Official press release for the 2013 India Development Marketplace

Grants awarded to 20 powerful development solutions

 Bhopal, May 01, 2013 – Twenty social enterprises were today awarded grants totaling $2 million by the India Development Marketplace (DM) funded by the World Bank Group (WBG). The grantees received $100,000 each to extend and scale up their innovative business models in the states of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. A number of financial institutions, social entrepreneurs, investors and government officials participated at the India DM event organized to showcase these development solutions to the problems of the most vulnerable people.

Through its India Development Marketplace initiative, the World Bank Group (World Bank and the International Finance Corporation[1]) has identified scalable, replicable and financially sustainable projects for support. The call for proposals was launched in January and received nearly 200 proposals from organizations already operating in these three states, as well as from across the country.  These organizations have developed business models to expand access to basic services such as livelihood and employment, education, women and child welfare, agriculture, energy, healthcare and financial services.

Of the 20 selected enterprises in 2013, over 40% demonstrate innovative business models to support and empower women living in low-income states.  Other enterprises recognized include initiatives that improve access to affordable healthcare for families; that increase the earning potential of families, while engaging in livelihoods that are supportive of improving the local environment; and, organizations that leverage and apply technology in new ways to improve the delivery of key social, health and education services to underserved populations.

In addition, the DM provides an opportunity to understand what works – how and under what conditions – in an effort to surface and invest in models that best meet the needs of poor communities.

“The World Bank Group is committed to supporting innovative models and programs that support underserved communities, particularly in low-income states. The DM provides an opportunity to understand what works and under what conditions as a means to improve services to the poor,” said Onno Ruhl, World Bank Country Director in India. “I recently visited one of our DM winners from last year which is crossing the proverbial last-mile by bringing regular medicines and the hope of a healthy life to TB patients. The DM is a platform that is aimed at bridging the gap between intention and implementation by helping development practitioners replicate successful pilots,” he added.

In 2011, the DM awarded grants to 14 high performing organizations in Rajasthan, Odisha and Bihar. Through the provision of capacity building services, the WBG has been able to assist in their organizational development.  Today, these grassroots organizations are demonstrating strong results in assisting the poor. In addition, key lessons learnt working with these enterprises have included their challenges of scaling and accessing growth capital. These constraints are an important focus for the India DM 2013 program.

“Linking early-stage enterprises to next-stage financing through grant support and advisory services is important for the growth of emerging social enterprises in India. This year, too, the IDM will support grassroots organizations to refine and build their business models to ensure sustainable impact over the long term,” said Anil Sinha, Regional Head South Asia Advisory Services, International Finance Corporation.

Over the past four months, eminent industry experts reviewed the shortlisted proposals on parameters including social impact, sustainability, growth potential, and innovation.  The social enterprises that made their way to the top of 2013 India Development Marketplace went through extensive due diligence and evaluation for their demonstrated projects.

“Not only do we seek to support these business models going to scale and strengthening a broader social enterprise ecosystem, said Drew von Glahn, Team Leader of the Development Marketplace program, “We are also keen to learn from these organizations – from these management teams – as to potential new mechanisms and business models that can increase the reach to these disenfranchised communities. This is consistent with the WGB’s new goals to surface and support what works to end poverty and promote shared prosperity.”

In order to accelerate the impact of these organizations, the WBG will provide capacity building support services over the next 18 months.  They will undergo business mentoring, and receive technical assistance in such areas as business development, financial management and strategic planning.  Building on the partnership that it has established with Innovation Alchemy, a Bangalore-based firm focused on supporting social enterprises, the DM will also help these enterprises identify additional local partners to expand their reach and sustainability.  In addition, the IFC continues to be an important strategic partner, bringing its keen focus on working with the private sector to support financially viable business models.

In addition to the direct impact that each of these organizations can have through the delivery of their services to marginalized society, the WBG will evaluate these service and delivery models – assessing the successes, and challenges, in reaching the traditionally underserved.

Past DM grantees include such organizations as Selco Solar, which provides sustainable and affordable energy to underserved households and livelihoods; Educate Girls – working in the Pali and Jalore districts to expand access to education for young girls; Bihar Development Trust – providing market access to rural women artisan groups; and Babajobs – using technology to provide better job opportunities to the informal job sector.  One of the DM 2011 grantees, Operation ASHA – which works on TB eradication – has taken their program global and is now working in four countries.   

About The Development Marketplace

The DM is a competitive grants program seeking to support scalable, replicable social enterprise projects with the potential for significantly improving lives and access to basic goods and services for underserved poor communities. Projects that demonstrate appreciable impact in these areas are provided financial assistance, backed by strong need-based technical assistance in order that they may scale and/or replicate their efforts. The DM also seeks to leverage other parts of the WBG and country partners including Government to scale-up delivery models most effective in reaching the poor. The DM has since its inception in 1998, awarded more than $60 million in grants to more than 1200 innovative projects identified through country, regional and global competitions.

Links to Additional Resources

Website: The Development Marketplace, World Bank Group, Innovation Alchemy

Feature: From Great Ideas to Social Impact: The Development Marketplace’s Second Decade

Blog: The Development Marketplace Blog, Innovation Alchemy Blog

Social Media: Development Marketplace on Twitter, Innovation Alchemy on Twitter

This blog post is the third of a series of posts written by Vishy Kuruganti, on location at the 2013 India Development Marketplace in Bhopal. The other posts from the series can be found here. If you would like to read an overview of this year’s Development Marketplace and its finalists click here.

More posts on the finalists and the DM event coming up soon..

Less Jugaad, More Real Innovation

Sometime last year I was waiting at the Sony World signal in Koramangala (Bangalore) in my blue Reva. One of those rare “peak traffic” moments when I had plenty of time to look around. A cargo auto rickshaw (the type where the driver cockpit area is clearly demarcated from the cargo hold area) was right next to me. Giving the driver company in the cockpit area was a medium sized boulder. We Indians have so many modes of communication available to us. For this moment, I used ‘body language’. Peering over, I stared very obviously at the boulder (as though it were an art gallery exhibit). After five seconds, I looked away and repeated the maneuver. The driver gesticulated to the back and then pointed to the boulder. I nodded slightly and slid my window open – an obvious translation to “Could you elaborate?” He explained “When I have heavy cargo in the back, I need to balance it out in the front.”

Totally makes sense, right? Another example of India’s jugaad in action. You’ve no doubt seen those pictures on Facebook of mopeds (and bicycles) laden high and wide with buckets, snacks, or whatever. Pictures that generate 1,000s of Likes and 100′s of laudatory “Indian jugged is great”, “we are like THAT only” comments. Well, I’m simply not impressed with this kind of jugaad and that’s putting it mildly.

What India’s BOP needs is good old-fashioned innovation. The kind of innovation that involves understanding customer pain points, researching candidate solutions and eventually choosing a solution at the right price point that drives significant adoption by the target customer. I spoke to five such organizations yesterday at the Development Marketplace.

Vigyan Ashram: Two-time winner of the Development Marketplace award. They first won in 2007 when World Bank was giving awards at the ‘idea stage’. The funny thing is that I interviewed Ashish Gawade (one of the co-founders) two years ago but didn’t make the connection because I knew them as BOPEEI – the for-profit division of Vigyan Ashram. Their initial foray was in productizing pedal-generated lighting systems [link to http://www.techsangam.com/2011/08/11/bopeei-generating-off-grid-electricity-in-cloudy-and-coastal-regions/ might be relevant] but they soon diversified to creating solar versions of their fast charging systems.

