More Chronicles from Central India

When I meet old friends, particularly from Bangalore, they often ask curious questions about Indore. In today’s post, I’ll try to give a flavor of some of the things that make Indore tick.

Industry & Commerce in Indore

Like Ahmedabad, Indore was once a major textile hub, but textiles no longer dominate Indore’s commercial activity. Today, Indore is a centre of the soybean industry, and a trading hub. I saw a number of huge cold storage facilities in the vicinity of IIM Indore and wondered what they stored. I found out that the Malwa region to which Indore belongs is favourable to potato cultivation with the long sunny days helping potatoes from this region have a high proportion of dry matter. The owner of a cold storage plant I met uses 80% of his space to store potatoes which are then sold to food processing companies. (See a picture of potatoes being stored in an Indore cold storage facility below).

The industrial suburb of Pithampur was once promoted as the Detroit of India, and is host to the Volvo Eicher truck joint venture and Force Motors. But, today, other regions like Gurgaon-NCR, Chennai, and, more recently, Sanand/Ahmedabad have moved far ahead on the automotive map.

Indore is home to a large number of small and medium enterprises including engineering companies. Some of these making agricultural implements are located close to the IIM Indore campus.

There is some pharmaceutical activity (Cipla, Ipca Labs, etc.) in Pithampur as well, but luckily this appears to be focused on the less polluting formulation activity and not on the production of bulk drugs.

One reason for the slow development of industry in this region could be the absence of balanced infrastructure – the IIM Indore campus is located on one of the roads from Indore city to Pithampur, and there is a one km stretch of the road near Rau which is full of huge potholes. But I suspect the other, more prominent, reason could be the shortage of skilled manpower in the region.

There is a small but growing IT sector in Indore. I saw a couple of IT parks in the city, but with unfamiliar names on them. That will change soon with both TCS (at an advanced stage) and Infosys setting up development centres in Indore. In fact Infosys Chairman Narayana Murthy visited IIM Indore when he came to Indore to lay the foundation stone for the Infosys development centre (see picture aove). There has been BPO activity earlier (Mphasis has had a presence here for some time), but it never took off as far as I can make out.

The state of Madhya Pradesh has many things going for it including the image of a dynamic state government, availability of power and water, and a land bank of property already available with the government. Parts of the state lie on the proposed Mumbai-Delhi “Super corridor.” If things go well, this could mean an explosion of growth in the near future. This will pose some new challenges.

Planning & Urban Development

Indore is already a large city with a population of about 2.2 million (2011 census). Like most other Indian cities, the actual population may be higher, particularly during the day time when the city acts as a magnet for people in the neighbouring areas seeking employment.

One of the challenges Indore (like many other Indian cities) faces is planning for the future. The Indore Development Authority seems to be active – there are signboards across the city underlining its presence. Newer areas of the city like Vijay Nagar have wide roads, and there have been several drives to create green belts across the city. There is a current initiative to draw up an Indore Master Plan. But, rapid growth could very well overtake the current planning processes placing the city in a perpetual catch-up mode. We saw this happen before our eyes in Bangalore!

Citizen Activity

Luckily, Indore has a citizenry concerned about the city’s future. Recently, a local NGO, CEPRD, organised a weeklong series of environment-related talks, and it was good to see them well attended. The theme on the day I attended was “Garbage-free City” and featured a presentation on efforts that Ahmedabad is taking to manage waste better (see newspaper coverage below).

The good news about the Ahmedabad “solution” is that it looks at the problem “end-to-end” and is very systematic in its approach with good aggregate data on the types of waste being created and how these should be dealt with. There is a campaign dimension to it as well and they have some cute films showing the problems created by a failure to deal with urban waste. But the danger I could see was that the solution seemed to be technocratic with inadequate attention paid to the behavioral changes that are required to make integrated waste management work. With urban Indian lifestyles moving rapidly towards processed foods, tetrapaks and the like, the problems of waste management are going to become only worse. The other challenge is that in many cases urban middle class Indians depend on domestic help to keep things clean, and waste disposal is in the hands of the help rather than the family itself. This makes the problem of proper waste disposal even more challenging.

Indore still has the chance to develop effective waste management solutions. But, if it fails to do so, it runs the risk of going the Bangalore way from a Garden City to a Garbage City!

Tailpiece

The route I traverse most frequently in Indore is the route from IIM to the airport. For the most part, the road is wide, and as you get closer to the city, it gets more crowded. Indore city has apparently seen many greenery drives - the evidence is in the form of areas along the road cordoned off by fences for growing trees. Most of these are not lush and green but brown and somewhat scraggly; let’s see how they look at the time of the monsoon.

