The Challenge of Solid Waste Management

Urban India (comprising of 35 cosmopolitan cities & 393 class-1 towns) currently generates about 1, 00,000 tons of solid waste every day. Taking into account the estimated rise in population & trends of consumerism solid waste figures are set to significantly increase. It is estimated that at least 50% of this waste is re-usable and has an economic value in the market.

For a city like Mumbai, which generates about 6,000 tons of solid waste on a daily basis, its Municipal Solid Waste Management Department has an annual budget of more than 10 billion rupees. Given the current unsustainable SWM practices of the government and decreasing landfill capacities – the market opportunity is huge for efficient & holistic end-to-end private SWM service providers. The need for infrastructure and large amounts of working capital are barriers that keep away small service providers from entering into this segment. However there are a few interesting experiments especially in and around cities like Delhi, Mumbai & Bangalore that are demonstrating this sector can be a sustainable venture with a triple bottom line – having a positive impact on planet, profits & people.

Solid waste management ventures can potentially raise revenue from the collection, segregation and management of re-usable solid waste. There is a large opportunity also in training and educating the workforce and people in better waste management practices. Additionally all waste that is re-used can be tracked in terms of the Carbon emission that is saved – and consequently converted into credits. 

Acceleration of the Waste Wise Trust Program

Waste Wise Trust provides end-to-end solid waste management (SWM) solutions in a socially and environmentally responsible manner. Bangalore generates approximately 3500 tons of solid waste every day – that is disposed in crude and unscientific ways thus polluting the environment. The current waste disposal methods also lead to several other issues like degrading the dignity of the waste pickers, health & safety challenges, poorly managed toxic waste penetrating into the ground water table, lakes becoming dumping grounds etc.

How Could WWT look at Systemic Change?

Before Incubation, WWT managed 1.5 tonnes of solid waste every day. This involved training and managing a group of waste pickers, enabling them withing an SHG structure, managing a land lab and a collection, sorting and sale process for solid waste collected from institutions and buildings. To be able to influence any change in the solid waste management process at a city level, it became clear that they would have to crack an operational model capable of processing at least 10% of Bangalore’s solid waste (equaling 350 tonnes of waste every day), a size that would be large enough to force new innovative methods and a size large enough to attract further adoption by the Government etc.  This would also demonstrate enough social and environmental impact to influence the SWM system of Bangalore. Also the model should be sustainable and equitable for all stakeholders (waste pickers, waste generators, service providers, BBMP and recyclers) involved.

The constraints faced by the team were three-fold:

a) They required large portions of land (which is scarce in Bangalore) to process solid waste of this quantity

b) The team required ways to generate rotating working capital to be able to deal with such a huge quantity of solid waste every day

c) They needed to ‘aggregate’ the generators of waste and access them in a sustainable manner. The success of any such model depends on a complex set of stakeholders involved and a deep collaboration with a partner willing to co-create a scalable model.

Prototype Design and the Thinking Behind

After a series of focused interventions, the existing business model was re-defined with the following shifts in it:

• The model would integrate all stakeholders of the value chain namely – waste pickers, waste generators, waste recyclers & entrepreneurs in an inclusive mutual-value-creating manner, with Waste Wise Trust playing a strong facilitator role in the value chain.
• The model would function as a Hybrid model a) A Non-profit entity that will train, build capacity and involve the waste pickers into a more organized community and b) a for-profit entity, accountable to providing professional services as opposed to the earlier pure NGO model
• The organization would focus on implementing end-to-end SWM services for a waste generating hub rather than disjointed waste generating units like shopping malls, hotels, multi storey apartments etc. Thus creating a ‘market of aggregated waste generators’ – from whom waste could be collected and managed more sustainably, creating an economy of scale

This shift in the thinking led the WWT team to actively pursue requests for end-to-end SWM services from two major waste generating hubs in Bangalore. One was the Electronic city – an industrial hub of more than 160 tech companies and offices, while the other was Peenya Industrial estate – India’s largest hub of manufacturing and industrial activity. The Electronic City Association (ELCIA) established a partnership with WWT in a strong move ahead and the prototype was finalized. This gave the team an opportunity to refine a working model that would process an average 5 to 15 tonnes of Solid waste daily – significantly increasing the current impact of their work.  The idea behind this prototype was to demonstrate:

1. A shift from managing 1.5 Tonnes daily to 10 time more – 15 Tonnes daily of SWM
2. Working with a complex set of collaborators in order to make this happen in a way that was never done before
3. Build a strong partnership, in a cost-sharing model for Land and some working capital as a start point of the  collaboration, making this a low-cost but sustainable project.

ELCIA has been a strong partner, coming into the partnership by providing WWT some land in the Electronic city campus to set up a land-lab for segregation and sale; and working capital in the form of some consulting and service fees to get the model off the ground.

The ELCIA Prototype

The Electronic city prototype has enabled the team to find an operational model capable of end-to-end SWM services (in large quantities) that impacts people, profits and the planet. Currently the team is experimenting ways to get access to higher quantities of valuable solid waste that is resalable. This would enhance the commercial viability of this model, thus leading to Governments adopting this model – as their current model leaks losses every day. Also the team is building internal capacity and strengths to take on more such projects that will demonstrate a working model that is scalable.

The Electronic City Industrial Association supports the Waste Wise Team with working capital, land & transport vehicles to be able to collect, sort & process the solid waste.

At the point of writing this case document, Waste Wise Trust has been working with ELCIA for 3 months, from February 2012 and has registered MoU’s and collects waste from around 13 companies in Electronic city. Just a few months into the contract the Model has already overshot the available land & transport capacities – requiring more investments into these especially with context to the contracts about to be signed with major players like 3M, Tata & HCL. It is expected that in 6-8 months this model will break even and become self sustainable, via a membership model paid for by the companies who are using the WWT facilities for managing their re-usable solid waste.

The Government Model Prototype

Apart from the ELCIA model that focuses on a few stakeholders generating huge quantities of waste, WWT is also collaborating with the Bangalore Municipality to innovate in how waste gets collected, sorted & processed from the public where a large number of people generate different kinds of waste in small quantities. By providing central sorting facilities, mobilizing the community & creating an incentives-based approach for waste pickers to adopt entrepreneurial routes for sustaining themselves, this model aims to manage public waste in a holistic & equitable manner in a form of Public-Private Partnership between the Government and Waste Wise Trust. Prototypes of this model are about to get started off in the localities of Domlur, Old Airport and Indiranagar Ward of Bangalore city.

