MORE IDEAS FOR ENTREPRENEURS

Here are some more ideas for entrepreneurs:

 

1. Gift Certificates – I just wanted to buy gift certificates for some of my relatives for a trip to Goa. Can you imagine that none of the Airlines nor hotels or resorts offer gift certs in India?

Gift Certs are big business in other countries particularly in the US. During Christmas time, these are in big demand. From malls, to hotels to Airlines to any kind of services, you can buy and gift it using a gift cert. No so in India. Why hasn’t any one thought of it?

2. Toilet Deodorant dispensers -  Been a restaurant/Hotel/Airport/Office loo. Ah…the familiar odor in the Urinal. Those which don’t smell like a disaster, don’t smell good, to say the least. You will however, see the familiar toiler phenyl balls or tablets either in the Urinal or hung from the wall. The world has moved to sophisticated self dispensed toilet deodorants with timers, which make a loo smell atleast as good as your temple….if not better. Remember, “…Your Bathroom is a room too.” advertisement? Someone wake up the Janitorial products providers in India. Kimberly-Clark?  

 

3. Taxi bill printers – So your boss has just accused you of padding up your conveyance bills on your last travel, ha? No need to worry. Show him a printed auto or taxi bill next time. Ah.. but for that you’d have to be in Singapore. Better still, you could be paying your taxi bill using your credit card. How convenient. So how come, with 70,000 autos in Bangalore alone, nobody thought of installing an auto bill printer. It is not that expensive.
4. Buko Pies  & Philippine Cigars  -  This one is for the bakers and the chefs. ‘Buko’ is Coconut in Malay/Filipino. The tender coconut with its abundant milk-cream is the raw material. Rest is all like it is in any pie. And the Cigars- few people know that when the Spaniards came to discover the Philippine islands, they planted tobacco leaves they got from the South American countries/ Mexico, perhaps Cuba as well. The Philippine cigars are good quality, they just don’t have the resources to market them to the world. This is an opportunity waiting to be tapped.

 

 

 

Village Enterpreneurs

By The People, For The People

An organisation that hunts down rural innovators and turns their efforts into marketable options

Two years ago, Joy John Thengumkudiyal of Kerala had improvised the JS milker, a simple vacuum-driven device to draw milk from buffaloes. Unfortunately, he was able to sell just three of four of them in a month. Then Rural Innovations Network (RIN), a Chennai-based non-profit organisation established in 2001, got in touch with John Thengumkudiyal—thereby adding meaning to the Joy in his name. RIN has managed to improve sales to 25 units per month.

Amudha Palanivelu who till recently used to physically milk seven cows now uses Joy’s JS Milker. It costs just Rs 7,700 as against the electronic milker priced at Rs 60,000 . RIN was started by Paul Basil, an engineer by training who was keen to turn devices like these into commercially viable products. "We picked up rural innovations depending on the impact they would have. Cost and energy efficiency combined with a commitment to eco-friendliness have been the key elements," says