Traversing the main roads doesn’t give one a clear sense of what happens in the colonies within, so I was happy that some recent pipe-laying activity on one of the main thoroughfares prompted our driver to take a detour through Manish Nagar, a colony on the road to the airport. The homes are somewhat like Delhi, with shared walls, and I could just imagine that one day, with increased prosperity, Manish Nagar could look like a south Delhi residential area, packed with large cars on both sides! Today, mercifully, most homes have only a small car (typically, a Maruti) and this makes the bylanes quite navigable.

[The views expressed here are the personal views of the author.]

Innovation at Mindtree

A recent visit to Mindtree with a group of Executive MBA students from the Georgetown-ESADE Global EMBA program (GEMBA) gave me a chance to revisit current thinking on innovation in the Indian IT services industry. (The pictures in this post are from our visit).

Innovative Roots

Mindtree had unusual origins. It was “born big,” when several stalwarts of the Indian IT industry left their former employees to strike out on their own. A big chunk of the founding team had its roots in Wipro, a company which was known to support a fair degree of independent initiative. The seniority of this group (Ashok Soota had been CEO of Wipro’s IT business for several years; Bagchi, Krishna Kumar and Janakiraman were all at senior levels too) and the others who joined them meant that they had to grow fast to be able to cover their own costs! Another unusual feature of Mindtree’s founding was the prominent role played by a private equity firm in bringing the group from Wipro together with another set of qualified founders from other companies.

Mindtree lived up to this unorthodox founding by trying to become a “different” company. They emphasized consulting and technology/intellectual property based differentiation at a time when others were seeking to expand their plain vanilla services rapidly. They tried to build a distinctive organizational culture by emphasizing organizational values in hiring and promotion decisions. They were proactive on the human resource management front with a focus on employee-friendly policies. They committed resources and managerial attention to knowledge management at a relatively early juncture of their evolution, and become one of the first companies to encourage the formation of communities of practice across the company.

While this got them attention from the media and from academics in business schools, over time it seems to me that the company has become more mainstream. The touchy-feely stuff is there, but is low key. The business portfolio is also more traditional, with its $435m revenue split among BFSI, high technology, travel and retail. A bold attempt to stake out a position in handset design is no longer spoken about. One manifestation of this is that the innovation activity at Mindtree has much in common with other IT services companies! (See my earlier post on Subroto Bagchi’s recent book for more on the changes at Mindtree).

Innovation at Mindtree

As in many other technology companies, Mindtree sees innovation as a strategic initiative that is overseen by the Chief Technology Officer (CTO). The company believes that innovation should be comprehensive, inclusive and purposeful (aligned to the business). At Mindtree, inclusiveness in innovation means not only participation from across the company, but also that idea generators will be given a chance to be involved in the execution of their ideas. (This is one dimension on which Mindtree retains its focus on the individual employee).

5*50 Program

This involvement takes its most explicit form in the 5*50 program of Mindtree. This program was conceived as a means of building significant new businesses and revenue streams based on ideas from employees that could help Mindtree reach the magical $1 billion mark in revenues (currently $435 million). The original intention was to be able to build five such businesses, each with potential revenue of $50 million. In the first round, only one such business (Vm Unify Cloud Management Platform) got created. In the latest round, the company received over 50 proposals and 3 have been shortlisted. Idea generators for 5*50 proposals are expected to take ownership for their ideas.

Even before the first round of the 5*50 program, the seeds were sown when the company undertook the creation of Intelligent Video Surveillance Solutions with soft funding from a government support program (CSIR’s NMITLI). This program required collaboration with academia and research institutions and helped Mindtree understand the dynamics of such collaboration.

Mindtree’s 5*50 program is evolving. While earlier the fledgling business was sheltered within Mindtree, now the thinking is to give the team more “flesh in the game,” and make it operate more like a start-up with its staffing and operations de-linked from the parent company. Mindtree will provide mentorship, funds and infrastructure, but the hope is that reduced dependence on the company will create greater hunger for the business.

Other Initiatives

As a services company, Mindtree is constantly on the lookout for what it calls “value adds” for its customers. Customers are also open to partnerships that would help them do their own businesses better. Therefore, Mindtree minds (as Mindtree employees are called) are encouraged to scan, focus and act to identify and implement both continuous improvement and business transformation ideas that would help the client. The company conducts workshops to develop skills and techniques to help employees do this better. Generic “value adds” are categorized and put into a database for later re-use.

Mindtree’s communities of practice have grown with 85% of the workforce involved in the more than 50 active communities. The focus of these communities continues to be on learning and sharing. On an average, 2 face-to-face community events happen every day. (For a  more extensive discussion of Mindtree’s Communities of Practice and the role they play in innovation, see our book 8 Steps to Innovation).