Summary

Solid Waste management is going to be a huge challenge for India, especially as urban centres increase in intensity and the Government finds it tougher to manage the system with its weaking governance and accountability. This provides an opportunity for enterprising, socially minded entrepreneurs, who are willing to take the initial risks of setting up projects in this space to discover and demonstrate the power of innovative ways to manage solid waste – in a sustainable manner.

The management at ELCIA have taken a very progressive step forward in enabling such a model to be prototyped. The initial funding of such experiments will need to be a combination of grants and soft capital provided in the form of capacity building support – designed to help organizations find breakthrough ideas and demonstrate prototypes that can be further scaled.

This acceleration project was implemented as a part of the Guiding Social Innovations programme, sponsored by the Marico Innovation Foundation, as a part of its endeavor to play a catalytic role in introducing innovation into the social enterprise domain.

Innovation Alchemy is happy to share learning and insights gained from this incubation exercise – and also keen to collaborate with other organizations that wish to accelerate their work in this domain. If you would like to learn more about the Alchemize™ program or if you would like your organization to be considered to participate in our acceleration program, please email us at info@innovationalchemy.com and follow us on Twitter for regular updates.

You can also participate in Alchemix a series of open forum discussions  hosted by Innovation Alchemy, between Founders, Entrepreneurs, Innovators, Designers and Engaged Citizens. These sessions are an opportunity to learn more about innovative and impactful social models. Read more about the Alchemix platform.

Yuva Parivartan provides employability training to young people who have either dropped out of formal education (or) are at risk of having no real livelihood options. It is estimated that by 2016 close to 500 million people in India would have dropped out of school, having gone through less than 5 years of schooling ( read more) creating a huge drag for the economy and a major challenge for industry in the country. This high rate of school drop outs and a large gap in terms of real employability options is a critical social challenge that needs urgent focus.

 The YP Innovation challenge

Although the team has successfully managed to create a low cost training model and setup the required resources to do so, the model is constrained by the number of youth who came to its physical centers.  Increasingly, the core operations team at YP was finding that a majority of their target group were not interested in building capacity for themselves – or in seeking any real employability options. With limited real livelihood sources at hand, lack of exposure to the wider world, limited access to go beyond their rural catchments – the youth we met were mostly convinced that no real option exists.  And if it does exist its too expensive and unaffordable. Interestingly though, most of them had high expectations of how much they wanted to earn, which, it figures, is in itself a barrier for them to take up entry level jobs (offered by YP courses). In the search for instant gratification the school drop-out teenagers, in their minds, continued to discount existing opportunities.

For the YP team it was not feasible to set up infrastructure in remote areas where the population is scattered, but the need for such an intervention was most felt in these areas. Similarly it did not make sense for the youth to travel about 40 kilometers a day for their training to the centers. In a sense it was a catch 22 situation that limited the team in reaching out to the rural, tribal youth and impacting their lives.

Innovation, prototype design and the thinking behind it

To address the challenges it became clear that the model had to evolve into one that could provide:

•    A low cost, scalable solution that solves the last mile gap
•    Has the potential to reach the most rural and remote villages
•    In an engagement of a few days, be able to start a transformation at a mindset level.
•    Demonstrate value by exposing them to sample livelihood opportunities.

Once it became clear for the YP team that cracking a model with the above design parameters would result in the removal of maximum number of barriers of scale, the Mobile Camps Model was redesigned – fresh insights, ideation, brainstorming and prototype development went into the design stage.

The Mobile Camp

A mobile camp offers basic training free of cost over a period of 7 to 10 days depending on the courses and its complexity. The basic infrastructure and equipment required for the teaching gets transported to the identified village and is housed at a public venue like the school or panchayat training room. Thus addressing the remoteness challenge by taking training centers to where the students were instead of the other way around. Also through on-job training opportunities within a catchment radius, the students get a taste of real earning possibilities. These opportunities are complemented by life skills training, aspiration of achievement and exposure to industry needs in an experiential manner.

 Early Signs of Impact & Potential Evolution of the Model

The camp model has now evolved to offer on job trainings for a month or two after completion of the course – thus exposing the candidate to real life learning and livelihood scenarios, thus also increasing the probability of the candidate getting his/ her first real livelihood opportunity soon. It also forces the YP team to create more advance courses (leading to better livelihood options) at their centers, since basic training is done through the low cost camps model. The camps become a pipeline for the centers and partnerships that help YP expand its reach deep into the remote rural parts of India where this need is the most. Operated at a very low cost, using shared resources, a well designed curriculum and integrating it with locally relevant skills makes this model widen the base of impact for YP tremendously.

Some important statistics from the ground:

• Through their mobile camp prototypes, the model has touched more than 15,000 children in rural, remote villages across 3 states, in just a matter of 5 months
• More than half the youth attending these YP camps are school dropouts.
• More than 80% of them are from backward categories. Also more than 85% of them come from families having a total monthly income of less than Rs 10,000.
• The camps model has been able to demonstrate impact by linking more than 40% students to a real livelihood opportunity in the form of wage employment, self employment or an on job training opportunity.

In the next year, Yuva Parivartan plans to scale their camps model throughout Maharashtra – demonstrating the direct impact of this model and creating small pilots across 11 other states. This will result in the model reaching out to more than 40,000 rural youth across these states. Apart from this they are in the process of standardizing their camp modules into replicable formats, thus enabling other organizations to pick up their model and run with it. The core team is now confident of reaching out to a million youth and transforming the lives of school drop-outs, helping them get integrated into the formal employability sector, with the infusion of additional funding into the program. Discussions have now been initiated with the National Skills Development Corporation (NSDC) for potential funding and expansion through Government channels.

Kishor Kher, Founder of KSWA, the parent organization for the YP programme is emphatic about the need to facilitate several other NGOs and organizations to adopt learning and insights from the YP model and apply it in their regions. He believes that this form of fission or natural adoption is the key to ensuring that all youth in India have a second chance.

Watch a film on Yuva Parivartan’s work.

If you would like to learn more about the Alchemize™ program or if you would like your organization to be considered to participate in our acceleration program, please email us at info@innovationalchemy.com and follow us on Twitter for regular updates.

You can also participate in Alchemix a series of open forum discussions  hosted by Innovation Alchemy, between Founders, Entrepreneurs, Innovators, Designers and Engaged Citizens. These sessions are an opportunity to learn more about innovative and impactful social models. Read more about the Alchemix platform.

