9. Your friends and family either think you’re cool or crazy for quitting your job and moving to India/working with Indian villages. Either way, you can live the spontaneous life and delay the question, “What are your future plans?”

8. The amount of learning you will do in one year amounts to years of climbing the corporate ladder at a “regular” job.

7. You can tout your experience in finance, marketing, operations, design, management, HR, customer service, and every other function of business – all in one position.

6. You become an active member of “the space” – the global social enterprise community of investors, entrepreneurs, researchers, and media.

5. In the startup environment, you have the support and autonomy to implement your ideas quickly.

4. You never know what the week will bring.

3. You have a cohort of awesome people to bounce ideas off of and learn from.

2. You get a tremendous amount of responsibility and you can learn directly from the founders of your organizations.

1. You’re working to find answers for something greater than you, your organization, and even your sector – the prospect of social change.

Apply to become a Villgro Fellow 2012 — the deadline is May 20th!  http://villgro.org/index.php/fellowship

Nilima Achwal is a 2011 Villgro Fellow working directly with Villgro, heading up a social entrepreneur training program, case study development, and the Villgro Fellows Blog. Nilima is also a Staff Writer for NextBillion, a prominent social enterprise consortium bringing together the community of business leaders, social entrepreneurs, NGOs, policy makers and academics who want to explore the connection between development and enterprise.

Our cohort of 10 Villgro Fellows went ahead and did just that. And I got them to spill the juice. Over the next few blog posts, we will tell you the good, the bad, and…the interesting. If it sounds like your cup of chai, you can go ahead and apply—before May 20: http://villgro.org/index.php/fellowship

Today, let’s hear from

• Neel Shah, based at ROPE in Chennai, which facilitates market linkages between rural artisans and mainstream retailers like IKEA,
• Swetha Krishnakumar, based at clean cook stove producer Sustaintech in Bangalore, and
• Ashish Sinha, based at rural distribution network Villgro Stores, which employs village-level entrepreneurs to sell mainly socially beneficial products in the district of Erode, Tamil Nadu.

Neel describes his typical day: it could involve brainstorming with the CEO in a conference room on product development, selling artisan baskets and flowers in the Chennai sun to willing passer-bys, or working directly with artisans in rural areas. There is no telling what the day brings.

The most rewarding element, for him, has been seeing up-close the development happening in rural India. He explains: “On a day to day basis, it is sometimes difficult to gauge the social impact being created by the organization. However, sometimes I visit ROPE production centers in rural India. Between, my consecutive visits, I can see the development happening. Between, my first visit and the second, T. Kallupatti (one of the villages where ROPE has its production centers) got its first ATM machine. Between, my second and third visit, it got its first moped showroom. Such moments, which reconfirm that the change is taking place because of the effort of social enterprise that I work in, is very rewarding.”

Swetha described her rewarding moment as interacting with the customers – restaurants owners in the BoP – because “the most valuable source of knowledge regarding our challenges and potential solutions are our customers and our sales executives. My place is to help formulate those thoughts into action.”

Ashish is a unique Fellow, with 8 years of consulting experience under his belt, he is the only one based out of a rural location, at Villgro Stores. This placement comes with its perks and downsides. Ashish recounts his most rewarding and inspiring experience in Gobichettipalayam. Two months ago, Villgro Stores added tea to its portfolio, as a “well-being product,” a product that has “tremendous scope and immediate cash realization potential, with a particularly interesting weight to earning ration.”   These type of products can be easily carried door-to-door by women village-level entrepreneurs. All they need was a pool of BoP women to pilot the business model for them – and they found just the woman, a true BoP woman who was ready and willing to become Villgro Stores’ next saleswoman.

She thought critically about how to market a brand and came to Villgro Stores with an idea – Give me 2,000 packs of tea [worth 1 rupee each], she said. “What do you want to do with that?” Ashish asked her. “When they open the door, I’m going to tell them make a cup and taste it. And when they feel the aroma and taste, they will buy more.”

Intrigued by the idea, Ashish thought about it. If he gave her the 2000 Rs. worth of product for free, he would be taking a big risk – on his own name. But he liked the idea. He fought with his staff, and he gave her the 2000 Rs. worth of tea, telling her to pay them back when she made money from the client.

She started knocking on doors. “Make it now,” she would urge them, “I’m waiting for you.” Housewives immediately began to put in orders for 500 grams of tea. At bigger households, she gave 5 or 10 rupee tester packets instead. “If you don’t like the tea, I’ve reimburse you cost of milk, sugar, and gas,” our enterprising lady told them. But of course, even if they didn’t like the tea, “no one in their right mind, would charge an emaciated saleswomen the cost of milk, sugar, and gas,” Ashish laughed. She got an opinion from everyone and reported the feedback back to Villgro Stores. She was effectively conducting product testing – a refined research technique. Ashish raved: “She’s brilliant – she never visits a house after 7^th or 8^th of every month  People get their paychecks by 2^nd  or 3^rd of every month and a majority of the household grocery purchase happens in the next few days. And she always goes when both people are in the house – the wife and the husband. In marketing terms, that’s the decision maker and the influencer. Now she sells 100 kg of tea on her own.”

