cost anywhere between $200-400. What followed was a phase of experimentation that led to a new way of creating CNT. While conventional methods involve laser vapourising, using an external catalyst like cobalt or nickel, Nair created a technique for producing CNT out of the high volume of carbon emitted from factories. Christened Flue- Tubes, his patent-pending equipment has two advantages over other methods of CNT production: 1. it uses industrial emissions to create the nanotubes, reducing the percentage of emissions for a factory by up to 50 percent; 2. It does so at a fraction of the cost. “Our cost of production is about $1/gm, which is fantastic given that use of nanotubes is inhibited by their cost,” he says.

The FlueTube applies transformative chemistry — a catalytic substrate is exposed to the flow of flue gas or flame coming out of a furnace to tap and produce CNT by a carbon vapour deposition process. What it means, effectively, is that a pollutant becomes raw material. The environmental aspect of his work is not incidental but core to the whole process. “We have partnered with rice mills in Tamil Nadu and Gujarat to use their emissions for production. Adoption is likely to be much higher because of the dual benefit of low cost and use of environmental waste as raw material,” says Nair.

THE INNOVATOR

VIVEK NAIR MAY already be a serial innovator and entrepreneur at 23, but his involvement with carbon nanotubes started entirely by accident, when he stumbled upon the subject at a seminar. Today, it’s a career choice even as he continues his education (he’s currently studying for a double doctorate at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University as well as at the Institute of Sports Research). He also founded Damascus Fortune, a start-up that has a host of patents pending for their proprietory FlueTube technology, as well as developing new technologies with partners in the auto industry, among others.

THE IMPACT

WITH A DEDICATED team that is working on bringing the FlueTube process to the market, Nair knows that he’s sitting on the cusp of big things. “If we want to combat global warming, we need to restrict carbon emissions — so a technology that makes productive use of it is critical.” The world already seems to know it. Nair was recently included on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list, apart from winning a host of innovation awards, from being part of MIT’s TR35 (20 top innovators under 35 for 2012) to TechTop 2010 and the Staples/Ashoka Youth Social Entrepreneur Competition at Techonomy 2011.

THE WAY FORWARD

UNDER DEVELOPMENT is a prototype for a new form of catalytic converter that would make it possible to create CNT from vehicle emissions. “Automobile companies are showing interest in partnering with us,” he says. Once again, it’s the environmental aspect, rather than the development possibilities of CNT, that seem to thrill him most. “We are aiming to have a massive environmental impact with our work,” he says. “That’s the biggest deal of all!”

Mom, I Know How You Feel

Rise Team — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 10:32:03 +0000

This article was originally published here.

WITH A MASTERS in IT from Vijaywada, an MBA from Rutgers University in New Jersey, and 10 years at Verizon Wireless, one would have assumed Sadhu, 39, had his professional life all charted out. Instead, he quit his job and invested his life’s savings in creating VESAG.

THE CHALLENGE

WHAT’S INCREDIBLE is not that Rajendra Sadhu, founder of Vyzin Electronics, thought of the device he later named VESAG; what’s amazing is that no one had thought of it before. When his parents’ ill health caused him to leave everything in the United States and come home to look after them, he started to wonder at the absence of monitoring services or devices that could help avert a medical disaster.

THE IDEA

SADHU CONCEIVED of a remote monitoring device that could be ‘worn’ and that would track the vitals of the user; the device would trigger an emergency response mechanism when something was wrong. On coming up with the idea in March 2010, he knew he had a winner; before starting work on developing it, he applied for the requisite patents, then started work on the device and by November, had a working prototype.

At the core of VESAG, which is designed like a wristwatch, is the monitoring of almost 17 health vitals such as pulse, heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, etc. Any change in the vitals above a certain level triggers an emergency call to a pre-fixed number; either an ambulance or a hospital. Vyzin has also tied up with Mera Doctor, a Mumbai-based doctor-on-call service to offer a bonus service: at the push of a button, the patient is connected to a doctor who can analyse the information, being transmitted by the device, to offer a diagnosis.

You can set medicine reminders on it; also, downloading a simple app on any Android phone can give the user’s family, anywhere in the world, real-time access to their vitals and health data.

VESAG uses a SIM card and a basic GPRS data connection to transfer data to the VESAG portal, from where the data can be disseminated in a host of ways. There’s a built-in microphone and speakerphone; as well as a built-in wireless hub to receive and relay data. In India, the device costs about Rs 6,500, while one year’s subscription to the Mera Doctor service comes free.