The Social Enterprise Opportunity

New age Social Enterprises and more traditional non-profit civil society organizations who form the formidable ‘third sector’, have over the last couple of decades demonstrated impact in areas that the Government and the private sector have had a challenge working within. Health, education, employability, potable water, nutrition… subjects where enterprising new social models have found ways to apply government funds, market mechanics and philanthropic money to demonstrate impact. These Social Enterprises have an edge over Government programs and large corporate initiatives in terms of understanding the core issue within communities and are far more innovative on the ground. Being agile enough to learn quickly by failing fast and cracking innovative models is a key strength that could go the last mile in efficient and low cost ways.

But…There is a Scale Challenge

More often than not the initial success at prototype stages does not always lead to large-scale adoption and impact. Limited resources, high costs of capacity building, poor infrastructure, fragmented value chains, lack of good management talent, limited working capital for operations are all reasons that good ideas seem to stop growing after a point. As a result organizations tend to compromise innovation and do a trade-off between the larger challenge and the potential feasible impact that they can create, through available current resources.

 The Alchemize™ Approach

The Alchemize methodology is a 12-18 month engagement, designed specifically to help teams at such a phase to uncover key Innovation levers that will enable their model to deliver significant impact, beyond organizational constraints. Going beyond Innovation at the idea stage, Innovation Alchemy gets involved with the teams at a deep level, facilitating, enabling and taking on co-ownership for demonstrating its impact.

The methodology facilitates a social enterprise to work on:

1. Redesigned goals and objectives with respect to scaling impact through key finding & working on Innovation levers
2. Seek insights around these innovation levers, build a portfolio of ideas that could help achieve significant impact, demonstrate prototypes of scalable, sustainable Models, implemented on ground with the core team, including impact measurement and unit costs.
3. Helping build a trained and capable core team, able to carry the work forward and continue to bring in Innovation Value into the organization. The team is actively facilitated to build innovation skills and take this forward
4. Focused interventions and support towards the model accessing growth stage funds and visibility, leveraging several platforms and relationships that Innovation Alchemy is nurturing within the larger social enterprise ecosystem in India.

In 2011, the Alchemize™ methodology was applied to incubate two social enterprise models under the Guiding Social Innovations program supported by Marico Innovation Foundation.

Projects Accelerated in 2011

The prototypes implemented with Yuva Parivartan  (rural school-drop out employability program) impacted more than 15,000 rural youth coming from remote, rural villages where the organization never had a presence before. The innovation and scale methodology was applied to help them significantly increase the scale of impact – and a key gap that was discovered was in the rural areas, where youth are not interested and have no opportunity to engage in employability adoption. The prototypes created significant social impact in the lives of these youth by linking them to real livelihood opportunities either through wage employment, self employment or on job training opportunities. This is all the more significant considering that over half of them were school dropouts and more than 80% of them were coming from backward categories. Read more about how the Alchemize™ methodology was applied to Yuva Parivartan.

The Innovation Incubation Process by Marico Innovation Foundation is a very good step to guide & handhold NGO’s like KSWA to take a big leap in an innovative manner. The inputs & insights on the Yuva Parivartan (YP) model, and (the support) thereafter in dividing YP activities into three different clouds was a great learning; hence innovative lever for us to invent the CAMP as backward linkage to the existing YP activity. Secondly, involving the energy of external experts in the overall YP innovation process helped us to find our way very easily. Dr. Vivekanand Sawant, Director, Yuva Parivartan Skills Development, KSWA

The Waste Wise Trust model transformed itself from being the small NGO it started out as, 27 years ago, focusing on street urchins and rag pickers into a social enterprise that is prototyping solutions to holistically manage Solid Waste at a systemic level. As a part of the acceleration process, the WWT team took on a large challenge of finding systemic solutions to SWT. Currently it is partnering with Electronic City Industrial Association (one of the largest IT offices and Software Industry catchments that generate solid waste in Bangalore) to find answers to a pressing problem of how to sustainably manage the 5-8 tons of Solid Waste that gets generated everyday in the campuses of its 165 resident companies. WWT is also closely working with the municipal government to crack a model that incentivizes the existing system to better manage its waste. Read more about WWT’s adoption of the Alchemize methodology here.

The incubation period defined the value of scale in our operation.  From our current operation of 5 tons per day, to 100 tons per day or 1000 t/p/d, we buoyed over the notion of scaling and how it happens, current impact vs potential impact and uniqueness of crafting a change.   The creative exercise which is the hallmark of every session with Innovation Alchemy helped us in transforming existing facility of waste management to learning center that attracts number of clients and visitors; Establish a network across the city to mobilize, train and take on logistical support from every actor involved; and establish a for profit company in its legal terms and make it distinct with social and  business impact indicators. Anslem Rosario, Ashoka Fellow, Founder Waste Wise Trust and Mythri Sarva Seva Samithi

If you would like to learn more about this program or if you would like your organization to be able to join the portfolio of teams who are being accelerated through the Alchemize™ methodology, please email us at info@innovationalchemy.com with a brief background on your organization or project – and why you believe this methodology could be of help to you.

In addition, we curate a community of practice for social entrepreneurs called Alchemix. This is a series of open forum discussions  hosted by Innovation Alchemy, between Founders, Entrepreneurs, Innovators, Designers and Engaged Citizens and is an opportunity to learn more about innovative and impactful social models. Learn more about Alchemix and how you can attend one of these sessions.

For regular updates on our open programs and peer connect Alchemix Session, you can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

In the foreword for the Mumbai Human Development Report in 2009, Kumari Selja, the Minister for Housing and Poverty alleviation states: “…Mumbai contributes 33% of income tax collection, 60% of India’s customs duty collection, 20% of India’s central excise collection and 40% of India’s foreign trade…..yet the city’s slums get less than 90 liters per capita of water daily. Studies have indicated that in certain slums of Mumbai there is an average of 81 people to each toilet seat available. And only 31% of Mumbai’s slum dwellers are likely to complete 10 years of schooling..”

In this context the Alchemix discussion sought to find insights on the following questions:

1. What are the most critical need areas for social and development impact in this context?
2. What does it take to succeed with a market-based model in urban slums?
3. What are the funding challenges for social enterprises in this context?

As always, entrepreneurs and team members from two social enterprises presented their models and shared their insights at the session to trigger off the debate and discussion:

Ankur Pegu and Sundeep Kapila, Swasth India – a social enterprise working to provide low-cost/ discounted healthcare services to slum dwellers in Mumbai. They have set up integrated health centers that provide low-cost diagnostics, consultation, testing facilities and a pharmacy all under the same roof.

