India Billionaires: So why am I not ecstatic?

Forbes just released its list of billionaires and there are 4 (not 1 not 2.. but 4) Indians in the top 10 - at 4,5,6 and 8 we have Lakshmi Mittal, Mukesh and Anil Ambani and KP Singh. If you grew up in India like I did - where the only foreign coverage we saw was BBC pictures of starving children or worse stories of "Suttee" and "thuggery" this is great news- its about India "arriving", India "shining" etc. Not only that I am personally a beneficiary of their endeavors: I am thankful for my flat in Gurgaon, great phone connectivity everywhere in India and not to forget - that Reliance data card - slow as it is - that gives me internet access from anywhere, everywhere in India.

So why am I not ecstatic? Because India's dreams are not big enough. Because I can't help but think that India could do more- we are not living upto the innovation potential of the full billion people. Wouldn't it be great if Gurgaon had green buildings? Ones that wouldn't have to run Diesel generators but could still have power 24/7? Better infrastructure? Is there enough investment in new R&D suitable for India's climate? Like Solar? Wind?

Technology can create wealth - Bill Gates (and the rest) has proven that over and over again. How about now we employ technology that will also distribute the wealth instead of making the income gap larger - especially in India where a majority still lives on less than $4/day.

India Rail Story. Continued...get tickets with Mobile phones

A few months back when I was on my way to India, I made online reservations for a train journey in India sitting here in Palo Alto - something travel agents in India had a hard time doing. I wrote a blog on it. The point of the story, ofcourse, which many people missed - inferring from the comments, was how empowering the internet is but so many in India do not have internet access and are not expected to get it anytime soon.

Well here is the good news - my blog readers may have missed the point but the Indian Railways didn't (yes I take full credit for this development!). "In a rare example of action pre-empting intention, mobile rail ticketing had already been in use for several months before Railway Minister Lalu Prasad announced it as one of the highlights in his budget to modernize train reservations. The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corp Ltd (IRCTC), a division of Indian Railways which issues tickets to about 15 million passengers daily, launched IRCTCmobile (link to article) services to provide "cutting-edge technology" developed by C-SAM inc. IRCTCmobile, which is device and network agnostic, allows passengers to perform various services such as book tickets using credit and cash cards, view train schedules, check availability, get fares, perform inquiries and access many other associated information services through mobile phones. "

'"IRCTCmobile is a great example of how the most advanced mobile technology can be deployed in a country like India to benefit the masses, including people at the bottom of the pyramid," Pitroda said.

Given the size of the Indian Railways and the rapid growth of mobilephones in India, This stands to becomeone of the largest mobile phone applications in the world - benefiting all involved.

Give them technology!

Can Text Messaging do Social Good? Ask NETWAS

Back in November 2007, in partnership with Kiwanja.net we launched a competition- to encourage text messaging for social good.

The idea was simple: more people have cell phones than internet so more people could innovate socially motivated phone system than an internet based system. So we invited NGOs from developing countries to submit a short proposal outlining how text messaging could make their job easier. At this time we're delighted to announce the winners of the inaugural nGOmobile competition. With over seventy entries from all corners of the globe, judging was a real challenge with the standard of entries incredibly high. Listen to the winners announcement on the BBC World Service here (MP3)

According to the Judges: "the sheer inventiveness of the submissions made judging the competition a real pleasure. We think we've chosen winners who combine creativity with the ability to deliver, and look forward to seeing how they progress" The top four are:

Entry name: Participatory rapid response forest management system
Organisation: Centre for Training and Integrated Research for ASAL Development Project Manager: Francis Kamau
Country: Kenya
Project summary: CETRAD is working with local communities to promote the protection and sustainable use of environmental resources. They plan to implement messaging services to help with reporting, field communications and to provide an early warning system to help combat poaching and illegal logging

Entry name: Ask NETWAS a water, sanitation and hygiene question and get an answer
Organisation: Network for Water and Sanitation
Project Manager: Cate Nimanya
Country: Uganda
Project summary: NETWAS plans to launch an SMS-based service for rural communities allowing them to ask a range of water-based questions on topics such as sanitation, hygiene, water harvesting, and water technologies

