Byrraju Foundation (a philanthropic foundation founded by Satyam head B. Ramalinga Raju and his family in 2001), is organizing India’s first National Conference of Rural BPOs named ‘Jyotismay’. The conference is to be held on 16th May, 2008 in Hyderabad, and you can register to participate in the conference through this link. It is important to note that the foundation also runs a pioneering Rural BPO outfit called GramIT.
The conference is an effort to provide collective voice to the Rural BPO industry which is still at its nascence. As we have noted in this space before, although there has been intense media coverage and interest in Rural BPO pilots across the country, the net job creation by the industry is still minimal. However, a national conference where Rural BPO players from across the country can come together and learn could be the right trigger to create a large-scale movement.
Although from the previous week, Prerna’s discussion on waste management continues to attract readers and comments.
Vinay’s featured interview with Gautam Ivatury of CGAP from last Sunday was the most read as a new post from the past week.
Santhosh’s post on the partnership between Airtel and the IFFCO also generated a lot of interest.
Reaching into the archives:
One of Vinay’s first posts just as this blog was kicking off focused on challenges that emerging economies face with making initial adoptions of new technologies widespread. Read it again here.
Technology: Trak.in reports that a DesiWiki will help Indian start ups to increase their knowledge base on the technical aspects of starting a new venture.
Education: In order to encourage students to stay in school, the government approved a merit scholarship that will award deserving students of lower income sections with Rs 6,000 annually.
SMEs: Indo American Chamber of Commerce (IACC), in association with the World Trade Centre (WTC), aims to host the fifth Indo-US economic summit in September 2008 to strengthen links between small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in India and USA and create opportunities for them to work with each other in areas of mutual interest, access technologies, form joint ventures and sign trading arrangements. [Source: Business Standard]
Many of our prior posts have spoken to the urgent need to overhaul, or at the least, significantly revamp the education system in India, as evidenced by the massive rise in demand for both primary and higher education institutions in relation to dwindling supply (not to mention the relatively low quality of instruction/infrastructure at pre-existing schools, particularly those in rural areas). The following except from Ramesh Menon’s, “The Talent Crunch” speaks to the gravity of this problem in explicit (and horrifying) detail:
Sam Pitroda, chairman of the National Knowledge Commission says that of the 90,000 MBAs that come out every year, only around 10,000 are worth employing. Kiran Karnik, former NASSCOM president, puts the blame at the door of India’s education system, saying that only 25 per cent of the country’s engineering graduates deserve jobs. No wonder companies today have to invest heavily in training fresh graduates, helping them to unlearn and pick up skills. As there are dramatic changes in politics and business as well as international scenarios, there is a need to keep updating the syllabus almost every year. Manohar Chellani, Secretary General, Education Promotion Society for India, New Delhi, points out that there is tremendous scope for improving the quality of education in India, and delay in doing it will cost us heavily.
The National Knowledge Commission has said that India will have to bring in education reforms if it has to emerge as the workforce of the world. India today needs at least 1,500 universities, but has only 370. There are more than 550 million young people in need of education but do not have educational institutes to go to. India also needs around 1,500 IITs, 1,500 management institutes, and 1,500 medical schools. A million good schools are also required. All that the present education minister, Arjun Singh, has done in his tenure is to fool around with reservations and suggest that Rahul Gandhi be made prime minister.
Though the IT industry needs 3.5 lakh engineers a year, only 1.5 lakh are available. This could lead to a shortage of over five lakh engineers in the next few years. A recent Nasscom-Crisil report says that the IT industry is expected to create about 11 million jobs by 2010. In another two years, the II sector would need half a million professionals. Presently, it employs over 350,000 but is short of around 90,000 workers. In another year, the shortfall is expected to cross 200,000. In 2007, the job market was vibrant. 2008 promises to be better as India goes on to vitalise its various sectors, which require over 1,000 CEOs across industries.
Are you alarmed yet? If you’re not, well, you should be. Read more »
Please send along any other opportunities to info@thinkchangeindia.org.
Jobs
The Institute for Financial Management and Research is looking for a Senior Researcher to work out of their Chennai office. The research will primarily comprise of the BoP energy sector. Go here for more information, and the full job description can be accessed here.
Fellowships
We have blogged about Atlas Service Corps, before, but this is a reminder that their deadline is May 18th for applications. Go here for details.
Ashoka is looking for its 2nd generation of Youth Fellows (12-24 yrs old) to provide seed funding and support to for creating unique ways of effecting positive change. Go here for more information. The website takes time to load, so we did not link to it.
Competitions
New Ventures’ Accelerated Funding Program for Sustainable Enterprises is accepting business plans until May 15th. Go here for more information and the application.