Soaib Grewal and Jennifer O’Brien, WaterWalla – a social enterprise that sources and introduces clean water technologies into slums, with a strong emphasis on research and data collection to better understand the problem of water contamination and how to solve it.

Some highlights from the discussion:

• Urban poverty is a poverty of infrastructure and access to resources: As the Mumbai MHDR study highlighted, slums are intensely populated, creating huge pressures on limited resources. Even though people can pay, infrastructure and resources are just not within reach. Waterwalla found that individuals living in unregistered slums in Mumbai were paying twice as much for water as 5 star hotels in the city. The water mafia in the region have absolute control over the supply of water, giving them full power to choose when, where and how much to charge for the water they dispense. Swasth India shared similar insights. Doctors prescribe expensive drugs since they are incentivized to do that – while a large number of equally effective, lower cost drugs are available in the market, that have completed their patent lock-in periods, but these are not on the prescription list of any of the local Doctors. Slum communities are paying for these services, but they are paying a lot more and getting a lot less in return.

• Products and solutions exist, however the supply chain is fragmented, expensive, ineffective and exploitative. Building further on the above point, both Soaib Grewal and Sundeep Kapila highlighted the availability of solutions that can be used effectively in the slum context. Over 3000 different low cost water filters that would be useful in this context. Or a large set of low-cost, high quality drugs that could be used effectively. The gap (and the opportunity) is in the absence of an effective, intelligent, socially relevant Supply Chain. And this gap is where many social entrepreneurs can come in, bring down costs, introduce more cost effective solutions and find ways to build market-based models. Both Waterwalla and Swasth India are in this space – integrating the value chain, lowering costs and improving access.

• Slums are ‘Data-poor’ regions and so there is a challenge of visibility, transparency and measurement of social and economic impact. In addition to providing access to products and services a social entrepreneur who chooses to work in slum communities has to adopt data collection techniques, build deep networks within the local communities, find ways to track and monitor data and slowly build a repository of community information which can be used to build insights and intelligence for scale. All patients who come to Swasth Centers become members of Swasth India, their medical records are tracked, every transaction is recorded and maintained. Similarily Waterwalla has invested time in measuring quality of water over periods of time, across the usage patterns to determine insights that can help it scale its program.

• Prototype, prototype, prototype: Both teams who shared insights are at an early stage of development, spending time prototyping, piloting and building insights on the ground. No silver bullets exists and given the immensely challenging conditions within slums, this is not quick development. Trust is a huge factor in the adoption of these services and both teams have learnt that they have to spend time winning that trust, demonstrating that their ideas have a value. The Swasth team set up 3 centres in different areas of the slum before they realized how to cover their operational costs and run a successful health centre. The first center at the corner of a slum, the second near a bus stop with more footfall and the third in a busy market area area adjoining slums. Sundeep joked about how many times they have changed the name board, trying to get the name right for the medical centers.

Experimenting with new ideas and products seems to be an essential aspect of developing a strong, high impact, social business model – in the first few years, social entrepreneurs  are probably very much a combination of entrepreneurs and social scientists; constantly prototyping and collecting data to develop deeper insights, building and tweaking their models accordingly.

But being a social scientist does not guarantee cash flows and many social entrepreneurs find funding and working capital to be inadequate. The need for patient capital was a big discussion point at the Alchemix session, also highlighting the need for grant funding and philanthropic capital which can be more innovative, more risky and more empowering in these early stages – while the social scientist/ entrepreneur finds ways to sustain their enterprise models. A recent report by the Monitor group and Acumen reveals that “..the MFI sector received $20 billion in subsidies from philanthropists and aid donors to refine its model over 2 decades” highlighting the critical role of grant capital in filling a void before impact capital can really play a part.

For more details on this session read:

The trigger slides to kick start the discussion (On Scribd)

The Storify summary of the Tweets that followed and continued the conversation beyond the real gathering.

 Alchemix is a curated, open forum discussion between Entrepreneurs, Innovators, Investors, creative minds and engaged citizens. Alchemix takes a deep, insightful look at high-impact social models from an innovation lens.

Learn more about previous Alchemix Sessions. Follow us on Twitter @innovalchemy and like us on Facebook for more information and updates.

It is estimated that every Indian consumes approximately 8 kgs of plastic a year.  If even 20% of the total plastic consumed gets into the waste cycle, that equals over a billion kilograms of plastic waste that will be generated in India just this year alone.

The United Nation’s Environment Program published an excellent study about Converting Waste Plastics into a Resource (PDF Download here). Describing the pathways for Waste Plastic, the report traces most routes, which invaribly lead to a dumping site or a land fill.

If India alone is producing over a billion kilograms of plastic waste each year – the global figures are huge. While the world tries to figure out how to use less plastic – an equally important focus for Innovation will need to be: What to do with all the plastic that is already in the dumping grounds?

At Rs 85,000 crore, the Plastic Industry in India is expected to grow at an average of 10 percent a year. Any benefits of rules that ban using plastic bags, containers and packaging will have little impact, considering the size at which the problem is growing. Even the most environmentally conscious urban dweller will find it difficult to completely abstain from using plastic. We have come to accept that banning plastic completely may be somewhat unrealistic. So the problem now isn’t only how to stop consuming plastic but also how to get the most use from waste plastic. What is possible?

A Mumbai based firm called STEPS (Sustainable Technologies and Environmental Projects) is setting up a plant to turn plastic into fuel.

The Pune Municipal Corporation has also run a pilot project that uses fuel made from plastic in generators. The technology behind creating fuel from plastic has already evolved significantly and Indian firms like STEPS have expressed an interest in pursuing this idea to scale.

K K Plastics in Bangalore demonstrates one of the most functional uses of waste pastic. K K Plastics started off as a plastic manufacturer in the 80’s but after manufacturing restrictions laws were passed in 1999 the two brothers, Ahmed and Rasool Khan realised the harmful impact plastic has on the environment and decided to be a part of the solution. Mr Rasool Khan, along with the Central Road Research Institute in New Delhi conducted an in-depth study on how one could use scrap plastic to create a new material for building roads. K K Plastics supplied the raw material and CRRI conducted the research at Bangalore University.

