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A tour in south India, meeting social entrepreneurs!

Encounters of the 3rd model

Our really first day was spent in a nice 5 star hotel in Paris, in june 2010! I was then business developer

of Prakti Design, a social enterprise designing efficient cookstoves for rural India market. I was hoping to

find French social investors to support Prakti’s development. And Beatrice, Femmes Business Angels,

introduced me to Mireille, managing director of companies in France, wiling to be more involved in

social business and French-India relationship. Six month after, we were organizing together a meeting to

introduce Prakti to potential donor, who would support the non lucrative part of the company.

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And Mireille found herself surrounded one evening meeting with 50 or so people eager to invest in any

type of social business in India.

An idea slightly started to grow, that it may be possible to increase the connection between France and

India, around social entrepreneurship, one of us being based in Pondichery, and the other in Paris! We

have both a large network and a strong will. And we thought we could mobilize it to fulfill this purpose.

How? Why? When?... No idea yet, and it was the aim of this trip to find answers.

Idea was to spend a week in Tamil Nadu, meeting various social entrepreneurs and network

supporting them. With 4 main objectives:

- Draw lessons from the experience of people we would meet

- Identify ways to intensify relations between France and India, which are 2 countries that

globally cooperate and know one the other very few!

- Identify a type of business that would be both socially attractive and nevertheless profit

driven…and to be defined for both of us,

- And last but not least ….to have FUN.

Day 1 and 2 – Chennai

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Our trip starts with Thomas Samuel, a young entrepreneur involved in LED and solar power solutions. He

represents very well the sort of guys on can cross in and around Auroville! He is not aurovillian, but

didn’t land it only by chance. After having spent months in a boat, in Sri Lanka, in Africa, he is facing the

most dangerous and difficult journey: create a social company in India! This guy has learned how to sail

by… buying a boat locally and sailing from Senegal to Cap Vert. No doubt he will also efficiently face the

dangers and illusions of social entrepreneurship! For the moment, he has strong values, a great

technology, a huge market and a solar street light with LED which could very well be the next reference

in it market! I have to say I’m supporting this company as a business developer and am not at all neutral

in my judgment.

Thomas introduced us to P. Sellamuthu, from Indian Institute of Energy Management. He is running a

well known and impressive research center for energy research. He is also a great industrialist, involved

in power generating system, and personally involved in lot of sustainable researches and actions. They

met during a one week seminar on sustainable development in Auroville. We had a first overview of

solar plant unit economics and interesting opportunities for street light. And Mireille spent next day

with his wife on a reiki meditation about affluence!

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I must say that enjoying a whole day of meditation, with a Reiki master, in India, is quite an experience.

We also decided that she would come in Paris in October to give classes to my French friends.

Thanks to P. Sellamuthu, we also had the opportunity to meet Sri Kalaivani, from Sri Maruthy Laser

Printers, who gave us a tour of her facilities, as Mireille , on the verge of investing in an editing company

in France, wanted to have some Indian benchmark. Value, employee care….the whole lot! No need to

be in social business to have social impact!

Next part of the day has been dedicated to RTBI, an impressive incubator of social project, within the

Tenet Institute of IIT Chennai. It makes years that, around Pr Junjuwalla, best of the range engineers

invent telecom solutions for rural issue. Monitoring health in a remote area by a doctor based in a city,

thanks to video and audio, making cash available with an ATM designed for rural area by the great

product designer Kannan… are some innovation that one can see in this institute. From 2 years, it now

intends to support the most innovative but risky ideas of India targeting rural markets. Most of the

incubatee came here with only an idea. They are then challenged, introduced, sometimes little financed

by Vijay and Barath, both extremely dynamics and dedicated animator of the incubator. They could

benefit from the IIT brand and skill network. It has led to successful company, like Desicrew, which is

hiring women for data or search services and sell this service to international and Indian key account.

BPO by BOP! Or ROPE, which is organizing supply chain of local women to weave coconut, banana…

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fibers. ROPE act as a plate-form which can guaranty to international buyers a production which will be

assumed under strict quality and fair conditions. He got recently a large order from abroad which will

insure volume for months to come. We first wanted to test if we could somehow interact with these 2

organizations and decided to visit them on our tour. We had 2 very different answers to our request.