While they are still selling the pedal generator systems (targeting shared community users), most of the growth is coming from three solar models: a) Rs. 750 entry-level single lamp with integrated solar panel, b) Rs. 1550 unit with rooftop panel and single separate light, and c) Rs. 3000 unit with two lights and a rooftop panel. So far they’ve sold to 2000 households in Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, and Karnataka. Their product and pricing strategy puts them in the space between D.Light and Selco – though the former’s products are priced even lower than Rs. 750.

Operation Asha: Possibly the most high-profile organization in this year’s cohort and another two-time winner (previously in 2011). I had a long conversation with the ebulliently eloquent Dr. Shelly Batra (Operation Asha’s Founder) about her back story and learnt what makes them a successful low-cost intervention in combating tuberculosis in India.

Their technology stack, developed in partnership with Microsoft Research, features a fingerprint reader and a Web+SMS infrastructure that enables a fraud-proof way of ensuring that a TB patient takes the full course of medicines. Operation Asha’s army of community health workers work with lists of TB patients (provided by its hospital partners) but they don’t stop there. Health workers proactively visit slums and other impoverished areas and, using a smartly designed verbal questionnaire with probing TB symptom questions, they obtain sputum samples from ‘likely’ patients. Patients that test positive are on-boarded to the Operation Asha treatment workflow. (Read more about the Operation Asha’s model from the guest post by Dr. Shelly Batra, Founder of OpAsha)

Waterlife: At the heart of Waterlife’s solution is the Waterlife Center – a water treatment plant that purifies water of fluorides and nitrates. The purification systems, imported from US and Europe, along with the physical structure capital expenditure costs about Rupees 35 lakh. Add to this India’s perennial problem “how do you maintain systems?” – Waterlife’s business model innovation lies in solving both these problems. The capital expenditure is paid by state governments and the Waterlife Center is run/maintained by Waterlife employees (usually village residents), an operational expense easily supported by villagers paying Rs. 3 for 10 liters and Rs. 5 for 20 liters.

Waterlife now has an installed base of 35,000 villages across 14 states. Some states are now urging Waterlife to also setup biodigester-based community toilets – Jharkhand might be the first state. Waterlife is venture-backed by Aavishkar and Matrix Partners.

Dimagi and Embrace had similar beginnings. The former was founded in MIT Media Lab and the latter in Stanford’s d.school (Design for Extreme Affordability) and both decided to tackle the massive health challenges in the third world. While Dimagi’s team now straddles two continents (an 18-person engineering team in Boston and a 30-person go-to-market operations team in New Delhi), Embrace’s 60-person organization is entirely based in Bangalore.

Dimagi recognized early that community health care was broken and “health workers” were the linchpins in driving any positive change. Dimagi has built a suite of open-source based tools for health workers but it deploys those tools via partnerships with NGOs (now numbering 50 across 25 countries). The company’s unique philosophy is to let teams decide which projects to pickup based on three criteria (in descending priority order): impact, team satisfaction, and profit. Dimagi’s Devika Sarin told me that she was initially skeptical but after two years, she’s convinced that there’s no better company out there. CommCare, Dimagi’s flagship product, leverages audio clips and images to reinforce each prompt, creating a simple interface accessible to low-literate users.

Embrace’s first product is the Nest, a Rs. 12,000 baby incubator which comprises a charging device (which heats a special material that stays warm for 6 hours) and a vest that is put around the baby. The Embrace Nest has been sold to government hospitals in Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Gujarat. Their second product (Embrace Care) is targeted at in-home users — i.e. prematurely born babies who still need support at home. The Care device (even cheaper at Rs. 5,000) is a flat-bed warmer and the heating contraption doesn’t even require electricity – all you need is some hot water to be poured into the outer hosing. Embrace has received perhaps the most visible product validation via a partnership with GE.

Vishy Kuruganti is an engineering alumnus of Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra and University of Houston. He has held a series of technology leadership roles at Navteq/Nokia, Yahoo and a few startups before returning to India/Bangalore in Aug 2008. After a 2.5 year senior leadership stint with Adobe Bangalore and 20 years of overall experience in the technology/Internet domain, he started TechSangam - a blog focusing on social enterprises in India. 

Follow on twitter: @ulaar

This blog post is the second of a series of posts written by Vishy Kuruganti, on location at the 2013 India Development Marketplace in Bhopal. The first post of the series can be found here. If you would like to read an overview of this year’s Development Marketplace and its finalists click here.

More posts on the finalists and the DM event coming up soon..

I met two excellent organizations working on agricultural extension yesterday and one of them (Under The Mango Tree – UTMT) didn’t fit the classic mold. UTMT had setup an interesting ‘entry quiz’ in their booth. Have a look at the contents of the two plates (picture to the left) and answer the question “What are the key differences between the two?” There are no ‘wrong’ answers but UTMT Founder Vijaya told me that nobody answered it ‘UTMT correctly’.The basic message is that without the madhumakhi (bee), one cannot enjoy the vegetables, legumes and dry fruits in the lower plate. I learnt that the bee plays a crucial role in the agricultural productivity of the planted crops in the area.

UTMT is a hybrid organization – its society arm works with farmers educating them to switch from bee ‘hunting’ to sustainable practices and its for-profit creates direct fair-trade market access from farmers to customers. Working primarily with farmers with annual incomes of INR 25,000, UTMT has been able to deliver a 30% increase in incomes through: a) Increased agricultural productivity, b) Sale of honey, c) Sale of beeswax. Four years after starting operations (and backed by US-based impact investor – First Light Ventures), UTMT recently turned profitable. Vijaya and team are now focused on getting the UTMT brand into as many Indian markets as possible. If they haven’t hit your geography yet, do try their Beer of the Month style annual subscription.

Aga Khan Rural Support (AKRS), is active in 1500 villages in poverty-stricken areas of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat and has come up with a highly effective organic fertilizer to improving agricultural productivity. Amrit khad and amrit paani are two deceptively easy-to-produce low cost fertilizers made from just six ingredients – besan (chick pea flour), jaggery, cow dung, cow urine, neem leaves, and water. Use of these fertilizers reduces the cost of cultivation by Rs. 2000 per hectare, significant savings for poor tribal farmers.

AKRS is also providing opportunities for poor tribal women to increase their income by selling these fertilizers to other farmers. AKRS was seeded by the Aga Khan Foundation but now 70% of its funding comes from government and other foundations. AKRS has vertical specialists in these areas – water management, crop advisories, livestock, and women’s empowerment. Approximately one specialist for every 40 villages.

What’s India’s largest manufacturer of writing and printing paper, Ballarpur Industries Limited – BILT, doing in a World Bank Development Marketplace event? Well, to be accurate we are talking about BILT Tree Technology. Since 1989, this BILT division has been using sustainable agro forestry as the synergistic vehicle to improve farmers’ incomes and drive its own destiny.

