Back in mid-March Catherine, Hari, Crystal, Deeraj, Fidah, Pete and I drove a hundred km or so from Delhi north into the state of Uttar Pradesh, home to 186M people and lacking in paved roads. We took a video camera along on the trip to use as a backup in case the video team cameras went down/ ran out of tape (really, the video crew was comprised of teenagers who would set the camera up and then wander off, coming back to check that the interview subjects had not drifted out fo the frame) and then we decided to start filming of our own accord. Out of 2.5 hrs of tape, 2.3 hrs were pretty miserable: shaky camera work, excessive use of pan and zoom, detailed shots of the lens cap, lots of shots of the ground from awry angles as the camera dangled from a bag, and tons of tooth rattling vibration from the cars. The whole effect was very Blair Witch project without the production values.
After coming back, we recovered some of the material and added a mild soundtrack to cover most of the static and noise. Here's the video:
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Blending In
So, I realized today that I need to stop teasing my colleague John about sticking out like a sore thumb. I found out today that I am no better. I thought that just because I am Indian, don't dress all that well, wear sandals which are made in India no less, and have given up smiling at random people, I would blend in. But no... not even close. On the walk home from a local coffee shop today, I was stopped by seven different taxis who all asked, "ssaRR.. auTTO?." ("auto" is the local name for a three-wheeled taxi in India.) SEVEN different people were able to pick me out of a crowded street.
I am going to grow a mustache (which almost 90% of the local men sport), lose about 30 pounds (men here are really thin), and try again... on second thought, I am not sure how good a idea that is. It will take me well over 6 months to grow the mustache ... and the weight I am not sure I can lose at all... maybe I should develop a new strategy to "blend" in... speaking of which, suggestions anyone?
I am going to grow a mustache (which almost 90% of the local men sport), lose about 30 pounds (men here are really thin), and try again... on second thought, I am not sure how good a idea that is. It will take me well over 6 months to grow the mustache ... and the weight I am not sure I can lose at all... maybe I should develop a new strategy to "blend" in... speaking of which, suggestions anyone?
Suguna Chicken Farm
So we saw a pretty cool concept in Chennai. A company called Suguna has come up with a way to make a profit as well as help the poor.
It works follows:
Pic 1 & 2: Chicken farm
Pic 3: Feeding station
Pic 4: Chicken feed
It works follows:
- A land owner agrees to set up a chicken raising facility (~2400 sqft) on his/her land. This usually involves building a covered structure with watering and feeding stations for the chickens
- Suguna then agrees to deliver chicks to this landowner. Suguna starts with an 'experiment' of a handful number of chicks and scales up to 2000 chicks if the person shows competence. Suguna provides the chicks as well as the required feed and medicine.
- For the next 6 weeks, the landowner tends to the chickens - feeding them, etc
- After 6 weeks, Suguna picks up the grown chickens and pays the farmer ~Rs 2 per KG of chicken
- The landowner takes the next two weeks to clean up the facility and get it ready for the next batch of chicks
Pic 1 & 2: Chicken farm
Pic 3: Feeding station
Pic 4: Chicken feed
Monday, March 31, 2008
Village Visit in Delhi
The villages near Delhi were very different than those near Chennai. Whereas the villages around Chennai had decent paved roads, a (mostly) reliable supply of electricity, and reasonable level of penetration by the major consumer goods companies in India (i.e. Hindustan Unilever, ITC), the villages near Delhi had none of these. The roads were full of potholes and were overrun by water buffaloes and camels; the villages were lucky if they received 4-5 hours of electricity a day; and the Kirana (convenient) store owner had to go to another town (3 or so hours away) to restock his inventory.
Pic 1: Overloaded truck near Delhi
Pic 2: Another obstacle on the road: a fire
The drive out was pretty interesting on its own. We quickly gained an appreciation of one of the biggest challenges in moving goods across India on roads. Apparently every time a commercial vehicle crosses a state boundary in India, the driver is responsible for finding a tax office (never clearly marked) and paying the 'entry' tax. If the driver fails to do so, any police official anywhere in the state can stop him/her and ask to see the tax-paid receipt (out-of-state commercial vehicles are easily identified by the license plate number and color.) Failure to produce the receipt results in a fine of 20 times the tax amount (or, as the driver later told us, a bribe of 4 times the tax amount!)
I have to admit that I was completely unprepared for extent of poverty that we saw. One person's story really hit me hard. It was one of the last people we talked. He was a day laborer who worked both as a construction worker and as a tailor.