One of the popular events at Mindtree is Osmosis, the annual technical festival. This includes events like a Techathlon (a series of contests leading up to the identification of Techie of the year), a Tech Works contest (more than 400 “value add” ideas received this year), K-Safari (an opportunity to demonstrate and showcase proofs of concept) and several webinars. An interesting addition this year was an invitation to select start-ups to set up stalls at Osmosis – the rationale was that Mindtree needs to collaborate more with the rapidly growing start-up ecosystem.

Challenges in Building an Innovation Culture

Mindtree’s management believes that a major milestone is that the company has been able to develop independent thinking and move beyond executing just what the customer indicates as its needs.

In a discussion with Mindtree’s innovation management team, I found that the challenges faced by Mindtree are not very different from those of other companies. There are people with good ideas and capabilities, but they often don’t come forward. There are several good tech ideas but converting them into impactful business ideas continues to be difficult. A few significant success stories would help inspire others to take on the challenge of innovation.

Innovation at Mindtree is not incentive or reward-driven. While cash awards are given for publications and patents, value-adds are not explicitly rewarded. However, value-adds do figure indirectly in the KRAs of delivery and account managers.

Customer Connect

The increasing power of digital collaboration tools provides an opportunity for software companies to collaborate with their clients in more explicit ways. Before we left Mindtree, we visited Digital Pumpkin, a studio designed to experiment in the retail space. Giant screens and hyper-reality provide the studio with a Star Trek feel. The studio seeks to connect the mobile phone to the store to enhance the retail experience. Mindtree’s designers are an enthusiastic bunch and they made the visit to Digital Pumpkin fun. But, I have seen similar set-ups in other IT services companies, and it remains to be seen how Mindtree is able to do something different with Digital Pumpkin.

Conclusion

The Indian IT services industry has become adept at incremental changes and improvements that help productivity or provide additional value to customers. But the big leap continues to elude most companies. The appetite to take big bets continues to be muted. 

Mindtree’s emphasis on inclusiveness and focus on communities of practice are distinctive. Its also good to see it reaching out to the startup ecosystem. But, I hope they will be able to take the lead in blazing new trails for the software industry.

[The view expressed here are the individual views of the author].

Can we build IP-based Product Businesses from India?

My interest in knowledge management has always been from the perspective of knowledge creation. So, I readily agreed to participate in the CII Knowledge Management Summit this year in a session that focused on this dimension. Ganesh Natarajan, Sharad Sharma and I were together on a panel to explore the potential of, and challenges in, the creation of intellectual property (IP)-based businesses from  India.

I began my talk with a historical perspective. For the first four decades after independence, India tried to build core industrial capabilities. The focus was on understanding, assimilating and improving on manufacturing processes. It’s only in the last two decades that we have seen some momentum building up in the arena of new product development.

IP-based Successes from India: Bajaj, Vigyanlabs, Praj & NCL

We have several examples of this trend. My favourite one is of Bajaj Auto. As a scooter maker, Bajaj restricted itself to making cosmetic changes to the Chetak. But after it entered the much more competitive motorcycle space, it came up against powerful competitors like Honda (at that time in the Hero Honda JV). After several unsuccessful attempts to adapt Kawasaki’s bikes to the Indian market, Bajaj was finally successful when it developed and launched the Pulsar around 2001. The Pulsar offered power and style at a reasonable price and operating cost to a new young generation of bike riders who wanted something more than the efficiency of Hero Honda’s Splendor. At the heart of the Pulsar’s engine, was Digital Twin Spark Ignition (DTSi) technology, a patented method of overcoming the traditional trade-off between power and fuel-efficiency. The DTSi patent itself has been the subject of litigation over questions of novelty and non-obviousness, but the Bajaj Pulsar is certainly a landmark in terms of a successful Indian product riding on IP covered by a patent.

In some of my earlier posts, I wrote about other companies that are doing a good job of IP-based innovation. Vigyanlabs, winner of the 2013 Nasscom award for technology innovation, has a novel solution to reduce power consumption in data centers – the core of this is covered by a US patent. Praj Industries started by developing improved continuous process technologies for fermentation of cane molasses, but is today doing research at the molecular level so that it can convert different types of waste into next generation biofuels. Praj already has patents covering processes to produce ethanol from lignocellulosic material, and I presume more patent applications will follow.

Our public research institutions have also been successful in creating core IP that is at the heart of commercial products. To give just one example, Dr. Sivaram and his team at the National Chemical Laboratory (NCL) created a microencapsulation technology covered by 6 US patents that is today being used by Procter & Gamble in their high end Downy fabric softeners for controlled release of perfume that lasts many days after the clothes have been washed.

