During 2001 to 2004, I worked for a company called n-Logue Communications Pvt. Ltd. The company was focused on bringing internet based services to rural areas of India using indigenous low cost wireless technologies.  Part of the National e-Governance Plan is to put 100,000 Common Service Centres (CSCs) in villages of India. The CSC is meant to be internet enabled to deliver a variety of services to rural areas. See http://www.csc-india.org/

For these CSCs to be exceptionally successful it really requires the Government to have a very strong, powerful and reliable information technology based backend to deliver all services to rural communities.

However what I learned during that period and subsequently is that the internet and Personal Computer (PC) are the real stumbling blocks for the success of information technology in rural areas of India.

This my list of 9 things that can go wrong

1)      Connectivity today is much better than it was in 2004, but speed is still an issue.

2)      Electrical power availability is a show stopper

3)      The initial cost of all hardware, PC, UPS, connectivity, furniture is high

4)      Most softwares require knowledge of English

5)      Vernacular content is largely urban centric

6)      There is no mechanism for rural needs/content to show up on the internet

7)      Hardware malfunctions need specialised skills not available in rural areas

8)      Software problems especially virus attacks cripple the PC on a regular basis

9)      The keyboard is the worst interface for rural people to use.

If you consider the mobile phone, you will find that it is a solution for all the problems listed above. The greatest part of the solution is the voice interface. There are social enterprises using voice recognition technologies to act as the interface between the mobile phone user and a server at the other end of the line.  Speech recognition in local language is the most advanced technology that can be used to serve rural folk. It does not require any pushing of buttons to choose number options. Customers don’t receive text messages, they receive voice messages. Complexities of illiteracy and innumeracy are removed by the most natural of interfaces, speech.

The mobile phone has found its way into all corners of the world and very remarkably even to the poorest people in India. The mobile is now the platform of choice for almost every conceivable application. One of the latest gives regular updates on patients’ blood pressure.

“The HP Mobile Health Monitoring Solution offers just that, but without the need for users to visit clinics or hospitals to get their vital statistics read. Instead, it deploys a mobile device to monitor and record patient blood pressures around-the-clock and then shares that information in near-real time with healthcare professionals, wherever they’re located. Any anomalies in the users’ health data trigger alerts to the healthcare service provider.”

“In the trial, 100 patients from Frontier Healthcare are wearing HealthSTATS’ wireless BPro® watch-like monitoring device.  HealthSTATS software translates the patient data into meaningful clinical readings, including 24-hour blood pressure and heartbeat patterns.  The information is then relayed wirelessly to a centralized healthcare data repository powered by SingTel’s cloud infrastructure.”

http://www.hpl.hp.com/news/2011/apr-jun/mobile_health-monitoring_solution.html

This is just the beginning. A lot of research work is going on to develop a reliable and non-invasive blood sugar measurement system. Thus, two of the most prevalent causes of death (diabetes and heart attack) will be monitored and controlled in real time by health professionals.

I worked for  the Byrraju Foundation, Hyderabad between 2007 and  2008. During that time I met with many professionals in the Satyam Group of companies. B Swaminathan was one such professional whose dream was to bring complex medical diagnostics to the village in an affordable way.

Swami and I sat and thought about this and looked at all the resources available to us. This included 30 internet kiosks set up by the Foundation in 30 villages of East and West Godavari districts of Andhra Pradesh, Electro Cardio Gram (ECG) kits provided along with ISRO Village Knowledge Centre programme and a good enthusiastic team of medical professionals. Swami told me that he could get a tie up done with Narayana Hrudayalaya at Bangalore. Narayana Hrudayalaya would  be able to look at an ECG output, make a diagnosis, suggest over the counter medication if required and what further action the patient should take. All of this within 15 minutes of receiving the ECG and for free.

We had to convince the management at Byrraju that we could make this happen at an extremely low cost to the patient and they agreed to let us do a pilot. The pilot was successful and we had pegged the cost of the test at Rs. 25/-.

Swami and I were delighted. Using the connectivity available in the internet kiosk, the low cost ECG kit supplied by ISRO, medical technicians available at the Foundation health clinics we were able to take the ECG readings of patients and send them to Narayana Hrudayalaya. Within 15 minutes we would get the response from Narayana Hrudayalaya. Rural people were at that point of time getting an expert opinion on their heart at a cost cheaper than any urban person.