Desicrew was thrilled and decided to welcome us in our of their rural call centers; Rope explained that

they targeted customers more of a Carrefour, or Ikea type than a Rollinde/Garolla type…..too bad for us!

Ecologin has been a particular meeting. Sridhar is now a long-time partner! He is distributing Prakti

stoves with the help of some corporate who prefer to do their CSR through Ecologin’s NGO arm

BASECAMP Social Research Foundation. Ecologin is a tourism company, but with a focus on rural

communities. Its objective is to bring urban Indians into rural area, observe and share, and finally make

these trips benefit to local communities. The company should be profitable thanks, and a foundation has

been created to support livelihood projects. As Ecologin has permanent workers on the field to organize

trips, it creates a very valuable situation to get feedbacks, understand needs, and spread efficient

solutions where treks occur.

As we enjoyed our trip more and more every day, we realized that we were building a new type of

leasure, which was the same time encompassing NGOs, business,meditation and tourism, and thought

that maybe some other people might enjoy as much as we did.We therefore contacted Ecologin to see if

we could partner with them to design a special tour of South India.

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Days 3 and 4 - Bangalore

Second part of the urban part of our trip, Bangalore! And a first meeting with Raja, who lead a specific

program for rural telecommunication for rural producers, in Sasken. Sasken is a large and reknown

informatics service company. The idea of Raja is to use telecom and computer applications to connect

Self Help Groups with clients from all over India and the world! By providing a full supply chain,

integrating voice recognition, direct connection from a client to a SHG women, stock management,

delivering… Women could then directly promote and sell their products.

The idea of an integration between a state of the art call center technology and a rural environment is

very appealing, but even if Sasken is a major player, it will be very complicated to implement.

We might play a future role in the project as prospective customers…..but it first need to go live. Point to

follow.

Schneider also have the willing to penetrate BOP market and has a specific program for this purpose. Bip

Bop. It was great to visit them with Gregoire, a French professional who had a previous experience in

lighting with BP. Being run by an Indian who claim itself to come from the clients he target, who has

both an engineer and a management training and experience, Bip Bop is well supported! And, indeed,

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the implementation is appealing. Bip Bop is leading to a product (a new type of LED lamp, able to light a

full room thanks to it 45 LED), which can be adapted to various market segment (thanks to innovative

management of power source, AC, DC or both). It mostly come with an interesting model. People are

buying the lamp, and are renting batteries for INR5 a day. Local entrepreneur are trained to charge,

maintain batteries and change them every 12 hours in client houses.

Interestingly enough, Cyril’s father met them at the same time in Paris to develop and implement the

same program in Africa, where the market is less mature.

In India, they seem pretty up to speed.

Dr Mitta, one of the Wipro founder, fascinating social entrepreneur, has a similar model in which he

trains local people on computer or other skills. He then identify entrepreneurs ready to invest in a new

company which will be able to employ the newly trained people to sell services on a competitive price,

through the vast network he can mobilize all over the world. The main impact being to let people work

where they are living, and limiting rural-urban migration.

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And some great individuals. Arvind, whom I know from a first visit in Paris incubator Soleillet, prove that

design can be use for social projects, in Flip Design company. Rajeev, professor at IIM and active player

in politics, who invited us in Bangalore Club to share about global context and cricket IPL! And finally

Sanjeev, who has invented his own 80/20 theory. 80% of consulting work and 20% in social business,

mainly to support children in Bangalore slums.

Days 4 and 5 – Madurai

Trip in Madurai has mainly be spent with Muthu, in CCD. We made a short break to work on an

interesting project of social bakery.