“Her work is the validation of our hypothesis. We need to scale up this model. We’re going to bring her into Villgro Stores system – we’ll pay her an honorarium as much or exceeding on how much she used to make on tea business and then get her to find more women like her. For each person she brings in, we’ll give her a fixed amount and a percentage of sales this new person makes. We’ll choose woman who have 500 or 2000 rupees to invest and if she has the potential to scale up and has the fire in her, but needs funds to do that, we will link her to an MFI at really attractive terms.”

When you finally stumble upon something that works – that’s what’s extremely fulfilling.

But it’s not all heart-warming. Neel recounts that working with the incubatees can mean working by yourself much of the time — the incubatees, in their start-up mode can rarely manage to hire a lot of talent to make great teams. “This can make days feel very long at times,” he explained.

Ashish is the only one actually based in rural India though – and he truly bears the brunt of isolation. He explained, “Being in Gobi is the hardest part of the Fellowship. The problem is, I’m very talkative. If the office is closed, I don’t have anyone to speak to. I have a total of 4 or 5 people to interact with…so life becomes very boring, very dull. I’ve never been in a situation like this before. It kills you…You know, when you make a iron weapon or something, you heat it until it’s red and ready and then you hammer it, and then quickly put it in a tub of cold water. That quenching process is probably what I’ve been through.” In addition to the lack of interaction, there are 10-14 hours of power cuts every day in Gobi.

Neel and Swetha agree that they have learned a lot from the Fellowship. Swetha explained, “I would most definitely recommend this fellowship to others. There are few other opportunities to really work in the field in social entrepreneurship, developing an understanding of the management and strategic challenges in the sector. Not only do we get this strategic understanding, but we also have the opportunity to engage closely with our customers.” Neel also commented on the quality of the Fellows themselves, saying “it’s a great opportunity to connect with like-minded people across the world.”

Ashish commented on the tight-knit team at Villgro Stores, and his joy in watching the organization evolve over the months. “It’s like planting a mango tree and nurturing it. One of the hardest parts is that just when it’s about to bear fruit, it’s time to leave. I would recommend this Fellowship to anyone with less than 3 or 4 years of experience, because that’s really when you’re going to learn and contribute a lot.”

Nilima Achwal is a 2011 Villgro Fellow working directly with Villgro, heading up a social entrepreneur training program, case study development, and the Villgro Fellows Blog. Nilima is also a Staff Writer for NextBillion, a prominent social enterprise consortium bringing together the community of business leaders, social entrepreneurs, NGOs, policy makers and academics who want to explore the connection between development and enterprise.

If your desire to make a difference to the world was somehow lost in your search for a stable career, here is your chance to rediscover it.

As a Villgro Fellow, you will work with a social enterprise for 1 year, applying your skills to create real impact in rural India. In charting a better road map for the social enterprise, you may find your own Road Less Traveled. Many Villgro fellows have gone onto work/consult for social enterprises or pursue further studies in the social sector.

What is the Villgro Fellowship?
Villgro works with social entrepreneurs who are transforming rural India with innovative ideas such as bee-keeping that increases farm yield and financial returns for farmers, Cost-effective anaemia testing machines to prevent maternal mortality, to name a few. Your expertise helps the social enterprise at a critical stage in its journey. Working hands-on with the social enterprises opens your mind to different possibilities. Villgro will provide training and financial support.

Who can be a Villgro Fellow?
If you are passionate about using your professional skills for social impact and have 3-4 years experience in any of the following areas – Strategic Planning, Finance and Accounting, HR, Sales and Marketing, IT and Operations – we would be happy to have you on board.

For more details and to apply please visit: http://villgro.org/index.php/the-fellowship-

Meet the Villgro Fellows from 2011 here.

DEADLINE: MAY 20, 2012

My lack of enthusiasm for cell phones never really evolved over the
years. My friends all know that I’m not the type to call or text “just
to chat.” I’ve also lost more cell phones than I care to count,
because I don’t value them. The only job from which I’ve ever been
fired was the one where my boss bought me a Blackberry so that she
could reach out to me 24/7 – and I just couldn’t adjust to the lack of
quiet time, leisure time and time to just “be.”  I actually resisted
getting a Smartphone until just last year, not because I could
continuously access my email, but rather so I could read the news on
the Subway (ok, and also play Angry Birds).