Yet, Challenges Remain…

I recently met Anjan Mukherjee, co-founder of HyCa Technologies. HyCa has been a pioneer in the development of hydrodynamic cavitation, a technology that has applications in areas as diverse as treatment of effluents and ballast water. Anjan and his team have won several awards, and been invited as guests of different countries. But, commercialization on a big enough scale has eluded HyCa so far. One of the main reasons for this is the absence of an effective public procurement system for new technologies. While in most countries public procurement helps in certifying and establishing locally-developed technologies, in India the rules of public procurement are loaded against the purchase of novel technologies developed in India.

The Indian pharmaceutical industry graphically portrays some of the other challenges in building IP-based product businesses from India. While the leading Indian pharmaceutical companies were already strong in process innovation, they invested in new drug development when India decided to sign the GATT/WTO agreement in the mid-1990s. But, after some early success in out-licensing molecules at early stages of the drug development process, they have found the big wins hard to come by. As a result, some of them either sold out or cut back on new drug development.

Why is it so tough to develop new drugs out of India? The combination of large upfront investments, a long gestation period  (trials and approval can take 10+ years) and uncertain outcomes (a drug can fail in advanced trials, rendering several years of effort infructuous) make drug development challenging anywhere. But, in India, this is compounded  by the absence of knowledgeable and patient capital, and a lack of deep expertise in biotechnology and disease mechanisms. Recent curbs on clinical trials in India have made the trial process more expensive and cumbersome. Local regulators lack the sophistication and expertise to make a rigorous assessment of a new drug. IP protection is also an issue with Indian IP laws perceived as being against new drug development.

Many Challenges are Ubiquitous

But, in fairness to the Indian environment, some challenges in IP-based product development exist everywhere. Even in the US, the assumed Shangri La for new product development. I often relate the story of Robert Kearns, who invented the first intermittent windshield wiper. He applied for a patent, and then offered his technology to the automotive majors. They didn’t license his technology, but introduced similar products of their own some years later. Kearns sued Ford and Chrysler, but won a pyrrhic victory – by the time he won in the courts, he suffered several personal losses. If this David vs. Goliath battle can play out in the US, one can only imagine the challenges of defending one’s patents in  India.

Apart from the IP itself, there is the importance of the possession of complementary assets in getting value out of IP. In many industries including biotech-based Pharma, in order to make money you need to have a good understanding of the regulatory process, staying power and resources to complete trials and the ability to market your product if you want to capture a major part of the value created by your IP.

Conclusions

India has the potential to build IP-based, product businesses. We have people with ideas, in many areas we have people who have gained deep expertise, and access to funding is improving.

But there are serious weaknesses as well including the absence of support from public procurement, regulatory gaps, absence of specialised funders, and shortages of talent, and infrastructure that can be used on a shared, chargeable basis.

The keys to success include the ability to stay the course (for a much longer time than in developed markets), internationalization, and getting the business/commercialization model right. I can’t over-emphasize the internationalization dimension – other countries can be much more accepting of new, cutting-edge technologies; you get a large enough market to amortise the cost of your development; and Indian customers are more positive once you have proven yourself elsewhere.

[The views expressed here are the personal views of the author.]

The Neglected Portion of the Indian Economy: India Uninc.

Given the plethora of writing on the Indian economy, one would have thought that all important facets of its structure and dynamics would have been explored by now. But, Prof. R. Vaidyanathan (Vaidy) clearly establishes in his new book, India Uninc. (Westland Books, 2014), that our understanding of the Indian economy is far from complete. And, that our partial view may be leading us to take inappropriate policy decisions.

India Uninc. Is the Growth Engine of India

Vaidy’s core argument (based on a close look at India’s National Accounts Statistics and other data) is that small partnerships and proprietorships operating primarily in the services sector (but with some presence in manufacturing as well) are the growth engine of India. His math shows that these firms account for as much as 45% of national income, compared to only 18% for the incorporated firms. Not only have these grown at a fast clip, they are responsible for the high savings rate that is one of the positive features of the Indian economy. Vaidy believes that, in contrast, Foreign Direct Investment is over-hyped, accounting for less than 10% of the financial resources available for investment.

Vaidy points out that a sizeable proportion of our population is self-employed, often in micro businesses that involve only themselves, their family and, at most one or two others. He quotes data from the National Sample Surveys to show that this kind of commercial activity transcends caste and religious boundaries. He therefore questions the importance given to large investments and FDI which will offer primarily wage employment. (Needless to say, Vaidy is firmly against FDI in retail, believing that it would lead to the pauperization of India). But this may need further investigation. Studies in entrepreneurship in India (such as the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor report some years ago) have referred to such wide-ranging self-employment as necessity-based entrepreneurship, implying that people get into such activity for survival and not because they necessarily want to.

