Source Pilani: Empowering Rural India

Inside Goenka Public School, which is situated in the bustling center of Pilani village, is housed one of India’s fastest growing rural BPO’s.

Welcome to the world of Source Pilani who are redefining the concept of CSR in rural India with their socio-economic approach to BPO’s.

A brainchild of L K Maheswari (the current Vice Chancellor of BITS Pilani), who convinced the Goenka family to invest in such a venture; he’s played a crucial role in scaling Source Pilani to where it is today. Giving a shout out to the alumni and getting them on board to man the ship, today the gritty team of Manoj Vasudevan. Sandeep Thalluri, Ashish Khandelwal and Bharat Bongu are putting in tons of man hours in order to put Source Pilani on the map.

The establishment of a rural BPO was mainly to tackle and capitalize on the problems faced by the urban BPO’s such as high attrition rates, increasing salary costs and sky-rocketing real estate prices. This lead to the belief that such a move would provide a host to some of the biggest opportunities such as access to a large pool of talented work force in and around Pilani, world class infrastructure facilities. Apart from this it would also help in building a brand name of the Goenka’s in the social entrepreneurship sector.

Today Source Pilani has several clients including some international ones. One success story which the founders narrated to me was regarding their work in the medical transcription domain:

“We partnered with Truworth to deliver Medical Transcription services. We have been consistently achieving 98.9% quality. Trueworth started realizing cost benefits of around 30%”

Source Pilani has also been providing data entry and form processing services to JhunJhunu (district in which Pilani is located) collectorate for e-Gram and NREGS. They have been delivering exceptional service despite the complex work flow. They deal accurately with a large volume of data of 890 villages and were recognized and felicitated by the district collectorate for the outsourcing services they provided

With revenues already in lakhs, an ever increasing list of clients, a stable workforce of 60 skilled personnel who are regularly rewarded based on their performance and a board consisting of BITS Pilani faculty and Alumni, things look bright for Source Pilani.

They are currently also participating in Tata NEN’s hottest Startup award, you can vote for them here

Alternatively, you can also SMS HOT117 to 56767

Startup Saturday at Hyderabad

This Saturday, my original plan was to visit Warangal and the neighboring areas. Why you ask? Apparently the Government is trying really hard to convert it into a tourist attraction. Some ministers have gone to the extent of calling it “One of the most beautiful places in the world”. Alright, so I guess he hasn’t travelled much, but I wanted to check the place out nonetheless.

I didn’t.

Instead I decided to go for Startup Saturday which was scheduled to be held at IIIT Campus in Gachibowli. This was the second such meet, with the organising party (who are the same people who organize Barcamp Hyderabad) gauging whether the concept works out in Hyderabad or not.

The meet began on time and within a few minute had enough people to ensure that my neck received enough exercise for the day. With nearly 35 people, including students, professors, Vice Presidents, academics, part time academics, Entrepreneurs, Unsuccessful entrepreneurs (a rather unfair term, for we all learn from our experiencesJ).

Discussions were lively, ranging from iPhone debates to Nirma’s success to importance of filtering in Google reader. Start up Saturday also takes an initiative of inviting entrepreneurs to give presentation and talks. This week it was Suheim Sheikh, the founder of SDG (which is now acquired by 3i Infotech), an Anti Money Laundering software developing company. Suheim’s presentation was witty as well as inspiring. He was also modest enough to tell us that one thing that he felt they didn't do was dream bigger. With nearly 70% of India’s market under them, they should have thought bigger, maybe try to capture the global market.

This is where he brought up an interesting point. Coincidentally, this is the same point that my boss at my internship also highlighted.

Indians are generally very apprehensive to admit that they are the best at something. Because since we’ve grown up, all the theories that we’ve been taught are works of foreign scientists. (Pythagoras apparently came to India and took the theorem back to his native land).

Mr Sheikh was saying that not for a moment did they think that their software was the best there was at that time. Had they given globalising more thought, maybe they’d have been eve more successful.

I was wondering. Apart from lack of the conviction that we can be the first or the best in something, could lack of marketing skills be another reason? Just a thought.

Startup Saturday in Hyderabad:

2nd/4th Saturday of every month at IIIT Campus, Hyderabad. IIIT, Main building. Turn towards the first right in the main building and head off to the third room. 10 AM

Marketing Strategies

In a town like Pilani, where a samosa chat acquires the status of lasagne, the primary food station is a roadside stall (or simply called a redi).

The other day I was sitting at one of these redis and was contemplating over what to eat and I saw him squeeze around 25 lemons into a glass. My eyes just widened. As far as food is concerned my tastes are totally feminine. I love sour foodstuff. So I asked him he could make a lemon soda using that pulp.

“Umm…this has 30 lemons in it. You know that right?” He said in his rustic Hindi.

“Ahuh, imagine how sour it’ll be.” I said enthusiastically.