Apparently, he used to work exclusively as a tailor until market forces turned against him. Industrialization and the introduction of ready-made clothing took a huge toll on him and others like him. In the good old days, he used to work from home and always had plenty of work. People would come to him on a regular basis; after all, tailors had a natural monopoly in providing clothes. The introduction of ready-made clothing broke that monopoly and completely destroyed his businesses and so he had to take up another profession - construction - to make ends meet.
Even though he worked in two professions, he still only managed to find work for about half the month - "some months i work 10 days, others i get lucky and work 20." His average monthly salary was around Rs 2000 ($50) and that had to provide for 7 people... that worked out to about 24 cents per family member per day.
Worst of all, he had no idea whether he would be called upon to work on any given day. The middlemen who control employment didn't seem to give him too much visibility. Construction work in India is literally back-breaking and is done without any modern equipment in ridiculously dangerous conditions. Clearly, it had taken a heavy toll on him; he was 40 but looked 70. When I looked around, I wondered what would happen to his family if he got hurt. He was the sole breadwinner and barely made enough to make ends meet as it was.
Pic 3: Villager's family
By the end of the conversation, I could barely stand being in the same room. I felt an unbearable sense of guilt when I thought about how many nights I had spent $50, even a $100, going out with my friends in Boston. And here he was supporting an entire family on that much ... only he spent that much in a month and that too to support 7 people.
Pic 1: Overloaded truck near Delhi
Pic 2: Another obstacle on the road: a fire
The drive out was pretty interesting on its own. We quickly gained an appreciation of one of the biggest challenges in moving goods across India on roads. Apparently every time a commercial vehicle crosses a state boundary in India, the driver is responsible for finding a tax office (never clearly marked) and paying the 'entry' tax. If the driver fails to do so, any police official anywhere in the state can stop him/her and ask to see the tax-paid receipt (out-of-state commercial vehicles are easily identified by the license plate number and color.) Failure to produce the receipt results in a fine of 20 times the tax amount (or, as the driver later told us, a bribe of 4 times the tax amount!)
I have to admit that I was completely unprepared for extent of poverty that we saw. One person's story really hit me hard. It was one of the last people we talked. He was a day laborer who worked both as a construction worker and as a tailor.
Apparently, he used to work exclusively as a tailor until market forces turned against him. Industrialization and the introduction of ready-made clothing took a huge toll on him and others like him. In the good old days, he used to work from home and always had plenty of work. People would come to him on a regular basis; after all, tailors had a natural monopoly in providing clothes. The introduction of ready-made clothing broke that monopoly and completely destroyed his businesses and so he had to take up another profession - construction - to make ends meet.
Even though he worked in two professions, he still only managed to find work for about half the month - "some months i work 10 days, others i get lucky and work 20." His average monthly salary was around Rs 2000 ($50) and that had to provide for 7 people... that worked out to about 24 cents per family member per day.
Worst of all, he had no idea whether he would be called upon to work on any given day. The middlemen who control employment didn't seem to give him too much visibility. Construction work in India is literally back-breaking and is done without any modern equipment in ridiculously dangerous conditions. Clearly, it had taken a heavy toll on him; he was 40 but looked 70. When I looked around, I wondered what would happen to his family if he got hurt. He was the sole breadwinner and barely made enough to make ends meet as it was.
Pic 3: Villager's family
By the end of the conversation, I could barely stand being in the same room. I felt an unbearable sense of guilt when I thought about how many nights I had spent $50, even a $100, going out with my friends in Boston. And here he was supporting an entire family on that much ... only he spent that much in a month and that too to support 7 people.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Village Visit in Chennai
At 6:30 am on Friday, March 7th, three other do-gooders besides myself - Hari, Kuen, and John - set out for a "nearby" village. Two and a half hours later, we arrived.
Actually, the drive itself was pretty interesting too. We had seen "brick farms" the last time out but didn't bother inquiring about them. This time our curiosity got the better of us and we decided to stop at one where a few workers were "farming" away. After taking a few pictures from a safe (i.e. long) distance away, a man approached us to ask us what we were doing. We could tell he was a man of some stature in the organization... not a principal or a partner mind you... but definitely a manager.
We asked him if he could tell us about the farm and to our surprise, he proceeded to give us a 1/2 hour lecture on the whole process. And here I was thinking that the four of us - two 'white-washed' Indians and two non Indians - would be run out of town for offending someone or another. Here's a summary of the fascinating process he described:
Pic 1: bricks drying
Pic 2: piling bricks up
Pic 3: "baking" the bricks
Pic 4: gaps left in pyramid to insert logs to burn brick pile
Pic 5: Pictured: Dheeraj, Kuen, "Teacher", John
Each farm yields up to 4 harvests a year over a 120 day period. These bricks are weaker than "normal" bricks but are good enough to do the job.
