Green Mango

I’ve decided to spend a couple of months working with Green Mango, a for-profit Hyderabad firm seeking to connect service providers, like tailors and plumbers, with customers using their pilot web platform (see screenshot below). The co-founders, who came from Women’s World Bank, saw that access to capital was not enough to get BOP entrepreneurs off the ground. They also needed access to markets and important information (like pricing). I’ll be working on their volunteer capacity, public relations, and other projects I’ll dream up. I’m excited to dig into an interesting problem and live in an up-and-coming city. Many of my favorite organizations have offices in Hyderabad, including Acumen Fund and Vision Spring, as well as some of the larger Indian microfinance institutions. It is also located in a region known for the level of spice in their food, so we’ll see how that goes.

In preparation I’ve been thinking about similar models where a business is built to connect buyers and sellers. Some examples I could think of were ebay, Kiva, TripAdvisor, craigslist, Angie’s List, and Innocentive, What do these intermediaries provide? One thing is a marketplace, a connection that these buyers and sellers might not have otherwise found. Where else are you going to sell your used TV other than craigslist? But in addition some provide information: ebay ranks buyers and sellers, TripAdvisor presents hotel reviews, and Kiva puts a face on microloans. Green Mango seems to be heading in the right direction, with user rankings and shopper networks already built into their platform. I am very interested to see how Green Mango applies lessons from these other models in the areas of revenue models, customer experience, and network effects in their unique environment, where their “seller” segment will not likely have internet access at home.