I was in Mumbai over the weekend, to meet an accomplished friend from the ‘BoP world’. The city, previously called Bombay, though rainy and humid, was as charming as ever. The teeming megapolis, with 17 million inhabitants, is a striking example of the economic disparity that defines contemporary India. Real estate prices in Mumbai’s Nariman Point are comparable to those in New York and London. On the other hand, Dharavi, one of Asia’s largest slums, is home to a million people, most of who survive on less than $2 a day.

 

Take a stroll on one of Mumbai’s busy streets and you are likely to meet men clad in white attire and Gandhi topis (caps), scurrying past with cartloads of lunch boxes. They are Dabbawalas of Mumbai, well known for their six sigma-rated service quality. A dabbawala (a Hindi word that translates into ‘a person with a box’) is someone who delivers home-cooked lunch to office-goers and businessmen in Mumbai, at a nominal monthly fee. A dabbawala’s service might involve only delivering cooked food from the client’s home or both cooking and delivering the food, based on the client’s preference. Sounds simple, eh? What’s stunning is the fact that dabbawalas deliver nearly 200,000 dabbas (lunch boxes) everyday, with six sigma quality, which means that there is only one mistake in every 6,000,000 deliveries!

 

The dabbawalas have existed for more than a century and have become an essential part of Mumbai’s social fabric. They travel either by foot or bicycles or suburban trains and barely use any technology. Their service is uninterrupted, even during Mumbai’s dreaded monsoon rains.

 

There are an estimated 5000 dabbawalas in Mumbai, most of whom are illiterates and come from very poor backgrounds. They are all shareholders of Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Supply Trust which  has a turnover of nearly 450 million rupees (approximately $11.25 million) per annum. Dabbawalas have never gone on strike and four years ago, they allotted just 20 minutes to Prince Charles to meet them so that their customers are not kept waiting. Their excellent teamwork and time management system has been featured as a case study by Harvard Business Review and they have presented their business model to various corporate houses such as Tata, Coca Cola, Daimler Chrysler and Reliance Industries. Riding on this success, the Dabbawalas are now planning to start a Supply Chain Consulting business.

 

The dabbawala story is an inspiring success story and demonstrates that simple ideas, when executed with discipline and dedication, can bring amazing results at the base of the pyramid.

I was in my hometown last weekend, visiting my parents, sister and my sprightly 4-month-old nephew. My parents have subscribed to a Kannada-language newspaper (Kannada is the local language in Bangalore and the rest of Karnataka) and I read an interesting article in the editorial page of this newspaper. It was about how some people are working towards bringing the benefits of Information Technology to the common man. As an example, the article profiled a technology, known as "CAM Mobile Services Framework", developed by one Mr. Tapan Parikh, which aims to enable small organizations reduce the amount of paperwork, make data entry process faster and increase service efficiency.

CAM is essentially a toolkit that offers a complete solution to capture data using a mobile phone's image capturing capability (camera phones) and upload it to web-based databases. This solution is ideal for orgainizations such as Microfinance institutions, aiming to reduce operational costs. CAM is currently being pilot-tested by a Delhi-based company called Ekgaon, which was co-founded by Tapan. The CAM framework consists of: 

1. CAM browser for the mobile phone, which is simplified and localized to make it usable by everyone.

2. CAM Forms, which are paper forms with visual codes that can be read by a CAM mobile phone.

3. CAM Shell, a programming language that deciphers the visual codes on a CAM form and provides interfaces to upload the deciphered data to web-based databases, provide audio feedback to the user etc.

Ekgaon is testing the usability of this technology by comparing it with a simple web-based interface on a Personal Computer. The CAM interface is expected to be more suitable to NGOs, small businesses or any organization trying to serve the poor in developing countries. This is because of the high penetration of mobile phones in rural areas, improved efficiency since data can be entered from the field itself and the ease of use.

Tapan,  a Master's degree holder in Computer Science from the University of Washington, was honored with Technology Review's Humanitarian of the year 2007 award, for this achievement. Ekgaon now plans to implement a complete Management and Information System (MIS), which can enable village-based co-operative societies to centralize tracking of accounts, financial positions and loan repayment performances.