The TiE-Cannan Entrepreneurial Challenge 2008’s deadline is May 12th. Go here for more information.
Jeevika, a South Asian documentary film festival, is accepting submissions on the topic of livelihoods until July 15th. You can learn more here, as well.
Freescale Technology Forum is holding a design competition for students to design a product that benefits the environment. Winners get USD 10,000 and a paid trip to meet FTF leaders. More information can be found here. The website is here.
Other Opportunities
Curruki.org’s Summer of Content is calling upon people like you to submit high quality educational content for middle and high school students. You can earn up to $500 for a unit, and $1600 for a semester’s worth of curriculum. Deadline is June 1st.
Health, Women and Mortality:The lack of inclusion of midwives within the National Rural Health Mission is highlighted as one of the main reasons for the high maternal mortality rate in India.
Public Awareness: Swagat Thorat, a freelance journalist, has started a new magazine in braille for the visually impaired.
CSR: The government is looking to establish a corporate affairs institute that will look at various practices, including corporate social responsibility. In related news, the government has awarded the Rural Electrification Corporation with the Navrtna award honoring its ongoing work in expanding access to electricity to the rural poor.
Microinsurance: IFFCO-TOKIO General Insurance Co. Ltd. (ITGI) has created a new microinsurance product that targets India’s low income rural population.
The Business Standard features an intriguing anecdotal story about salt pan workers in Gujarat who now run their own company within the industry. Twenty-seven salt pan workers joined hands and efforts to form their own private company, called Sabras.
These workers hold 65 per cent stake in equity and are planning to raise it to 74 per cent. Of the three directors on board of Sabras, two are salt pan workers. The remaining 35 per cent in Sabras is held by Saline Area Vitalization Enterprise (SAVE), a public limited firm.
Besides, there are similar attempts on the anvil for onion and mango growers. Inspired by Sabras project, SAVE now aims to form another company called Veg-India where primary producers will have majority stake of 74 per cent. The producers of Sosiya village in Gujarat are in the process of joining hands in Veg-India for selling sweet kesar mangoes.
A board member of the company, Rajesh Shah (who is also a founder of the NGO Vikas), believes that this is the first time in India that people below the poverty line are one of the major stakeholders. At the same time, he notes that voluntary and nongovernmental organizations need to take notice of promising employment and wealth generation opportunities, and restructure themselves to meet these needs.
To me, the story highlights the fact that entrepreneurial spirit lies within all of India’s classes - a sort of parallel to the touted “American Dream.” If the right mechanisms and opportunities were made available to even manual laborers - such as salt pan workers - then perhaps stories like this would become even more common. And an added benefit is that these “rags to riches” stories signal the creation of a new class of people who have worked at all levels of a production chain.
Health: Over 53% children in India under five years - that is, 67 million - live without basic healthcare facilities. This means that India alone accounts for about one-third of all children in the world aged below five who don’t have basic healthcare. [Source: Times of India]
Education: There is a shortage of teachers at central universities, with 20 per cent of teaching posts being vacant since October. The government will raise the age for pension schemes, and a committee will review the pay scale to address the issue.
Energy: With low-interest loans for solar power from Canara Bank and Syndicate Bank, more than 100,000 people in rural Karnataka benefit from affordable and reliable electricity. The program was subsidized by the United Nations Environment Programme.
The Hindu just published a great interview with Mr P.N. Vasudevan of Equitas Micro Finance, a start-up MFI based in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. Vasudevan is an interesting entrepreneur, having spent 20 years in the traditional banking industry working with Cholamandalam Investment and Finance Co Ltd and Development Credit Bank. Reading the interview, its easy to see that he brings a lot of that financial acumen into the microfinance sector, especially in running Equitas:
We have put in place the best software available for MFIs and were the first MFI in the country to start business after the full IT system was in place. Internet-enabled software, combined with centralised processing, ensures that all backend operations are done at the HO, leading to higher efficiencies and also releasing the branch staff fully for customer-facing activities, thus enhancing their productivity.Typical cost of delivering a rupee is about one paisa; and, for collecting, it costs about 8 paise currently. Though we are already the most efficient in our operations, the challenge will be to continuously keep raising the bar on productivity and efficiency and scale up to absorb the cost better
On the same note, here is a SocialEdge interview with Mr. Vasudevan.
Overall, it will be interesting to see how quickly Equitas can grow. Clearly, the competition in the Indian MFI space is growing, and thats never a bad thing for the BOP consumer!