The findings were remarkable; the new compound used plastic mixed with asphalt at a high temperature and created a compound called polymerized bitumen. This new compound when used in roads increases the strength and durability of the material. Roads made out of regular tar last about 3-4 years under ideal conditions but adding scrap plastic to the mix increases the life span by 2 -3 years. Scrap plastic has very little use unless it is broken down and converted into another substance; this means roads made from polymerized bitumen are one of the best ways to put an otherwise waste material like scrap plastic to use.

An innovation like this has the potential to create a tremendous impact in India; waste plastic that would otherwise litter streets and clog up drains has been put to use in a very useful, functional manner and road longevity has increased. The process even has the potential to generate employment as waste pickers and sorters would be required to source the scrap plastic.

Mr Rasool estimates that the raw material to build one km of road requires 1.6 tonnes of shredded, scrap plastic. The Indian Road Congress estimates that there is approximately 42.3 million kilometers of paved road in India. That means Indian could potentially have a use for 67.68 million tonnes of plastic every 4-6 years.

Yet after 10 years of completing the study, K K Plastics has managed to pave only about 1200 km of road with polymerized bitumen. Even with breakthrough technology and knowledge of the environmental and livelihood benefits, plastic roads are not being adopted on a large scale.

Why?

A strong need for policy backed, large-scale adoption. In the case of roads for instance, the only real customer for plastic roads in India is the Government; K K Plastics only produces as much road as the Government is willing to pay for. The only way for this technology to have a significant impact on the environment is if it is mandatory for roads in India to be made of polymerized bitumen. The Government is currently more focused on reducing plastic consumption than finding alternate uses for the material. A shift in mindset needs to be triggered – where plastic (especially scrap plastic) is viewed as a raw material and not as a waste product.

New policies in waste management will need to source and understand these interesting innovations and support them through large scale adoption, encouraged by enabling policies, facilitating citizens to adopt. Till all that happens, we need to continue supporting and working with such entrepreneurs, helping them find ways to breakthrough the adoption cycle for their innovative and high-impact work.

We will explore such subjects in more depth through our Alchemix sessions. If you haven’t yet joined any of the Alchemix insight sessions – here is your opportunity to find out more. You can also join the Alchemix Community via Facebook.

Follow us on Twitter @innovalchemy for regular updates.

If you are working on an interesting challenge area, new business model, unique opportunity for social impact – we would love to meet you and understand more. Write to the Research & Insights Team at Innovation Alchemy (info@innovationalchemy.com) with a few details and we will be in touch.

Blog Post Research & Compilation: Mansi Reddy, April 2012

#Alchemix #MIF2012

4.30pm – 5.30pm IST, Thursday, March 22nd , 2012

Innovation Alchemy is hosting a Twitter chat in collaboration with the Marico Innovation Foundation as a part of a Series of Innovation Practitioner conversations called #Alchemix. The Theme for this chat is ‘Healthcare Innovation in India’. The chat will last an hour and is an opportunity to engage with Leaders, Practitioners and experienced Professions who are making breakthrough innovation happen in the healthcare space.

Featured Organizations

IKP Center for Technologies in Public Health– ICTPH aims to demonstrate sustainable healthcare delivery models for rural Indian populations. Driven by the philosophy of ‘pro-active’ care delivery, ICTPH in its current field site in Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu serves a population of 70,000 rural inhabitants through seven Rural Micro health Centers. Population geo-tagging, risk profiling coupled with a broad range of primary care services such as ophthalmic and dental provisioned at the village level are clear differentiators of their model. With the intent to demonstrate a functioning health-system design through financing interventions ranging from pre-paid primary healthcare to fixed price healthcare, ICTPH aims to contribute towards the National agenda of provisioning universal healthcare to its populations.

Vaatsalya Healthcare – A majority of the healthcare facilities in India are in urban/metro areas and not accessible to rural and semi-urban individuals. Vaatsalya is bridging this gap by building primary and secondary care hospitals in semi-urban and rural areas. They aim to take high-quality healthcare to rural areas while also making it affordable. Oasis Fund and Seedfund recently announced their funding support to help expand Vaatsalya.

Featured Guests and Practitioners on the Chat

Dr. Nachiket Mor, Director, IKP Centre for Technologies in Public Health (@nachiketmor)

Dr. Zeena Johar, President, IKP Centre for Technologies in Public Health (@ZeenaJohar )

Dr. Ashwin Naik, Co-Founder, Vaatsalya Healthcare and Ashoka Fellow (@ashwinnaik )

WHEN: 4.30 pm, March 22nd, 2012.

HASHTAG: #Alchemix

The Tweet Chat will be moderated by Parvathi Menon (@ParvathiMenon), Founder CEO of Innovation Alchemy Consulting (@innovalchemy) and will be actively shared and enabled by Marico Innovation Foundation (@innovationindia).

The first 20 minutes of the chat will focus on the IKP Centre for Technologies in Public Health. Dr. Nachiket Mor and Dr. Zeena Johar will answer questions and share their insight. The next 20 minutes will focus on the Vaatsalya model and co-founder, Dr. Ashwin Naik will also answer questions and share his experience and perspective.

The last 20 minutes will be open for comments and queries from the online innovation community and is an opportunity to ask further questions and learn more about Healthcare Innovation in India.

More on the Guest Practitioners and Featured Experts:

Dr. Nachiket Mor is an independent member of the Board of ICTPH.  He was a member of the Board of ICICI Bank (2001-2007) and President of the ICICI Foundation (2007-2011). He has a background in finance and supports the ICTPH vision, that a combination of new human resources, infrastructure, technology, interventions, and financing approaches will be needed to address the challenges of primary healthcare in India.  He is also a member of the High Level Expert Group on Universal Healthcare appointed by the Government of India under the Chairmanship of Dr. Srinath Reddy. Follow Dr. Nachiket Mor – @nachiketmor

Dr. Zeena Johar is the President and a Founding member of ICTPH. She obtained her PhD from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETH – Zurich. Dr. Johar has played an instrumental role in conceptualizing the strategic alignment of ICTPH with the overall mission of IKP Trust and is currently spearheading their healthcare delivery pilot in Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu. Follow Zeena Johar – @ZeenaJohar

Dr. Ashwin Naik is the co-founder and CEO of Vaatsalya. Dr. Ashwin was recently selected as one of the Young Global Leaders of 2012 by the World Economic Forum. Ashwin has a medical degree from Karnatak Medical College, Hubli and a master’s degree from the University of Houston, Texas. His experience growing up in a small town in India and the lack of basic health care facilities are what inspired Vaatsalya. Follow Dr. Ashwin Naik – @ashwinnaik. Follow Vaatsalya Healthcare – @Vaatsalya

Parvathi Menon is the Founder CEO of Innovation Alchemy and the curator of Alchemix, a growing community of innovation practice. She brings together a passion for development issues, entrepreneurship and a strong belief in the power of innovation thinking to be the critical change ingredient. Innovation Alchemy applies a set of tools, frameworks and methodology to facilitate social enterprises that wish to scale their impact significantly. Follow Parvathi Menon – @ParvathiMenon. Follow Innovation Alchemy @innovalchemy

How can you take part?

