I first heard about Jaipur Rugs Co from the ‘Rural Business Hubs’ team at CII. But, when I finally made the trip to Jaipur and met them, it blew my mind.

N.K Chaudhary, M.D, Jaipur Rugs, is one of the most unassuming and modest persons I have met. But, his dreams for rural artisans have been anything but small.

From modest beginnings in the late-90s, his ‘Jaipur Rugs Company’ has built its entire business model around having village artisans work as entrepreneurs. Today, 25000 artisans- mainly women- engage in weaving or reeling as a home-based occupation. Jaipur Rugs Co provides ‘door service’ to these artisans by delivering raw materials, providing training and quality checks, arranging financing for looms, and picking up the semi-finished carpets and rugs.
The scale and efficiency of this outsourced manufacturing model is astounding, and clearly a win-win arrangement for the company as well as artisans. Weavers across eight states( Gujarat, Rajasthan, UP, Bihar, Jharkand, Orissa, West Bengal and Nagaland) earn 80/- to 100/- per day. Before Jaipur Rugs Co came into the picture, they could typically earn just about 30/- with middlemen pocketing most of the margins.

With his belief that “enabling is more important than charity”, N.K Chaudhary is committed to adding 5000 looms and engaging 30,000 more artisans in the near future.
An important outcome of my trip was that we got his agreement to try out the same model with urban poor, by working with us in Delhi.

Overarching visions, massive scale, and rapid execution have been the hallmarks of India’s 21st century corporate giants. None typifies this better than ICICI Bank, whose transformation into India’s leading consumer bank and mega financial institution will remain a case study for times to come.
So, it isn’t surprising to see the same spirit underlying a brand new institution that is being spearheaded by Nachiket Mor, and which aims to bring about a paradigm shift in the social sector.
By putting together a slightly-complex structure of organizations( ICICI Foundation, IFMR Trust, Network Enterprises Fund, CSO Partners, etc), Nachiket and his team are aiming to create an enduring focus on sustainable development, via the ‘for-profit’ route. Their firm belief is that sustainable development cannot be achieved via recurring grants to NGOs or others, but only through a combination of low-cost products; debt and equity funding; and tools, know-how and market linkages.
At the heart of this strategy is their current effort to develop complete solutions for as many as 14 different verticals like Crafts, Dairy and Foods to fascinatingly interesting ones like Rural Tourism, and Rural BPO. By working as ‘market-makers’( i.e. creating linkages between supply chain and market demand) in each sector, they hope to massively impact livelihoods and enterprise development in each of these areas.
While many of these verticals are still work-in-progress, it was great to see the progress in the established ones like Foods, where the team’s efforts are enabling fruit farmers in Himachal’s Bhuira village to scale up their operations by accessing more markets for their jams, marmalades, preserves, and chutneys.
There’s truly a serious effort on here to bring a paradigm shift in the social sector. If anyone can make it happen, this team can.

During my interactions with various people trying to innovate in the social sector, I’ve met lots of interesting people. High energy levels, minds buzzing with ideas, and passion seem to be the common denominator. Satya( V. Satyanarayana) and Dyan( Dyan Belliapa) fit this description aptly.
Alumnus of School of Planning, Ahmedabad, Satya and Dyan have decided to give up a mainstream career in order to focus on low-cost housing. Their firm, Aarusha Homes, hopes to be a facilitator-cum-consultant that aggregates housing demand among the poor, and also help low-income groups in many other ways.
Despite meeting him early morning on a cold winter day, Satya was bubbling with ideas for what can be done to provide innovative housing solutions to the residents of re-settlement colonies in Delhi who have just 12 sq.m each.

Going forward, I am quite sure that we’ll have a lot to do with Satya and Dyan.

Vineet Rai( of Intellecap & Aavishkar) is one of the most interesting people I have met in the social sector. His fertile mind has been responsible for a Social VC Fund( Aavishkar), a leading Microfinance consulting firm( Intellecap), and now a unique franchising model to take microfinance to every nook and cranny of the country( Intellecash).
Simply put, Intellecash is ‘micro-finance in a box”!
Through a franchising model, Intellecash offers to help local entrepreneurs set up a micro-finance business. What it offers in ‘a box’ is tools, training, processes, and hand-holding. When I met Vineet, his team- led by Chris Mitchell- was living inside Holambi Kalan( North-West Delhi), in order to hand-hold the Delhi-based microfinance institution, Aajeevika, which has engaged Intellecash.

Apart from Delhi, this franchising model is underway in Maharashtra, HP and Mizoram.
The Intellecash hypothesis is that micro-finance has yet not focused on the really-poor states of North & East India. To be able to do so rapidly, only a leveraged model like franchising can deliver.
While the jury is out on the eventual success of this ambitious plan, Intellecash is busy identifying interested entrepreneurs who may be keen to take the franchising option to run micro-finance ventures in their local markets.
Given my firm belief in leveraged, outsourced models to drive reach in a vast country like India, I would place my bets on the Intellecash strategy.