Entry name: SMS at the service of healthy forests and families and empowerment of women
Organisation: The Equilibrium Fund
Project Manager: Cecilia Sanchez Garduno
Country: Mexico
Project summary: This project seeks to help rural Central American and Mexican communities solve problems of deforestation, poverty, malnutrition, unemployment and the marginalisation of women using SMS to improve a range of communications and provide market data, training and advice

Entry name: Count to 5! Campaign
Organisation: Digital Development
Project Manager: Razi Nurullayev
Country: Azerbaijan
Project summary: This campaign will use text messaging to help grassroots and politically excluded people understand their human and legal rights, and to engage them further in the political process

Do check out details and pics on the ngoMobile site.
Many thanks to our sponsors. We will be doing this again and if you wish to sponsor in any way (laptops, phones, PR) we welcome your help

2008 Social Capitalist Awards : FastCompany

Check it out - useful list with pointers to - in their view- the best in the field

MMM Good: Social Entrepreneurship Day at Stanford

As Social Entrepreneurs we must routinely flirt with Media and Money. The event at Stanford on Sunday (info in my previous blog) was an incredible such opportunity. But if you missed the Feb 24 event -not to worry. Catch up in the blogosphere. I am still pretty caught up with eweek so will get to my musings later but I wanted to get the ball rolling - For starters let me point you to great pics from Mitchell Tsai and a detailed writeup on the panelists from Project View John Kuner.

For the panel - Kriss pointed out that the debate was not about "what is social entrepreneurship?" - an endless and incredily engaging topic in and of itself - but about "how to be a social entrepreneur" by showing the Greg Dees definition of social entrepreneurship. For me this really set the tone of the event in a positive fashion - less intellectualizing and more action. All the panelists were stellar in providing practical "how to" advice. I liked "Do Good Smart" from Jessica who said she first heard it from someone else.

Digital Vision Fellows - that's us showcasing projects in all areas from Tele-medicine to Digital Big Game- attending "in the flesh" and "in the virtual" created an incredible buzz with their passion and energy. I met some new people and we all made new connections and partnerships that should further the cause of social entrepreneurship.

Ah yes - in answwer to the question "what else is the one thing, besides money, a social entrpreneur needs?" - the answer was - "Mentor" - and talking about mentors Stanford eweek is piloting a program called "Coaches On Call" a mentor match up program -

MMM Good is my summary: for social entrepreneurs - easy to remember- MMM - its Mentor (to bounce ideas in a supportive fashion), Money (SE is a new business model so it is extra efffot getting started and be prepared to do something fo a while before you get any), Media (get the word out and let them find you) but most importantly "Moi" - i.e that's you - the social entrepreneur - its about your focus, your passion and your leadership that will get the M3 chasing you an not the other way round.

Or, to quote: Just do it!

gotta go -

Give Them Technology

One month after announcing the world’s cheapest car — the $2,500 Tata Nano — India has unveiled the telecommunications equivalent: the $20 “people’s phone.” Developed by Spice, the Indian telecoms group that is listed in Bombay and worth $2 billion, is angled at the very lowest end of the market.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,330784,00.html
http://www.india-forums.com/news/article.asp?id=75438
I think the world ought to sit up and take notice. These are early indicators of a change in the making. An important change; a great change: where lower cost comes from reducing non-essential features in product design not from using older, cheaper technology developed for a market with completely different economic drivers.
For years technology has been associted with “expensive”, “complicated” and most importantly “irrelevant” for the poor or people living on less than $2/day. This is a red herring. Give them food, give them medicines and ah yes give them education; but technology?
Yes technology - the best and latest technology; the kind developed for the market that represents the next billion.
Affordability and access (communiction, transportation) are backbones of productivity - imagine what the world would look like if not just two billion but the gobal population, 6.6 billion people, were engaged in the innovation process!