Chemins d’Enfances, a French association run by Martine Roussel-Adam, and whose Indian branch

based in Pondicherry is run by Laetitia Adam, is a good example of cooperation between France and

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India. They introduce playing, artistic and educative activities through children’s clubs in order to

provide skills, free time and work on the resilience faculty of children, when they face dramatic situation

like a tsunami or great poverty. This is already something interesting by itself. Furthermore, they are

looking for a way to make this intervention sustainable. Can this type of Clubs become sustainable? Can

and should communities take care by themselves of the animation of the clubs? Huge challenge,

interesting to face! For the moment, Chemins d’Enfances is supporting its local partner, Nanban, to

introduce and animate the clubs. Nanban is an old and very dynamic NGO. It is working for many years

to find and bring back to families runaway children, creating awareness to avoid such situation, creating

income generating activities to provide opportunities and funds to the social activities. The specific aim

of our visit was to audit how the social bakery could be more profitable and efficient.

We then spent time in CCD, both in the training center of Karadu, the main office of Madurai and the

large unit of Seruvayur. It makes now 6 or 7 times I come to Madurai to meet Muthu, the founder and

director of CCD. And I m always amazed by the efficiency of the execution of this NGO. Things happens!

And quickly! And in many directions! Partners and people from all over India and the world are asking

for connection with the 20 000 farmers who belong to the Communities around CCD. These farmers are

indeed the ones who, gathered into federation, control the activities of CCD. From these farmers are

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coming rice, cotton, medicinal plants sold to Hymalya… To these farmers are distributed lighting,

cooking solutions. And each time, the chain includes a Jyoti, a woman from these communities, who get

a margin to procure or sell! There is now a challenge for CCD to go to the next step, to industrialize even

more, to get a new position in the value chain which could bring more revenue to the communities, to

build rather than to sell. Innovation is everywhere, from the large batch of energy products selected to

be sold, from the new species of cotton tree tested to avoid the risk of a bad crop from classical seeds,

from biogas, from briquettes and palettes made by tamarind husk which is abundant there… Innovation,

and Execution. Which are the two mammals of a great social entrepreneurship project!

Muthu held a 4 hours brainstorming session where he explained his business model present and future

and asked us how we could contribute to the funding of the plants he wanted to build.We are still

working on it and have not come with a definite answer yet.

One of the partner which is playing an important role today to structure the value chain of CCD is

Unifor. And this company is incubated by RTBI (see day 1!). It provides IVR (Voice Recognition) to social

companies, on order to strengthen their chain. It can be a way for Jyothis, distributing products from the

central warehouse of CCD, to give their order by phone rather than to write them. It may reduce the

time between the order and the delivery from 20 days to 1 day. But it can also be the other way. For

pushing automatic advices to farmers by voice message, rather than by SMS. It will be send every day at

the same hour, adapting the language, the content, to every receiver. It can also be a local patient,

calling a hotline, and finding the closest doctor. Or a client calling a voice plateform to order an item

from an SHG woman. Furthermore, one can now design its own voice scheme on Unifor website, and

ask for an implementation paid on a per use or a monthly subscription base.

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Day 6 – Kanyakumari

Kanyakumari is the city where Vivekanandra finish it trip and spent 3 days meditating on the rock which

now bears his name. It is also the place where the Vivekanandra Kendra center has set up it holistic

center of meditation, exhibition, social activities, education and… research on energy, agricultural or

health. NARDEP, held by Pr. Vasudeo, is an incredible place. You enter in, and you feel like in a thematic

park without queue, headache, coke and cries! But with compressed earth block allowing really cool

construction, great exhibition about traditional agricultural and health practices in India, water

treatment and… biogas. Vivekanandra Kendra has received an Ashden Award in 2006 because they are

one of the most efficient organization in India to develop and spread biogas plant. These plants used to

work with cow dung only, but they can now work with every solid waste people have in their kitchen or

agricultural activities. Take 5kg of garbage, you ll get 1 cubic meter of methane 2 days after. Add some

money and you can even get methane pure enough to be compress and sold as bio-CNG, or use for

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power generation. It looks like a miracle! And Cyril is now committed to installing a biogas unit in his

backyard….we are unsure about Tamara’s approval as of yet.

Day 7 – Tanjore

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Tanjore is the place where IFMR launched it experimentation about microfinance. We met Villavan, who

is working with Anu in the energy company around IFMR. Indeed, many supply chains are optimized by

IFMR, along with it pure microfinance activity. In energy, improved cookstoves are distributed by local

entrepreneurs to individual and restaurants. In microfinance, 50 branches are covering each 5km and

offer joing loan, insurance products, individual loan and even fixed deposit, using FINO biometric card.