Since early-2007, when I started spending time with NGOs, and in the field, I’ve been repeatedly told that micro-finance won’t fly in an urban setting. Many reasons have been proffered – that SHGs can’t be formed due to group heterogeneity, that peer pressure is not strong enough to guarantee repayments, etc.
So, when Vineet Rai( CEO of Intellecap & Aavishkar) introduced me to Aajeevika, which works at Holambi Kalan and Bawana, in Delhi, it was nice to see this myth being broken.
At Holambi, a resettlement colony in North-West Delhi, Aajeevika has over 1500 ‘loan-members’, across 150 ‘centers’. This approach bypasses the traditional rural SHG model completely, and has a zero incubation period. Prospective members are administered a ‘Group Recognition Test’ to determine whether group dynamics within the ‘center’will work out fine. Starting with loan sizes of Rs 1500/- to 2000/-, these gradually increase to sums upwards of Rs 5000/-.
I had the opportunity to spend time with several ‘centers’.

Each ‘center’ has a fixed, weekly time for its meeting, and members adopt all its rituals, including punctuality and an ‘oath’( where they re-affirm their commitment to each other, and to repay any loans taken).

At one of these ‘centers’( “AHP2018”), Center Manager Madhuri discussed loans that various members wanted;  Rajvanti wanted Rs 8000/- for building her house, Malti for her vegetable shop expenses.

  One interesting encounter was with Kunti Devi who wanted Rs 5000/- to buy a machine for her husband’s welding shop. I had the chance to talk to her husband, Dileep Sharma, as well, and ask him about his feelings regarding his wife’s use of microfinance to fund his business. It was nice to see him being completely open about this.

MFIs like Aajeevika completely recognize that members will often use these loans for non-productive or consumption-linked purposes. For instance, Rajvanti had earlier taken a loan for building a house, but used it meet expenses relating to her son’s illness.

All in all, it was nice to see one more myth being broken. Innovations and progress in the social sector will require us to demolish many more myths ruthlessly.

2008 started off on an interesting note as I spent January 1 checking out  ‘Khushi Clinic’ at New Delhi’s Sanjay Gandhi Transport Nagar on the outskirts of the city. A joint initiative by Gates Foundation & TCI Foundation, Khushi Clinics are a great example of what happens when a business icon focuses on social change.

While the focus is on HIV/AIDS amongst a specific high-risk group, viz. truckers, what’s different is the Microsoft-like approach to planning( thorough!),scale( nation-wide!) and results( metrics!). Through a partnership with TCI Foundation, 17 truckers’ ‘halt points’ across the country are being targeted under this initiative.
At the Transport Nagar I visited, the ‘Khushi Clinic’ is positioned as a general health clinic for truckers, while simultaneously emphasizing behavioral change with regard to their sexual practices. Tucked away in the heart of Transport Nagar, the clinic- which operates for 8 hours – offers free consulting, and medicines on cost-to-cost basis.  High-quality, standardized communication via films, street plays, etc promote safe behaviour and condom usage. Innovations like ‘Khushi passport’ – which each trucker carries- ensure that medical history is seamlessly transferred to other ‘halt points’ in the country.
As yet another example of how a successful business practice has been transferred to the social sector, it was fascinating to see how nationwide presence has been achieved by using the best-available, local ‘channel partner’. In the case of Delhi, the ‘Khushi Clinic’ is run by the highly-competent Deepa Bajaj of Child Survival India( CSI).

During the time we spent with Deepa, it was evident that the original vision of Khushi Clinics has been completely internalized by Deepa, who in turn, evangelizes it with equal passion and commitment.

Results are meticulously tracked. For instance, Nov’07 saw 1600 footfalls, of which 2/3rd were STI cases.
Watching all this, it is reassuringly clear that social initiatives can be scaled up professionally, and in a business-like manner.

I spent two interesting days visiting the villages around Udaipur, and especially the Ubeswar area. My local host, Dr O.S.Rathore( former Principal of Agriculture College, Udaipur), took me to village Bujdha, which has a population of 4500, of whom over 1000 are tribals.
The highlight of this trip was my meeting with a gentleman called Vardi Chand, who has created a remarkable business around Vermi-compost and organic farming.
Until a few years ago, Vardi Chand was a salaried employee earning Rs 3000/- p.m. Today, he has transformed into a new-age businessman producing 20 tonnes of organic manure each month, and selling them via internet, to customers spread across the country. Besides this, he raises and sells organically-produced wheat and vegetables to hotels who value this.
It was fascinating to see how Vardi Chand, with some help from his son, actually runs a website www.organicfarmingindia.com out of this small village. By using this site for e-commerce, he converts the dung produced by his 40 cows into marketable organic manure, that earns him over Rs 4 lakhs p.a..