The Latin American economist Hernando de Sato is well known for arguing that the absence of property rights in the form of title to property leads to a lack of collateral and hence difficulty in raising capital for the poor. Vaidy argues that gold plays the role of such collateral in the Indian economy. He points to some of the additional benefits of gold such as divisibility and liquidity. He is therefore of the view that gold should not be considered as a consumption good or a non-productive asset as seen in the west. Vaidy is particulary critical of government policy that not only ignores India Uninc, but goes on to tax it heavily without providing it a safety net.

Vaidy is anti-consumerism and emphasizes the importance of India’s frugal past. But, given the growth of malls, multiplexes and consumer spending, it looks like he is on the losing side of this issue!

India Uninc. & Innovation

As a student of innovation, this book triggered an important question: What role is India Uninc. playing in innovation? I must confess that I don’t have a good answer to this question. Just as economists have tended to miss out this vibrant slice of the economy, observers of innovation in India have tended to focus on innovation in the corporate sector or start-ups. I suppose Professor Anil Gupta’s grassroot innovators might fall under the broad rubric of India Uninc., but the drivers of India Uninc’s impressive growth numbers are in areas like real estate, construction and restaurants which are not the sectors that our well-recognised grassroot innovators work in.

One exception is the interesting work on indigenous fast food chains like the famous Darshinis (stand-up fast food restaurants) of Bangalore. I wonder whether these darshinis fall under the organized sector or India Uninc. This needs further investigation.

There may, however, be a close link between jugaad and India Uninc. Many of the popular examples of jugaad like lassi being made in a modified washing machine would fit in with the fast-growing sectors identified by Vaidy’s work. Given the importance of India Uninc, it would be useful to know more about how productive the India Uninc firms are in using resources, and whether (and to what extent) innovation helps them use resources more productively leading to faster growth.

Another question that looks interesting is regarding the links between India Uninc and the so-called organized sector. We know, for example, that the software boom in Bangalore has triggered a boom in catering services, service apartments, “paying guest” accommodation, interior decoration, and similar services. Apart from large developers who are incorporated and sometimes even listed on the stock market, there are hundreds of small builders and contractors who are meeting the demand for housing as well. So, I wonder whether the growth of India Uninc. and the organized sector including multinationals are as unconnected as Vaidy’s book might suggest.

Tailpiece

Vaidy has been developing these themes for several years now through his columns in the national press and digital media. Often times, Indian scholars do good work, but fail to consolidate and integrate their ideas, thus undermining the impact of their scholarship. So, I am really glad that he decided to put together all his writings on this subject in one volume. There is some repetition of ideas across the book, but I found that this helped to reinforce and underline the key themes.

We know from the field of innovation that good ideas take time to ripen and germinate. This one is no different. Vaidy attributes the trigger for this line of thought to talks given by Professor K.N. Raj at IIM Calcutta in the 1970s. Of course, it’s somewhat ironical given Vaidy’s contempt for communism and communists that he was inspired by a leftist economist like Professor Raj, but I suppose that’s what good scholarship is all about!.

An important contribution of this book is to underline the urgency of reform of our national statistics. Though the National Sample Survey and other economic and social data collection efforts of the government provide useful data (Vaidy has used this data extensively in this book), it’s clear that some changes are required in the categorization of economic entities if we are to track the progress of India better, and to come up with meaningful policy interventions.

[The views expressed in this blog are the personal views of the author.]

Energy Self-sufficiency need not be just a dream: Janak Palta & the Jimmy McGilligan Foundation

Amidst the gloom and cynicism that tends to pervade India at this particularly trying time in our history, meeting people at the grassroots who are doing extraordinary work brightens up life. When I came to Indore in early January, I was determined to discover such people in this part of the country. And, Indore has not disappointed on this count.

Energy Self-sufficiency

On a recent bright sunny day, I set out to meet Janak Palta McGilligan at her home, Giridarshan, in Sanawadiya, just outside Indore. I first met Janak at the Prestige Institute of Management conference a few weeks ago. At that time she mentioned that her home ran entirely on renewable energy. This immediately interested me for I had often thought of putting up solar panels on our Bangalore home. I never got around to it, but the interest remains, so I was really excited at the prospect of seeing a solar-powered home.

Janak’s home is self-sufficient on the energy front. She has a whole set of solar cookers ranging from the box type to different types of reflectors. The reflectors are foldable and light, and can hence be transported easily from one place to another. The entire tasty meal we had was cooked using these solar cookers. They have a bigger reflector as well that tracks the sun – it is really powerful, as demonstrated by a piece of paper that caught fire in no time. Solar power is also used for drying things and for power – Janak has a huge solar panel on top of her home. There’s also a windmill. Janak contributes her excess power to the neighbouring Adivasi settlement for lighting up the area.