THE INNOVATOR

WITH A MASTERS in IT from Vijaywada, an MBA from Rutgers University in New Jersey, and 10 years at Verizon Wireless, one would have assumed Sadhu, 39, had his professional life all charted out. Instead, he quit his job and invested his life’s savings in creating VESAG. Actual development of the device was primarily done by him; it was only when he came upon specific requirements, “such as the plastic injection mould needed for the watch”, that he brought other people in to work with him. In March 2011, Connected World magazine ranked the device the No 1 Connected Health Devices in the world.

THE IMPACT

NOW SOLD IN over 10 countries, Sadhu says the response has been phenomenal. “Every day, we receive emails from around the world from caregivers whose lives have been transformed by having access to VESAG. It also frees up women who oen don’t work, to step out of the house, secure that elderly family members are monitored.” Many, though, have found innovative uses for VESAG. “Parents use it to monitor children’s well-being when at school,” he says. “We have started hearing of BPO employees who find it offers them a sense of security and access to emergency services when coming home late at night.”

THE WAY FORWARD

“IT’S INEXPENSIVE, BUT even this proves too much of an investment in villages,” says Sadhu. He’s currently piloting a project whereby individual devices are placed at a panchayat office. “Each watch can store up to 99,999 unique IDs. Villagers can be given a unique ID number; they can wear the watch after entering their unique ID number. This transmits their health information to doctors and can prove a fantastic diagnostic tool when there aren’t hospitals or doctors close by,” says Sadhu.

Samaj Pragati Sahayog

Rise Team — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 09:46:34 +0000

This article was originally published here.

A DELHI UNIVERSITY ALUMNUS, Rangu Rao heads the Watershed Development programme for SPS. His hands-on interventions and personal connections with hundreds of villagers have yielded many successful initiatives.

The Challenge

TACKLING INDIA’S agrarian crisis is not the most fashionable project for contemporary innovators. It isn’t even about innovation — because conventional challenges of innovation pale when confronted with the realities of food and crisis in farming in some of the country’s drought-ridden drylands. The scale and reach of the government intervention has not been able to make a dent. It is enough to demoralise even dedicated do-gooders. But one formidable band of game-changers has taken it upon itself to work towards livelihood security on an unimaginable scale: over a million acres of land across India’s 72 most backward districts.

The Idea

THE CORE FOCUS of Samaj Pragati Sahayog (SPS) is watershed development — farmer suicides in the state were high, usurious moneylenders were taking advantage of illiteracy and desperation, and reliance on single crops was making land yields unviable. SPS adopted 57 villages to directly implement watershed programmes — spending 60 million to create water harvesting structures with a storage capacity of over a million cubic metres, irrigating over 112,000 acres of land. In the process, they generated two million man-days of employment — and for the first time ever, offered drinking water security to every household in each village. Another key benefit: drought-proofing of the all-important kharif crop that the community primarily relies on.

But simply creating structures wasn’t enough; the innovators at SPS got involved in management and equitable sharing of water also. Written agreements were drawn up in each case, detailing everything, from proportion of water sharing to hours of pumping, sequence of irrigation, cropping patterns and even watering intensity. All households, irrespective of their size of land holding, were given an equal share of the water. SPS core member Rangu Rao — who oversees the watershed programme along with Pramathesh Ambasta, Murlidhar Kharadia and Narendra Patel — had the formidable task of gaining the confidence of farmers and arriving at the agreement on water-sharing through involvement with local communities and panchayats.

The Innovator

A DELHI UNIVERSITY ALUMNUS, Rangu Rao heads the Watershed Development programme for SPS. His hands-on interventions and personal connections with hundreds of villagers have yielded many successful initiatives. Along with a committed team, Rangu has created a network that enjoys the confidence of locals. His paper on Rural Credit in 20th Century India (along with Mihir Shah and PS Vijay Shankar) is a part of the syllabus for Development Theory for Delhi University’s Bachelor’s degree in Economics. Rangu also chairs the working group on.

The Impact

SPS HAS BEEN making a tangible impact on the quality of life and incomes in the region. The value of agricultural output has increased, due to expansion in irrigated areas and higher yields. Kharif yields are up 10-20 percent, Rabi by 50-60 percent. Equally significant – external migration of farmers and local families has dropped by a staggering 80 percent. Another key impact has been the removal of reliance on a single crop – tribal farmers now cultivate 2-3 crops.

The Organisation

SAMAJ PRAGATI SAHAYOG (SPS), one of the country’s largest grassroots initiatives for water and livelihood security, is headquartered in Dewas, MP. SPS has direct intervention programmes in over 220 villages and towns in the area. Its key focus is to arrest distressmigration towards the metros and liberate farmers from the vicious cycle of moneylenders and loans. For direct intervention programmes, SPS relies on government funding, and a few key donors. The organisation also focuses on building a corpus from larger donations where only the interest is used for development activities.