The programme got  Byrraju Foundation the Computer World Honors Program Award.

http://www.cwhonors.org/viewCaseStudy2008.asp?NominationID=741

The newspaper article is at:

http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/byrraju-emri-win-computerworld-awards/325595/

Artificial Insemination technology that BAIF introduced and spread throughoutt India (see http://dev.ikf.in/baif/about_us_about_baif.asp)  has gone towards improving cattle livestock, improving milk yields and better remunerations for farmers. There was another technology breakthrough implementation that gave dairy farmers raised incomes and better input quality control for the milk processing plants.

A small company called Shree Kamadhenu Electronics Pvt. Ltd. pioneered the technology and implementation of Milk Collection Systems.

“Shree Kamdhenu Electronics Pvt. Ltd. (INDIA) provides one stop solutions to the dairy sector Since 1996 under the brand name ‘AKASHGANGA‘ ™. We offer a total integrated solution for Automatic Milk Collection Systems (AMCS). More than 3,252 AMCS units are already installed. Simple, but appropriate solutions to facilitate timely collection of milk and thereby generating higher earnings for the rural milk producers by introducing Quantity, Quality based Payment System for the Milk Producers.”

(see http://akashganga.in/index.html)

The company is being modest on its own web site. The really important piece of technology they introduced was a means of quickly measuring the % of fat in the milk brought to the collection centre by the farmer.

This measurement when integrated with the existing Automatic Milk Collection System  gave farmers more transparency, better incomes (higher milk fat means higher earnings) and better quality control for the milk processing plant. The system helped remove the practice of dilution of milk with water practiced by farmers and rewarded them for offering a better product.

“One key operation is to measure/weigh milk, indicate fat percentage, price payable to the supplier, indicate customer number, date-time and session of supply through a printout. For the record of Village Cooperative, a report is generated at the end of each session containing customer  number, milk  procured in litres fat content, amount payable to each customer separately for Cow milk and Buffalo milk. This report also contains additional feature to print total weight and average fat for Cow milk and Buffalo milk separately. Every ten days customer wise ledger containing information on total milk supplied and the amount payable to the customer for the period is generated.”

(see http://akashganga.in/KeyBenefits.htm)

One small company with a daily impact on a very large number of small dairy farmers.

It is always annoying for me to see electric water heaters. The annoyance comes because in India we produce most of our electricity using coal. The overall thermal efficiency of a power plant running on coal wont exceed 30%. The electricity is transported over hundreds of kilometers (with a 20% loss during transmission and distribution). Then after many step down transformers (each with its on loss of heat) the electricity comes to your home. Now you attach a device that converts the electricity back to heat and that is your electric water heater. If you are not able to see that conceptually this a waste of a “good” resource like electricity, then I am afraid you wont like what I am about to say next.

There should be a move to ban electric water heaters across the country and the world. Electric water heaters waste electricity. They also waste a lot of good quality water as you wait for the hot and cold water to mix till it is the right temperature for you. In my house we have not installed electric water heaters. We heat up a small vessel with good quality water over a gas stove and then mix this in a bucket with cold water and get our desired temperature. It may be a bit inconvenient when there are many guests at home but it helps regulate water use as well. In Chennai good quality water is always to be conserved.

My work took me away from Chennai to Hyderabad and I was staying in a gated community that had ensured the houses had solar water heaters on the roof tops and also built a pressurized water system rather than one based on overhead tanks. The 16 months that I lived in that house were like being in heaven. The high pressure shower that very quickly adjusted its temperature meant an extremely refreshing start to the day and an excellent tonic before going to sleep. Our electricity bill would come to around Ts. 300/- per month since it was also fitted with Compact Fluorescent Lamps.

The use of chromatograms in Biodynamic Agriculture was supposed to show the presence of a spiritual component a “formative force”. The chromatogram is an image developed from an extract of substances like soil, dung or food using simple commonly available chemicals. (see http://www.biodynamics.in/chrom.htm )

I first saw the chromatograms at a Biodynamic workshop held at Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu, by C Jeyakaran and friends. I was accompanied by Dr. K Perumal and we were both representing Shri A M M Murugapa Chettiar Research Centre (MCRC), Chennai. Perumal and I, were both fascinated by the chromatograms and we discussed the similarity of the technique with conventional chromatography. I suggested to Perumal it would be good to see how important soil nutrients like Nitrogen (N), Phosphorous (P) and Potassium (K) looked like with this technique.

Perumal kept working on this and a couple of years later after I had left MCRC we met again and discussed the technique. By then I was with n-Logue Communications Private Limited. n-Logue was putting up internet kiosks in villages and I was searching for special applications to put on the internet for the kiosks set up in the villages.

I suggested that Perumal should create a library/database of chromatograms. The IIT Madras had a bunch of researchers working on pattern recognition. If the chromatogram kits could be standardized then a chromatogram of the soil at a farmers field could be compared with images in the database using pattern recognition software through an internet connection at the village. The comparison and subsequent interpretation would be used to give guidelines on the quantity and type of nutrient the soil needed to become healthy.