Basil. Today, RIN deals with 11 innovations. "We nurture the creativity of rural innovations by providing links to research and technical institutes and assisting with product development," says P. V Vijay, chief operating officer of RIN. For the team at RIN, sustainable development becomes more sustainable if the enterprise is based on local needs, utilises local knowledge and is commercially viable. Other innovations in RIN’s portfolio include the varsha rain gun, venus kerosene burner, a banana stem injector, and bio asthira which gives paddy and turmeric farmers a less expensive, fully natural, eco-friendly solution to pest management. Anna Saheb, a 70-year-old sugarcane farmer of Sadalga village in Belgaum district, Karnataka, made the varsha rain gun (Rs 6,000). Varsha saves 40-50 per cent of water used for irrigation, besides saving irrigation time, power and labour consumption. RIN incubated the rain gun and facilitated a technology transfer agreement between Anna Saheb and Servals Automation Pvt Ltd, a Chennai-based company that also makes and markets the venus kerosene stove burner. Developed by V. Thiagarajan, an engineer, it is energy-efficient for kerosene stoves tested by the Central Scientific Instruments Organisation (CSIO) and Anna University. The banana stem injector (Rs 500) was developed by Manoharan, a lathe owner. It injects pesticides into the pseudo-stem of the diseased banana, thus providing assured relief from stem borer, wilt and weevil attacks. One of RIN’s major successes has been the varun tiller, manufactured and marketed by Coimbatore-based Trident Dynamics. "This tiller is just 2.5 feet wide and can easily be manoeuvered in sugarcane and cotton fields and can also double up as a tractor," says K. Chandrasekhar, the innovator. Varun costs Rs 65,000 while its nearest competitor costs Rs 1,10,000. Since varun can be used for weeding operations even three months after the crop is sown, it effectively displaces weedicides and thus also reduces the chemical input into the soil. Trident sold some 120 units in three years, but after RIN entered the picture, sales are touching 120 units a year. The end users too seem happy. Amudha Palanivelu of Athanur, Namakkal, who till recently used to physically milk seven cows every morning today not only uses Joy’s JS milker, but has recommended it to 15 other farmers. Costing Rs 7,700 against an electronic machine’s Rs 60,000, the vacuum milker is one of RIN’s most sought after products. Next in line is a water harvester that will use solar energy to convert salt water to drinking water. If this materialises, millions of Indians will thirst for RIN’s success. Write to Rural Innovations Network Foundation, No. 9, 2nd Floor, Kanakasri Nagar, Cathedral Road, Chennai 600 086. Tel: 91 44 2811 2108. Email:info@rinovations.org

 

 

Gaurav Agarwal

Manager-Airline Relations

Bangalore International Airport Limited

118, Gayatri Lakefront, Outer Ring Road

Bangalore-560024

E-Mail: ga@bialairport.com

 

Tel + 91 80 2354 0000.

Direct + 91 80 2217 6290

Mbl + 91 9343864060

Fax + 91 80 2333 3400

URL: www.bialairport.com

 

The Man Who Caught Rain

In Vidarbha's parched Morshi tehsil, a retired IPS officer shows how to harvest rainwater

Many wonder what keeps 75-year-old Suryakant Jog so active. For the former dgp, retired life isn’t about relaxing in his armchair and complaining about the system.... As active as ever, the ex-cop has embarked upon a mission with a difference. He now helps people harvest rainwater to ensure that they can tide over the dry summer months. Jog’s focus is Vidarbha’s Morshi tehsil, his home turf, where the parched landscape is a grim reminder of how the mindless extraction of groundwater has pushed the water table to an alarming low.

Confronted with a severe water crisis in Chikhaldara, Vidarbha’s only hill station, Jog’s innovative idea to harvest rainwater has helped the area save 10 crore litres of water. With inventive rainwater harvesting, Jog is now turning things around. "Our measures are simple, inexpensive and effective," he says. He is quite confident that the orchards in the area will bloom once again. Jog, who joined the IPS in 1953, was never one to rest on his laurels. Less than four years after retiring