Banking on the Phone

Rise Team — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 02:38:29 +0000

This article was originally published here.

40-SOMETHING SHUBHRANSHU is no stranger to Chhattisgarh or journalism. But, as a veteran journalist for The Guardian and BBC, among others, few would have thought he would combine the two.

The Challenge

SHUBHRANSHU CHOUDHARY, a BBC-journalist-turned-activist, felt strongly about the absence of a medium for tribals to communicate with those in authority, and the wider world. “There are very few tribal journalists, and mainstream journalists often don’t understand their language. When I worked with the BBC and travelled to other countries, we used the help of local journalists for translation. But the dialects of the tribals are often not understood outside the community,” he explains. “The lives of the tribals and urban journalists are so removed from each other that, for an outsider, the context is hard to appreciate.” With an estimated 100 million tribals in the country, a solution to this was urgent.

The Idea

IN TRYING TO CREATE THE RIGHT forum for marginalised communities, Shubhranshu was clear he wanted to go the ‘oral’ route. “Poor people, especially tribals, are oral communities. The educated class focusses on reading and writing, but the majority are more comfortable speaking and listening,” he says.

Although he wanted to use the radio, the laws were not conducive for community radio to grow. So he started out online, by setting up an online discussion group CGNet (or Chhattisgarh Net) in 2004 for people to exchange views on issues related to the state. But realising the dismal reach of the Internet, Shubhranshu stumbled upon Audio Wiki, a technology platform developed by Microsoft Research’s India Lab and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that enables phones to record and listen to messages. That’s how CGNet Swara started. It has a Bengaluru phone number on which listeners call and are given two options: 1 to record, and 2 to listen. What’s unusual, though, is that listeners can contribute information as well. Recorded messages come to the Bengaluru server where trained journalists access the system using a web-based interface. A verification and review process follows and once a report is approved, it’s available for playback over the phone. Translated versions are also available on the CGNet Swara website. According to Shubhranshu, 11,000 unique users have registered on the site in the past two years.

The Innovator

40-SOMETHING SHUBHRANSHU is no stranger to Chhattisgarh or journalism. But, as a veteran journalist for The Guardian and BBC, among others, few would have thought he would combine the two. Having studied in tribal schools of Chhattisgarh, he knew he wanted to bridge the alienation that tribals feel from mainstream media. A Knight Journalism Fellow, Shubhranshu also launched an initiative with the help of the Knight International Journalism Fellowships, a programme of the International Centre for Journalists.

The Impact

A CGNET SWARA report moved a Mumbai listener, Priyanka, to intervene successfully in a midday meal scam. CGNet reports were behind the arrest of a headmaster charged with molesting a girl; villagers say now officers call them and ask them about any complaints, when earlier they had to make umpteen visits to their offices.

The Way Forward

FOR ENTERPRISING government officials, CGNet Swara has become a source for tracking grassroots progress. Rajim, a villager who helped many people record their stories online, even received a call from the state chief secretary: “He called me and promised to take action.” Shubhranshu is also hopeful that mainstream media will use CGNet Swara to pick up stories, especially in conflict areas, where media access is limited. “In March 2011,” says Smita Choudhary of CGNet Swara, “CGNet Swara got calls that tribal homes were being burnt in villages around Tadmetla. A year earlier, 76 CRPF jawans were killed by Maoists in Tadmetla.” The Hindu andThe Times of India carried news stories relying heavily on these firsthand citizen reports.

It Pays to be Exotic

Rise Team — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 04:19:46 +0000

This article was originally published here.

MATHEW JOHN, 47, may have studied at IRMA, Anand, but it wasn’t until he and his two friends spent a year backpacking through Tamil Nadu that their love for finding and scaling up wonderful local products became a career choice.

The Challenge

THE CONCEPT OF organic or fair trade is neither new, nor alien to India. Yet for most farmers in the godforsaken parts of the country, receiving certification for their produce is a distant dream. With neither the know-how nor the financial means to apply for certification, they continue to receive lower prices than they could for produce and products created with the same quality-consciousness. Last Forest was set up to promote products and practices that met four key criteria: they needed to be organic or fair trade; they needed to support indigenous craft; they needed to support or improve local biodiversity and they needed to increase local employment and build local markets.

The Idea

LAST FOREST’S INTERVENTION to help local farmers and craftspeople has taken multiple forms. An aggregator that sources and markets the finest local products from farmers across India on different platforms, Last Forest has created a network of brick-and-mortar retail stores in Mysore, Ooty, Coonoor and Kotagiri to retail these products. It also supplies to 50 retail stores nationwide, besides an online platform to reach the rest of the country.