Can there be a better example of bridging the digital divide?
The internet truly symbolizes the global, connected world. Likewise, the current fad for organic foods could be dismissed as the fancy of the rich. What on earth could either of these two symbols have to do with poor farmers in India who have more-pressing, survival issues to address. The deteriorating state of the poor Indian farmer, and the globalising world have often been considered by observers to be opposing trends.
But, does it have to be that way? Can the two trends work with, and support each other, rather than be antagonistic?
The Vardi Chand example shows that the Digital Divide can indeed be bridged. As organic food sales($40 billion in 2006, and currently account for 1–2% of total food sales worldwide) grow rapidly, in both developed and developing markets, it is likely that farmers in India can draw inspiration from him, and reach out to national and global markets.

As we traveled further to another nearby village, I encountered yet another instance of rural India getting connected with corporate India, in interesting and synergistic ways.

 Two brothers, Choga Lal Teli and Takhat Singh Teli, run a home enterprise for producing PC ‘dust-covers’ to IT peripherals company, Amkette, which is based in Delhi.

Here, 670 km away, in a village in Udaipur district, the brothers churn out 8000 piece each month. Their employees cut the sheets, stitch them into shape, and brand them as ‘Amkette’ before shipping them out.
As a related diversification, they also produce 50 kg of PolyPropylene ropes each day in another location nearby.

It was the day after Gandhi Jayanti that I got on to a train to Deoghar, in Jharkhand. My friends at Pradan (Delhi-headquartered NGO, active in seven states) had been nice enough to help me plan this trip.
Deoghar district, like neighboring Godda & Dumka, figures in the ‘Most Backward 100 districts’ list, published by India Today few years ago.
So, it was a fascinating coincidence that, as the CII-sponsored ‘India @ 60′ celebrations got underway in New York – the epicenter of the globalized economy- here we were, in Jharkhand, about to witness an experiment in home-grown Gandhian model of economic development.
Without sounding hopelessly romantic or impractical, I must say I came away reasonably convinced that Pradan’s Gandhian-style economic model, juxtaposed with the western-style market economy, can actually be a recipe for inclusive growth. I got a glimpse of how Pradan has organized 100,000 families into 5300 Self-Help Groups (SHGs), to enhance their livelihood options, and escape poverty.
Although most families in Jharkhand own 1-2 acres of land, but they are constrained by the uneven terrain, quality of land, and lack of irrigation. In such a situation, Pradan identifies and develops enterprises suitable for local needs, provides resource persons, and creates linkages with government and financing agencies. So you have Tasar plantations, poultry, dairy, horticulture, and vegetable farming becoming available as options. Also, through better ‘watershed development’, farmers can improve the yield from their land holdings.

In Titariya village (Banka district, Bihar), Pradan’s Pranjal Saikia (a veterinary scientist from Assam) introduced us to the Village Watershed Committee (VWC). He has been working with the VWC to bring in a set of revolutionary innovations that are transforming waste land. Whether upland, mid-land, or low-lands, these districts have a lot of land rendered waste due to their inability to retain water for cultivation. In such a situation, innovations like ‘5% Method’, ’30 ft by 40 ft’, ‘Staggered trench’, and ‘Drip Dams’ now enable farmers to prevent soil erosion and retain water. The outcomes are unbelievable – a 2nd paddy crop; mango, lemon and papaya cultivation.

Birma Devi animatedly described her ambitions for her two sons who have studied upto Inter and Matriculation respectively. She wants one of them to become a teacher, and the other a politician. Listening to her, it’s hard to believe that, just ten years ago, hers was a family where they had hardly enough food for even six months in a year. But, for 10,000 families in Jharkhand, and many more in neighboring states of Central India, the silent Tasar revolution has offered new hope.
The efforts of NGO Pradan (along with its sister organization, Masuta) now account for as much as 15% of India’s Tasar yarn production. Their vertically-integrated Tasar strategy covers everything from rearing (of tasar cocoons), to reeling (producing yarn from tasar cocoons), and finally, weaving.
Hari is one of the 12 farmers in Sadalpur village who took the step towards Tasar rearing after hearing from Pradan and others that he could earn upto Rs 15,000/- additional income. It was exhilarating to walk through the 70 acres of ‘netted’ greenery in this village where 65,000 ‘Arjuna’ plants host the Tasar cocoons. (The nets prevent damage to plants, and protect from birds of prey).

We next drove to nearby Raksha village where a group of 30 women have formed a ‘Mutual Benefit Trust’ (MBT) to produce tasar yarn, from the cocoons. This is where Birma Devi works. While she and other women are at work, their small children are looked after at an on-premise crèche. The kids even sang and danced for our benefit!
There are almost 2000 such yarn producers in all.

Madhabananda Ray, the Chief Executive of Masuta points out that this Pradan/Masuta model allows 53% of added-value to be retained by the actual producers, unlike the traditional model where only 25% was possible, after cocoon and finished-goods traders had taken away the lion’s share. Also, apart from the sheer quantity of jobs created, there is also the qualitative, social dimension – tasar offers a dignified job opportunity for marginalized groups like women and landless farmers without being exploitative.
The Tasar revolution can only be the beginning of something much bigger. If everyone has to earn a livelihood, NGOs like Pradan need to keep innovating. In Madhab’s words, “we need a Bell Labs of livelihood innovation”