BILT Tree Tech sells saplings from its three large nurseries (growing eucalyptus, casuarina, bamboo and two other species) to farmers on fallow land, facilitating bank loans whenever necessary. Farmers are assured purchase of their pulpwood produce at declared support prices or market price whichever may be higher. About 10% of the farmers end up selling to BILT paper division, a percentage they would definitely like to see increase over time.

To the two young folks who walked me through the different stories, BILT Tree Tech is not just a job. Everytime they succeed in convincing a farmer to plant trees (on forlorn ‘beyond redemption’ land) and.. 4 years later.. see a fully grown tree plantation, the satisfaction is beyond qualification.

Fascinating stories from Water Life, Operation Asha, Vigyan Ashram and Micro Insurance Academy next — watch this space for these stories and more from the other finalists.

Vishy Kuruganti is an engineering alumnus of Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra and University of Houston. He has held a series of technology leadership roles at Navteq/Nokia, Yahoo and a few startups before returning to India/Bangalore in Aug 2008. After a 2.5 year senior leadership stint with Adobe Bangalore and 20 years of overall experience in the technology/Internet domain, he started TechSangam - a blog focusing on social enterprises in India. 

Follow on twitter: @ulaar

Vishy Kuruganti is an engineering alumnus of Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra and University of Houston. He has held a series of technology leadership roles at Navteq/Nokia, Yahoo and a few startups before returning to India/Bangalore in Aug 2008. After a 2.5 year senior leadership stint with Adobe Bangalore and 20 years of overall experience in the technology/Internet domain, he started TechSangam - a blog focusing on social enterprises in India. 

Follow on twitter: @ulaar

I was invited by Parvathi Menon to guest blog this year’s India Development Marketplace event. My education started soon after I stepped out of the Bhopal airport. Sharing the cab ride with me was Santosh Kumar from Shore Bank International – he gave a helpful overview of the various World Bank organizations. By the time we finished lunch at the hotel, we had discovered at least three common contacts. Arriving a day earlier meant I got an opportunity to spend half a day meeting many of the finalists in an informal setting.

A total of twenty finalists from an initial pool of 190 received applications have been selected after a series of merit based evaluations and a due diligence and needs assessment visit by teams comprising of senior assessors from the World Bank, Innovation Alchemy and independent subject matter experts.

As a social enterprise watcher for over two years, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that I had only heard of seven finalists. When I mentioned this factoid to Parvathi, she remarked that DM often turns out to be a discovery platform for the finalist organizations. Besides the broad awareness generated from winning, the recognition by World Bank ‘validates’ these organizations especially in the eyes of state and central government entities leading, in many cases, to active cooperation and collaboration.

My first conversation yesterday was with Dr. KS Sunanda and Dr. KT Arasu. Their organization, Alternative for India Development, was born with the ideological overtones of the 70′s with an exclusive focus on Jharkhand (Palamau district). After being a grant-based organization for decades, they started experimenting with a self-sustaining social enterprise model as early as 2007. They are now providing banking services for the tribal poor (via RBI’s Business Correspondent model) through a network of 120 retail points which they term as ‘panchayat kiosk banking’.

Varanasi-based SMV Wheels has made a lot of progress since the last time I spoke to them (~ 2 years ago). Joyce Jauer (SMV’s CFO) talked about her journey from Texas to Boston to Delhi to Varanasi. When she’s not traipsing around on her scooter in Varanasi, she’s helping SMV bring dignity to rickshaw drivers. I asked Joyce what dignity meant to an auto rickshaw driver and she replied “pride of ownership, legitimate permit to drive, reduced persecution by the police”. The SMV network now boasts 1200+ auto rickshaw drivers and they are adding about 50 per month. Rickshaws cost about Rs. 11,000 – SMV sells the drivers the rickshaws via a deferred weekly repayment loan model (Rs. 300/week) which eventually works out to Rs. 15,000 to the driver.

We got a teaser of a low-cost infant baby warmer story from Embrace’s Rahul Panicker. The device costs Rs. 12,000 (compared to a standard incubator which retails for over 1 lakh) and has already sold 9,000 in the past 2 years. With 20 million infant deaths worldwide of which a whopping 8 million are in India, Embrace is targeting saving a million+ babies from premature death.

My carefully constructed and sanitized world of social entrepreneurship came crashing down towards the tail end of a dinner conversation with Anima Baa and Prashant of South Vihar Welfare Society for Tribals – SVWS. Earlier that evening, Anima had given an impassioned backdrop to SVWS but it still didn’t prepare me for the stories of human trafficking I would hear. 29% of Jharkhand is forest land where most of the tribals live. Unable to derive livelihoods and a missing-in-action government, Jharkhand women are migrating in large numbers to the metros (especially Delhi and Mumbai) – lured by unscrupulous ‘placement agents’ with the promise of a better life. For many, the ‘better’ life turns out to be a nightmarish world of red light districts and trafficking. The lucky few manage to eke out a relatively dignified living as domestic help. It was the scale and magnitude of trafficking that shook me – more on this later.

Fascinating stories from BILT Tree Tech of Chhattisgarh & Orissa and Boston/Delhi-based Dimagi — stay tuned here for these stories and more from the other finalists.

The World Bank’s Development Marketplace (DM) is a competitive grants program that surfaces and funds innovative projects with high potential for development impact that are scalable and/or replicable. Through a combination of grant funds and strategic technical advisory support, the grant aims to catalyze innovative social enterprise solutions delivering a range of social and public services to the most undeserved low-income groups in the target regions.

The 2013 India DM is focused on identifying social enterprise projects that have the potential to scale the impact of their work in the States of Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh. Read more about the eligibility criteria for the 2013 India DM.

The call for proposal was launched in January 2013 and we received over a 190 proposals in response. After a series of rigorous, merit based evaluations by a panel of development experts from inside and outside the World Bank, 30 projects were shortlisted for the due diligence and capacity building diagnostic. Seven teams comprising of senior assessors from the World Bank, Innovation Alchemy and independent subject matter experts have been traveling all across the country in the last two weeks to meet with the teams at the head office as well as in the field to identify the gaps in the model (if any) and determine how the World Bank could support these projects in addressing them, if they won the grant funding.

Following the in-depth evaluation and needs assessment review of the projects, 20 projects have been invited to showcase their projects at the Development Marketplace event in Bhopal on 1st May 2013.

An Introduction to the finalists

The projects include a very rich and diverse range of products & services targeted to impact the base of the pyramid in these states. Models built around low-cost infant warmers; mobile science labs for rural schools and mobile phone based information & case research systems demonstrate innovative application of technology. Other programs target complex social challenges such as adolescent girl trafficking; connecting school drop out youth to skills & jobs; managing tuberculosis treatment in very poor communities and facilitating use of organic fertilizers. And some of the projects demonstrate extensive experiments in enhancing business models, such as a hybrid model for facilitating bee keeping, exploring sustainable business through carbon credits, agro forestry and rural productivity hubs for farmer collectives.

Of the twenty finalist projects, seven of them are registered for-profit organizations, twelve projects have a non-profit base and one operates as a hybrid. Six of the finalist projects are targeting Madhya Pradesh for scale and replication; seven projects are targeting their work in Jharkhand; 4 in Chhattisgarh and 3 projects intend to work in more than one target state.

Four projects are intended to directly impact women and another four projects are seeking to impact children, including one that is focused on the girl child. Apart from that projects are designed to impact tuberculosis patients in poor communities, farmers, rickshaw drivers and the youth.