Last Forest brainstormed and decided to create their own unofficial ‘certification’ process for organic and fair trade practices — bringing together like-minded organi – sations to extend reach and offer a wider platform to villagers. Two different processes are followed to grant fair trade and organic ‘status’ to farmers. For fair trade, it’s an informal exercise of visiting each and every farmer who follows fair trade practices and verifying their methods, then including them under a loose collective of similar farmers.

In the case of organic practices, Last Forest joined hands with 6-7 other organisations and they have worked with farmers to develop the Participatory Guarantee System, which ensures that the products certified by the system have been developed organically. Today, with over 5,000 farmers onboard, they have extended the benefits of the organic platform to grassroots farmers without them having to pay heavily for the privilege.

The Innovator

MATHEW JOHN, 47, may have studied at IRMA, Anand, but it wasn’t until he and his two friends spent a year backpacking through Tamil Nadu that their love for finding and scaling up wonderful local products became a career choice. The three set up Keystone Foundation and started with their first — and ambitious — project, to hunt for the best wild honey in the region’s forests. “It’s funny,” laughs John, “around the world, the word ‘wild’ commands a premium for a product, it signifies exclusivity and purity, while in India, it seems to devalue the product.”

The Impact

THE BIGGEST VALIDATION of Last Forest’s indigenous Participatory Guarantee System came last year when the Government of India adopted the system through the Department of Agriculture and Co-operation, a move likely to impact scale tremendously.

The Way Forward

JOHN IS EXCITED about the possibilities for Last Forest. “We already represent products from more than 60 collectives,” he says. “We want to remove middlemen, and make farmers more competitive, as well as give them the benefits of getting their products to the urban, better-paying market.

“We have started to offer packaging services — smaller farmers or collectives can bring us their produce and we will package it for consistency as well as appeal. We are also investing in training — recently, for example, we brought together 15 store managers from the retail stores that have fair trade certification to interact with each other, understand the products better and engage on a common platform. We thought it far more worthwhile than bringing together 15 CEOs.”

Hear is the New Frontier

Rise Team — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 04:02:57 +0000

This article was originally published here.

“I WORKED FOR a server security firm reporting to a gentleman in the US; we used to catch hackers online,” says Shilpi Kapoor. “He was much quicker than I but one day, a security issue came up that he would normally address — and he didn’t. I did what was needed, then asked him what had happened, and I was stunned when he told me he was paralysed neck down and had been using a special technology that enabled him to move the cursor by blowing air into a pipe.

The Challenge

IN THEORY, THEY have the same rights as any other citizen; in practice, they are the true minority that no one sees, hears or represents. Virtually no technologies or practices exist to include them in the mainstream of everyday life; they can’t do things you and I take for granted — pick up the phone and order a pizza, use phonebanking to make a request or yell at a pestering customer care executive. “In India, we build a few ramps and that’s mostly the end of our ‘accessibility’ thinking,” says Mumbai-based Shilpi Kapoor. “If at all anyone focuses on the disabled, it’s mostly the blind. But the hearing impaired are huge sufferers, going through life without understanding and being understood.”

The Idea

IT’S SO SIMPLE, you wonder why no one thought of it before. Sign ‘n’ Talk is a bridge that connects the hearingimpaired with the hearing world via an interpreter who knows sign language — and all it takes is an Internet-enabled computer and a halfway decent camera. Registered users log in to www.signntalk.org, fill in their call details (the name and number they want to call) and connect to the interpreter, who dials the number and interprets the conversation for the hearing-impaired user using sign language. The project is in beta, but already has about 2,500 registered users, who are able to use the phone for the first time ever, thanks to the assistive technology.

“Users make all kinds of calls. We even get people who simply want to talk to their grandmother, something they have never been able to do before,” says Shilpi Kapoor, 39. Currently free, the service offers almost limitless possibilities. “Customer service companies should use it, the government needs to use it to ensure all public enterprises are accessible to the hearingimpaired,” she says. “We are working on finding a model for this that makes business sense,” she says, “otherwise it will never really go big. That’s my focus right now.”

Kapoor, who is a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer, now employs 60 people — 75 percent of whom are disabled themselves — and works to bring the world’s most cutting-edge accessibility solutions to India at an affordable price.

The Innovator

“I WORKED FOR a server security firm reporting to a gentleman in the US; we used to catch hackers online,” says Shilpi Kapoor. “He was much quicker than I but one day, a security issue came up that he would normally address — and he didn’t. I did what was needed, then asked him what had happened, and I was stunned when he told me he was paralysed neck down and had been using a special technology that enabled him to move the cursor by blowing air into a pipe. The technology had failed him that day, or I would absolutely never have known he was disabled. It made me decide I was going to focus on tech for the disabled.”