Day 7 – Kollumdangudi

Last day was spent in the Kollumangudi branch of Descirew, the rural BPO company. 20 women,

graduates and undergraduates are employed to do data typing and web search. It looks like working

condition are great and output professional! This cooperation we really want to investigate further

because it seems they perform jobs that are not longer held in Europe under socially advanced

conditions and for a bargain price.

Day 8, 9 and 10 - Pondicherry

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Back in Pondicherry, we had an energic meeting with 3 crazy and brilliant graduates from Marseille.

They have created MakeSense, a platform to identify challenges from social entrepreneurs all over the

world, and connect them. They are also close to innovation cells of key accounts in France. They will

contact us in France as we have decided to use their platform to make our French/ Indian project more

visible.

In the afternoon, Marie from Kynarou introduced us to a tamil village close to Pondicherry, who

benefited from their support to get proper water access, tanks, managed by a specific water committee

made of panchayat leaders and SHG members.We were really impressed by her modesty and her

commitment.What a lady!

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Water has been a major thematic in Pondy! After Kynarou, visit to water basic needs, with Klaas, the guy

who looks the most like Paul Polak! He has sold more than 1 lac individual filters, mostly in Africa at this

time, at a very affordable price, but letting him and his distributor enough margin enough roupies to

sustain! One of the rare to be really sustainable! And he may scale more when he will have full

manufacturing facilities. And the CSR (Centre for Scientific Research) hosts a wonderful decentralized

water treatement (DIWAT) system, introduced by Thomas Drouin , former colleague who doesn’t want

to be call engineer!

Final point with Hemant, one of the main energy specialists in India! He has a strong vision that 250 start

ups could be launched and create breakthrough in years to come, in the renewable energy field. And

Auroville/Pondi could be the silicon-valley for renewable energy! A dream? Nice to have somes!

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Lessons learned - Vision

What is the situation of French-indian relationship regarding social business? Not easy to say! Obviously,

quite nothing if our tour is a bit representative.

A bit early to claim a vision. Just some global observations made on the ground!

Social entrepreneurs have a vision

As we read in day 6 of our trip, in Vivekananda precint in Kanyakumari, a genius is made of 10% of

vision, and 90% of execution, used to accomplish this vision. Muthu, head of CCD (met in day 4 in

Madurai) is the best illustration of this principle. Like in start up, execution is the key to success. But

only if it is strongly connected to a clear and strong value corpus. Social entrepreneurs have an

advantage. It is easier for them to explain these principles more clearly to their clients, employees,

partners…

Models

Thematics are large and diverse, but quite all are looking for an impact on communities, weither as

producer or consumers

- Connecting communities to larger market, thanks to a design, marketing, telecommunication…

plateform – ROPE, desicrew, Sasken, NextWealth – PULL model, both by hiring or connecting

entrepreneurs to the world

- Supporting communities to improve their livelihoods, by selling them products, providing them

services usually dedicated to urban area and rich clients – English training, Schneider BipBop,

Adharam, Vivekanandra Biogas , Prakti, Sunna – PUSH model, by training local entrepreneurs, or

using social enterprises network

- Provide service to social entrepreneurs – incubators, Unifor

Environment

Auroville, Vivekanandra Kendra, RTBI, IIM incubator in Bangalore, CCD. It appears that many of the

entrepreneurs we have seen were part of a larger community or were part of a group. Some of these

communities are mostly service-based, like incubators, even if the focus is made on social projects.

Others are purely value-based and create a large ecosystem in which social enterprises are only one of

the form of the concretizations of values supported by the community. All of them have a sort of

master/guru. Not always follow, but always there and incarnating the values.

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Local and scale

It has been a regular debate during our trip. Some of the entrepreneurs thinks big, right from the

beginning. They want to achieve huge results, large volume, throughover India. Of course, they assume

that they will start small, with pilots, but their ambition is clearly to reach volume, mainly because it is

the way to create social impact and allow sustainability. Small margins with small volumes. Base of the

BOP model!