I’ve often had the thought that, ironically, cell phones support more
antisocial behavior than what is more natural to humanity – a genuine
desire to connect to others on a meaningful level. It’s rare that I’m
in a meeting, or out to dinner, or in a theater, when time spent with
friends isn’t interrupted by an incoming call or message that ensures
we will never be completely present to each other. The quality of our
relationship is compromised, as is the quality of communication that
lacks eye contact, giving way to high-tech, low level dialogue that
seems to thwart maturity and interpersonal growth.

Its easy, then, to find humor in the fact that I’m working for a
company that develops mobile technology. Even more ironic: one of my
primary roles in the company is marketing. Essentially, my job is to
convince businesses, governments and nonprofits alike that they should
reach out to their customers in the bottom of the pyramid in a way I
would never like to be contacted – through the mobile phone.

My work is part of a movement known as Mobile for Development (M4D),
embodied in an annual conference that I attended this year, both as a
participant and presenter. Practitioners from over 30 countries
gathered to share their insights on the role of mobile phones in
health, education, agriculture, financial services, governance and
livelihoods. There were over 50 presentations about the various ways
that mobile phones are changing the face of development. Text to
Change, for example, demonstrated how text campaigns can improve the
delivery of male circumcision for HIV Prevention Services. Eko, an
Indian financial service company, discussed how they enable financial
inclusion through mobile-based transactions. My presentation was
especially exciting because I showed how voice technology enables
mobile applications to reach the last-mile, promoting the most
inclusive development.

The human voice is a universal asset that allows those without
literacy to be included in the possibility of economic advancement
through mobile applications. They simply have interactive dialogues
through speech recognition (the same technology used by Siri on the
iPhone). Multilingual speech recognition permits everyone to use these
tools in their local languages. Using voice technology is also
important in areas that lack connectivity, as people can still
interact without a wifi connection. Voice biometric technology enables
organizations to offer even more valuable services through the mobile
phone, allowing them to not only access information, but also conduct
transactions, whether it be a loan payment, ordering an agricultural
input, or purchasing medicine. My company is the only provider of
multilingual speech recognition and voice biometrics in India, so it’s
important to participate in these conferences to get the word out and
partner with all kinds of players trying to include the poor in their
business models.

The businesswoman in me recognizes that using mobile phones is the
most efficient way to leapfrog poor infrastructure, as well as
literacy, language and connectivity issues. Since mobile penetration
has reached such high levels in the developing world, it makes sense
to tap into this pre-existing supply chain and deliver products and
services to people directly through their phones. Many of us are
familiar with the challenges faced by many pregnant women in the
developing world, who in so many cases, have to walk miles and miles,
sometimes while they are in labor, for assistance in a delivery that
could end in the death of both mother and child. Mobile phones can aid
a life-threatening situation through telemedicine, allowing the
expectant mother to communicate in her native language with a medical
information portal that can deliver relevant information specific to
her health profile. Opportunities such as these are vast.

But the social worker in me is much more hesitant to embrace mobile
phones for development. In my training at Columbia University School
of Social Work, I learned so much more about the status of my clients
through their expressions and body language than I did their words.
In fact, a UCLA study showed that 93% of communication effectiveness
is determined by nonverbal cues. When I started studying different
facial expressions, eye contact, posture, hand and feet movements,
body placement, and walking styles, I became much more effective in my
work. My clients would often tell me things that were incongruous with
their body language. The more I attended to nonverbal cues, the more
effectively I was able to assist my client.

And so I worry that the use of cell phones enables people to mask
their feelings and reactions through more calculated verbal or written
communications. In spaces like mobile health and mobile education, I
fear that without the human connection to a doctor or a teacher who
can holistically communicate through verbal and nonverbal modes,
genuine care and learning won’t take place. The nuances of emotion and
relationships can be lost in mobile communication. From a wider
perspective, I also have trepidations that a one-dimensional push for
greater use of mobile development programs may increase the dependency
on these methods in poorer countries, further de-motivating
governments from building roads and developing remote areas with
proper public services. This would translate to poor people
continuously receiving services through mobile technology, while
others receive services in centers where compassionate professionals
can offer help.  In the long run, could this augment the divide
between urban and rural areas, and between the rich and the poor?

My goal in coming to India was to participate directly in social
enterprise and learn, from a practitioner’s perspective, what works
and what doesn’t on the ground. I was hoping to gain some clarity from
insights on the front-line that I could eventually use to inform
better policy-making. And while I’ve learned a lot, my work has
perhaps brought more ambiguity than certainty. Should we be using
mobile for development? To what extent? In what industries? And what
will the long term consequences be?