The chat is an opportunity to engage deeply with thought Leaders, debate and discuss the challenges, successes and innovations in the Indian Healthcare space. We will be using the hashtags #Alchemix to direct the tweets. The chat is open to anyone who is interested, so feel free to join in and express your thoughts.

If this is your first Tweet Chat, the process is very simple. Sign into Twitter with your account information and search for the hashtag #Alchemix. This will allow you to track all the Tweets being sent out during the chat. Make sure you include the hashtag #Alchemix in each of your tweets, that way everyone engaging in the chat can see your tweet.

You can also use the Tweet Chat Application on www.tweetchat.com. To use it, just visit the site, sign in with your Twitter account information and search for the hashtag #Alchemix.

If you know anyone in the Healthcare space or who would be interested in learning more about Healthcare, Innovation and Ideas that are developing in India please do share this page with them.

Follow us on Twitter and be a part of the growing Indian Innovation Ecosystem.

Micro-credit developed as an innovative response to the lack of capital for poor families; leveraging a combination of social credit (people knowing people in the community) and micro enterprise initiatives (small enterprises that could generate a livelihood). And this form of credit is most relevant for low-income individuals who typically do not have access to banking services. The general belief was that low-income individuals are capable of overcoming poverty if given access to this type of credit.

But in practice (and as the evolutionary issues in Micro Finance in India have reflected), there is limited proof that micro credit can alleviate ‘poverty‘. A recent Forbes article went so far as to say that micro finance “can make the already risky lives of the poorest even riskier ”. The potential to mitigate poverty exists BUT profit seeking MFI’s have found ways to leverage credit and make money off the poor. The learning that is emerging is that MFI’s may not be the best (or the only) way for the poor to access capital.

Crowd Funding seems to be the evolutionary next step from Micro Credit – encompassing a larger target group of people who are ‘CAPITAL-DEPRIVED‘: the poor individual, the micro enterprise and also some of the more profitable social businesses. Crowdsourcing.org defines this as “an approach to raising capital for new projects and businesses by soliciting contributions from a large number of stakeholders following three types of crowd funding models: (1) Donations, Philanthropy and Sponsorship where there is no expected financial return, (2) Lending and (3) Investment in exchange for equity, profit or revenue sharing.”

Combine purposeful micro-credit with crowd-sourced individual contributions and you get crowd funding.

The capital is essentially a pool of capital created by a larger crowd of individuals putting small amounts of money together in order to fund and support ideas, people and social businesses.

Social organizations like Kiva.org have leveraged the internet and built online platforms that allow for person to person lending, without the red tape and high interest rates that banks and MFI’s offer. Kiva.org was the first online platform to successfully connect micro-lenders with individuals who need micro-loans in developing countries. They brought together a global community of lenders and increased accessibility to social capital in a way that was never possible before. What is interesting is that crowd funding models don’t only apply to alleviating poverty; Smallknot.com is a micro lending platform that connects local businesses with engaged community members who wish to lend their support. The main benefit is that it gives local businesses access to low-cost capital while providing community members a low-risk method of helping out.

Milaap’s crowd funding model…

Milaap.org is evolving as one of India’s answer’s to the social capital gap; much like Kiva they are also an online platform that offers micro-loans to India’s poor. We had a chance to meet Milaap founders Anoj Viswanathan and Sourabh Sharma and got a deeper look into the pressing need for this kind of capital in India. Milaap.org allows India’s working poor to get access to capital, lenders can browse through profiles, select a recipient and choose to contribute as little as 1000 Rs or 50$. The money is not a donation; local partners ensure repayment, once the loan is paid back, the lender has the option of recycling the money within the system or can choose to opt for a refund. Milaap.org is probably the first in India to allow Indian and Foreign lenders to contribute directly to India’s working poor in a transparent, technology enabled manner.

Milaap unlike Kiva is a for-profit enterprise; they sustain themselves by taking a small percentage of the money generated by the low interest loan. Each Rs.1000 loan generates approximately Rs. 75 in interest in a year. Rs. 35 is paid to the local NGO partner and Rs. 40 is earned by Milaap as a facilitation/ transaction fee.

Institutional supporters to Milaap include The National University of Singapore, Village Capital, DASRA, Microfinance Society of Singapore, IIMB and many more. Recently, Unitus Seed Fund has also shown their support by choosing to invest in Milaap.

Why this model could work…

In India, casual lending and borrowing is a common practice; people are known to provide financial help to neighbors, workers, relatives and friends in need.  Since the amounts are usually small, and the borrower is known to us, issues like high interest rates are not applicable. Milaap.org is trying to tap into these Indian lending practices; updated borrower profiles remove anonymity and provide transparency and lenders know exactly where their money is going and how it’s being used.

Since lenders are only expected to lend small amounts, the risk is minimized. “Loan a little, Change a lot” is the motto they adopt. No financial institution or bank is involved in these transactions so interest rates are significantly lower (about 50% cheaper than micro-credit loans). Pooled resources remove the need for banks and expensive capital. Since the money is a loan and not charity, it encourages borrowers to be enterprising and use the money well.

The ultimate appeal of Milaap’s crowd funding model is the feel good factor involved in giving; it allows lenders to engage with needy individuals, contribute to causes that resonate with us and create an impact without spending too much time, money or effort – but all of this within a more formal lending structure – rather than informal giving.

There is a great need for cheap, low risk and easily accessible capital in India and MFI’s are no longer serving this purpose. The rise of crowd funding models like Milaap is a direct organic response to the gaps of MFI’s. But how great is the impact and how can we ensure that every BOP Indian has access to this capital? One of Milaap’s biggest challenges will be scaling and reaching all those in need. The concept of lending to the poor vs. charity is relatively new and convincing the common man to be a part of an online lending platform can also be a challenge.

Crowd funding via the internet is an innovative way to target social issues; it is a new banking paradigm that allows socially engaged citizens to be involved in the solution. Kiva and Milaap are early models and given the challenges and the potential for impact, it will be interesting to see what emerges in the future.