What does Janak do on a rainy or cloudy day when there is no sun? Another reneweable source of energy is briquettes. Waste newspapers are converted into briquettes, dense cylinders that can be used to fuel a stove.

Janak uses solar energy in other ways as well including a solar powered transistor radio and solar lighting.

Janak is almost completely self-sufficient on the food front as well (except for a few things like salt and cooking oil) and grows her own vegetables and herbs. She is now working on developing a whole set of natural colours than can be used at Holi.

About Janak herself…

Not surprisingly, Janak has a colourful past. She is a Punjabi by birth (regional stereotypes can sometimes be misleading, but they are remarkably accurate in Janak’s case – she displays all the positivity, warmth and “can do” attitude that represents the best of Punjab!). She grew up in Chandigarh, underwent open heart surgery at a time when survival rates were quite low in India. Her own survival convinced Janak that she must use her life to serve others.

It took her some time to find out exactly how she wanted to do that. She went through a series of jobs in the provident fund office and as a translator in the High court; later she worked at the Centre for Rural Development on a variety of research projects, including one on communal violence. This latter work took her around the country, and to Indore. Here she met Jimmy McGilligan, an Irishman who was working on a project in Gwalior.

The Barli Institute

Janak’s tryst with renewable energy started at the Barli Institute, an organization that she and Jimmy set up to train young women from disadvantaged backgrounds. Jimmy was a very practical man who could use his hands to do a number of things – e.g. he built a good part of the house Janak now stays in with his own hands. Janak told me a fascinating story of how there were solar reflectors set up with the help of the Ministry of Renewable Energy at various locations across India. At one point of time, the only functional one was at the Barli Institute because of Jimmy’s ability to keep it going! Janak described Jimmy as a jugaadu, one who could make almost anything work, and was unfazed by lack of prior knowledge or exposure. Jimmy set up much of the infrastructure at Giridarshan.

Janak’s Holistic Approach

One thing I particularly liked about Janak’s approach to life is her holistic approach to sustainability. The Barli institute is today run by the next generation, and Janak is no longer involved in a day-to-day operational role. She has transition plans for her current home as well, and only reluctantly agreed to be the trustee of a trust set up in memory of Jimmy who passed away in a road accident a few years ago. At Giridarshan, Janak lives with Nanda and Rajendra Singh Chouhan, both trained at Barli, and both are closely involved with future plans of the Trust.

She seems to have this amazing capacity to just let go. I wonder whether this comes from her own life experiences – apart from the heart surgery I mentioned earlier, Janak is also a breast cancer survivor, and today one of her other activities is Sangini, an organization set up for the counseling of breast cancer patients. There is a spiritual influence as well – both Jimmy and Janak have been strongly influenced by the Bahai faith.

I haven’t seen the Barli Institute so far, but reading its website I can see that it trains rural women to be pillars of their own communities. That’s what the name itself signifies.

Janak is very open to having visitors, particularly youngsters. While I was there at Giridarshan, she also hosted a couple of young photographers who were making a video feature on the site.

Sanawadiya

As I mentioned, Sanawadiya is just a few kilometers away from Indore city, but Janak told me that it is very different in terms of people’s attitudes and approaches. It’s certainly very different in terms of road quality, and I really hope they are able to make a better road surface soon. Some road construction activity is visible, so I am hopeful!

What did catch my eye on the way back was some very visible construction of toilets in many homes alongside the road. The MP government was in the news some months ago for what some felt was an insensitive approach to promoting toilet construction. But the results seem to be positive, and this should benefit hygiene and public health in the state.

Conclusion

It’s been wonderful to meet amazing people like Janak. We need many thousands if not millions like her to transform India. And, for those of us fortunate enough to live in houses, we can start by emulating Janak Palta McGilligan on the energy front.

[The views expressed here are the personal views of the author.]

Chronicles from Central India - 2

Many cities have a main thoroughfare that shapes the city. In Indore, that road is the Agra-Bombay Road (often shortened to AB Road, lending itself to many other interpretations!). Indore is now getting re-defined by the By Pass Road, a four lane, divided road running roughly parallel and to the east of AB Road. The By Pass Road is a major centre of real estate action with literally dozens of gated communities springing up on either side. I am told that not many people live in these communities right now, but a few of them look quite impressive and will be occupied over the next decade as the city fills out. Already, IIT Indore faculty and students and people coming into Indore to work with companies in the industrial area of Pithampur stay there.

Indore reminds me in many ways of Ahmedabad 20-odd years ago. Highways, large construction projects, beautifully maintained compounds but an unkempt and unfinished look outside. Plastic bags litter vacant plots (this is one of the biggest eyesores in India, across the country). Fast-developing new areas like Vijaynagar remind me of the Satellite area of Ahmedabad. The good news is that by the time we left Ahmedabad in 1996, the city was looking much more neat and clean, thanks largely to a drive run by Keshav Varma, then a young and energetic IAS officer, who streamlined the city’s tax collection and then directed the proceeds towards improvement projects.

