Using my digital camera to make friends

Yesterday I went to Maria’s house for lunch. Maria is the cook for the family who’s apartment I stay in and I’ll admit I was a little scared to have lunch at her house. Here’s why: a few days earlier we were at her sister’s three-room home in Bandra, which doubles as a general store/ shop. The three rooms are a kitchen, dining room, and bedroom/ tv room; it was probably 500 sq. ft. or less and opened in the back onto a garbage-ridden waterfront. What scared me was when Maria described herself as “poor” and her sister as “rich”. If this was “rich”, what was Maria’s place like? It turns out that Maria’s home is about the same, just not in such a convenient and central location; it’s at least 1 hour away from anywhere in Mumbai no matter what transportation you use. There’s no running water (there was a well right outside) and the electricity only worked about half the time I was there, but it was clean, well-kept, and reasonably spacious.

I was a celebrity in the neighborhood; everyone came out to meet me, the white foreigner. Since my Hindi is quite bad and I can’t carry on conversations, I passed time before lunch entertaining the neighborhood kids by making videos of them on my digital camera and then showing them the videos. Even though the videos were rather simple, this was endless entertainment for both the kids and me. They, of course, became shy when the tape was rolling, unwilling to dance around anymore, even though Sabina (the short-haired girl in red) was a totally hilarious spaz the rest of the time. She also got the biggest kick out of the videos.The parents of the kids came to watch the videos as well, and quickly asked me “kitne paisa?”- how much money- for the camera. At $200 it’s a little out of their price range, but it made me think maybe there’s business opportunity for low/ medium quality video transferred to DVDs. Most people in this neighborhood had TVs and many had DVD players.

Innovation for the Subcontinent

Here’s a quick list of technologies and companies in India that serve the average Indian:

• A Little World/ Zero Foundation: This company and its foundation intend to use technology to bring low-cost solutions to the bottom of the pyramid. Their most recent success is Go Mumbai, a system they developed (and subsequently sold off) which uses smart cards to replace paper tickets for Mumbai trains and buses.
• Solar-powered Routers: A 31-year old Texan came up with the winning design in a recent Innocentive challenge sponsored by ASSET India, a non-profit using technology for children of sex workers to connect them to better opportunities. Zacary Brown’s Linux-based solution met all the challenge requirements, including using low-cost readily-available hardware. (I learned about this through the ThinkChangeIndia blog.)
• Drishtee Kiosks: Drishtree has been providing kiosks in rural India for 8 years. Current services provided include access to government records, spoken English training, youth education, certificate filing, banking, and reports of commodity prices at different markets, but I believe this is just the beginning of what could be offered through this platform. As for a business model, Drishtree has a fixed revenue sharing agreement with each kiosk owner and a variable revenue agreement with the service providers.

Proving You Exist

I’ve been spending some time at Aaramph, a non-profit focusing on education in slum areas. They are located in Navi Mumbai (or New Bombay), which is home to many different migrant populations who have come to the city seeking work. Aaramph provides education to children who, for many different reasons, are not using the formal education system provided for free by the government of India. One main reason why these kids aren’t enrolled is that many of them were born at home and don’t have a birth record. Mothers try to fix this by going through school or government officials to navigate the bureaucracy, but sadly this is often fraught with corruption and ends up costing upwards of Rs. 400 ($10 or a week of salary), with no guaranteed result. Aaramph has worked for years to set up a system, advised by trusted lawyers and recognized by local schools, that results in a birth record being obtained in a single day for only Rs. 40.

That’s just one example of the many things I learned while speaking with Shobha Murthy, Aaramph’s founder. I had never heard of this problem of birth records before, but it is a great example of both the trouble with informal systems and the disconnect between policies (like free education) and their implementation.

I found Aaramph through an Indian volunteer-matching website. In an odd coincidence, her brother works for a company in Minneapolis where I worked for 4 years, so she’s actually spent time in the town where I live. I’ve had a chance to tour Aaramph’s facilities and will be working on a donor’s report for them in the coming weeks.