And as a quick last thought – how can this be migrated to the Mobile Phone? Considering that almost every poor Indian has an access to a mobile phone – how could that device be the enabler for a larger revolution in crowd sourced funding?

We will explore more on this via the Alchemix sessions. If you haven’t yet joined any of the Alchemix insight sessions – here is your opportunity to find out more. You can also join the Alchemix Community via Facebook.

Follow us on Twitter @innovalchemy for regular updates.

If you are working on an interesting idea, new business model, unique challenge – we would love to meet you and understand more. Write to the Research & Insights Team at Innovation Alchemy (info@innovationalchemy.com) with a few details and we will be in touch.

Blog Post Research & Compilation: Mansi Reddy, 10th March 2012

Follow Mansi on Twitter: @MansiReddy13

In this wonderful February 2011 piece on GigaOM, Om Malik writes about changing the DNA of a company. And he argues about how tough that is – but its possible instead to identify the bad behavior – which is creating the drag – and steadily change those behaviors. That’s very tough too… but possible.

In an unrelated piece, in the January 2012 Forbes India issue, Samar Srivastava explores how PepsiCo is approaching the BoP market in India and the changes its having to introduce into its retail operations. Including the creation of a new set of goals, different team and a cost structure and business model that is very dissimilar to the Global Pepsi business – but necessary in the context of a distributed, competitive, fragmented market like rural India.

And sometime in December I read a newspaper article analyzing the difference between Low Fare carriers and Low Cost carriers. (Couldn’t locate a link to this article unfortunately). But in essence the article pointed to Kingfisher and Jet being full service airlines trying a low fare service – with a full cost mindset. Versus Indigo (and the former Deccan airways) which were set up as Low Cost Carriers – thus making it possible for them to succeed in the tough industry climate – because their essence and core DNA was to be low cost across all aspects of operations and delivery.

What links them together?

Essentially the 3 different pieces of thinking all pointed back to the fact that:  To solve a nagging problem and to INNOVATE around a challenge, its impossible to find the direction without first RECOGNIZING THE MINDSET or DNA that drives the BEHAVIOUR of the organism. And start by changing the behavior that’s blocking innovation.

PepsiCo as a part of its India BoP strategy has set up office in an area that maybe somewhat dilapidated, but half the cost of its offices in the Global Business Park in Gurgaon. They are located with several other similar businesses, are using local production facilities, field sales men without field devices, leveraging local distributor cash, focusing on providing good incentives to the retailer and a variable pay structure to its team. Back to the basics of retail in many ways. But combined with a new set of relevant products for this market.

After a few unsuccessful years of trying smaller packets of popular products and cheaper costs – PepsiCo finally put together a strategy to start fresh in rural and BoP markets, without the behaviors of the global business. Collaborating with Tata on an energy drink for daily wage labour defines a big new start.

In Om’s article he quotes Gregory House, the cranky, genius doctor from the television show, House, who solves medical and diagnostic mysteries. House say’s “Almost dying doesn’t change anything. Dying changes everything.”

Indeed. Kingfisher airlines seem to have found some direction in its near-death experience. Will it go ahead and kill itself before it recreates though? It appears that the Management is keen to lay claim to the Full Service model, exiting Kingfisher Red over a period of time and focusing on its ‘service’ and ‘hospitality’ promise. Jet airways is seeking to stay in both fields – but with two different companies and two completely different operating cost models – one designed for an Efficient Full Service and the other designed around the promise of Low Cost.

Have these two airline teams dug deep enough into their DNA – and have the bad behaviors been identified? Will PepsiCo’s Iron Chusti, Glucoplus and Lehar win the market in rural India?

For now… it’s interesting to see the reflections and the new behaviors that are being put into place…. in the search for innovation impact!

Parvathi Menon, Bangalore.

The two days of engagement was a quick immersion into the complex Development world of the North East. The region is perceptibly isolated from the rest of the country, politically, geographically, economically... A brief research of the core challenges in this part of the country points to porous borders, leading to migration, infiltration and huge demand on a weak economy. High degree of ecological instability and recurring natural disasters repeatedly impacting livelihoods, increasing displacement and further reducing opportunities. Adding to the complexity is a feeling that ‘the Central Government does not care about the North East‘.

 Combine all this – human rights struggles, cross-border violations, weak economy, limited opportunity and lack of any strong progressive policy frameworks – and what you get is a situation ripe for human conflict.

In this context a strong Civil Society can be a major pillar on which new ideas, sustained human intervention and support can be crafted.  Ashoka India has elected some remarkable social entrepreneurs and development professionals over the last 2 decades who are leading the change. Over 20 of these Changemakers and Ashoka Fellows came together for the thematic session because the subject of Scale is troubling them as much as it is any other social entrepreneur in India.  The crux of the scale question for the nonprofit organization is  – HOW CAN WE GET SIGNIFICANTLY MORE PEOPLE TO BENEFIT FROM OUR PROGRAM, AT THE SAME TIME FIND WAYS TO BECOME FINANCIALLY SUSTAINABLE, and ALL THIS WITHOUT ADDING MAJOR COSTS TO OUR BOTTOM LINE?

The core of the discussion stayed around the deconstruction of the approach to scale. Debating weather the route to scale needs due consideration or should it be a natural serendipitous evolution. Is it even possible to scale purely non-profit models and if so how. The real challenge is to increase the impact of a programme/ initiative, without the resources or bandwidth available to increase people, capacity or infrastructure. And therefore this becomes an opportunity to really apply innovation thinking to the problem of scale.

Also under discussion was the very real concern with funding. While a lot more market-based venture funding is being made available to social entrepreneurs across India, the scenario in the North East demonstrates a classic need for blended funds. The ‘market’ in that sense is not nearly able to pay for the nature of challenges being addressed. What is needed is a combination of strategic long term institutional funding, Government support through programme funding for implementation and a need to fund capacity building of the teams working on potentially sustainable market based models. Foundations and CSR initiatives probably need to adopt some of the core capacity building areas under development in this region – especially related to ecology and its sustenance, allowing social innovators to find breakthroughs that combine development with economic returns.

Debating frameworks, routes and methodologies for scale, the discussion is a start point to some of the Fellows adopting a ‘by-design’ approach to significantly increase the impact of the work they are doing. Here is a sample of the Ashoka innovators and entrepreneurs who joined the scale discussion.

