Rural Technology and Business Incubator:

Can incubated companies make a

difference in rural areas?

Ashok jhunjhunwala

IIT Madras

1

India was struggling in eighties

• One had to wait for eight years to get a telephone

• Deposit money to get in a queue– To buy a two-wheeler took four years

– Gas connection took even longer

• Importing a simple USD3 microprocessor IC took one year

Life was difficult

TeNeT Group

• A group of technology faculty at IIT Madras

– Committed to use S&T to make changes in India

– Soon recognized that work need to be carried out at:

• Technology level: to make products affordable to Indians

• Operations level: organizations / business which can scale

– entrepreneurship

• Policy level: to help business work

– Being at premium university, in a unique position to

influence policies

• Fortunately India got moving

21.2

15.8

12.8

5.8

3.22

0.8 0.9

0

5

10

15

20

25

5 9 13 18 26 42 65 175

HH Income in thousand Rs/month

Nu

mb

er

of

HH

in

mil

lio

ns

Urban Indian has changed: 65M urban homes

Nu

mb

er

of

HH

in

m

illi

on

s

HH Income in Rs /month

2001

2007

Subscribers

in million

India is a large market, but at right

price point Mobile Market in India boomed

• Not until Mobile Infrastructure CAPEX < Rs 3000 per line

– and with handset price: Rs 1000 onwards

– service available at < 50 p per minute

– ARPU of about Rs 150

– 15+ million subscribers added each

month

Just Like number of TVs in India rose from 10 million to 100 million in 90’s when prices became URs1200 onwards and cable TV tariff fell below Rs 75 per month

• Number of TV channels boomed

• Entertainment industry in Indiaone of the biggest

India on Move

• Airline Industry is booming in India: – Average tariffs have fallen to a fourth: affordable to middle class Indians

• Inspite of rising petrol prices

• The only limitation to growth is the airport infrastructure

• Auto Sector is booming– R&D driven initiative: Scorpio and Tata-Indica and now Tata Nano

– India emerging as leader in auto-component design and manufacturing

• India’s cement plants in 90’s virtually closed as they could not compete– Today India has some most energy efficient plants of the world

• Electricity from wind energy surpasses its nuclear energy– India’s wind energy company is the fastest growing one in the world

• Indian companies carrying out successful Drug discovery– Spends USD50-70M as opposed to USD800M for a drug

Engineering Education

• 1M engineering students graduate every

year from 1000 engineering colleges

• Up from 25,000 in 100 schools in early eighties

– Uneven quality is a major problem

• was foreseen and resulted in reluctance to expand

But it is this human resources which has

driven growth

• Growth of IT and IT enabled services is legendary

– Reaching USD50 billion in year 2009

– Trillion dollar IT Services industry being projected

The World is Flat

But you aint seen nothin yetfor the changes has not yet touched Rural India

Dilemma:

Rural India is still far behind (700 million, 140 Million homes)

• Media has grown, reaches villages and is independent

– It shows the disparity between urban and rural life everyday

• Indian democracy is strong

– Gives opportunity almost every two years for people to vote out

• governments and policies which leaves them behind

– Singrurs are a reflection of this

• Politically unsustainable

– Government reacts: make social programs its primary emphasis

• Ahead of infrastructure for growth

2007

Nu

mb

er

of

HH

(M

illi

on

s)

HH Income in Rs / month

102.1

1710

3.9 1.9 1 0.3 0.30

20

40

60

80

100

120

3 9 13 18 26 42 65 112

HH Income in thousand Rs/month

Nu

mb

er

of

HH

in

mil

lio

ns

2001

Rural India needs

• TeNeT / RTBI at IIT Madras has focused on these needs

– Using entrepreneurship leveraging ICT to

• build Technologies and Business Models

• and incubate enterprises that can scale

• Exploratory Ventures => Ventures in making => early-stage Ventures

Capacity Building

– Education

– Health

Livelihood

– Agriculture

– Industry

Enabling Services

– Electricity / Energy

– Finance

– Markets

– Water Management

– Communications

and Transportation

Can Manufacturing be outsourced to villages?

Natural Fibre Based Products

• World-over rapid development in 20th centuries took place due to

– outsourcing of manufacturing

– outsourcing of services

• it all started with routine services

– But the nations (where services were outsourced) used this to build technical and business skills

• And soon became leaders in these industries

• and acquired business and technical leadership

• Can we now outsource manufacturing and services to villages and generate wealth and confidence?