My Next Car: Nano

If you haven’t already heard, Indian conglomerate and car-maker Tata is launching a Rs. 1 lakh ($2500) “people’s car” in October. Tata decided to put the plant in West Bengal for lower costs and to spur economic activity in the state. They even co-located suppliers, a necessity when shooting for a $2500 price tag. However, some in the state are crying foul about the appropriation of farmland for the project. I don’t know the details and have so little understanding of Indian politics I wouldn’t begin to put forth an opinion, but the most common one I’ve heard is that this is clearly political maneuvering because otherwise this would have been settled years ago when the project was started (I referred to this project in my b-school essays 3 years ago). Too bad either way for West Bengal, who might get a bad name in the business community. However, production is moving forward and none of this has stopped the excitement for the Nano. Check out what Vincy thinks on his auto-rikshaw. (By the way, personalization of vehicles is everywhere here. More on that later. )

I totally want one, but they are not street-legal in the US because they don’t meet safety standards. Safety is not as much a part of the culture here in India, with entire families of 5 traveling on a single motorcycle with no helmets.

Who's greener: India or America?

I’ve been in India for over 1 month, been in 4 states. and visited several homes, and have yet to see a dryer. They are just not used here. This is a picture of an upper class apartment building and you can see the laundry put out to dry.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that each outlet has an on-off switch, which does two things. First, I’d imagine that it limits the power loss attributed to “vampire power”, the electrical leakage to appliances while not in use, by being able to switch off the outlet itself. Second, it makes me think about what I’ve got plugged in and whether or not I’m using it.

On the flip side, I have yet to see a recycling receptacle. It’s widely known that “ragpickers”, or “ragwallas”, a lower caste profession, go through the garbage and retrieve recyclable materials for income. Some say that as much as 20% of recycling comes from them. However, this doesn’t exactly sound like a good recycling solution. Maybe the ragpickers could be organized and gain better employment, as demonstrated by Albina Ruiz in a Lima, Peru, neighborhood. Seeing the government waste services failing and unemployed citizens risking their health to sift through garbage to earn a living, Albina organized micro-entrepreneurs into a waste management business and convinced locals to pay for their services. (By the way, the information about Ms. Ruiz is on the PBS New Heroes site, a series about innovators in the non-profit arena that I highly recommend.)

SMS your ticket to ride

As most people know, use of SMS (or text messaging) is much more common outside of the US. Here in India, you can use SMS to purchase rail tickets. As shown here, apparently you just text a certain phrase to a 5-code and receive a code back. The code you receive is used with this automatic kiosk to print out your tickets. If you’ve ever seen the “lines” at an Indian Rail Station, you would understand how cool this could be. No one was even using this kiosk in Bangalore, maybe because it is only for Airtel and Reliance customers; maybe because it hasn’t caught on yet; maybe because you are left wondering how you will be billed and whether or not there are additional charges.

Lessons from the Sam Walton of India

I am currently reading a book called “It Happened in India” by Indian entrepreneur

Kishore Biyani. Kishore started a company that later included Pantaloon, a clothing retailer, and Big Bazaar, a market-style hypermarket. I’ve only been to one Big Bazaar (pictured here in Trivandrum), but they are everywhere.

Here are a couple of things I have learned from this book:

• There is a viable consumer base in “third-tier” cities in India: The 1st tier are the big cities; Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata. The 2nd tier are up and comers like Nagpur, Surat, Vijaywada, and Indore. Kishore is referring here to small cities like Sangli, Panipat, and Ambala.
• Indian retailers have to respond to LOCAL requirements: India is a large country and local tastes vary dramatically. For a chain to survive, each store has to have a unique product mix. This also results in an organizational structure where decisions are driven down to the lowest level.
• Indian consumers have uniquely Indian ways of shopping: For example, Indian families shop together, so stores need to accommodate groups of people shopping, not individuals. Realizing that not all Indian families had made the transition to ready-to-wear garments, Pantaloons offered a pants kit that could be used to make pants at home.

Kishore is also keen to point out that he took a lot of inspiration from reading Sam Walton’s Made in America, but the Western retail model would not work in India. What he learned from Mr. Walton was how to re-invent retail to suit the current consumer.

Getting connected in Mumbai

I have meant to be posting more often, but my current dial-up-through-my-cell-phone connection doesn’t really allow me to upload pictures, and I do not like posts without pictures. I am trying to get a cable broadband connection in my flat, but it is proving to be a longer process than I had guessed. Step 1 involved paying someone $50 to string cable down the side of the building and in through the window. I then learned there is a Step 2, where some engineer will come and set up the service, which will cost me around $80 for 6 GB of data transfer over the next 6 months. We’ll see how many more days it takes!

In a few hours I am going to brave the Mumbai train system for the first time and visit an NGO in Navi Mumbai. If all goes well I will also get a tour of some of the work they are doing there in a slum. I’ll have more to tell later!