Projects Targeting Jharkhand

• SOUTH VIHAR WELFARE SOCIETY FOR TRIBALS – Combating human trafficking by empowering adolescent girls and improving their health status.
• ALTERNATIVE FOR INDIA DEVELOPMENT – Delivery of banking/ financial inclusion products/ services to excluded families by combining Panchayat kiosk banking outlets and Self Help Group strategies.
• WATER LIFE INDIA – Sustainable community water systems for safe drinking water.
• EMBRACE INNOVATION – Deployment of Embrace infant warmers in low-resource government hospitals and measuring impact over time.
• OPERATION ASHA – Implementation of eCompliance to supplement their treatment/ prevention of tuberculosis and turn the tap off on Multi-Drug Resistant TB in Jharkhand’s tribal regions.
• DIMAGI SOCIAL INNOVATION – Working on using/ developing technology to increase the quality of services provided by community health workers.

• IMERIT TECHNOLOGY SERVICES – Empowering marginalized women by training them in IT-based livelihoods.

Projects Targeting Madhya Pradesh

• ACCESS DEVELOPMENT SERVICES – Help aggregate small and marginalized farmers to create Producer Companies/ Cooperatives.
• AGASTYA INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION – Facilitating hands on education by developing Mobile Science Labs.
• REAL MEDICINE FOUNDATION – Empowering women as a means to address malnutrition in India.
• RANG DE – Enabling individuals to become rural entrepreneurs with cost effective micro-credit for enterprise development and education.
• AGA KHAN RURAL SUPPORT PROGRAMME – To reduce the cost of cultivation at a large scale by using organic fertilizers.
• UNDER THE MANGO TREE – Using beekeeping to supplement income of tribal farmers.

Projects Targeting Chhattisgarh

• BILT TREE TECHNOLOGY – Changing lives of tribal farmers of Chhattisgarh through sustainable agro-forestry.
• MICRO INSURANCE ACADEMY – Help facilitate self-reliant community based health insurance schemes of and for low income communities in remote regions of India.
• VIGYAN ASHRAM – Empowering youth to build a human powered generator, solar lighting and laptop charging system.
• VRUTTI – Aims at re-strategizing extension services through demand led market based farmer enterprises focusing in accelerated growth in agriculture.

Projects Targeting Multiple States

• KHERWADI SOCIAL WELFARE ASSOCIATION – Looking to provide vocational training with inputs in life skills and work readiness to 1 million school-dropout youth.
• SMV WHEELS – Provide a unique solution to cycle rickshaw drivers to become owners of their own vehicle in just over a year along with vocational support services.
• ESAF – Provide clean energy solutions to lower income groups with the help of Micro-credit programs.

 An Invitation to join us in Bhopal on 1st May 2013.

The India Development Marketplace team would like to invite you to attend the open conference event designed for social entrepreneurs and development practitioners to come together to learn with, recognize, award and celebrate these high-potential projects.  Registration is free. Join us at this learning event, we hope to see you there on 1st May 2013! 

THE WORLD BANK 2013 INDIA DEVELOPMENT MARKETPLACE COMPETITIVE GRANT

With a grant pledge of USD 1 million, the 2013  India Development Marketplace (India DM) seeks to build on the work it has done in supporting social enterprises in India so far.  This World Bank initiative aims to surface high-impact social development solutions that have demonstrated initial outcomes and provide catalytic support in helping to scale their work further.

Applying a multi-layer approach, the DM meets this objective first by providing crucial funding to back these projects (USD 50,000 to USD 100,000 per project funded) and then by enabling necessary technical assistance (through an empaneled group of local and regional firms & experts) to help organizations effectively address challenges of scale.

Launched on January 21^st of this year, the 2013 India DM focused on 3 low-income states of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh. The call for proposal invited all social sector organizations (for-profit and non-profit entities)  seeking to scale projects in these states, to apply for the grant. Over 190 project proposals have been received from across India in response to the call for proposal, within the stipulated timeline of 30 days, while the call was open.

Close to 72% of the proposals received, are from registered nonprofit organizations including civil society organizations, trusts, Section 25 companies and cooperatives.  A high number of proposals (around 66%) target Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand to scale or replicate their models, with approximately 14% of the total proposals targeting to work in more than 1 of the 3 target states.

The 2013 India DM has a strong gendered focus, with projects that center on women’s empowerment being especially encouraged to apply. More than 35% of the proposals received identify women as a major beneficiary of their projects.

A total of 26 children-related proposals have been received, 11 of them working specifically on issues related to girl children. A primary focus of many of these projects is empowerment of women through livelihood creation and capacity building.

As the Lead Partner and Program Manager for the DM in India, the team at Innovation Alchemy leads the strategy, design, implementation and outreach for the program while also facilitating the larger ecosystem building mandate over the next 2 years.

Extensive information sessions have been conducted through the 3 states in this capacity, with members from the World Bank and Innovation Alchemy traveling to Bhopal, Raipur and Ranchi to interact and engage with organizations seeking to apply to the Development Marketplace. These sessions, as well as interactions with the press, formed the core of our outreach campaign in the states.

With a poverty headcount ratio of 49% for Chhattisgarh, followed by 39% and 37% for Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh respectively, these 3 states are characterized by high levels of poverty, poor infrastructure and inadequate educational and health facilities. Despite being rich in natural resources, their poverty levels are much higher than the all-India headcount ratio of 29.8%. They constitute approximately 11% of the country’s population and contribute a significant portion of its tribal and schedule caste population. The DM’S focus on these states aims to identify transformative projects that are able to demonstrate significant impact for members at the bottom of the economic pyramid. It is envisioned that providing the necessary funding and technical assistance to scale such projects will ultimately help catalyze the social development ecosystem in the region as a whole, thereby addressing many of the area’s developmental concerns.

Currently, the proposals are undergoing a three-tier assessment process which will also include a due diligence and capacity building diagnostic, where World Bank and Innovation Alchemy Teams will visit each of the shortlisted organizations/ projects for an in-depth review.  30 shortlisted organizations will be invited to present their proposals to a jury of experts at an awards event in April of this year (2013).

Around 15 winning proposals, determined through the rigorous selection process, will receive the combination of grant and technical advisory support. All finalists will also have access to a set of advisory support. A final stage of selection will determine the winners at the event, which is planned to be held in Bhopal.

Next key dates for those who have submitted proposals:

• 26th March 2013 – Communication to those proposals that have been shortlisted for the diagnostic/ due diligence. This information will also be made available on the DM India website
• 1st April to 12th April – On field meetings with shortlisted projects/ organizations to gain first hand learning and perspective. Shortlisted organizations will be intimated regarding the dates and details of the on-field visits.
• 25th April to 1st May – Final Jury event in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh.

Innovation Alchemy is proud to be collaborating with Marico Innovation Foundation for the third year running to kick off the third batch of the Social Innovation Acceleration program.

Marico Innovation Foundation supports the cost of this program under their catalytic CSR agenda to facilitate Innovation in India.

The Acceleration Program uses Innovation Alchemy’s Alchemize™ methodology which is designed to help Development Entrepreneurs, Social Enterprises and NGOs apply innovation to scale their impact, beyond organizational constraints. This is achieved by providing customized capacity building, strategic advisory support, mentoring, research and acceleration facilitation over a 12-18 month period.