On a personal level, at least, I’ve come to embrace cell phones a
little more. In a city like Chennai that uses what I’ve termed the
‘anything-but-a-grid’ method of city planning, I’d love to have a
phone with a map. And because the infrastructure is not in place to
get anything done quickly – like going grocery shopping, visiting the
doctor, etc. – it would be nice if I could accelerate those processes
with my mobile phone. Yet, even here in India, I still find people who
are reliant on text messaging for relationship building and suffer
chronic distraction from true intimacy because they can’t turn off the
technology for even ten minutes.

Professionally, I’ve had a front row seat to the progress made
possible through mobile phones: a man opening his first bank account,
a woman getting previously inaccessible medical advice, and a farmer
having access to information about weather conditions for the first
time. I also know that a 1% increase in telecommunications penetration
in India leads to a 0.03% increase in its GDP. Mobiles do contribute
to growth, but growth is not always indicative of development, which
is a much more difficult end to achieve. We cannot simply throw these
high-tech solutions at villages and expect development. The success of
mobile phones will be determined by the human skills implementing
them. We must work intimately with the end user to train them on using
these new tools and provide relevant content in accessible and useful
forms, that is responsive to their needs and communications styles.
I’m proud to be here using my social work skills to work towards this
end, helping to create technologies with which the poor can be most
comfortable, and that genuinely enhance their standard of living. But
I tread carefully, wary of the fact that the mobile phone is a tool,
but not a panacea, for genuine poverty alleviation in India.

Caitlin Marinelli is a 2011 Villgro Fellow working in marketing and product development at Uniphore, a technology startup which uses its revolutionary speech technologies to facilitate rural development. Caitlin has a Masters in International Social Welfare from Columbia University, with a concentration in socioeconomic development. Prior to Villgro, Caitlin’s work experience involved a unique combination of direct social work and policy advocacy in Guatemala, Ecuador, and Sri Lanka.

Like the stereotypical Indian pressure cooker, India is under pressure from all sides. Pressure from a constantly growing population, albeit at a declining rate. Pressure from a diverse community with varied beliefs, values, and preferences. Pressure from a growing and unwieldy bureaucracy.

Under this pressure, it is difficult for even the most efficient and effective of organizations to achieve significant impact. One of my friends once commented that it seemed like India could never develop what with all of the problems involving corruption and population density. Being in India myself, I feel that I see many of the on-the-ground realities that perhaps result in my being more accommodating of the problems and roadblocks India faces. Even the most successful organizations need a conducive environment to allow it to experience sustainable and continued success.

One of my relatives recently recounted a story about a competition between an Indian consulting firm, an American consulting firm, and a British consulting firm to complete a project in India. The Indian firm won, primarily because they knew how to achieve results with what they were given and work within the constraints of the system. Indians, many people say, know how to achieve 95% effectiveness even given imperfect conditions. The flip side of that is that they can also be content with 95% effectiveness even when 100% is quite within reach.

Under these circumstances, social enterprises have seen success. But with new innovations and new methods of operating a social organization, previously un-thought-of challenges are arising that put newer pressures on these organizations. In 2010, SKS Microfinance released its IPO; in the same year, numerous allegations came out of SKS agents pressuring loan recipients to suicide. This begs the question:  is the pressure for quicker and more widespread growth mutually exclusive from the need to provide the best social offering to each customer?

If you are a social enterprise that follows a for-profit model, you would probably face similar questions just as SKS did. Regardless of whether you are a microfinance institution, you are still selling a product on which you need to collect payments. From a sustainability and scale perspective, collecting on payments is integral to the organization’s success. From an individual social perspective, putting in the time and effort to work with each customer to address every challenge in making repayments and ensuring product usability might be of utmost importance. Is it possible to be both a sustainable and scalable organization as well as a high social impact organization? And is it a social organization’s problem if our customers have extenuating circumstances that are unrelated to our core operations?

During our strategic planning at Sustaintech, we have to keep a number of things in mind – our ideal growth plans, the realistic constraints, our social mission, and our customers. We’d like to be able to provide the best quality products and services to the largest number of people as soon as possible. But not all of that is possible. So we look at slowing down our growth until we develop our organizational capacity and do not attempt to grow so much that it becomes unwieldy and out of our control. We are pursuing partnerships with a number of different consumer finance institutions to provide loans to our end consumers. But because we want to ensure more favorable interest rates and payment schedules, we work only with the most appropriate financing partners and exclude the others. All of these decisions have trade offs, but we believe we are making the best decisions given the context and the constraints. However, continuously assessing our operations and strategies has helped and will continue to help us focus on our social mission and better understand how best to achieve it.