Ekgaon in Hindi means "One Village". The company believes that what is good for the development of a single village is also good for the sustainable development of the whole world. Indeed, an inspiring belief. 

Have you ever thought about what happens to the dry cells and batteries that you threw away recently? Or have you ever wondered what happens to your computer, once it becomes obsolete? In a developing country like India, this e-waste will end up being burnt or being disposed unscientifically, releasing toxic chemicals to the environment.

The city of Bangalore, where I live and work, is a technology hub and has hundreds of technology companies operating from here. While the IT boom has tremendously boosted the city's economy, it has also brought the hazards of e-waste with it. An estimated 30,000 computers become obsolete every year in the IT industry in Bangalore alone. The total e-waste generated in India is estimated to be 146,000 tones per year. But wait! There is help at hand, through E-Parisaraa (Parisaraa in the local language means "Environment").

E-Parisaraa Private Limited is an ISO 14001:2004 organization and was set up in Dobaspet Industrial area near Bangalore by Mr. P Parthasarathy, a Chemical Engineering post-graduate from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. It is India’s first scientific e-waste recycling unit and aims to reduce pollution and landfill waste, recover valuable metals, plastics and glass from e-waste in an eco-friendly manner. E-Parisaraa currently employs nearly 50 people from the neighboring villages and aims to achieve environmental and economic sustainability simultaneously, which is why this post finds a place in this blog. E-Parisaraa reduces, recovers and recycles e-waste such as obsolete computers, printers, telecom equipment, printed circuit boards, cables etc.

E-Parisaraa already has some of the big IT companies in Bangalore, such as IBM, Tata Elxsi, ABB and Philips, as its clients. Recently, on World Environment Day, my employer, Robert Bosch India, also joined this list (which is how I came to know about E-Parisaraa). But there are hundreds of other IT companies, who still do not have eco-friendly e-waste disposal policies in place. There is also a lack of stringent e-waste disposal laws by the Government.

I hope to see many more IT companies partnering with E-Parisaraa very soon. I would also like to see E-Parisaraa expanding its presence to other IT hubs in India, such as Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune, Gurgaon and Noida. Perhaps, E-Parisaraa can do better with effective publicity, which is lacking at the moment!

DakNet is an internet service based on the technology from First Mile Solutions (FMS), which was spun-off from an idea, known as “DonkeyNet”. This idea was featured in the MIT Entrepreneurship Competition in 2002. DakNet offers affordable, asynchronous internet access to rural areas. FMS is based in Cambridge, MA and offers its Wi-Fi based technology to the rural population in developing countries such as India and Cambodia. It uses a store and forward technique through Wi-Fi, which the company describes as "Cached Wi-Fi Intelligence".

To mobilize end-user market creation, a separate organization, known as United Villages (UV), was created by the founders of FMS. The purpose behind the creation of UV was to develop for-profit rural internet service providers using FMS technology. FMS and United Villages merged in 2003 and an operating company, known as United Villages Network Private Limited, has been established in India in 2005.

Here is how the service operates: United Villages has installed Mobile Access Points (MAPs) on existing vehicles such as buses and motorcycles which ply in rural areas. A donkey was used to install a MAP when the idea was originally implemented, which explains the name “DonkeyNet”. Kiosks have been setup in villages, which typically have a computer with a wireless internet connection (Fixed Access Points). United Villages sells pre-paid cards to village kiosk operators who in turn resell them to the villagers. The villagers can use these pre-paid cards to avail services such as sending e-mails, voicemails, purchase railway tickets online, access matrimonial sites etc. The data from the user, such as an e-mail, are stored in the kiosk computer and whenever an MAP is within the range of the wireless network, it picks up the stored data from the kiosk computer and forwards it to the internet hub in cities and then to the internet.

UV's service now covers more than 40,000 villages in five countries, including India and Cambodia. This is definitely an innovative and inspiring initiative but I believe it has to overcome some of its shortcomings, such as usage of petrol/diesel-driven vehicles for MAPs and charging the villagers for services as simple as e-mail. The company has ambitious plans to connect all the 220,000 villages in India and it would be interesting to know about the strategy that it adopts. The company plans tie-ups with major telecom companies and ISPs in India, in order to achieve profitability. I wish them all the best!