Alternative Perspective
 Entrepreurship with a Difference:
Lessons from India
Issue 38, July 3, 2003
Compiled by Madhukar Shukla

 Alternative Perspective is an attempt to widen our awareness about issues related to business, environment, role and influence of media, geo-politics, culture, etc. It aims to share, on a regular basis, some of those pieces of news and information, which do not find place in the highly monopolised mainstream media. Please feel free to share/ forward/ distribute this newsletter to others who may be interested.

Entrepreneurs, as Joseph Schumpeter wrote long ago, are those daring spirits who innovate in the face of competition and daunting economic conditions - and in the process create wealth. Over a period of time, however, the meaning of entrepreneur's wealth-creating activities has become eqated to mere personal profit-making. In this issue, we have a few stories of entrepreneurship, which create wealth of a different kind, viz., Sustenance & Development of Community.



Note: The URLs of sources used in the text are numbered and given at the end of the Newsletter.

In This Issue:
  • Aavishkaar: Unlocking Rural Innovations
    Import restrictions of yesteryears did have a positive outcome: necessity being mother of inventions, they stimulated countless innovations in the rural India[1], e.g., a cotton seed stripper, which is 30-times more efficient than traditional methods, or an oil expeller which consumes 50% electicity and space to provide the same efficiency, etc. Aavishkaar, along with Sristi, Gyan and National Innovation Foundation[2], is an effort to support, leverage and bring to surface these rural innovations - made mostly by uneducated individuals to meet their personal work needs - and make them a markatable product.
    http://www.goodnewsindia.com/Pages/content/economy/aavishkaar.html

  • The Tiffinwalas of Mumbai
    Here is a 120 year old organisation, run by 5,000 illiterate/semi-literate people, who manage a task which would be a supply-chain manager's nightmare - picking up lunch tiffins from 175,000 homes spread across the metro, and reaching them individually to people in their offices/schools (and then bringing them back!!!) every day. And the dabbawalas/tiffinwalas of Mumbai manage this logistics without any complex modelling or IT software packages - just some hieroglyphic color codes, and with an error-rate of just one every two months (that is, 1 in 16mn deliveries - According to The Forbes that is way beyond the 6-sigma limit[3]).... How do they do it?!!!... Read this narration of odyssey of one single tiffin/dabba[4]. Now that is entrepreneurship!!!
    http://www.mumbai-central.com/specials/tiffin.html

  • Compassionate Manufacturing
    How do you become world's second largest manufacturer of one of the most expensive medical products (cateract lenses), while making it available to the poorest population at 4% of the global market rates - and yet making a surplus of 30% on your costs? That is what Aurolab[5] has managed to achieve, which supplied around 2mn lenses to 85 countries in last 10 years. The vision behind this success was not how to make profits, but "With sight, people could be freed from hunger, fear, and poverty. You could perfect the body, then perfect the mind and the soul, and raise people's level of thinking and acting."[6]. If entrepreneurship is about making contribution to the community to change it, here is one example.
    http://www.changemakers.net/journal/03january/herbst.cfm

  • Banking on the Asset-less Poors
    Imagine an illiterate woman, from marginalised class and with no assets to offer as collateral, approaching a bank for loan to buy a goat. The certainty is that she will be denied - even though, it is only by selling the goat's milk that she can become economically self-sufficient. That is the service which Mhaswad (Maharashtra)-based Mann Deshi Mahila Sahakari Bank provides. This story of social entrepreneurship provides a fascinating glimpse into the possibilities of building self-sufficient communities without outside help.
    http://indiatogether.org/economy/articles/prisen0902.htm

  • Patenting Bio-Diversity
    Since asserting one's Intellectual Piracy Rights (IPRs) is becoming a globally legitimate norm for doing business[7], protecting one's indigenous biodiversity resources has become even more critical. A small village in North Kerala made the first beginning to safeguard its indigenous knowledge.... This article describes how the community got together to document all biodiversity resources the village had.
    http://www.vshiva.net/aticles/control_genetic_resources.htm


    Other Sources Quoted in the Newsletter:
    [1]: http://www.aavishkaar.org/rural_entrepreneur.htm
    [2]: http://www.goodnewsindia.com/Pages/content/discovery/sristi.html
    [3]: http://www.forbes.com/global/1998/0810/0109078a.html
    [4]: http://www.uppercrustindia.com/11crust/eleven/mumbai3.htm
    [5]: http://www.aravind.org/aurolab/
    [6]: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/43/drv.html
    [7]: http://www.vshiva.net/archive/biopiracy/pirates.htm


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