SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURS - A REASON FOR CELEBRATION

By Ruma Dubey

Week after week, we talk about capitalistic pursuits so this week, the thought was to look at some people who could have become big in corporate world, earned bags of money but they chose to work, use their education for the benefit of others. Dedicating one’s life to the poor and downtrodden is probably the highest form of spiritualism, even if the person is an atheist.

India has its set of economic and political challenges; right from lack of infrastructure, basic facilities to corruption is every pore of the country. Entrepreneurs say that it is tough working in India, a challenge.  And for another breed of entrepreneurs – social entrepreneurs, this just the right place. There is so much to do, and that too without the Government.

Social entrepreneurship is big in India, blending charity with economics. And with 65% of the population being below the age of 35, surely this is one booming area. The recent uprising of youth in Delhi after the gangrape was an indication of how the youth today is more aware, more ready to do for the society. Not all the same, every bunch of peas will have some rotten ones. But largely, the youth does want to do something, give back to the society. Many IITs and those educated abroad are also coming back to become social entrepreneurs, striving to improve lives of rural India.

Yes, there are the legends in this field of social enterprise, like Bunker Roy of Barefoot College, who, upon moving to the small rural village of Tilonia in the 1970s, founded a solar-powered school that teaches people from impoverished villages the skills they need to become doctors, solar engineers, architects, and more.  Then there is Anusha Gupta of Goonj, known as the Clothing Man, he has made clothing into a mass movement for recycling and reuse of tons of waste material by channelising it from the cities to the villages, as a resource for rural development. 

Another source of inspiration is Dr. G. Venkataswamy, who founded Aravind Eye Hospital.  In an eleven bed hospital manned by 4 medical officers, he saw the potential for what is today, one of the largest facilities in the world for eye care. Over the years, this organization has evolved into a sophisticated system dedicated to compassionate service for sight. The Aravind Eye Care System now serves as a model, for India, and the rest of the world. A disciple of Sri Aurobindo, in recognition of his work in the fight against blindness, Dr, V received the Padmashree award in 1973.

There is also Harish Hande, the founder of Selco, a solar electric light company supplying affordable, environmentally sustainable energy services in rural India. Kurien of Amul, Amitabh Shah, founder of Yuva Unstoppable, Nand Kishore Chaudhary who is the founder of Jaipur rugs, Yashveer Singh, founder of National Social Entrepreneurship Forum; the list is thankfully long!

Let us take a look at some of the recent such ventures which should inspire us to do better, not just for ourselves but for the society at large.

GRAM POWER

One such company is Gram Power. This company is a venture of social entrepreneur, young and Berkley graduate, Yashraj Khaitan. Young, around 23 years of age, he is the co-founder and CEO and he is joined by another of his colleague from Berkley, a techno wiz kid and he has co-developed Gram Power’s core technology and as CTO, leads technology development. The venture is funded by Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen , an angel investor

The aim of Gram Power is to provide reliable, affordable power to the 2.6 billion world poor living without it. It wants to eliminate power theft and energy losses as high as 58% in India through Smart Grid Technology and more importantly, reduce $900 million of diesel subsidies consumed by telecom towers in India by supplying clean power through renewable energy. And to do this, it sets up energy efficient Smart Microgrids in remote areas to provide on-demand, reliable electricity to telecom towers and rural households with an affordable prepaid purchase model. For as little as 20 cents a day, Gram Power offers villagers a prepaid electricity card that can power all their home appliances.  Now who says there is brain drain? We need more of this reverse brain drain to bring about a revolution in India.

HEALTHCARE SERVICES

Then there is Healthcare Services or E Health Points which provides safe drinking water for a family of six for 5 cents a day and telemedicine consultations for 20 cents a visit. Till date it has provided around 31,000 tele-medicine consultations,  17,000 diagnostic Investigations, 36,500 prescriptions filled and there are 3 lakh users daily of its safe drinking water.  Here, the President and CEO is Amit Jain and he holds a Masters in Resources Management, Advance General Management Program from IIMC, GSBI Scholar from Santa Clara University, California. He has 17 years of experience and has the one who established Health Products Social Marketing network across 50,000 villages at HLL Lifecare Limited. He also anchored Naandi Foundation’s Water business from inception to 500 units serving 3 million people in 2.5 years. His work in the Water & Health sectors has become case studies at the Harvard Business School & at the Michigan University.

DIGITAL GREEN

This is another social enterprise which aims to transform the lives of rural communities around the world by leveraging technology with social organization. It provides low-cost communications systems for Indian farmers and women’s groups to show each their best practices through digital films projected from their huts/ farms. The videos are produced by farmers, of farmers, and for farmers across field locations and these are synchronized with its global library of videos on its website. These videos of farmers, explaining their best practices are shot over hand-held cameras, and is of 8-10 minutes duration. 10-15 videos are made each month  and are distributed on memory cards for playback on battery operated pico projectors in each village. It is working in the fields of Karnataka, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and has reached 900 villages and 60,000 farmers.

Here the core team member is Rajesh Veeraraghavan who was earlier a software developer at Microsoft and was also a, associate researcher at Micorsoft, Bangalore. And the President of the organisation is Srikant Vasan who was earlier an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where he incubated his startup and advised the foundation's post-secondary team on strategy and investments.

FARMS N FARMERS

This has been started by Manish Kumar, Integrated M. Sc., IIT Kharagpur and Shashank Kumar, B.Tech IIT Delhi, who left his cushy job in a consulting firm, set up this NGO in 2010 and their aim was to try to help farmers bridge the gap between market, knowledge, technology and farms and farmers. It helps maximize farmers' profit per unit area by providing 360 degree support to small farmers - crop selection, quality input procurement, farmers' training, post harvest practices and marketing by forming clusters of farmers and achieving economy of scale. 

FnF forms cluster of farmers having similar profile and then rest of the operation including post harvest value addition like scaling.grading and packaging is done at the cluster basis.
Based on same model, FnF is working with thousands of farmers in 6 districts of Bihar.  The organization which started in 2010 with one cluster of 14 farmers has now spread to over 8 districts of Bihar. Products that they cover include papaya, litchi, medicinal herbs, basmati rice, maize (corn), baby corn, mushroom, turmeric, mangraila, rajma, moong, gram and seasonal vegetables.