The By Pass Road is wide and motorable, but is plagued by the same problems we see elsewhere – incomplete flyovers, progressing at a snail’s pace. But I am happy to see that flyovers are being built at major intersection points now rather than after the traffic builds up as was the case of Bangalore in the Outer Ring Road and the elevated road from Hebbal to the airport. Another challenge with the By Pass Road is the lack of illumination – its pitch dark at night with only the headlamps of vehicles to light up the road.

Indore: Education Hub

Indore prides itself as an education hub, and the By Pass is often the best way to reach many of the new educational institutions that have sprung up on either side. I had occasion to visit two of them recently. The Shishukunj International School is regarded as one of the best schools in Indore, and I saw evidence of that when I visited their campus – very nicely designed, good infrastructure, and more than anything else a committed management and teachers. Representatives of the three founding families – the Mehtas, Sethias and Daves – were present on the dais at the graduation ceremony for the Standard XII students. The students were a bright and happy lot, the school choir sang beautifully, and one of the school youngsters sang a tuneful solo song. Both the head boy and head girl gave crisp speeches (the head girl was particularly impressive) – the communication skills of our youngsters are streets ahead of what they were in our time!

Each graduating student (all 150+ of them!) was given a short introduction as s/he marched on to the stage to receive a graduation packet from me or Smt. Mamta Sharma, Chair of the National Commission for Women. Some of the introductions mentioned the student’s career plans – students aspired to be rich businessmen, software technologists, architects, doctors, DJs and even Bollywood stars. I was a little concerned that no one was introduced as a prospective scientists or biotechnologist, but I guess that’s a sign of the times.

The school seems quite successful in emphasizing the right values. I heard several references to empathy, and concern for others, both from the students and from the management. The Principal led the students in taking a solemn oath to contribute to society as well as their alma mater.

There was a lot of poetry and story-telling in the air (many of the teachers who conducted the event spoke lyrically, both in Hindi and English). Clearly, this is a school that provides diverse influences to its students. There could be no better exposure to such diversity than the four panels on successive pillars as I entered the school – tennis star Mahesh Bhupati, actor Prabhu Deva, spiritual guru Osho, and the Sai Baba of Shirdi. I remain intrigued about the choice of these four (maybe there are more panels elsewhere, but these are the four that I saw), and I can only hope that these are intended to inspire the dogged persistence needed to be a top sportsman, the adaptability and flexibility of a contemporary dancer (I am sure all of you have seen some of the incredible moves by Prabhu Deva!), the creativity and openness of Osho, and the spiritual goodness of the Sai Baba (I mentioned these in my talk!).

The School had other creative ways of recognizing and commemorating its students – one of these was a gallery of portraits of the students (made in the Art class, I was told) [see the picture below].

Clearly, since the time we studied in school, high quality school education in India has come a long way. The best schools have everything on offer, from high tech classrooms to a variety of sports and out-of-the-classroom activities to languages and culture. Reflecting growing globalization, Shishukunj also has an international exchange programme.

Contrast with the rest of the Education System

While we must celebrate the existence of schools like Shishukunj, the contrast with the rest of the education system is unbearably sharp. The latest ASER report indicates high enrollments at school (96%+) but disappointing and often declining education outcomes (close to 50% of standard V students can’t read a Standard II text). Government initiatives like the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) have clearly achieved some success in getting students into school, but giving a good primary education remains a daunting task. I read about a new proposal to start a Navodaya Vidyalaya (rural, fully residential schools originally conceived by Rajiv Gandhi, and set up in every district) in each block of India – while welcome in itself, we really need to crack the problem of how to provide basic education on a large scale.

Tailpiece

But I must give full marks to Indoreites for their warmth and friendliness. Except for a grumpy pharmacist who looked at me suspiciously when I asked him for vitamin C tablets (it turned out that he identified products only by their brand names – when I asked for “Limcee,” his face brightened up!), I have found most people take pride in their city and are happy to welcome outsiders to it.

[The views expressed in this blog are the personal views of the author.]

Innovation in India: Emmbi Industries, Premier Explosives & Trimed blaze new paths

Schumpeter believed that the entrepreneur is the key to innovation for the entrepreneur tries to find new value for resources in an effort to grow his enterprise. The quest of this blog is to see whether and how the nature of innovation in India is changing, and its therefore useful to periodically take a look at the entrepreneurial landscape.

I profiled some interesting companies earlier like Vigyanlabs, the Mysore-based provider of energy management solutions for datacenters; Fusioncharts, a leading source of data visualization tools; and MadRat Games, the pioneer of educative Indian language board games. This blog post is devoted to three more interesting companies I came across recently.