These were just ideas we were throwing around at that time but Perumal continued to work on it and he even got research funding from Department of Science and Technology, Government of India. He worked and built a kit that gives repeated and reliable results. He also created a vast library of images. Validation of results used conventional techniques as well.

Today this technology is to be used to advise farmers on their soil nutrient requirements. Fo more information contact Dr. K Perumal (perumalk@mcrc.murugappa.org) at Shri AMM Murugappa Chettiar Research Centre. (http://www.amm-mcrc.org/)

About 20 years ago my guru Dr. C. V. Seshadri was approached by a young and enthusiastic NRI who wanted to set up Institutes of excellence similar to the IIT’s (Indian Institute of Technology). These institutes would focus on information technology and were to be named IIIT (Indian Institute of Information Technology). The young NRI asked my guru what would be the pressing challenge facing Indian farmers that these Institutes could address. Without batting an eyelid my guru said every farmer wanted to know when his cow would enter estrous.

Much later I understood how useful and really important this piece of technology could be. Farmers who keep small number of cattle need many sources of income to make keeping cattle viable. Chief source of income is the milk. The milk is available as long as the cow is nurturing a young calf. For a farmer it is important to keep getting a yield of milk from the first calving. This means that after the birth of the calf and within a 2 month window the farmer would want the cow to be pregnant again. This is the tricky part. The estrous cycle is about 21 days long. There is a window of less than 6 hours and upto (sometimes) 24 hours within which insemination should take place. Otherwise the farmer has to wait for another 21 days. That means a 21 day loss of milk yield. (see  http://beefrepro.unl.edu/pdfs/estrouscycle.pdf for technical details).

The first technology revolution for cattle was pioneered in India by Bharatiya Agro Industries Foundation (BAIF). “Dr. Manibhai Desai, a freedom fighter came to Urulikanchan near Pune with Mahatma Gandhi in 1946 to manage the Nature Cure Centre to promote community development and sustainable livelihood.   Based on the successful experience, he established the Bharatiya Agro Industries Foundation (BAIF) and motivated small farmers to take up agro-based development, as their business enterprise with sound management. Later in 1989, BAIF was renamed as BAIF Development Research Foundation to re-focus on development research for rural prosperity. Cattle development was the initial preference to serve small farmers effectively.”  (see: http://dev.ikf.in/baif/about_us_about_baif.asp )

BAIF is most well known for their Livestock Development programme. “This flagship programme, launched in early 70’s, is presently serving over 4.4 million families through a network of over 3500 cattle development centres spread over 70,000 villages in the states of Maharashtra, Karnataka, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh. Each centre covering 15-20 villages in a radius of 10 km, is operated by a local youth, trained to provide services such as artificial insemination, pregnancy diagnosis, vaccination, minor veterinary care, forage production, good feeding and management practices. BAIF’s Central Research Station at Urulikanchan provides frozen semen produced from elite bulls of foreign and Indian breeds to these centres, apart from conducting applied research, technology development, training and supply of critical inputs such as cattle feed, mineral mixture and seeds of elite forage varieties.” (see http://dev.ikf.in/baif/our_programmes_livestock_development.asp)

With establishment of these centres, artificial insemination of cattle has allowed farmers to get their cows pregnant in the shortest time. However they must recognize that their cow is ready to be inseminated. A technology that would inform a farmer that his cow is ready for insemination would go a long way in reducing the loss of revenue from milk, and this is what Dr. C V Seshadri had said was critical to farmers. Any technologists readyto take up the challenge?

In this chapter, Gopinath dabbles in politics by running for the position of MLA (Member of the Legislative Assembly). This development is in some ways consistent with what the reader learns of Gopinath in previous chapters.

Firstly, in Chapter 3, Gopinath mentions that he is becoming increasingly well-known, both because of his silkworm and other businesses, and because he wins the Rolex Award for Enterprise. Therefore, it is not surprising that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) asks him to be the president of the party in Hassan.

Secondly, in my post on Chapter 3 I mentioned an incident when Gopinath offers help even to those who ransack his farm. In this incident, Gopinath displays an ability to stand up to people when he looks the marauders in the eye, raising his voice but nevertheless reasoning with them. In this chapter Gopinath both argues with Vajpayee at a dinner attended by leaders of the state BJP, and with Deve Gowda, a powerful politician. In the latter incident, Deve Gowda violates the election code of conduct by arriving to speak around 20 minutes early, with a procession and drums. Gopinath, incensed at Deve Gowda cutting into his time, refuses to call off or even temporarily stop his meeting.  Gopinath eventually prevails.