“I am sorry sir, but I cannot serve you this. I just cannot” He shot back.

And then he went on about how 30 lemons would simply kill me. It would just cut through my skin (him giving examples of how lemon juice can erode walls). He said it was his moral duty to stop me from harming himself.

Oh now we’re on to something I thought.

He continued saying how my health is quite important to him, for I was one of his regular customers. He later said that he wasn’t greedy and that, he could have very well made that mega-lemon soda which would have cost 50 rupees (for lemons aren’t cheap in Rajasthan these days), but then what? Would that make him a millionaire? No. Instead he was at a risk of losing me for a couple of days, which would result in losses far greater than 50 rupees to him (for I eat quite a lot).

There is cut throat competition amongst the BITS-Pilani redis. The redi owners (at least some of them), everything works on trust and honesty. You would rather build a relationship with a customer rather than try to get hold of his money (even if that is what you eventually want to do), for the student is going to be around for the next four years. It makes business sense to tell him that the redi pretty much belongs to him and that money isn’t an issue at all.

Also this particular rediwallah also knows that students can bitch a lot (after all he listens to them all day long as they gobble his food) and that he should provide them with the best service to his capabilities. And this makes them loyal which in turn makes these loyal customers as a sort of brand ambassadors.

Later on, this rediwallah also told me quite frankly how the other redi wallah( his main competition) is totally unlike him. How the other person would have readily given me the killer lemon soda with a smiling face. He also went on to say how in a college since we’re away from out parents, we’re like his children in some respect and it’s his duty to at least warn us before hand.

So by now:

1) He’s shown to me that he’s really cares about my health, for I am his main customer and that my health is quite important to me.

2) His competition is a money hungry leech quite unlike him

There is a reason why this redi wallah is so successful. Today he owns a taxi service, couple of restaurants, yet his major source of income is this redi which serves refreshments to over 400 people in BITS-Pilani. He is the undisputed tycoon here. And how does he do it? He keeps his customers happy and takes good care of them, because only if they are healthy will they spend more money on his venture. What he also does is that engages in some pretty interesting conversation. As a result you end up spending more time and hence more money at his redi.

I am planning to do my Economics thesis under him.

Fornication to save Rainforests!

People are always on the look out for some innovative ideas. As is the case in most start ups, the primary idea isn't anything revolutionary, its something ordinary, something which makes us go like "Yeah, so?" but what matters is how you implement it.

A Norwegian organisation which goes by a self explanatory name Fuck For Forests(FFF) has sex in public places to raise money for saving the rainforests. Now I was scandalised as well deeply impressed by the idea. On one hand the idea of having sex in public is still a taboo if not unacceptable in most countries. On the other hand they are raising money for a cause.

The idea receives cent per cent on innovation. The reason I say this is:

However noble be the cause, you can't expect to take money from people if you don't give them something in return. FFF gives it target audience exactly what it wants in return for saving the world's rainforests.

They have sex in public, they have sex on stage during concerts, basically they have sex anywhere they can.

After their first year they made nearly 100,000 USD from their website by selling merchandise and membership.

The problem from this sort of start-up can be that they'll be mostly on their own. I don't see any huge NGO (WWF doesn't accept their money) or Govt Organisations coming forward to help start-ups like FFF. The internet proxies will add to their woes. Also their reach will be quite limited as far as on ground activities are concerned, not many countries are that liberal to public pornography.

But despite that they still have a huge base according to me. If your product is good, people will buy it, the same applies to porn as well. They might not be able to have hoardings and bill boards, but I can safely assume that word of mouth publicity for a venture like this can work just fine. Also, I don't think the initial investment for this would've been anything significant.

FFF is currently working on projects with tribes and locals in the Amazon rainforests.

Social Entrepreneurship has always been there.

Pluggd.in has a recently had an article on how sustainable is social entrepreneurship in India.
The author felt that Amul was the only social venture which actually made it big as was reflected in the blog post

How many national scale, socially relevant, market oriented, impact making businesses can you name in India?” is a question that I asked at a recent gathering of friends. This is partly due to the fact that the only answer that springs to my mind is “Amul“, partly out of a certain confidence that the other person too cannot name any other business and partly out of a genuine desire to know. This question has intrigued me for some time now. Why haven’t there been many more Amul’s in our country? God knows there are enough and more social problems to be solved!

And almost instantaneously there were comments from people retorting. One such person said there have been similar groups such as Lijjad Papad and Fabindia.
Though Lijjad papad has received enough publicity, FabIndia on the other hand according to me has been doing brilliantly. Its great how they have created a niche for themselves in the garments industry and have actually made themselves in a huge brand. Generally as is the case you find similar handmade products only in exposition fairs or in some shady corner. FabIndia on the other hand have made it a retail business with chains of FabIndia's all over the country selling high quality really low priced garments. Here is a link into their back ground.