Applications will be reviewed by a panel of senior advisers; a team from Innovation Alchemy and MIF will visit shortlisted organizations for an in-depth due diligence. Finalists will be required to interact in person, to present their application for the final selection.

The Acceleration methodology typically involves working with projects that have been on the ground for 2-3 years, have demonstrated some amount of workability and impact and are now keen to increase the scale of impact.

Participating in the Social Innovation Acceleration Program helps a project/ organization to achieve:

• Greater impact, faster (by discovering the ‘innovation levers’ that will help get there)
• Build long term financial sustainability into the idea/model
• Build replicable models that can be leveraged by other entrepreneurs and innovators, thus creating organic scale

Marico Innovation Foundation, which was instituted in 2003 by Marico as its CSR initiative, provides a framework to Industry and Social Sector to leverage innovation for quantum growth. The foundation plays the role of a catalyst and works towards creating an innovation eco-system through cutting edge research, knowledge creation and dissemination. In its catalytic role it supports Development Entrepreneurs, Social Enterprises and NGOs to apply Innovation which enables them scale the impact of their work significantly.

The foundation has so far supported 5 Social Enterprise Projects over the last 2 years using Innovation Alchemy’s Alchemize™ methodology. The first batch (2011) successfully accelerated projects for Yuva Parivartan and Waste Wise Trust to achieve breakthroughs in their impact (Read more about our work with Yuva Parivartan and Waste Wise Trust in batch one). In 2012 three more projects were added to the acceleration portfolio – Akshaya Patra’s hub-spoke kitchen system, Fractal Microspin’s product to business model transformation and Yuva Parivartan’s Employment Exchange for rural school drop-out youth.

Based on the success demonstrated of this approach, the Marico Innovation Foundation would like to offer 5 more organisations the opportunity to engage in this capacity building process in 2013. The facilitation of this program is highly customised and would require a high degree of involvement and scale aspiration from the teams who apply.

In this batch we are focusing on organizations that are working in the following areas (which also come under the purview of Schedule VII of the Companies Bill 2012 which highlights the activities that may be included by companies in their Corporate Social Responsibility Policies):

1. Agriculture (including agriculture allied models)
2. Clean Energy & Technology related
3. Education
4. Healthcare (including reducing child mortality, improving maternal health and combating HIV, AIDS and other diseases)
5. Livelihood & Entitlement related (including promoting gender equality, empowering women and eradicating poverty)
6. Waste Management (including promoting sanitation and hygiene) 

If you would like more details about the Program and/ or would like to apply for the Program please do get in touch with Aditi Kini (aditi@innovationalchemy.com) and Akshay Dandekar (akshayd@maricoindia.net) before the 30th of March 2013.

Alchemix™ is a curated, open forum discussion between entrepreneurs, innovators, creative minds and engaged citizens. Alchemix sessions are designed by Innovation Alchemy as a peer learning initiative and take a deep, insightful look at high-impact ideas from an innovation and scale lens. Previous speakers include social entrepreneurs, founders and  leaders from organisations like Ashoka, Pratham Books, Swasth, Waterwala, mDhil, YourStory.in and many more.

The next session is scheduled for Wednesday, 21st November, 2012 and will be hosted in Bangalore. Time:  5.00 pm to 7.00 pm IST, at the Dream:in center. Register Now

 Session Theme: Technologies that are creating impact and why…

We are, therefore we invent. Technology represents one of the most fundamental applications of human intelligence. Little surprise then that it is at the crux of some of mankind’s greatest achievements through time, providing solutions to many challenges, whether it is the need to land a rover on Mars, light a bulb over a surgeon’s operating table or deliver clean drinking water to massively populated urban centres.

Yet, as we achieve complex technology accomplishments, more than a billion people continue to be disenfranchised, with no direct access to economy, science or development. In this Alchemix session we will look at how some innovators and entrepreneurs have worked with existing technology to build new ideas, to create a range of inexpensive, accessible and effective solutions that can be adopted at a large scale. We will also be looking at the need and opportunity for breakthrough innovation in adapting technology to create big impact.

Read a detailed research blog on the background to this session in our Alchemix Blog Series: Dispatches from the Field

Practitioners who have been invited to speak at this session include:

1. Kannan Lakshminarayan. A serial innovator, Kannan is the Founder of Vortex and the Gramateller low cost, low power ATM machines that was commercialised into an independent venture. He has now developed Microspin,a technology enabled cotton spinning unit that has the ability to connect cotton farmers into the fabric value chain by making it easy and simple to spin cotton into yarn. As he works towards scaling Microspin, we will speak with him about the steps involved in scaling a technology and finding adopters to buy at scale.  

2. Neha Juneja & Ankit Mathur. Greenway Grameen Infra has taken the ‘earthen chulah’ubiquitous across rural homes in India and a major health hazard for women and families, and tranformed it into a more eco-friendly stove, without forcing any change in user behaviour. Greenway Grameen breaks even as a business this year and has demonstrated how to co-create products with the users and build ideas that don’t challenge deep set behaviours and patterns – enabling rapid adoption. We invited Neha and Ankit, co-founders of Greenway Grameen, to share HOW they have managed to do this.

3. Mayank Sekhsaria. Greenlight Planet. What started as an experiment with powering irrigation pumps has translated into a set of simple, highly effective solar powered lights and a rapidly evolving rural business. To succeed in enabling more rural consumers to use solar lights, the team at Greenlight Planet had to create an entire approach to rural distribution. This distribution network is now their biggest resource as it enables them to reach deeper into the ecosystem. We have invited Mayank, co-founder of Greenlight Planet to share insights around getting the products adopted so widely.

4. Joe Madiath. Gram Vikas The dichotomy—between providing technologically-based tools to rural communities and searching for the most appropriate and helpful versions of them—has led to a conflict in current development paradigms,writes Joe Madiath in his paper It Takes a Faucet. Joe Madiath is the founder of Gram Vikas, a non-profit organization that works extensively with the disenfranchised, tribal people of Orissa. His work at Gram Vikas took biogas technology across rural Orissa, providing renewable energy in a way that rural families could own and adopt it- thereby making a strong case for the importance of adapting existing technologies to suit the needs of people.

Sharing by Practitioners will be followed by an open group discussion on the emerging insights:

• What are the ingredients for the successful adoption of technology in under served markets?

• How are innovators and entrepreneurs approaching challenges in developing a market for technology based ideas?

• What is the role of understanding the social behaviors for an effective business model in taking a technology innovation to scale?

Seating is limited to the first 50 people who register.

Please do block the date and register at the earliest. You can also email Aditi Kini at aditi@innovationalchemy.com for more details. Learn more about previous Alchemix Sessions.

If you are not in Bangalore you can join the Livestream and the Twitter Conversation.

We will be livestreaming the session on a high bandwidth stream for peers across the world to join in. Our team will also be interacting through Twitter during the session – please follow us on @innovalchemy and use the hashtag #Alchemix for live updates during and prior to the session. You could also like us on Facebook for more information and updates.

This Alchemix™ Session is brought to you by Mahindra Rise

Mahindra’s Spark the Rise is a unique online platform for change-makers across India to connect with one another, collaborate and exchange ideas, procure volunteers and donors, and to compete for monthly grants from Mahindra.