Social organizations have achieved a lot of success in India, but numerous pressures are challenging the notion that new models like social enterprises can lead to revolutionary improvements in India. We need to find the optimal balance to ensure social impact and growth simultaneously. No longer is a “good intention” enough. The risk of another SKS, whether intended or not, cannot be an option.

Swetha Krishnakumar is a 2011 Villgro Fellow working in business development and operations at Sustaintech, a social enterprise startup selling fuel-efficient cook stoves to the low income roadside eatery market. She recently graduated with degrees in Industrial & Systems Engineering and International Affairs from Georgia Tech, where she had her first exposure to issues of human rights, international development, and social entrepreneurship.

“There is no ‘one size fits all’ strategy.”

Another Villgro Fellow Nilima recently referred me to this post from the Acumen Fund Blog, which discussed the fact that it is so difficult to find an improved cook stove that is universally accepted and effective. I think Sean Moore’s words above are so appropriate, not only for the improved cook stove market but also for the entire social sector.

At Sustaintech, we work in the niche area of the improved cook stove market. We are addressing the needs of a customer base that is not adequately addressed by the improved cook stove sector, namely the low- income commercial sector (roadside eateries, restaurants, etc). We do not want to address the gaps that other companies are already filling in the household market, and we realize that the needs of the commercial sector are unique. So we design our cook stoves specifically for small restaurants/eateries in Tamil Nadu and continue to innovate and update our products as new preferences are revealed.

However, I’ve found that many MFIs do not always customize their offerings to fill gaps in the market. For instance, many MFIs focus only on women, banking on their increased reliability and their tendency to focus on their families. And there have been notable successes using this model. But what do you do in areas where the men in the family manage a business and they need business loans? This is the case with Sustaintech customers. Very often, it seems, these families are turned away by both commercial banks and MFIs and the women of the house are required to take on income generating activities to sustain the household or to receive the loan.

Sustaintech is trying to ensure that consumer finance linkages are available to those customers who need loans to purchase our product. But the gender bias among financial institutions makes it difficult to ensure financing for our target customer base. This hurts our customers by limiting their ability to purchase our stoves, curbing the growth of their businesses.

The tendency in the social sector has been for new organizations to jump on the current bandwagon. So when Muhammad Yunus found success with his microfinance model lending to women in self-help groups, other MFIs followed suit. The problem is that the Grameen Bank’s women-centric model will never be able to address the financial needs of all potential customers at the Bottom of the Pyramid, and when the majority of MFIs follow the same model, many potential beneficiaries are denied access to important services.

So, inadvertently, what happens is that many social organizations and MFIs end up imposing their views on their intended beneficiaries, requiring them to change in order to be able to receive the benefits. Wives of the men looking for loans will begin businesses simply to take out a loan for their husbands, and the men themselves sometimes have to revise their business and personal financing strategies to do without loans. Neither is this sustainable nor is it appropriate. It is not a social actor’s place to dictate how a household interacts or how a business is run; rather, the social organization must adjust itself to provide the most appropriate services to the beneficiaries.

Therefore, I think it’s necessary that MFIs and other social organizations engage in healthy competition and keep their beneficiaries in mind, so that customers may dictate the products and services they need and encourage organizations to diversify their activities.

In NextBillion’s response to the Acumen Fund post, author Scott Anderson quotes co-founder of Envirofit Bryan Willson “‘What we’re trying to do is bridge the gap between some very good stoves that are too expensive and some very low-end stoves that don’t perform.’” Also, according to the NextBillion post, the international improved cook stove industry is looking to ensure that appropriate standards are in place to define what truly is a “clean” cook stove (in terms of efficiency, emissions, and more). While it is important to hold cook stoves to a certain standard of efficiency, I think it is integral to find the balance between the high-end and low-end models, as Willson mentions. The improved cook stove industry, and even the entire social enterprise sector as a whole, needs to decide whether an improved cook stove with 80% efficiency and 100 stoves in the market is better than an improved cook stove with 40% efficiency and 1000 stoves in the market.

The customer is going to give us the most important information. So if the 40% efficiency cook stove has sold more units, it might be the model to study. The immediate impact on end consumers is more significant than efficiency, and there is no reason the cook stove company cannot continue improving efficiency and assessing customer receptiveness while continuing to sell. The customer and the environment will benefit if a company achieves more sales, rather than if a company invests time and capital into an extremely efficient stove with low volumes due to difficulties in usability.

After his discussion with Akos, the owner of the small roadside eatery near his office, Sean remarked that “low-income consumers are extremely knowledgeable about the products they use and generally make rational purchasing decisions.” Knowing that, if we pay closer attention to the financing needs of our customers and to the cook stove models that are really generating sales, then we will be well-placed to tap into our target markets. We know that coming up with a few proposed solutions, telling the poor what to do, and giving them what we thought they needed has not led to much success. Let’s let them tell us what they need from us and see where that takes us.