• ROPE attempts to outsource manufacturing to villages – Obtain manufacturing contracts

especially those not involving • heavy machinery

• Large amount of power

– If some raw materials are from villages, it will be of further advantage

Distributed Garment Manufacturing Distributed Garment Manufacturing

•Manufactures high quality uniforms

and Institutional Wear

•Outsources to micro-manufacturing

units in rural India

Clientele: 15. Getting

improved traction

Revenues: 36 L

Centres: 3 (new 1 in

Kerala)

� Creation of Rural Delivery Model (RDM)

� Enable technology to move work to where people are, rather than move people where work is

� Provide customers with flexible work-force at competitive rates

� Sample of a work carried out by four villages working in coordination

� One did the translation

� Another did the flash

� Third did the voice recording

� Fourth did the integration

� Can we have a 25 seater BPO in each village� Employing 50 people

Remote Training Rural people for

jobs • As India grows, it faces shortage of trained people

– Vocational Training in villages using ICT

– Connecting employable Rural Youth with Corporate

– Remote Screening, Selection, Learning ,Testing & Placement

Gearing rural India for the corporate world

• Allow the corporate India, tap the talent from rural India

• Offer youth from rural India better career options

MobilTrain

Mobile based learning on the

go

1000 teachers are using

‘Quick Learns’ for efficient

teaching

2000 Subscribers from

Nokia life tools, Voluntary

Health Services & Private

School

Education: MobilTrain’s 5 products are well

accepted in over 30 schools in Tamil Nadu ie

Chennai, Coimbatore, Vellore, Dharmapuri,

Krishnagiri, Tiruvarur, Tiruchi and Madurai. The

company has planned to increase this to 100

private schools in the coming year.

The company is in discussion with a partner to

launch its products in Sri Lanka and Tanzania

• To deliver a fun and

engaging way for

individuals to learn

programming skills (Java,

Java-script, PHP, Python to

start with)

• Aim to bridge the

employability bridging gap

between the Rural and

Urban

Content: Developed content for

English training

C1 – Basic language

ICT based Remote Coaching

• Rural India has very few quality teachers

– Students find it difficult to pass board exams

• especially English and Maths

– “if we lived in towns, we could have sent our children

to a coaching school”

• Can remote teaching be carried out?

– Why not? after all we coach children in the West

from India using ICT

– Samvit provides Online Tutorials for classes 9th to

12th standard

• On computers

• And also on mobile phones

– Learn at level and pace tailored to individual students

Edutor Technologies

• Edutor Technologies is learning solutions Company focused on making Tablets an essential tool in the hands of a student.

• The easy intuitive interface of the tablet and accessibility of compelling content/learning material on the tablets enable significant improvement in the efficiency and efficacy of learning experiences for the student

RTBI and TCOE at IIT Madras working on defining Aakash Tablet

is setting up Aakash Development Labs

Avaz: Assisting Communications

• Avaz was awarded Winner of the National Award for Empowerment of People with Disabilities, 2010

• Received President award for Applied Research and product innovation

• Ajit recognized as Innovator of the Year 2011 by MIT Technology Review for Avaz

19www.inventionlabs.in

India-focused Product

development and

Product services

India-focused Product

development and

Product services

Vet care with Veterinary collegeRemote Eye Care

Strengthening Health Care: Telemedicine

� Initial experiments with eye-care and with Veterinarian using the video conferencing

� Moved on to video-consulting for GP & gynecology problems

� Designed Telemedicine kit costing Rs 15K

� Focus on Village Health Practitioners: Training,

Medicine Basket, Test systems, Referral

mHealth for Drug Adherence & Treatment FollowmHealth for Drug Adherence & Treatment Follow--up up

System for TuberculosisSystem for Tuberculosis

Build an eco-system that facilitates the successful management of TB by:

•Motivating and reminding patients to adhere

to their treatment protocol

•Follow-up of patients to track treatment completion

•Real-time updation and digital maintenance

of health information

Design Rationale: Enabling End User Adherence

Lack of Awareness and

Motivation for drug

adherenceText and voice reminder messagesText and voice reminder messages

Customized reminder messages to

suit end-user requirements

Customized reminder messages to

suit end-user requirements

Multimodal adaptable User Interface for

voice interactions and mobile applications

Multimodal adaptable User Interface for

voice interactions and mobile applications

Leveraging TCP-SMS for mobile-phone

based Social networking

Leveraging TCP-SMS for mobile-phone

based Social networking

Need for networking among

the patient community

Patients with varied medical

history and specific needs

Need for inclusive services for

patients with various kinds of

impairment

Need for follow-up of

treatment protocolPatient monitoring and tracking systemPatient monitoring and tracking system

Key ComponentsKey Components

• Mobile based registration and follow-up of patients

• Voice and text message based treatment reminder system in local language

• Web interface providing real-time access to information for patient monitoring

Ayzh

6000 kits sold last FY

Partnership with SHGs in

Rural Karnataka

Distribution in resource

constrained environments

PLCs, Remote places,

Entry into African market

Fund raising in progress

Agriculture: Managing Risks for farmers

AfterBefore

Okra crop turning

white

Pictures sent to the experts at Madurai Agricultural College:

diagnosed it as “Yellow Mosaic

disease”

2007 - 2009

Early Exploration Understanding Nuances

Hands on interaction with Farmers (Organic, In-organic farming, Disparity

in Cropping and Climatic conditions within a Block…)

Moving from Internet based to mobile phone based services

Looking ahead then - Questions were plenty, interplay of various factors

affecting productivity (weather, water availability) – Farmer /Farm Specific

Looking ahead then - Questions were plenty, interplay of various factors

affecting productivity (weather, water availability) – Farmer /Farm Specific

2009 – 2012

• Farmer: How to promptly deal with modern scientific farming?