Invitation Social Entrepreneurship Day, Feb 24, Stanford

You are invited to a free panel discussion on funding social enterprises, and a Social Entrepreneur Showcase, sponsored by the Center for Social Innovation and the Stanford Social Innovation Review, and the Digital Vision Program this Sunday, February 24, at Wallenberg Hall, Stanford University, from 3:00-5:00 PM. The event is part of an exciting week of activities for Entrepreneurship Week at Stanford University.
Kriss Deiglmeier, executive director of the Center, will moderate a lively discussion among funders of social enterprises and their grantees, including: o Jenny Shilling Stein, executive director of the Draper Richards Foundation o Jessica Jackley Flannery, cofounder and director of business development of Kiva.org o Amy Clark, Global Fellows Program Leader at Ashoka o Suzanne McKechnie Klahr, Ashoka Fellow and founder of BUILD The event is open to all, with no registration required (but we recommend that you arrive early). For more information, visit eweek.stanford.edu. Immediately afterwards, from 4:00-5:00 PM in Wallenberg Hall, the Stanford Digital Vision Program will host a fair showcasing social entrepreneurs from around the world. Meet these entrepreneurs in person and learn about the innovative IT-based applications they have developed in the areas of health, education, and financial services.

Entrepreneurship Week, Stanford Feb 22-29

Stanford e-week is coming up ( eweek.stanford.edu) and Social Entrepreneurship Day is Sunday Feb 24, Wallenberg Hall, from 3-5: agenda is
Panel – Funding Social Enterprises 3-4 (this one is being put up by Center for Social Innovation)
Showcase of Social Entrepreneurs 4-5 (this one is being put up by Digital Vision Program - that's us!)
See you there.

TATA Nano : is it Social Entrepreneurship?

I am just back from India after a two month stay touring all sorts of places – and I have decided India is two (at least two) parallel universes – intertwined but unconnected….and maybe just maybe…. The TATA Nano will provide a connection – and that’s social entrepreneurship- at least in the India context.

New Market: The Nano (the people’s car) target market is the 4 person family who cannot afford a car today - so along with folks in the large cities who can afford the SUVs– there will be a big rural demand for this car – i.e. a whole new market will be opened and a productivity and lifestyle improvement created that will benefit the India economy – and that means the global economy. This is the point critics of the Nano in India are missing as they envision choked (as if they can get any more choked) city streets.

Eco-friendly: The green-guys are missing the point that the Nano is pretty eco-friendly car (better mileage than Prius, same emisions as a scooter). If Tata can make enough Nanos to enter the export market and replace just the SUVs in Californmia that will take care of the added "Nano footprint".

Innovation: I believe it will spur innovation in the “green-car” space through competition – witness the announcements by almost all major car companies to do something including Ford. Since gas in India is almost twice what it costs in the US and the car is being sold to those who cannot really afford the gas – green alternatives will be developed – there is already talk of the e-nano and India does have the technology – witness the Reva electric car at Rs. 4 lakhs – catering mainly to the export market.

I used to be in the "Nano-is-disaster" camp but after being on the ground -in the target market for the car where it is the realization of a dream - I am a convert. I just hope TATA can make it to keep up with demand and it does not end up in the black market.

Check out the article Nano- hypocrisy below:
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5579
"Social Entrepreneurship will be no different from "core business" as the TATA Nano will demonstrate." says Gerardo Rego. I agree.

An Internet Story - India Rail tickets

Its much easier to make reservations for travel in India from US than from India. Sitting here in Silicon Valley, I could make reservations on Indian Railways that professional travel agents in Delhi could not! This past week, I have personally experienced internet power. We are planning an India trip and for various reasons decided to take an overnight train. We contacted friends; asked travel agents but no luck- either no tickets available or try later- then it occured to us to try the internet ourselves- from the land of unlimited bandwidth - we were able to log in right away to a friendly Indian Railways screen, get all information, reserve, make payments and were done in ten minutes. I found out later that the travel agents in India also try to do the same thing - but in India where only one in 3 computers is networked and bandwidth is unrelible - they could not do it and eventully they do it through a courier - just like the old days!