Inc. India magazine recently did a special issue on India’s most innovative mid-sized companies. A couple of the companies profiled here come from their list.

Emmbi Industries Ltd.: Building the Right Challenge Book

Emmbi is a Rs. 140 Crore company making polyester woven sacks and other polymer-based woven products. Started by first generation entrepreneurs Makarand and Rinky Appalwar, in the mid-1990s, Emmbi is has won several awards over the years. The article on Emmbi in Inc.’s December 2013 issue gives some insight into why Emmbi has been so successful.

The article describes how Emmbi faced a problem typical of many manufacturing situations: the set-up and processing time of their manufacturing unit implied a certain minimum production run of a product for cost-effective production, so they could not accept smaller size orders even though plenty were available. They soon realized that obvious solutions like buying another piece of machinery with smaller capacity and changing the yarn after every 6-hour run were not good options. But, another experiment with the use of three specially-designed moulds allowed them to make 3 different types of yarn in parallel without shutting down for a fresh set up. This increased their flexibility to produce multiple yarns at the same time in lower quantities, meeting the demands of their customers more precisely, reducing inventory and getting better realizations. This is an excellent example of how innovation in the manufacturing process can yield increases in sales and profits.

How did this innovation happen? According to the Inc. article, this came about thanks to a concerted effort at problem solving by the engineering team in the Emmbi plant. If you read 8 Steps to Innovation, you’ll recall the importance of the Challenge Book (Identifying the right problems to solve) in the innovation process. Emmbi zeroed in on a pain point (its inability to serve smaller orders effectively), rode a wave (customers looking for specialized technical materials in small quantities) and tackled waste (inventory pile up) effectively in coming up with this innovation.

Premier Explosives Ltd.: Adversity can drive Innovation

My co-author, Vinay Dabholkar, is fond of emphasizing that innovation is driven more by curiosity than by creativity (see his nice new video). Premier Explosives is a company which has done what appears to be impressive innovation driven by adversity, and the resulting urge to solve a critical problem.

Premier Explosives is a Rs. 60 crore company run by Mr. A.N. Gupta, a veteran of the explosive industry. They have worked closely with Defence R&D projects in India. Till a few years ago, Premier was using ASA as the primary explosive for its detonators. ASA is a material commonly used for this purpose, but has drawbacks including high sensitivity and environmentally-unfriendly lead residues.

An accident in Premier’s plant in July 2012 that led to the death of two workers forced Mr. Gupta to question the wisdom of continuing to use ASA-based detonators. Premier already had access to technology for another less sensitive compound, NHN, that it had sourced from ISRO’s Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, but had been unable to develop a commercial process using this material. The accident acted as a trigger to Premier to undertake sandbox-style intense experimentation in a short time to tweak multiple parameters to create a viable process to make detonators using NHN. According to the Inc. article, this makes Premier one of the first companies in the world to do so, and they are filing for Indian and international patents on their technology.

Mr. Gupta attributes his company’s ability to innovate to Premier’s focus on involving people in the decision-making process, and transparency of functioning.

Trimed: Ready for business model exploration

On a recent visit to Chennai, I had the privilege of visiting Trimed’s main centre just off Anna Salai at Teynampet. One of Trimed’s founders is an old friend, Raghu Venkatnarayan (when we were together at IIMA, I never expected that Raghu would become a serial entrepreneur, but that’s exactly what he has turned out to be!). Trimed defies easy description – it’s not a spa (though it offer some things in common), it’s not a hospital and it’s not just a clinic. Instead, Trimed is trying to re-define holistic and integrative healthcare.

The heart and soul of Trimed, is an eminent neurologist, Dr. Ennapadam Krishnamoorthy. His qualifications and achievements fill up a whole wall and are prominently displayed at the Trimed main centre I visited. In treating patients with symptoms of acute stress and many of the occupational hazards of modern life, he realized that the required treatment was rarely medication alone. In addition to counselling, therapies like Yoga, physiotherapy, and Ayurveda could often be of help. But most doctors were often unwilling to use these approaches and even if they were willing, the patient would find it difficult to obtain high quality treatment in these areas. This is the niche that Trimed fills.

I was impressed by the novelty of the idea. But like all products and services that are different from the existing dominant model, Trimed now faces the challenge of exploring different business models (Step 6 of our 8 Steps model) to discover how to convert this integrative approach into a sustainable business proposition.

Tailpiece

Though India is usually seen as a place for IT innovation, some of the most exciting innovation may be happening in companies such as Emmbi, Premier and Trimed. I look forward to discovering more such companies in the times ahead.

[The views expressed here are the personal views of the author.]