• Extension workers: How to provide specific solutions for specific

problems?

Solution - Can we learn from other fields and apply concepts/models ? Solution - Can we learn from other fields and apply concepts/models ?

Farmer Expert

Bridging Distance

Bridging Information Gap

2 Way Knowledge Capture

RTBI, TNAU, Agricultural Extension Units, Uniphore Software Systems

Crop

Protection

Cultivation

Practices

Input Prices

Livestock

Market Info

Risk

Recovering

Value Addition

• How quickly can

an expert provide

the answer?

•How effective is

the information

available on the

Dashboard? Is it

utilized?

•Conferencing

solution to add

experts on the call

with the Farmer?

• How quickly can

an expert provide

the answer?

•How effective is

the information

available on the

Dashboard? Is it

utilized?

•Conferencing

solution to add

experts on the call

with the Farmer?�Weather

�Links to Market

Prices

�History of Farm,

Farmer profile, past

advisories given

�Photos of Pests

Potentially any

other required info

Stellapps Technologies

“Quality of Life enhancing

solutions and Touch every

life every day”, Stellapps has

successfully gone live with its

SmartMoo™ - a small-farm

automation solution with

features for efficient herd

management, productivity

improvement and hygienic

milk production protocol

adherence, enabling rural

entrepreneurship that

includes the Bottom-of-the-

Pyramid (BoP).

SmartMoo 1.0 live in one

farm

• Procurement– Organic farming Sangam

– Organic Farmers procurement Society

– Arogyam

• Drying

• Processing (Milling, Cleaning)

• Storage

• Transport

• Packing

Arogyam Organics

Microspin Machine works

Microspinning, Integrate Cotton yarn production

At a scale hundred times smaller in scale to

conventional spinning

Enable diversity and quality to become

market differentiators

Aim to build an end to end technology solution

provider for rural supply chain

Developed ARBIT Media for Rapid Composting

(Proprietary)

Installed Spirulina manufacturing units

Developed Technology for extraction of

Lycopene from Tomato (Proprietary)

Developed world’s largest Dunaliella plant in salt

pans for PBL in record 8 months time (145 acres

developed with ponds and infrastructure and

handed over for commercial exploitation

Executed many projects for MCRC at the village

level dissemination of Technologies

• Agriculture

• Healthcare

• Livelihood

• FI

• Education

Information-on-demand

Data Gathering/Form

filling

Voice Authentication

Feedback/surveys

Alerts/Updates

Pull

Push

• multi-lingual

• Personalized

• Guided

conversation

• Natural Voice

Interactions

Transactions

Making Affordable Finance Available in Rural India

• Mobile Banking can reach most rural

customers

– But most are illiterate or semi-literate

• Voice based Mobile Banking in local language / dialects

• Using Rural ATMs

– At a price point close to a fifth of regular ATMs

– Powered on solar

– Remote Electronic Lock

• Using Internet Kiosks

– Business Correspondents

• Using Mobile Banking and BCs

But how does one cash-in / cash-out?

GramaTeller

� Unique ID will enable Credit rating of rural customers

� Simple overdraft credit can meet

� most emergency consumer needs in rural India

Powering Rural India

• Even most grid-connected villages do not have power from 10 to 20 hours a day– Villages can not have any production set-up without local power

• Each Village require 30 KW to 100 KW Power Generation– Solar Biomass Combustion

– Biogas Bio-diesel

– Solar photo-voltaic Solar thermal with Sterling engine

– Bullock-energy

• Solar power possible today– But dc-powered homes would consume about 35% of today’s power

– LEDs need dc power and consumes very little power

– DC motors consume 40% of power of the ac motors• DC motor based fans, grinders, washing machines, refrigerators, cell-phone chargers, computers and even

aircon

• High conversion efficiency for ac possible today for devices that need ac only

•Solar based lighting solutions:

― Lamps and flashlights/reading lights

Designing Products and Packages

• Products from Rural india

often weak in

– Design

– Packaging

• et helps rural producers in

product & packaging design

Revenues: 60 L

Milestone: partnership with

NABARD for designing credit

scoring mechanism

Aaum Analytics

• A company focused

on analytics

especially for Rural

India

Village on Web(VoW)

in collaboration with iViL

▪ Village on Web (Vow) is a rural ecommerce portal for rural SHGs and producers

involved in enhancing livelihoods

▪ USP – Voice Response System functioning seamlessly along with a web portal

• Aug ‘12 - Soft Launch

IITM/RTBI community

• Cash on Delivery

• Producers handling

shipping

• Aug ‘12 - Soft Launch

IITM/RTBI community

• Cash on Delivery

• Producers handling

shipping

In other wordsIn other words

Towards enabling Rural Areas….

Technology as an enabler…

Knowledge as a definer…

Business as an encompasser…

For rural is for the future

Technology as an enabler…

Knowledge as a definer…

Business as an encompasser…

For rural is for the future

• Technology can be used to take rural

India along with urban India

– ICT can help create viable

businesses to meet some rural

needs

– Will require Confidence, Local

technologies & Services and lots of

experiments, failures and hard work