Swetha Krishnakumar is a 2011 Villgro Fellow working in business development and operations at Sustaintech, a social enterprise startup selling fuel-efficient cook stoves to the low income roadside eatery market. She recently graduated with degrees in Industrial & Systems Engineering and International Affairs from Georgia Tech, where she had her first exposure to issues of human rights, international development, and social entrepreneurship.

Read Part 1 of the series, from Acumen Fund Fellow Andrea Griffin, here. Part 2, from Villgro Fellow Emily Paarmann, appears below.

For anyone that has been keeping up with the Villgro Fellows Blog, you probably have a basic understanding of some of Villgro’s portfolio companies. Most of the organizations that Villgro works with directly address a specific need or challenge of India’s BoP by offering a product directly to the poor that improves efficiency at some level. In my last blog post, I discussed Under The Mango Tree’s mission of providing rural farmers with bee boxes in order to increase agricultural productivity and increase incomes through both the additional crops produced and by providing market access for the honey produced. Thus, there are two ways that UTMT reaches the BoP – 1) establishing a network of farmers that believe in the power of bees and are willing to accept the challenge, and 2) by being the marketing, branding, and distribution force driving sales of honey that is produced by small farmers. Regarding the first point, UTMT trains “Master Trainers” in beekeeping that can then disseminate their learning’s to others in the community. However, it is how well UTMT can deliver on the second point that will ultimately determine the success of the organization – and this is what my work in Mumbai largely consists of. So rather than discussing distribution and marketing directly to the BoP, I will be discussing what I have learned about distributing a premium product to India’s discerning customer, and how this ultimately impacts the BoP.

My job at Under The Mango Tree (UTMT) comes in once the honey has been packaged and has made its way to Mumbai. I am actually not in contact with the farmers to whom we are providing market access. My job is to understand the market in India for gourmet fast moving consumer goods, get the product on retail shelves, and develop marketing strategies. To be quite honest, this is certainly not what I imagined doing when I joined Villgro! I had an image that I would be in direct contact with the farmers at the BoP. However, my eyes have been opened to the importance of developing this market, and it has made me that much more aware of the connection between the top and bottom of the pyramid.

Under The Mango Tree has traditionally reached customers through direct contact – events, home deliveries, and establishing direct contacts with small retailers. With modern trade (large retailers or chains) gaining popularity in Mumbai, we have been finding that these types of outlets are more willing to take on innovative products more quickly than smaller shops or kiranas. In order to reach a maximum number of stores and lessen the sales burden on UTMT staff, a distributor is necessary. Part of my job is to meet with distributors, understand the models and terms on which they operate in India, and appoint several appropriate distributors who can most effectively help us bring our product to market in a sizable way. One of my biggest challenges has been understanding what consumers choose to purchase, how they make purchasing decisions, and where they shop. I had to spend my first few months merely navigating the basic markets for consumer goods, as a consumer myself, before I could make a meaningful sales contribution to Under The Mango Tree. Markets here, even in Mumbai, are much less formal than in the US – establishing relationships with retailers is a very important strategy to encourage them to market your product, and finding distributors and appropriate stores is largely a matter of asking people for introductions.

From the sourcing side, there are several ways that honey can be procured for sale within India. Some of the largest sellers of honey actually own their entire supply chain – they manufacture honey to their specifications and bring it to market. Others work with honey aggregators, which are sourcing from independent farmers and selling in the market. Often, the largest honey suppliers will procure honey from the cheapest source available, even if that means importing a low quality or adulterated product. Under The Mango Tree takes care to source from small farmers that produce a very high quality, unique, single flora honey. Through the market access that UTMT is creating, these farmers are able to decrease their selling costs by having a guaranteed buyer. By strengthening the links between these suppliers and the end consumer, producers are able to consistently sell more of their product at higher prices. In turn, producers are able to invest more in their product and improve quality and diversity.

Agriculture supply chains in India remain quite informal, as compared to those in Western markets. Small producers in India often need support in order to boost the competitiveness of their product. This is where Under The Mango Tree comes in. UTMT has helped de-commoditize the honey being procured through 1) packaging, 2) branding, and 3) building market awareness of single-flora honey (a huge differentiating factor of our product). One of the most important ways we have added value to the product is by working with IndoCert – an organic certification agency – to help our farms attain organic certification. This has added tremendous value to the product we are procuring, allowing producers to demand a higher price. In addition, since these farms are now certified organic, they are able to offer an entire range of organic certified products, including spices, oils, and pulses.