Now, for the interesting part. We get to the village and split into two groups. Kuen and John went to see a small business owner while Hari and I went to visit a village Doctor. Except that he wasn't a doctor... and readily admitted it. He had gotten a BSc in Geology and couldn't get a job for five years so had decided to go work as an assistant to a local Doctor. After a year, he set up his own practice. Apparently, in India, you can get certified as a "Rural Medical Practitioner" which then allows you to practice medicine even though you aren't an actual doctor. He had even chosen to "specialize" in treating Asthma, Cold, and Ulcer patients and knew what prescriptions to write for these conditions. He would refer other cases to the local government run hospital, which was open for all of four hours a day.
What was also surprising was that his patients seemed to understand the difference between a RMP and a MD and expected to be charged less when visiting a RMP. Our interviewee charged Rs 10-30 per visit as opposed to Rs 75 that a MD would charge.
Now, maybe I just have an unethical mindset but what I started wondering was why he had chosen to tell these people that he was a RMP at all and not just claimed to have been a MD. After all, he could have probably gotten away with it. It's unlikely that anyone in the area would have had spent the resources to confirm his claims.
Initially all sorts of explanations went through my mind - maybe he was scared of being found out, maybe he was worried that he would make a mistake. But by the end of our conversation with him, I was convinced that it was just that he was a very honest person.
It gets better. This 'Doctor' made more money selling life insurance than he did from practicing ... his art. He got a recurring revenue stream from selling life insurance in the form of a percentage of the customer's insurance premium for as long as he/she retained the policy. It is not inconceivable that in the future, he may start offering free medical care as long as his customer signs up for a life insurance plan.
Pic 6: Doctor
Pic 7: RMP "diplomas"
Next, we visited a local Kirana store owner. A Kirana store is a neighborhood, one-stop store which sells everything from toothpaste and razor blades to vegetables and cooking oil. There can be multiple Kirana stores in a given area but they are all pretty similar.
His store carried two types of goods - non-perishable and perishable. He obtained his supply of toiletries and other non-perishable from sales agents who came to the village regularly. He maintained a regular stock of these and could get new supplies of most items within a day or so.
The perishable items presented a much more difficult challenge. Since he didn't have access to a refrigerator or other cold storage facility, he had to obtain these on a daily basis. He did so by traveling four hours a day to a nearby town and bringing back what he expected to sell that day on a hired carrier. Talk about a balancing act - if he ordered too much, he would have to eat the cost and if he ordered too little, he would lose customers.
He also kept very long, investment-banking type hours. The store was open 20 hours a day, 6 days a week. The only day the store was closed was Wednesday and even then the store owner would go to Chennai (a six hour round trip) to order yet more goods for his store.
I had heard of the revolutionary, low-priced sachets introduced by Hindustan Unilever, but never actually saw them. The Kirana store was literally full of them and he had them for all kinds of goods - detergent, soap, shampoo, shaving cream, even food - the list goes on and on. These sachets started at Rs 0.50, which is equivalent to just over a penny in US currency. The surprising thing is that even at this price point, the companies that sell them are highly profitable. To put that in perspective - to earn a profit, the company has to spend less than $0.01 per package for everything from manufacturing to packaging to transporting the sachet to even the remotest villages (which in India is no easy feat.)
Pic 8 & 9: Sachets
After we finished the interviews, we whipped out our lunch - some delicious, custom-made, authentic Subway sandwiches. After that on the drive home, we saw the most interesting tractor you will ever hear about... but you will have to wait for John to blog about that... stay tuned!!!
Actually, the drive itself was pretty interesting too. We had seen "brick farms" the last time out but didn't bother inquiring about them. This time our curiosity got the better of us and we decided to stop at one where a few workers were "farming" away. After taking a few pictures from a safe (i.e. long) distance away, a man approached us to ask us what we were doing. We could tell he was a man of some stature in the organization... not a principal or a partner mind you... but definitely a manager.
