77% of India cannot afford Rs.20 in a day!

A harsh reminder of the ‘other side’ of the coin…it still exists…

Can you imagine surviving on just Rs 20 per day?

Many of us spend many times that amount on maybe a snack every day.

Yet, 836 million people in India live on Rs 20 a day. That’s right. 836 million Indians, according to a recent government-commissioned study, live on Rs 20 a day. That is all they can afford.

If it costs more than Rs 20, 77 per cent of this country’s population cannot afford it.

This is the unfortunate reality of the resurgent India. Lost in the glowing terms with which we are described in the international media, lost in the glory that India has joined the ranks of the world’s economic powers, are India’s Real People, to whom the shining malls, the fancy real estate prices, the boom on Dalal Street makes no difference whatsoever.

Do read the full story…

Sanitation solutions for schools in developing countries

The Humanitarian International Design Organisation (HIDO)  is running a ‘toilet design contest’. More details here (link thanks to the Core 77 Blog).

Due to free education in many developing countries, schools receive a lot more children. Organisations build new classrooms to respond to the request but there is one thing that many still forget, namely sanitary facilities. Let’s be creative and help them to find a solution to conquer this issue. This can go from new concepts to a toilet as we know it, for rural areas out of low cost materials and keeping in mind that water is not available.

Promise of the Bottom of the Pyramid

Looks like the promise of the ‘Bottom of the Pyramid‘ is finally becoming reality in day-to-day life…

VCs focused on startups creating products/services for the BoP segment. Got this from Boldstep.

The fishermen from the Indian village of Chidambaram live a hard life. They sleep most of the day, then spend the night out on the water. For light during those dark hours, they have long depended on wobbly kerosene lamps that were easily blown out or, worse, toppled by the wind, risking deadly fires on their boats.

But these days, the kerosene lamps have been replaced with MightyLights, $50 solar-powered fixtures. “I save 100 rupees [$2.50] a month on kerosene alone,” says K Kanimuri, a fisherman’s wife, who also uses the MightyLight in her makeshift kitchen. With her savings, she now makes and sells candles.

Kanimuri and her fellow villagers may not know it, but the change in their fortunes is rooted in global finance. MightyLight is the brainchild of New Delhi-based Cosmos Ignite Innovations, a Stanford University-incubated startup by Matthew Scott and Amit Chugh that aims to provide simple products for the world’s poorest people.

And Cosmos got its start with backing from Vinod Khosla, a veteran Silicon Valley venture capitalist. Now Cosmos is in talks with other groups, including London-based 3i Group and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, for a second round of funding. “For us, it’s not just the light, but using a sustainable model to affect social change,” says Scott, chief executive of Cosmos.

More BoP startup news from Bangalore…

Sean, (ex-Microsoft Research), has been working on Babajob.com! A promising concept, considering we all (in India) know how tough it can be to find a good cook or car driver!

It’s based on the simple idea that everyone deserves to get a better job – even if you can’t read English and work in another’s home. Most people find jobs through people they know – namely their extended social network – and most employers – particularly when hiring employees that work in the home, would like to hire a person who someone they trust can vouch for.

Babajob and babalife are an attempt to digitize this process to efficiently “get the word out” and importantly provide an incentive for the folks in between an employer and employee to connect people together.

Here’s an example: Let’s say Rajesh is looking for a cook and places an ad with us for 800R. After searching on babajob.com, he ultimately decides to hire his uncle’s driver’s sister. Assuming all these folks are on babalife.com, then both Rajesh’s uncle and his driver, will earn 100R.

We know that many of the people who might be hired through babajob.com may not have access to a computer or phone, and so their accounts can managed by a friend, relative, NGO or even a cyber-café operator – called a mentor. Again, whenever someone is hired, their mentor also earns 100R.

Mobiles for the masses

Looks like Nokia is now going to focus on the rural market. The numbers speak for themselves…

The rural markets account for around 5 per cent of the national GSM handset sales. The figure is expected to rise to 25-30 per cent, adding around 100 million new cellular subscribers by 2009, according to a recent study by LIRNEasia and AC Nielson.

Innovation culture

Thanks to This Blog Sits at the…, here’s a report assessing Canada, with respect to innovation (among other things)…

“Our culture is unwilling to accept the failures that are built into an environment that genuinely supports risk taking. Nor are we wholly comfortable with differentiation, success and excellence. This culture holds Canada back in entrepreneurial and technological innovation.”

It’s not too hard to see the obvious similarities with the Indian culture of (lack of) risk taking. But, one of the other ways of looking at it is, in “third world” or developing countries (never understood these terms), when one hits rock bottom and when things come down to survival for the basics, wouldn’t necessity be the mother of inventions?

No wonder Mohammad Saidullah got to the list of 12 finalists at the Asian Innovation Awards (2005).

Frustrated by three weeks of flooding in 1975 that swamped his village, Mr. Saidullah was determined to make his bicycle float. He attached fan blades to its rear wheel, and fashioned some floats out of wood that he attached to the spokes and saddle. After a few failures, the bike stayed afloat and that is how Mr. Saidullah has been using it since, putting on demonstrations for visiting dignitaries and researchers in a local pond, his distinctive white hair and beard blowing in the breeze, a generation or two of children looking on. Mr. Saidullah remains ready for commercial production, believing the bicycle— named after his wife Noor—has potential beyond merely overcoming floods and traversing the local pond: as an alternative to crossing rivers on overcrowded boats, for monitoring plankton, towing barges, relief work or as a paddle cycle for fun parks.

And, Prof. Anil Gupta’s Honey Bee network seems to have enough proof.

“Grassroots innovations seem to carry a message of sagacity, fortitude and ultimately the spirit of overcoming constraints ingeniously without any outsiders’ help,” he says. Mr. Saidullah isn’t alone. The Honey Bee project has discovered more than 50,000 innovations in the Indian backwoods, some of which have also made it to the AIA’s final 12.

The Canada report also had this statement about innovation…

“…Needs more skilled people…”

And that got me thinking…

• What does “skilled people” mean? Traditionally, we tend to mix up skill and education. The UK HSMP seems to indicate that “highly skilled” people are “successful people with sought-after skills”. And if you look at their criteria, education is a very important factor. Which obviously contradicts the success of people like Mr.Saidullah.
• Is this statement more relevant in the context of commercialization of grassroots innovation. Even in the case of the 50,000 innovations that got identified by the HoneyBee network, it took a Prof. Anil Gupta to start the process and to have “highly skilled” people champion the cause of the grassroots innovators.

While on the topic, The Innovation in Emerging Markets blog is also a good resource.