Of course, adding value to the product means nothing if small producers do not have the networks established to bring it to market. The demand for these high value products lies within major metropolitan areas, and these small farmers do not have easy access to these markets. The commodity markets are well established, with complex systems sourcing and bringing fresh fruits, vegetables, spices, etc directly to the markets lining the streets of Mumbai. However, de-commoditized and differentiated products offer greater growth opportunities to farmers. By building a brand of high quality, pure honey that is gaining a presence among the upper echelons of Mumbai society, we are able to start bridging this gap.

Emily Paarmann is a 2011 Villgro Fellow working on business development, sales, and marketing with Under The Mango Tree, an agriculture startup that trains rural farmers in beekeeping and honey production to increase agricultural productivity. Emily has a degree in economics from the University of Virginia, and worked in the financial services in New York City prior to joining Villgro.

There is an enormous rural market for solar in India.  But the key is ‘reach’ through effective marketing and distribution and ensuring that systems continue to work as expected.

Orb Energy, a solar energy company, aims to serve customers who are looking to adopt a better energy alternative that is safe, environmentally sound, and reliable. Orb is one of India’s leading providers of solar energy systems. To date, Orb has installed over 30,000 systems in 5 states (Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Maharashtra, and Andhra Pradesh) and is interested in expanding its reach to regional and international markets.  Orb designs, engineers, and distributes its own products including a large range of AC and DC power systems for off and on-grid grid applications, solar water heaters, and solar street lights.

Effective distribution and ongoing service and maintenance are absolutely integral to the success or failure of a business model in the off-grid decentralized solar energy market.  In fact, many companies and markets have suffered/failed due to poor distribution and failure to effectively maintain and service systems once they are installed.  Regretfully, India has a long history of solar not being properly maintained after installation, therefore leading to system failure of a highly valued asset to the discounted customer.

Orb’s main innovation has been its distribution model of over 100 direct and franchised retail branches and direct sales methodology.  Many companies will sell solar products through dealers.  Dealers are essentially retail outlets accessible to the end-user that typically sell multiple brands of products and product types.  Orb on the other hand, sells Orb-designed and engineered products directly to the customer through its own direct sale branch network and sales team.  Orb branches also maintain a team of technicians who service and maintain the systems them after installation.  There are many reasons for the direct retail approach, but the most notable is that Orb is able to invest in the end-user customer relationship and oversee that maintenance of the systems after installation.  As said earlier, this after sales service is key to the firm’s sustainability in the long run.  Happy customers typically introduce new customers to Orb.

Orb’s approach to distribution has been a success made possible by the dedication, vision, and resourceful planning of its managing team and employees.  But managing more than 100 branches across 5 states and a distributed workforce of over 550 employees is cumbersome.  It’s especially cumbersome for a company like Orb that wants to scale its distribution network into new regions and states within India (not to mention into new countries as well).  Not only do you have to scale your network of branches and franchises, you also have to simultaneously maintain the health and performance of the existing branches.  Orb has more recently considered diversifying its distribution channels within India and outside, by signing on channel partners and franchisees where possible.

The key distribution and marketing challenges we face are the following:

1)     The branch network is expensive but integral to building trust:  To establish a direct retail branch, CAPEX (capital expenditure) can be high.  The company will typically incur a loss in the beginning because the local solar market is not developed and a fair amount of awareness building and deal pipeline needs to be established.

2)     Scale:  In order to scale, Orb needs significant capital to deploy to fund new branches.  Orb is building trust in the communities they operate in that couldn’t be done via a dealer.  The physical Orb office shows commitment of the brand to serving the community.

3)     Market Making:  Each time Orb sets up a direct retail branch in a new area, solar technology (especially PV) is typically being introduced for the first time to the community.  Orb’s branch therefore has to create solar awareness among the community. End user finance is also key to a large group of our customers.    Orb works with local banks to familiarize them with the benefits of solar to the end user to create solar lending programs.  End-user finance enables more end users, particularly those in the lower income bracket, to purchase solar systems via loans. The presence of Orb branches also means that local employees need to be recruited and trained, both from a sales and technical standpoint.  In doing so, Orb is essentially building local market infrastructure from scratch each time it establishes a branch.

4)     Capacity:  Finding skilled and motivated employees on the ground with a shared vision can be a challenge.  Solar energy is a technical product and requires a combination of good sales skills, technical understanding and skills, and strong business acumen as well as an understanding of the customer/end users needs.  Many of Orb’s staff do not have a formal background in business, so Orb needs a strong emphasis on training and controls for sales, money collection, distribution, installation, and after-sales service to function smoothly.

5)     Retail Productivity:  The ability for Orb to be in business is driven by the branch office’s productivity in generating sales and bringing in revenue.  Keeping productivity at the branch level growing is a constant challenge, particularly when Orb headquarters are not nearby.