CSR: Turns out Government of India is planning to set-up a institute focused on corporate affairs and Corporate Social Responsibility. The proposed think-tank is to be called Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs (IICA) [via iGovernment]
Social Security: According to a report by the People’s Collective for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (PCESCR), an umbrella organisation of 150 NGOs, 93% of India’s workforce has no social security coverage [via Sindhtoday.net]
Microfinance: The Economic Times reports that HDFC, one of the country’s largest bank will be rolling out Mobile Banking Units to service its micro-finance clients [via India Development Blog]
Ashoka’s Changemakers and Global Water Challenge have partnered to open a worldwide search for ideas and projects that, when scaled-up, have the potential to transform the provision of sanitation and water.
We have covered the lack of access to safe drinking water in India before. There are three finalists out of nine from India - Naandi Foundation, Swayam Shikshan Prayog, and Himanshu Parikh Consulting Engineers. This is an issue that affects many countries, and the project finalists are working on some innovative approaches, from community based initiatives to leveraging technology to working on mechanisms that encourage behavioral change.
Three winners will receive $5000 for their projects. Go here to cast your vote.
In a recent interview with IndiaKnowledge@Wharton, Vikram Akula of SKS Microfinance touted mobile banking (conventionally used for “performing balance checks, account transactions, payments etc. via a mobile device such as a mobile phone”) as the future of microfinance, but cited India’s regulatory environment as a significant limiting factor in expanding mobile banking networks (click here for a related article from our archives). According to Akula,
“It doesn’t make sense to try and build a retail brick-and-mortar infrastructure in rural India. From a cost perspective, it makes no sense at all. Mobile technology today is robust enough that you can actually very easily do banking. We actually have a very successful pilot that we’ve done.”
The prohibitive regulatory environment cited by Akula may soon change, as RBI “has begun to realise that the ‘rapid expansion of this mode of communication has thrown up a new delivery channel for banks.’” In order for the mobile banking market to fully realize its full potential, however, further incentives/mechanisms need to be put in place that stimulate, rather than stifle growth, especially since the mobile “banking” sector in India is currently “limited only to enquiries, alerts, and certain kinds of bill payments,” and has yet to become “transactional.”
To watch a video of the interview, which focuses on issues beyond mobile banking, including capacity building, capital infusion, cost defrayal, and the notion that microfinance institutions’ operational models should be akin to those of businesses, see below:
Mobile bank: HDFC plans to unveil its pilot mobile bank branch with an ATM aimed at microfinance clients. While the term mobile bank here differs from what we envision with regard to the use of mobile phones, it is still a step in the right direction.
Women’s reservations: The Congress Party has vowed to keep this bill alive despite criticisms and to bring their allies on board.
Genes and Health: Briitsh scientists have found a gene that contributes Indians being more susceptible to being overweight and having diabetes.
IndiaWest Online reports that Unitus, Seattle and Bangalore based organization providing consulting support to MFIs, just received a $9 million grant from Omidyar Network. The grant is meant to support expansion of Unitus programs beyond India.
The article features one of Unitus partners, MokshaYug Access (MYA). MYA recently received $2 million funding from Unitus Equity Fund (UEF) and we have featured MYA in this space before:
One of Unitus’s success stories in India is Moksha Yug Access, founded by 36-year-old Harsha Moily. MYA is based in Bagalkot, a rural district outside Bangalore. The organization partnered with Unitus in 2007, its second year of operation.
“The consultancy service from Unitus brought more efficiency to our operations which translated into lower interest rates for our borrowers,” Moily told India-West by telephone from Bagalkot. “I have access to the brightest minds at Unitus,” he said.
Indian start-ups will gain from the increasing trend in business schools to offer the services of their students in developing business plans and conducting analyses - in return, students have an incredible opportunity to work with some of the most innovative start-ups in the country and gain practical experience before they even graduate. Mint reports:
Such programmes, B-schools believe, are mutually beneficial. Start-ups, smaller in size and often working on shoestring budgets and limited resources, cannot engage consultants typically used by larger corporate houses.
First-time entrepreneurs can find themselves out of depth while dealing with the financial or marketing side of the company. A team of student consultants preparing to take on management roles might be better-equipped in such situations. For start-ups, this gives them an opportunity to tap into the university’s resources and network of contacts including plugging into venture capital firms.
The top business schools in India are all looking to integrate this concept into their curricula. Now they just need to take it one step further and find opportunities for their students to contribute toward social ventures and start-ups, which would allow them to learn from truly innovative and unique models while learning about issues that are not traditionally covered in business schools.
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ThinkChange India is looking for new writers to contribute to the blog.
If you are interested, e-mail us your resume and a short writing sample (preferably in the form of a post) to info@thinkchangeindia.org.
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