As early as Chapter 2, Gopinath also displays his skill in fundraising. He starts farming on 30 acres of land, 20 of which belong to his uncles. He tells his uncles that he will pay them a much higher amount than they would get by selling the land, and higher interest than that offered by the banks, but from the sale of his crop (in the future). In this chapter, Gopinath faces a much larger fundraising challenge when he has to organize a rally for the visiting BJP leader, Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He realizes that if he organizes the rally using his own funds he will become bankrupt, and decides instead to publicize the function through local artists, traders and contractors. Yet the reader can question the ethicality of this decision, as it is likely that many of the traders and contractors invested in Gopinath in the hope that if he came to power, he would “reward” them later with development contracts.

Gopinath says that he did not have time at that moment to consider the ethicality of his decision.  However, another ethical decision that he struggles with in this chapter and resolves somewhat more satisfactorily is over whether to represent a party with communal overtones.  Gopinath joins the BJP only when he is assured by the party that they are a separate and independent identity from the communal RSS, and that there will be no interference in his functioning.

Gopinath’s strong sense of equality, instilled in him both by his father and his experience in the army, is evident in this chapter not only in his statement that, “…there is only one caste, one community, and one religion: of being an Indian,” but also in his decision to contest from the agrarian constituency of Gadsi, rather than from the cities of Bengaluru or Hassan where he would win votes on the basis of his caste.  There is also an incident where party workers and leaders gather on his farm, and refuse to eat the food cooked by Raju because he belongs to the scheduled castes. Gopinath asks Raju to serve him first, and everyone else follows.

Nevertheless, at this point in the book, it is difficult to discern a clear progression in the opportunities that Gopinath chooses to pursue.  Although he loses the election, it seems just as feasible that had he won, he would have become a politician as the founder of Air Deccan.  This led me to think about entrepreneurship education, and the theories behind it.  One theory could be that some people are “born entrepreneurs,” and that entrepreneurship education will uncover these “hidden” entrepreneurs.  Another theory could be that entrepreneurship education exists to educate everyone on entrepreneurship as a possible career option.  For people like Gopinath, who seem to be interested in several career paths, entrepreneurship education could steer them in the direction, or at least make them aware, of entrepreneurship as one amongst these options.

Ayllu (pronounced ‘i-you’) started out with the idea of “spreading social enterprise through franchising” but as the Founder Melissa Richer was doing the research to start the organization she noticed that everyone she was interviewing was more interested in the data she collected than the concept she was researching.  Based on this experience she decided to shift her focus toward the company’s current mission which is to “provide updated, centralized information to help social enterprises, investors, and supporters learn from each other so that decisions can be made and scale achieved more easily, quickly, and cheaply”.

The choice Ayllu made to switch missions has proven to be extremely beneficial to the social enterprise industry as they have garnered support from NextBillion, OpenAction, IRIS, GIIRS, Acumen Fund, the William Davidson Institute, Santa Clara University, and Artemisia International to develop iuMap – the “public face” of Ayllu’s internal database.  It is currently the world’s largest directory of market solutions to poverty listing the majority of the world’s social enterprises (450 enterprises in 65+ developing countries), and has been visited by users in 133 countries!  Ayllu envisions it as a valuable resource for practitioners, social entrepreneurs, funders (investors and donors), students, academics and generally those interested in social enterprise.

Two of the latest iuMap features include an ability to filter the map based on location, issue, legal structure, and supporters and ten sector pages with reports, case studies, commonly used metrics for the sector, twitter feeds from the sector, all the businesses they have listed, and links to other online resources.  In the next few months Ayllu will release an Energy Map focused on social enterprises delivering energy solutions to the poor by surveying 60+ enterprises and an India Map focused on social enterprises in India facing enormous growth challenges by surveying 50+ enterprises.

Ayllu has been utilizing the help from any volunteers who want to submit enterprises missing from their database.  This has been fairly successful allowing them to grow by 50% in the last few months.  They are still encouraging submissions which you can do here.  Feel free to contribute because Ayllu says “the more we map, the more we’ll share.”  They have hopes that iuMap will one day by be a tool for accessing data and analysis like best practices, trends, connections, and benchmarks.  The growth of this company and tool has been remarkable to witness and it has come just at the right time.

You can see this link for a rundown of the new iuMap features as well as links to their partners and a video explaining how everything works.  Check it out today!

Lindsay Clinton of Beyond Profit magazine offers her thoughts in her recent article on the GOOD Business website. To find out what makes India tick, click here.