Orb is well positioned to address these challenges to distribution in India but is constantly looking for ways innovate to push this model forward within in India and now particularly into new geographies around the world.

Andrea Griffin is an Acumen Fund Fellow, working in Bangalore, India, with Orb Energy, which is India’s largest direct provider of off-grid solar systems. Andrea is from the United States, and has worked as an analyst at Bear Stearns and subsequently J.P. Morgan. She has also worked with the UNDP in Senegal and as a Summer Associate with Acumen Fund in Pakistan. She holds a Master’s in International Energy Management and Policy from Columbia University’s School for International and Public Affairs, as well as a B.A. in Economics from the University of Vermont.

One system that has piqued my interest is the business of the dabbawallahs (literally: “box people”) in Mumbai, whose primary business is, according to Wikipedia, “collecting the freshly cooked food in lunch boxes from the residences of the office workers (mostly in the suburbs), delivering it to their respective workplaces, and returning the empty boxes back to the customer’s residence by using various modes of transport.”

The Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers’ Charity Trust was founded in 1890 and employs about 5000 dabbawallahs who deliver about 2,00,000 home cooked meals daily to about 80,000 offices for lunch time. Tiffin boxes are collected from the homes, organized at the train station based on final destination, and delivered to the offices by 12:30 pm consistently. After lunch, at around 1:15 pm, tiffin boxes are picked up and returned in the same fashion to the homes before 5:00 pm. Among other ways, the dabbawallahs ensure quality through an innovative coding system that provides all of the relevant information for accurate delivery in a simple and easily understandable manner. The dedication to quality has earned these dabbawallahs six sigma (the error rate being less than 1 in 16 million transactions) from the Forbes Group and resulted in about a 10% growth rate annually.

Code includes letters representing collection point, colors representing train station, & numbers representing destination point.

Achieving six sigma for a company or organization is an industrial engineer’s dream. Companies including AOL and AT&T are still working toward achieving higher levels of quality and customer satisfaction, while a relatively unknown organization in Mumbai has achieved the highest echelons of quality customer service.

During my time with Villgro, my primary focus has been the customer. From an industrial engineer’s perspective, I want to be able to better serve our customers by improving system performance.

When I first began college, we were constantly assigned textbook problems with endless assumptions that had no connection to real-life problems. During later years of college, we faced complex and real problems with more variables and more uncertainty; these, we would solve using an array of software programs that could handle the complicated mathematics. By graduation, I was convinced that the real world needed software and technology if it ever wanted to address the complex problems it faced. Now, I’m starting to rethink that.

The dabbawallahs, having become world-renowned after being recognized by the Forbes Group, have been guests at a number of management institutes and business schools. One student who had the opportunity to hear them lecture reflected that “the belief that technology is indispensable to solve complex problems was shattered.” I wholeheartedly agree.

At Sustaintech, I am working to streamline the data collection and analysis process to drive smarter business operations. At the onset, I was convinced that technology held all the answers; technology made things faster and smarter and could only mean good things for a business. So I invested a lot of effort into looking for mobile-based solutions to data collection. However, after some candid discussions, I realized that the cost-benefit analysis did not add up. Most of our Sales Executives were not SMS savvy, let alone computer or smartphone savvy, and most voice-based solutions were outside of our price range. On top of that, we were not a company that had to have real-time data, so the benefits of a mobile-based solution would be low especially given the amount of training required and the steep learning curve that our Sales Executives would face. I could not reconcile a solution that would cut into upwards of 1 hour per day of productive time spent by the Sales Executives since a mobile solution would increase the amount of time for data entry compared to the handwritten method currently used.

So the solution we have finally settled on is a cloud-based customer relationship management system for small businesses in India. This system will allow management personnel to view and analyze data and reports and use mobile technology to send SMS alerts and reminders to Sales Executives who would still send in handwritten data on a weekly basis. We found that this was the most balanced and appropriate use of technology in this context.

Systems improvement is not just about applying the newest technology or management principle to an organization. It is about understanding the context, resource constraints, the cost-benefit trade-off, and the customer to devise a solution uniquely appropriate for the organization in question. This, I believe, requires a lot of learning and experimenting and, at the end of the day, imagination. I hope I can use my academics and experiences to truly live up to my designation as an “imaginary engineer.”

Swetha Krishnakumar is a 2011 Villgro Fellow working in business development and operations at Sustaintech, a social enterprise startup selling fuel-efficient cook stoves to the low income roadside eatery market. She recently graduated with degrees in Industrial & Systems Engineering and International Affairs from Georgia Tech, where she had her first exposure to issues of human rights, international development, and social entrepreneurship.