Babloo Loitongbam has designed a human rights curriculum that equips traditional village institutions to organize themselves and simultaneously internationalizing grassroots responses to human rights issues and violations.

Binalakshmi Nepram is the Founding Secretary General of the Control Arms Foundation of India, and focuses on grassroot efforts of disarmament. Bina works primarily with women affected by gun violence in the region. She also began the Manipur Women Gun Survivors Network.

The region is known to be disaster prone with cyclones and high rainfall. Floods are common and waters have been known to rise up to 30 ft effecting over 10,000 villages every year. The impact of these turbulent weather conditions is high levels of displacement and poverty, the agriculture and farming sector of the region suffers greatly. Unregulated deforestation, pollution, indiscriminate fishing, and a lack of community involvement are depleting the region’s biggest asset.

Ravindranath is institutionalizing a civil society model in which villages and communities in flood-ravaged regions are better prepared to predict, confront, and cope with floods, turning a one-time calamity into opportunities for people to create new and alternative livelihoods. A service that facilitates healthy Pig breeding and farming is one such direct opportunity.

The region shares borders with Bhutan, China, Myanmar and Bangladesh and these poorly monitored borders have become a hub for human trafficking, narcotics and illegal arms trade, leading to more violence and strife amongst the people of the North East. Tourism is a significant source of income and livelihood in the region but the industry has suffered due to widespread ethnic conflict and violence.

Ashoka Fellow and inspiring social entrepreneur Hasina Kharbhih has developed the well known Meghalaya Model, a comprehensive tracking system that connects the state government, security agencies, legal groups, media and citizen organizations to combat cross-border trafficking of children and women. She is now on her way to developing an idea to rebuild the community of local handicraft connecting to national and international markets.

A market-based model that is making headway has been developed by Ashoka Fellow Pranjal Baruah. Farmers are put in control of their produce through his land-to-lab strategies, training and support – transforming the farmers into “mushroom entrepreneurs.” This results in new livelihood opportunities for thousands of unemployed youth and landless families in Assam. By federating farmers, Pranjal is creating systems that aim to put an end to farmer exploitation in the northeast region. We were treated to the taste of the highly coveted Oyster Mushrooms, a delicacy grown in the Hills of the North East – now cultivated in an organized manner through Pranjal’s initiative 

The Ashoka Fellows have been selected carefully, for their innovative work in livelihood, human rights, empowerment, environmental awareness and conservation, all subjects of great significance in the North East. In comparison to several market based social enterprise models we (Innovation Alchemy) engage with in States like Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Gujrat  – the models in the North East continue to stay strongly within the non-profit paradigm – and understandably so.

 Makes it even more compelling to have an innovation strategy that can help them leapfrog into a sustainable, high-impact mode in the next few years.

The International Energy Agency estimates that about 1.5 billion people around the globe do NOT have access to electricity and 85% of these people live in rural areas.  In India, close to 40% of the country’s population still lives with limited access to grid electricity. This is not to say that rural India is in complete darkness. The up-front cost of procuring clean, affordable energy is high and so several parts of rural India rely on kerosene, charcoal and other forms of fuel that are easier to access and in local purchase terms, cheaper. The existence of these alternatives indicates that people have the ability to pay for energy, but it needs to be in a format and amount that they can access. Regular energy sources have not been able to find ways to fit this need yet. Simpa Networks leverages this insight into the rural market to find a way to fit within the ‘ability to pay’.

“Customers pay upto 1000$ over 8-10 years for kerosene lanterns why not capture what the customer is willing to pay and give them a cleaner alternative?”says co-founder Michael Macharg.

Based in Bangalore, Simpa Networks aims to develop affordable energy solutions for the poor. Their product makes solar electricity accessible and affordable to the rural and under served consumer through their innovative pricing system called ‘Progressive Purchase’.

Simpa Networks has developed a metered solar energy system that generates electricity and can be installed in any rural home. The system can be purchased for a small upfront cost and can be recharged (through local agents via SMS) according to usage. If the meter runs out, it switches off and comes back on once the user has paid for a recharge (recharge amounts vary from 50-500 rupees). But the real proposition is that as the user recharges the system, he or she is slowly paying to own the system. Once enough recharges have been made (across a period of approximately 3-5 years), the system unlocks and produces solar power for free.

What’s enabling adoption?

Flexibility. One of the reasons rural India relies on kerosene is that it appears cheaper since the user can pay only what he or she can afford, and buy based on money at hand. Simpa recognizes that rural incomes are irregular and applies this insight to their product pricing; the cost of electricity generated by the solar panels is the same as buying kerosene lamps. The ability to pay for clean electricity in small doses and the added bonus of eventually owning a solar panel that generates free power is what makes this product especially remarkable and innovative.

What are the challenges?

Need to create and build distribution and service channels into the targeted markets. Finding the right local partners to help distribute the solar panels into rural homes is a challenge. Right now, Simpa partners with SELCO India to take their product into villages and reach the rural population in Karnataka; and will need to find similar dedicated partners in other geographies to expand and scale up. The system also potentially requires routine maintenance. Servicing and employing an efficient workforce of partners to execute this maintenance is also a challenge that the Simpa team is looking to work through.

Impact – current and potential

Simpa Networks was incorporated in India in mid 2011 and have conducted their first round of pilot testing in Karnataka. They have a Sales agreement with SELCO India to sell 1000 solar home systems in 2012, growing to 5000 + systems through SELCO and other distributors in 2013. By 2014 they aim to have sold 25,000 solar home systems demonstrating a clear model and scale approach.

Paul Needham co-founder elaborates on the Simpa Business model. Watch him speak at Poptech 2011 (Video).

Products, services and business models that can help bring cheaper, more user friendly, clean energy into homes and work spaces across India is going to be a huge opportunity for innovators and entrepreneurs alike. Its early days yet, but enterprises such as Simpa Networks are doing some critical experiments in this direction and the insights from their learning and growth in this market will form the basis for a lot of development in this industry.

We will explore this subject further in the next Alchemix session. If you haven’t yet joined any of the Alchemix insight sessions – here is your opportunity to find out more. You can also join the Alchemix Community via Facebook.

Follow us on Twitter @innovalchemy for regular updates.

If you are working on an interesting idea, new business model, unique challenge – we would love to meet you and understand more. Write to the Research & Insights Team at Innovation Alchemy (info@innovationalchemy.com) with a few details and we will be in touch.

Blog Post Research & Compilation: Mansi Reddy, 11th December 2011