Spark the Rise empower innovators, entrepreneurs, and ordinary people to drive positive change in India by:

1. Connecting change makers with one another to collaborate, exchange ideas, procure volunteers and donors, and make things happen.
2. Funding ideas and projects through grants ranging from 2-40 lakhs
3. Supporting entrepreneurs and innovators through mentorship, workshops, and on-the-ground events across the country.

Looking forward to seeing you at the 6th Session of Alchemix™.

This research was done as a part of the Alchemix Blog Series: Dispatches from the Field

We are, therefore we invent. Technology represents one of the most fundamental applications of human intelligence. Given the gift of conscious thought, human beings are constantly striving to improve, enhance and evolve their lives. Defined as the application of scientific knowledge for specific purposes, technology is the engineered end result of the conscious human thought, harnessing the potential in nature for the purposes of our convenience. Little surprise then that it is at the crux of some of mankind’s greatest achievements through time, providing solutions to many challenges, whether it is the need to land a rover on Mars, light a bulb over a surgeon’s operating table or deliver clean drinking water to massively populated urban centers.

Yet, as we achieve complex technology accomplishments, more than a billion people continue to be disenfranchised, with no direct access to economy, science or development. The critical need is for innovators and entrepreneurs who can work with existing technology and build new ideas from them, to create a range of inexpensive, accessible and effective solutions that can be adopted at large scale. In this edition of Dispatches from the Field, we looked at the work of a host of entrepreneurs who are working at the grass roots, applying technology in ways that directly impact local under served communities.

Joe Madiath’s work at Gram Vikas took biogas technology across rural Orissa providing renewable energy in a way that rural families could own and adopt it. Jaipur Foot has brought down the costs of the prosthetic foot from $2500 to lesser than $30 and customized it for Indian usage making prosthetics and aids accessible to over 1.2 million under served people. Megh Payane Abhiyan has leveraged local insights to create storage solutions for drinking water that work in the worst flood affected regions of Bihar. WOSCA uses the ubiquitous mobile phone to connect tribal communities with data that measures their access to public entitlements, significantly enhancing their access to the public distribution system. OperationAsha uses biometrics within the counseling centers and clinics in urban slums significantly reducing instances of drug resistant TB under their watch.

These are not just examples of technologies integrated into development. They are a pursuit of enabling poor communities to gain access to technologies that can be easily adopted, within their available resources – in a way that significantly impacts their economic and social security.

This raises the question of social insights that form the basis for technology adoption. Are enough entrepreneurs pursuing insights while developing new ideas or is ‘consumer insight’ relegated to the later stage of  ‘market development’? Beyond the impact of these technologies, these examples raised a more deeper concern. All these models have evolved through the deep, patient perseverance of a non-profit, philanthropic approach that allowed the innovators to experiment and evolve the model with the communities in question. Does the more modern ‘impact investment capital’ have this patience? Are impact investors willing to innovate on the nature of their funds so that more such technologies can be adapted and accepted? Could we be chasing a quick solution format in the search for market-based large-scale solutions? Is technology adoption only about the technology – how do we fund the social and economic process of adoption that forms the basis for any technology innovation succeeding in impoverished communities?

The social entrepreneurs profiled here are attempting to solve the very real challenges of getting public entitlements, basic life products and services to the most under served communities. Without the luxury of resources, these organizations are using the power of insight, collaboration and continuous prototyping – connecting the ingredients through effective technology adoption. We researched their work further to understand what are the triggers for their technology exploration and adoption. From the various models we studied, we have pulled out some of the pivotal patterns that seem to be making their ideas work.

Adapt and apply. Keeping it simple and effective.

The dichotomy—between providing technologically-based tools to rural communities and searching for the most appropriate and helpful versions of them—has led to a conflict in current development paradigms,writes Joe Madiath in his paper It Takes a Faucet.

“Often we do not need any heavy R&D, just some creativity, encouragement and the courage to take risks. Basic solutions like fitting a ball bearing to a water-lifting device to draw water from a well, or designing a better bullock cart, can make changes in the way poor people live and work…” says Joe Madiath, founder of Gram Vikas (GV), a non-profit organization that works extensively with the disenfranchised, tribal people of Orissa. Gram Vikas’ own experience in the implementation of its Biogas program makes a strong case for the importance of adapting existing technologies to suit the needs of people. More than 77 percent of Orissa’s rural households are dependent on wood as a cooking-fuel and 15 percent utilize cow dung cakes. Less than 70% of the state’s rural households have electricity connections. [1]

Tapping into locally available eco-friendly biomass and organic wastes such as cow dung, vegetable waste etc to generate a renewable energy source through biogas plants, GV was able to power villages and help them meet their energy demands. What began as a small 6 cubic metercommunity biogas plant that supplied electricity to 28 homes and a small communal hall in the village of Toda, rapidly extended to include over 54,000 biogas plants supporting more than 6000 villages in rural Orissa.

“We have always favored sustainability, not cutting edge technologies for which local communities had no use, and eschewed the low-quality equipment the government often provided simply because it cost the least, ” says Madiath.

Innovation in plant construction was one of the key factors to overcoming the program’s challenges of scale. In fact, the concept and technology was so simple that rural community members found it hard to believe that it was a credible solution to their energy needs. “…biogas being a relatively new technology in rural areas, people did not know much about it and found it hard to believe that by just mixing dung and water in a cement and brick tank, a gas that could be used for cooking and lighting would be produced.”[2]

More than 90% of GV’s biogas plants were built for small scale and marginal farmers, the landless and scheduled tribes, which meant that low-cost and affordability was a key factor in scaling the program and low-maintenance models necessary to its future sustainability. When practical experience revealed that existing designs of biogas plants, such as the Janata model, developed leaks over time and were not adequately meeting these challenges, GV set out to find solutions through innovation. Everything from lining the plants with polythene to plastering the plant wall was tried and during this experimentation phase, some 20 to 30 different biogas plant models were tested with the collaboration of various researchers and organizations. This experimentation phase, where existing technology was tested and modified to suit the local requirements that were so crucial to the large-scale implementation of the program, proved a deciding factor in its success. The Deenbandhu model, developed in 1984, and one of the models tested at the GV campus, was found to be less complicated and considerably less expensive. Eventually, the Deenbandhu model made up for 94% of the more than 54, 000 plants installed by GV. Through the program, more than 2000 masons and 700 supervisors sustained direct employment, creating capacity within the area for further growth and sustainability of the program long after GV’s withdrawal.

This experimentation phase, where existing technology was tested and modified to suit the local requirements that were so crucial to the large-scale implementation of the program, proved a deciding factor in its success.

 We may be able to manufacture the most durable water pipes on the globe through the latest research, but it will be of little use for the simple Indian farmer in a remote village who can ill-afford to customize it for his use. Like millions of the world’s most vulnerable and disenfranchised, the poor farming family will have to manage without any access to clean water or sanitation because of a lack of economically viable options.

The key to GV’s success may be found in its diligent efforts to assess the needs of the community and understand its particular challenges. This enabled the organization to find, test and modify existing technology in order that they are most relevant to meet the challenges.

Function leads design. Real life drives technology.