We asked him if he could tell us about the farm and to our surprise, he proceeded to give us a 1/2 hour lecture on the whole process. And here I was thinking that the four of us - two 'white-washed' Indians and two non Indians - would be run out of town for offending someone or another. Here's a summary of the fascinating process he described:
- Planting: the workers mold the clay soil in the shape (and size) of a brick and let it dry for 20 days
- Watering (okay, burning): after the 20 days are up, the bricks are piled up in a pyramid shape, covered with hay and "baked" for 8 days to dry them out completely (Hari was quick to point out that Indians never get credit for building pyramids but here they were, hard at work)
- Harvest: after the burning process, the bricks are loaded onto trucks and driven away
Pic 1: bricks drying
Pic 2: piling bricks up
Pic 3: "baking" the bricks
Pic 4: gaps left in pyramid to insert logs to burn brick pile
Pic 5: Pictured: Dheeraj, Kuen, "Teacher", John
Each farm yields up to 4 harvests a year over a 120 day period. These bricks are weaker than "normal" bricks but are good enough to do the job.
Now, for the interesting part. We get to the village and split into two groups. Kuen and John went to see a small business owner while Hari and I went to visit a village Doctor. Except that he wasn't a doctor... and readily admitted it. He had gotten a BSc in Geology and couldn't get a job for five years so had decided to go work as an assistant to a local Doctor. After a year, he set up his own practice. Apparently, in India, you can get certified as a "Rural Medical Practitioner" which then allows you to practice medicine even though you aren't an actual doctor. He had even chosen to "specialize" in treating Asthma, Cold, and Ulcer patients and knew what prescriptions to write for these conditions. He would refer other cases to the local government run hospital, which was open for all of four hours a day.
What was also surprising was that his patients seemed to understand the difference between a RMP and a MD and expected to be charged less when visiting a RMP. Our interviewee charged Rs 10-30 per visit as opposed to Rs 75 that a MD would charge.
Now, maybe I just have an unethical mindset but what I started wondering was why he had chosen to tell these people that he was a RMP at all and not just claimed to have been a MD. After all, he could have probably gotten away with it. It's unlikely that anyone in the area would have had spent the resources to confirm his claims.
Initially all sorts of explanations went through my mind - maybe he was scared of being found out, maybe he was worried that he would make a mistake. But by the end of our conversation with him, I was convinced that it was just that he was a very honest person.
It gets better. This 'Doctor' made more money selling life insurance than he did from practicing ... his art. He got a recurring revenue stream from selling life insurance in the form of a percentage of the customer's insurance premium for as long as he/she retained the policy. It is not inconceivable that in the future, he may start offering free medical care as long as his customer signs up for a life insurance plan.
Pic 6: Doctor
Pic 7: RMP "diplomas"
Next, we visited a local Kirana store owner. A Kirana store is a neighborhood, one-stop store which sells everything from toothpaste and razor blades to vegetables and cooking oil. There can be multiple Kirana stores in a given area but they are all pretty similar.
His store carried two types of goods - non-perishable and perishable. He obtained his supply of toiletries and other non-perishable from sales agents who came to the village regularly. He maintained a regular stock of these and could get new supplies of most items within a day or so.
The perishable items presented a much more difficult challenge. Since he didn't have access to a refrigerator or other cold storage facility, he had to obtain these on a daily basis. He did so by traveling four hours a day to a nearby town and bringing back what he expected to sell that day on a hired carrier. Talk about a balancing act - if he ordered too much, he would have to eat the cost and if he ordered too little, he would lose customers.
He also kept very long, investment-banking type hours. The store was open 20 hours a day, 6 days a week. The only day the store was closed was Wednesday and even then the store owner would go to Chennai (a six hour round trip) to order yet more goods for his store.
I had heard of the revolutionary, low-priced sachets introduced by Hindustan Unilever, but never actually saw them. The Kirana store was literally full of them and he had them for all kinds of goods - detergent, soap, shampoo, shaving cream, even food - the list goes on and on. These sachets started at Rs 0.50, which is equivalent to just over a penny in US currency. The surprising thing is that even at this price point, the companies that sell them are highly profitable. To put that in perspective - to earn a profit, the company has to spend less than $0.01 per package for everything from manufacturing to packaging to transporting the sachet to even the remotest villages (which in India is no easy feat.)
Pic 8 & 9: Sachets
After we finished the interviews, we whipped out our lunch - some delicious, custom-made, authentic Subway sandwiches. After that on the drive home, we saw the most interesting tractor you will ever hear about... but you will have to wait for John to blog about that... stay tuned!!!
Monday, March 10, 2008
The Inno-Ventures House Pics
Pic 1: Innosight Ventures Chennai House
Pics 2 & 3: Two views of the main desk (okay, it's a dining table but it works)
Pic 4: Couch & TV (this is part of our working area)
Pic 5: Additional chair/bean bag; the pink paper tray was Hari's idea
Pic 6: The more comfortable "work stations"
Pic 7: Bed in hallway (for Boston visitors)
Pic 8: "THE RIDE" (okay, it's a rental)
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