The Impact

THE DAY THE government and big private firms adopt this technology, both for customers and employees, is when I will talk about an impact,” says Kapoor. “Of course, the user response has been great. But there are between 12-15 million hearing-impaired users in India and unless a significant percentage of them can access the everyday stuff we take for granted, I won’t quite feel like I have made a difference.”

The Way Forward

KAPOOR IS WORKING on making a host of assistive technologies from around the world more accessible and affordable. “We offer about 80-100 assistive products today that help the disabled,” she says, “and we also work to bring price-points down. For instance, we offer a screen reader for the visuallyimpaired — a competitive product was available at Rs 60,000, while we have been able to negotiate to bring it in at Rs 24,000. That’s a massive difference.” Kapoor also founded and organises Techshare India, the country’s first ever platform for sharing and displaying assistive technology companies from around the world.

Indian, By Design

Rise Team — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 07:52:25 +0000

This article was originally published here.

AS A VENTURE capitalist at Nexus Venture Partners, Manoj Gupta had invested in leading e-commerce firms and sat on the board of Yebhi.com and as board observer of Snapdeal.com. After completing a BTech degree from IIT Mumbai, an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad, as well as MS and CPhil degrees from universities in the US, he’d co-founded a tech start-up in the US.

The Challenge

SOME OF INDIA’S richest, most exquisite craft traditions are centered in the smallest villages, many barely a dot on the map. For years, access to these crafts has been limited to an adventurous few who venture that far, or to middlemen and ‘cottage’ emporia that selectively exhibit or supply these to a niche audience. But wider global access has been impossible — artisans have had neither the means nor the technological know-how to put their creations on that most democratic of all platforms, the Internet.

The Idea

IT’S BEEN CALLED the Etsy of Asia but that’s almost simplistic for the role Craftsvilla plays in bridging the artisanconsumer gap. It was on a trip to Kutch that Manoj and Monica Gupta fell in love with the exquisite local craftware, and talked to artisans about why their craft wasn’t available more widely. “We have always loved to travel to villages, and discovering local crafts are a huge part of that,” says Manoj, CEO and founder of Craftsvilla. By the time they returned to Mumbai, fascination with craft had blended with Manoj’s entrepreneurial instincts and Craftsvilla was conceived.

Like Etsy.com, the behemoth that dominates the global craft marketplace, Craftsvilla is a platform for artisans and craftsmen to link directly to end consumers — but it goes beyond. Unlike in the West, where Internet access is the norm and technological awareness wide, the craftsmen Manoj and Monica interacted with were completely out of the tech loop. “We therefore launched something called Craftsvilla Studios, where we guide artisans and designers to bring them online — from helping them with photo-shoots to content-writing, web upload and in some cases, even in helping them with inventory management and dispatches,” says Manoj.

The other vital difference from the Etsy model: whereas the former only allows individual artisans to list, Craftsvilla encouraged collectives of artisans and NGOs to join, exponentially increasing their reach.

The Innovator

AS A VENTURE capitalist at Nexus Venture Partners, Manoj Gupta had invested in leading e-commerce firms and sat on the board of Yebhi.com and as board observer of Snapdeal.com. After completing a BTech degree from IITMumbai, an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad, as well as MS and CPhil degrees from universities in the US, he’d co-founded a tech start-up in the US. Perhaps most impressive about Manoj’s start-up is that he has demonstrated that social entrepreneurship and innovation can be highly profitable and sustainable — Craftsvilla has received VC funding worth $1.5 million.

The Impact

IT’S BEEN JUST over a year since Craftsvilla’s launch and already, over 800 sellers list and sell more than 75,000 products. The sellers, mostly collectives, represent 10,000 individual artisans, offering them formidable reach and improving their livelihoods significantly. “Our sellers earn two-four times more profit as we remove middlemen and provide direct access to one million customers,” says Manoj. Sellers echo his satisfaction. “We started working with Craftsvilla in 2011 and reported a 500 percent jump in business just in the first six months,” says Vandana Agarwal, a trustee of the NGO Gramshree. “It’s especially rewarding for us since most of our artisans are women. Now, we have a dedicated team working only for Craftsvilla, and hope to grow 10 times thanks to their intervention.”

The Way Forward

“WE PLAN TO list more than 25,000 sellers and one million products in the next 12 months. This will make us one of the world’s largest online ethnic stores. We plan to expand internationally by bringing Asian countries into the Craftsvilla.com loop in the next few months,” says Manoj.