Other (Sridhar, Murty) are clearly following Small is Beautiful principles. They are looking for locally

made-locally produced systems, are seeking community support and involvement, even if it cost more

and prevent them from large growth. Locally available raw material, seed, food, skills… are preferred to

large centralized system. This model can scale also, of course, but it usually assume a mix of

financement.

Some, finally, are local by nature, because they have been created to support a particular community.

And some are assuming that if small companies should take care of innovative product design and last

mile coverage, only large ones can assume quality and cost reduction in such a way that product can

become affordable. Partnerships have to be found or… small companies have to become big.

Evaluation of impact

Rare. All claim but few external measurement. Every village has it water treatment, or improve

cookstove, or… But how can we assess the impact? What was the objective? Was it worth spending this

amount of money? What are the consequences on health, revenues… for the individuals, for the

communities, for the state?

Impact on society and on environment. Strong connexion. Who should pay the ROI?

ROI on people paid by peope. ROI on social paid by donors and ROI on nature paid by carbon finance.

The more is paid by the client, the best. But without compromising on quality and social impact.

Segmentation

Best offers are segmented offers. See Schneider and IFMR strategy.

Women are there

Sri Kalaivani (Sri Maruthy Laser Printers), Uma (Upasana). It could look obvious, but women are not only

the main beneficiaries of micro finance programs. They are also there, as entrepreneurs. Their numbers

is maybe well below the quota of political women now imposed in Lok Sabbah! Esther Duflo pointed out

that the ROI of very small business ran by women was less than men one. Mostly because women have

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small activities as an extra to their daily work as mother, cook… It may not be the case for larger social

entrepreneur.

FLO (Network of Women Entrepeneurs in FICCI)

Cities and campaigns!

It was very strange to observe that in Tamil Nadu, an Indian coming from Delhi or Mumbai looks (quite)

like a French guy lost in India! He doesn’t speak the same language (most of final user in Tamil Nadu

speak only tamil, whereas this guy speak hindi and English), he is playing with it

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Our commitments

Connecting People

Interns - Few days after our meeting with P Sellamuthu in Chennai, I received a mail from a French

student, looking for internship in energy. She may spend some months with IIEM. ALZEA

(www.alzea.org), is also looking for opportunities in India for French student. Basically, French interns

have good reputations, but issue with English!

Professionals - The main wish of Vasudeo in Kanyakumari was to increase exchanges with engineers

abroad.

Incubators – RTBI, IIM Bangalore with Durapole, Paris Developpement?

Be part of MakeSense

Commitment1 – pursue and increase our support to French professionals, interns, individuals willing

to discover/participate in India Social business:

- Open guest houses at Cyril Place

- Student guest house in Francois Martin, with Thomas

- Connection with interns

- Welcome one staff from CCD in France!

- Synchronous Social diners in India and France

Tourism

What we have done during this week could very well be replicated for small groups. They will have to

plant a tree to compensate their CO2 emission, be prepared for 3rd

class travel, small hotels, agendas

not always completely followed. Prepared to India, in a way! They could contribute to an NGO that they

would visit, or which would organize a part of the trip. They could then form a “club” of people having

travelled in India on a special way, and ready to pursue the experience as investors.

Commitment2 – organize a pilot tour of social business in India for 5 people, maybe with Ecologin

Markets

- Find commercial opportunities for products manufactured or for service produced with local

communities – Desicrew, ROPE, Sasken, CCD, with or without special dedication to French client

- Fair trade and export of product is still something on which we have to think more

- Open branches of companies in Pondicherry, thanks to French clients – Desicrew, NextWealth

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Commitment3 – Find 3 french pilots for rural BPO, with Desicrew, first survey about opening a branch

of Pondi targeting French client and generating at least 25K euros turnover

Money

- Find French investors to support Indian social entrepreneurs - CCD

- Find donors- Chemin d’Enfance, Kynarou model

Commitment4 – Analyze 10 models of relation between france and India (Kynarou, Chemin d

Enfances, Aides et Actions, foundations…) and check if there can be an offer to represent them in

India

Commitment 5 – As far as we get a proper business plan, support of CCD to find social investors in

France