Constricting economic concerns, meager resources and urgent need can prove a fertile sandbox for new, groundbreaking innovation. Dr. D R Mehta is greeted by a large motley group of people as he enters the building at the Jaipur Foot campus. Stopping to speak with a young man sitting on a run down wheelchair he asks him “How much money do you have?” The young man pulls out a Ten Rupee note.

“With 10 Rupees in his pocket, this young man has come from Muzzafarpur to Jaipur, will need to stay here for 3-4 days, get himself a prosthetic and go back to his village. He has no means to pay for any of this. How can the Technology we design not take into account this young man’s real life?” asks Dr. D R Mehta.

The development of the Jaipur Limb is a great example of what is increasingly becoming a powerful driving force in technology-enabled intervention programs of social enterprises. First designed in 1968, by Mr. Ram Chander Sharma, the Jaipur Limb was a revolutionary innovation in the world of prosthetics, using simple, cost-effective technology to meet the specific challenges of amputees and physically disabled of India. Continued research, development and promotion of the technology through the initiation of Bhagwan Mahaveer Viklang Sahayata Samiti (founded by Mr. D. R. Mehta), one of the largest social organizations in the world providing fitments to the physically handicapped, has, in many ways, brought the Jaipur Limb on par with some of its more conventional counterparts.

Unlike most other prosthetic legs that can only be worn with shoes, the Jaipur Limb enabled people to wear the prosthesis without footwear, a feature of particular cultural significance, as it allowed users to go into temples and mosques for prayer. To meet the challenge of infrequent follow-up visits by beneficiaries, the Jaipur Limb was designed to allow for quick and on-the-spot fittings. It is a known feature that many of the patients do not come back for the second visit meant for fitment.[3] Depending on the case, a Jaipur Limb can be custom made and fitted for each person in as little as 3 hours. This distinguishes Jaipur Limb Technology from other technology which send their teams twice to the camps, once for making assessment and taking measurements and secondly for fitment and delivery after a few weeks or months.[4]

The technology is not only water-proof, but allows for the same range of movements typical to a natural human foot, allowing users to squat, sit cross legged, walk on undulated terrain etc.

Driven by the needs of the people themselves, such innovation often draws from the cultural and traditional practices of a region, combining modern scientific knowledge with existing practices. This is often a participatory endeavor that galvanizes communities to meet the challenges of their region with the collaboration of external agencies such as non-profits, government organizations and the people themselves, a process that in itself strengthens future sustainability of any intervention program that may be implemented. Enabled by innovation but strengthened by the people, these technologies are addressing broader social issues such as gender gaps, hygienic living conditions, proper management of natural resources among many others, to create paradigm shifts in a community’s approach to meeting its challenges.

Megh Pyne Abhiyan (MPA) is using this strategy to meet its campaign goal of a behavioral change amongst the rural communities to effectively revive, innovate and institutionalize water and sanitation management practices and mainstream issues concerning floods through collective accountability and action. When participatory research revealed that lack of clean drinking water during floods created many problems for the communities, a simple innovation in rainwater harvesting and water storage techniques provided a workable solution.

An estimated 77% of north Bihar is vulnerable to flood[5],a phenomenon that is so common in the region that it forms an additional season to the calendar year, known locally as Barh. During floods the flood and river water are used for multiple purposes such as – defecation, drinking (if the hand pumps are submerged), immersing the dead persons and animals. Perforce people drink unclean stagnant water or flowing flood water’[6].

To enable access to clean drinking water throughout the year MPA began a series of efforts that drew from the experimentation and feedback of local communities for a scalable solution. The Jal Kothi was the result of this collaborative effort. Designed from traditional grain storage earthenware, the Jal Kothi has enhanced storage capacity, allowing community members to store water during the 3 months of the rainy season when they are most vulnerable.

MPA’s Phaydemand Shauchalay and Matka Filters (eco-sanitation and household filter initiative) is another result of these efforts. These toilets address several concerns at once: they are designed to account for seasonal floods in the area, they prevent contamination of the environment, particularly drinking water sources and they allow for privacy, which is particularly important for women and girls. In the Matka filters there are three local typologies of filters that address existence of iron, microbiological and arsenic contamination in groundwater.

The ‘community receptiveness’ of MPA has created a critical mass- that is both ‘willing and able’ to take forward innovations that emerged during MPA’s alternative safe drinking water and sanitation initiative. These innovations are in the form of structures that collect, filter and store water, and provide safe and hygienic space for defecation,  especially for women and adolescent girls – all built using local materials.

People driven strategies in this high-risk environment were derived from the resource- specificities of the region. Adapting simple innovative systems of resource utilization based entirely on local perceptions, knowledge, creativity and skill sets have enabled the adoption. The strong “local” component in the technology has facilitated the process of cost and model construction, in such a way that the design and unit price are derived based on availability, access, quality and remoteness to required resources, skill sets, need and location of the affected habitation. Thereby, making the technology thoroughly decentralized in terms of construction, costing and use. Eklavya Prasad, Managing Trustee of MPA strongly believes that weaving the drinking water and sanitation mandate into the social, health and economic fabric of the target areas, will help in developing a scalable model. It has been very important to leverage these innovations and integrate local innovators, to enable a critical mass of adoption within the community.

Facilitating visibility and access, technology makes data easy.

Economically poor communities lack access to public entitlements. But more importantly they lack the ability to visibilize the extent of the gaps and large discrepancies that keep them poor and under served. This seems to create a regressive cycle of dependency and further poverty. But easy to use technology seems to be playing the role of a rapid catalyst in bringing about change in this scenario. Is the ability to create empowered transparency a trigger for adoption of technology?

The Women’s Organization for Socio-Cultural Awareness (WOSCA), implements a very interesting project titled: Tracking Livelihood Entitlements of Rural Communities in Orissa Using Mobile Phone and Information Technology. This project aims to use technology to increase transparency in order to empower disenfranchised tribal communities in Orissa so that they may be sufficiently equipped to claim their entitlements as outlined in various government schemes and programs.

WOSCA’s project uses MERComs, a modular, expandable and localized (English, Hindi, Oriya) Management Information System (MIS) that generates regular reports using data extracted and summarized from a database of 46,000 households. These households are connected via a group of volunteers and community members who are responsible for collecting data at the point of disbursement of a service/entitlement. The data is collected diligently from each household and sent to the main server via SMS using a mobile phone.  This is done regularly to ensure that the entitlements are reaching those who need them most. The data that is generated allows WOSCA to create a report indicating which households in the database have received their entitlements and shows any discrepancies that may be present, such as families not receiving what is their due.

The reports are shared with community members and SHGs once a month in order to empower them to continually claim their entitlements. This report forms a strong starting point for beneficiaries and community members to open up a dialogue with concerned government officials at the appropriate administrative levels and claim their entitlements. It acts as a form of evidence that, when presented to concerned authorities, holds them accountable and compels them to ensure transparency within the system.

While the mobile phone is ubiquitous across rural India as a communication device, its very interesting to see that the relevant MIS system, linked to the mobile phone and a community demand for transparency can be transformative within the sleepy tribal village communities of Keonjhar District, Orissa.

A similar prototype has been implemented by Operation Asha (OpAsha) within its Tuberculosis (TB) program. OpAsha uses technology to measure the effectiveness of its Tuberculosis Management.