in 1987, he started a residential school at Chikhaldara, Vidarbha’s only hill station. He was immediately confronted by the water crisis in the area. The locals had to buy water despite an annual rainfall of 75 inches. The water crisis was so severe during the summers that Jog had to close down his school for a month during the first two years. While looking for a solution, Jog recalled his childhood meeting with an old lady who collected rainwater falling on her cottage roof and used it all year round. In 1997, convinced that this could bail the school out of its water shortage, Jog installed corrugated sheets and the necessary piping on the 6,000-sq ft roof of the school hostel and collected as much as 3,00,000 litres of water in six specially built tanks. Basic calculations suggested that even this was less than a third of what could have been collected. The school started saving enough water for the dry months. Even eight months after the monsoons, the water was found to be potable. More importantly, it cost only Rs 2.25 per litre, which was far more economical than the prevalent supply systems. With this water already catering to the 500-odd residents of the nearby Pandhari village, Jog wants to extend the concept to more villages. Initially there were very few takers. Many did not believe that harvesting rainwater was a solution or that the water could be retained for months together. Jog had to literally prove that what he was mooting made sense. He set out on his task despite the sceptics. To harvest rainwater draining off the asphalt roads, Jog constructed simple gabion embankments (a structure made of stone strung together with a wire mesh to hold water) in the space between a 15-kilometre stretch of the Morshi-Warud highway and the neighbouring fields. Undeterred by those who doubted his single-handed effort, Jog got the Central Road Research Institute to certify that it was safe to construct these structures four feet below the road level to discourage the water’s capillary action from damaging the surface. To prevent flooding of the fields, the gabions were raised 2 feet above the ground. Each of the 100 structures cost Rs 2,000. Barring some monetary help from the state, Jog himself bore most of the expenses. "Even with four major showers, these structures can collect 22 crore litres of water," he says. "And even if we are left with 10 crore litres after evaporation, it can still work wonders." Within a year, water in 82 nearby wells has surged by 8-10 feet. "With 11,000 kilometres of roads in Maharashtra alone, the idea holds immense promise," says Jog, who has now obtained permission to pilot a similar project along railway lines. Earlier this year, Jog constructed bunds across streaming nallahs at three locations in the Satpura hills. Each bund costing Rs 75,000 has resulted in 150-metre-long embankments storing up to 1 crore litres of water. By next year, Jog plans to extend this to 20 new locations. He only hopes that others will help him in his efforts.As he points out: "Like us, social organisations and MLAs can also raise money and easily replicate this initiative in their areas." Jog can be contacted at: Jog Bungalow, Camp, Amravati, Maharashtra-440602 Tel: (0721) 2662611 or (022) 22041704

 

PRAGYA-AN NGO MAKING A DIFFERENCE

Making a Difference         Outlook's weekly profile of people who work under wraps, beyond the laudatory limelight. Magazine | 19 Jun 2006

Sunil Pillai and Gargi Banerjee   Sow The Sun, Reap The Wind High up on the mountains, survival depends on how you tame the sun, wind and water to serve you At an altitude of 12,000 feet and above, you may not see activists sweating it out. For one, you need lung power. And you need to think different. That’s what Sunil Pillai and Gargi Banerjee did and the net result was an organisation—Pragya—that has made its mark in the higher reaches in areas like eco-conversation and snow harvesting. Sunil and Gargi were your ordinary townsmen looking for some adventure. It was in the course of one such adventure to Leh that the duo stepped back and wondered whether they could give back something to a region they had only taken away from. Pragya began more as a journey and ended as a full-fledged high-altitude NGO. "With most of the attention focused on the Bimaru states, there is very little focus on the Himalayas. With sparse population, most places are simply clubbed as retreats," says Gargi. It was 11 years ago that Pragya began its work of classifying medicinal and aromatic plants in right earnest. The traditional healers were taken into confidence and trained in the art of hardsell. Close to 59 species were identified and a threat assessment study done. Community plantations, kitchen gardens, nurseries followed in keeping with the NGO’s objective of an all-round development of the region. The efforts paid off, and also fetched the Whitley Award for International Nature Conservation in the year 2000—the Oscar equivalent in conservation. Pragya’s project areas are above 8,000 feet that remain under snow for more than six months in a year. It works in five Himalayan states—including Ladakh, J&K, Himachal Pradesh, Uttaranchal, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh. The organisation today has set up three ethnobotanic centres and five rural museums for the preservation of the local culture in the western and central Himalayas. The first-ever solar wind hybrid system was installed at an altitude of 14,000 feet in Lossar village of Lahaul and Spiti, which fetched another award—the International Energy Globe Award, 2005. The solar energy system today lights a rural library, serves 60 households and a weaving centre used by the women to weave carpets. As Gargi says, "At an altitude of 15,000 feet, you discover that the main sources of energy are wind, sun and water and you try to work them out to their optimum. We realised they had to be tapped." The future? Snow harvesting where trials are on to store snow to create snow reservoirs. Pragya will move on to climate change impact assessment, drought and disaster mitigation. Where else? At high altitudes. Contact A 212 A Sushant Lok 1, Gurgaon. Tel: 9810188166 —Anuradha Raman