‘Our low-cost biometric technology has not only ‘turned the tap off’ on MDR (Multi Drug resistant) TB, it also reduces the cost of treatment per patient, improves productivity of staff, prevents ‘gaming’ of the system, and ensures total transparency. It also streamlines our reporting system by electronically generating monthly reports, thus proving environmentally friendly and time saving,’⁹ writes Dr. Shelly Batra.

As the Co-founder and President of OpAsha, Dr. Batra has long been aware of the particular challenges that the poverty stricken of India face, especially in the health sector.

Established in 2005 with a vision to make India Tuberculosis-free, OpAsha tackles the high incidence of TB in South Asia through its 200 treatment centers present between India and Cambodia.  The organization uses the Directly Observed Therapy Short Course (DOTS) treatment method as outlined by the World Health Organization. In DOTS, medication is administered by trained healthcare workers, who must diligently ensure that every patient swallows each dose of the 6 to 7 month course in their presence. DOTS was developed after it was observed that many TB patients never completed their course, leading to multiple drug resistant TB (MDR-TB).

Though it has proved effective, the DOTS method has some drawbacks. One of the biggest criticisms leveled against it is that it depends solely on the honesty of healthcare workers’ inputs to ascertain if a patient has in fact taken the medication. Further, if a patient has missed a dose, the existing process was very slow to respond effectively. For OpAsha, effective impact measurement on a daily basis was an essential need to succeed with the TB program.

Faced with these challenges, OpAsha turned to technology application. ‘Under the eCompliance initiative, each treatment center is equipped with an eCompliance terminal, consisting of a fingerprint reader and a low-cost SMS modem. When a TB patient visits the treatment center, they verify their visit by scanning their finger on the reader before taking their medicines. The terminal keeps a real-time attendance log.  This gives health workers the option of quickly viewing which patients have visited the center, which patients still need to take their medicines and which patients missed their doses the previous day. With use of the fingerprint reader, the system provides unmistakable evidence that a patient was physically present for the treatment’ ¹⁰

What characterizes these examples are their simplicity and the use of the core challenge as the trigger to seek and adopt technology (rather than a technology that seeks a market). Complementing the technology is a nurtured involvement of people in the community to use and deploy the solutions. These examples and cases are not singular in their simplicity and contextual use of technology. Hints of several such examples can be seen in the work of grass roots innovators and social entrepreneurs building new products for the underserved market.

For any technology to work it seems that the innovator, entrepreneur must find answers to key questions in their context:

Are enough entrepreneurs paying attention to the social behaviors and social science that is associated with the adoption of new ideas and technologies?  Or are social insights relegated to ‘market development’ – much after the technology or idea has already been crafted and invested in?  Are impact investors willing to learn from philanthropic behavior to build new and enhanced ways of supporting the social process of technology adoption? And finally who in the ecosystem must facilitate this journey of ideas and technology to large scale adoption?

Series Author: Parvathi Menon
Research and Content Development: Anupama Kalgudi
Blog Series inspired by discussions with Arvind Gupta, previously the Program Lead for the World Bank’s Development Marketplace Program.

This research and learning is the basis for the 6th Alchemix™ Session to be hosted by Innovation Alchemy in Bangalore on 21st November 2012. This Session will be brought to you by Mahindra Rise. Join the discussion in person or through a Live Stream. Register Now.

References

#Alchemix

2:00 pm – 3:00pm, Wednesday August 22^nd 2012

Join us online on Wednesday the 22^nd of August 2012 for another Alchemix Tweet Chat.  This time the discussion is on Sustainable Housing in India and the Innovation happening in this space. The chat will last an hour and is an opportunity to engage with practitioners in the field, discuss and learn from their insights.

Featured Practitioners:

Rakhi Mehra co-founder of Micro Home Solutions (@microHS). Rakhi co-founded mHS, determined to make people and players think more creatively about urban housing and building inclusive cities. A Rhodes scholar and an MBA from Harvard (‘09) she has many years of international development experience with CARE, Ashoka Fellows, Grameen Bank, RABO Bank, Jeffery Sachs’ office at Columbia University. mHS works at two levels: (a) engaging in hands-on implementation of pilots and prototypes for proof of concept and seeking to influence policy and project design by undertaking research and providing consultancy services. (b)  Building and enabling innovative components designed for viable and scalable housing solutions that meet the diversity of low-income housing needs.

Chitra K Vishwanath (@chitrav)  a Bangalore based architect recognized as a leader in designing sustainable buildings, who has designed and implemented hundreds of residences, institutions and resorts – guided by ecological principles, integrating sound water, energy and land-use thinking into design. Her firm Chitra K Vishwanath Architects merged with Rainwater Club in 2008 to create Biome Environmental, a Bangalore-based firm focused on ecology, architecture and water.

Yogini Deshpande (@yoginisd) a PhD holder from Purdue University, has over 15 years of experience in the development of sustainable civil engineering materials and design of sustainable infrastructure systems.  In the past, she has worked as a Research Fellow at the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, India and has taught at various universities in USA.  She now runs @RC_Infra a boutique-consulting firm specializing in design, development and education of sustainable infrastructure systems. She is a member of various committees of the American Concrete Institute including ACI-130 Sustainability committee and the Associate Editor of Journal of Civil Engineering Research. Yogini also joins us in this chat as a Guest Blogger. Watch out for her blog with a summary of the insights from this chat.

Development Alternatives Set up in 1982 with the purpose to deliver sustainable development outcomes in a commercially viable manner. Working in the rural regions of India, Development Alternatives develops technologies and methods that help marginalized communities build affordable housing, that also meets their water, sanitation and energy needs. In the last few years, DA has focused on enabling communities to be climate resilient through the use of innovative tools and models. Primarily active in the semi-arid regions of Bundelkhand and the mountain regions of Himachal Pradesh, DA is working on an action research project supported by Fem Sustainable Social Solutions to create a comprehensive credit based eco-housing delivery model for rural families. Salim Altaf, from the Development Alternative Team joins us on the chat.

The Chat will be moderated by Parvathi Menon (@parvathimenon) CEO of Innovation Alchemy (@innovalchemy). The chat will explore four questions in Sustainable Housing in the context of India.

The questions we will explore

• Can we demystify Sustainable Housing? What is considered sustainable housing? Is it the same as affordable housing? Low cost architecture? Eco friendly green housing? Or housing that is low cost, green and also accessible to low income communities?  Or all of the above?

• WHO is the target market for Sustainable Housing developments – right now and in the future?

• What are the innovations in material, technology, process and the science of housing development that are breaking new ground? Who is working on these? Which part of the world is leading in sustainable development?

• And finally, what policy frameworks do we need in India to scale and expand sustainable housing developments?

How can you take part?

The chat is an opportunity to engage in an in-depth conversation with practitioners, thought leaders and people interested in this subject.  The chat will aim to debate and discuss the challenges, successes and innovations in the Sustainable Housing space. We will be using the hashtag #Alchemix to direct the tweets. The chat is open to anyone who is interested, so feel free to join in and share your insights.

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 Sustainable Housing space or who would be interested in learning more about Sustainable Housing, Innovation and Ideas that are developing in India please do share this page with them.

Follow us on Twitter (@innovalchemy) and be a part of the growing Indian Innovation Ecosystem.