SPAN May/June 2018

MAY/JUNE 2018 Rs. 20

Riding the Skill Skill Train Train Building With Bamboo with Bamboo Greenhouse In-A-Box

Social Entrepreneurs

Driving Growth and Innovation

I

t is now widely accepted that green growth is the need of the hour. Various sources of alternative energy—those not based on fossil fuels—are being explored around the world, including in India. One renewable power source that is available in abundance in the country is the Sun. Solar energy has the potential to not only help power India’s growing economy, but also make the growth cleaner and sustainable. Women, especially, benefit significantly from access to electricity in the home. Solar systems can provide power more affordably and safely, making cooking, studying and checking livestock easier. Thus, several governmental and nongovernmental organizations in the country are working to make solar power more accessible to people. One such organization is Ajaita Shah’s Frontier Markets.

The Rajasthan-based company sells solar energy products, aimed particularly at rural women, through existing shops and trained Solar Sahelis (solar friends), women who earn a stipend and commission to market these products. It also partners with

of Green Frontier Development

By NATASA MILAS

Frontier Markets

Photographs courtesy Frontier Markets

works to bring solar power to rural Rajasthan, focusing particularly on the needs of women.

A Solar Saheli showcases Frontier Markets’ Rakshak solar torch.

2 MAY/JUNE 2018

May/June 2018

V O LU M E L I X N U M B E R 3

https://span.state.gov

CONTENTS 2



Courtesy Weavesmart

Courtesy SkillTrain

14 35

Frontier of Green Development

26



Growing Naturally

7



Brake Through

28



Wealth for Knowledge

10



Wearable Self-Defense

30



Smart Diagnosis

12



Methane to Green Materials

32



Building With Bamboo

14



Riding the Skill Train

35

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19



Education Meets Engagement

38



The Cookstove Start-Up

Focus and Fusion

41



Greenhouse In-A-Box



Courtesy Rohini Dey/Vermilion

21

Courtesy Kheyti

21

Weaving Worldwide Connections

41 Editor in Chief Craig L. Dicker Printed and published by Jeffrey R. Sexton on behalf of the Government of the United States of America and printed at Thomson Press India Ltd., 18/35 Delhi Mathura Road, Faridabad, Haryana 121007 and published at the Public Affairs Section, American Embassy, American Center, 24 K.G. Marg, New Delhi 110001. Opinions expressed in this 44-page magazine do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Government.  Articles with a star may be reprinted with permission.

Those without a star are copyrighted and may not be reprinted.

Contact SPAN at 011-23472135 or editorspan@state.gov

Reviewing Editor Karl M. Adam

Editor Deepanjali Kakati Associate Editor Suparna Mukherji Hindi Editor Giriraj Agarwal Urdu Editor Syed Sulaiman Akhtar Copy Editors Bhawya Joshi, Shah Md. Tahsin Usmani Editorial Assistant Justina Bosco

Art Director Hemant Bhatnagar Deputy Art Directors Qasim Raza, Shah Faisal Khan Production/Circulation Manager Alok Kaushik Printing Assistant Manish Gandhi

Front cover: Erik Azulay, director of Nexus Incubator, with Sanjeev Arjun Gaur who, through his Nexus-supported start-up, Dhakka Brakes, has invented a device to ease the work of cycle rickshaw pullers.

Photograph by Hemant Bhatnagar.

Research Services : Bureau of International Information Programs, The American Library

Courtesy Frontier Markets

4 MAY/JUNE 2018

What motivated you to move from New York to Rajasthan?

I grew up in a Jain community in New York City, surrounded by my loving family. This upbringing shaped my life.

I did not know I would be an entrepreneur, but I did realize I had an entrepreneurial mindset and related skills when I started working in India. I was

GES 2017/Courtesy Flickr

Above: Ajaita Shah (center), co-founder of Frontier Markets, and Solar Sahelis showcase different solar products sold by the company.

Right: Shah (left) speaks at the 2017 Global Entrepreneurship Summit, held in Hyderabad.

local entrepreneurs, who sell clean-energy products under the brand name of Saral Jeevan.

Shah, co-founder and chief executive officer of Frontier Markets, was born and brought up in New York and earned her bachelor’s degree in international relations from Tufts University, Massachusetts. She has worked in the field of microfinance in India and was named one of Forbes magazine’s 30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneurs in 2014. Shah won the Global Innovation through Science and Technology (GIST) Catalyst pitch competition at the 2017 Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES), organized by the governments of the United States and India in Hyderabad.

Excerpts from an interview.

Frontier Markets www.frontiermkts.com

GIST Catalyst Pitch Competition is About More Than Just Winning

Go Online

https://goo.gl/WMgxE6

“

always drawn to the country because I could use my experiences in college and at work to address some of the challenges it faces.

I saw the need for solar energy solutions. I was able to leverage my Indian background and my ability to speak, read and write in Hindi to assimilate and understand the local culture in multiple states of the country. It is my passion to make a difference, to understand people, to connect with their lives and to try to understand ways to address challenges. India was the perfect place for Frontier Markets to launch.

What is “last mile distribution,” the concept by which Frontier Markets operates?

Frontier Markets believes that if we use the voice of the customer as our guide, we can truly create demand. Seventy percent of its product users are women and most are in the “last mile.” It has proved that women are best suited to gain the household’s trust; to capture, analyze and apply customer insights; and to build and capitalize on the rural market opportunity.

Our company has been a pioneer in taking a commercial approach to last mile distribution. It has optimized the entire value chain by putting women at the center and is now fueling it with customer data to scale.

Frontier Markets wants to expand income generation for women using an enterprisebased energy access toolkit, covering financial and digital access.

The company was set up to bring solar electricity access to rural Rajasthan, focusing particularly on the needs of women. We planned to sell our products through the existing rural shops to build a local presence and provide after-sales service. However, it would not have been easy for us to recruit or retain women in the more remote and conservative areas. Therefore, it made business sense to partner with NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] and government agencies, which had already developed the skills and capacities of local women through self-help groups.

These groups help Frontier Markets identify women with the potential to act not just as sales agents, but also as solar energy service providers, called Solar Sahelis (solar friends). Trained Solar Sahelis earn a stipend and commission to market products, educate potential users about the benefits of solar electricity, sign up customers, collect data, and provide a first point of contact for follow-ups and repairs.

What has been the impact of Frontier Markets?

Frontier Markets has recruited 1,000 women entrepreneurs who have successfully sold solar home lighting systems, solar agri appliances and clean cookstoves to 363,000 households in Rajasthan, impacting 3.1 million people. They have also supported 10,000 agri-livelihoods and generated 950,000 tons of carbon saving.

Please share your experience of the Global Innovation through Science and Technology Catalyst pitch competition at the 2017 Global Entrepreneurship Summit.

It was an incredible experience to prepare for such a competition. The GIST team worked really hard with us to help us understand how to share our work in three minutes, which is an unfamiliar task for most social entrepreneurs because our work is very intense and complicated. It was the first time I actually prepared a speech and delivered it.

GES brought together amazing people from across the globe. So, it was a nervewracking experience to speak in front of so many people. The judges were all inspirational and it was an honor to get feedback from them. I did not know whether I’d make it to the finals, but when that happened, I was pretty determined to win.

This was a hard feat because all the finalists are doing incredible work.

I was surprised and happy to hear that we won. Our work has such an important connection to the theme of the 2017 GES:

Frontier Markets has recruited 1,000 women entrepreneurs who have successfully sold solar home lighting systems, solar agri appliances and clean cookstoves to 363,000 households in Rajasthan, impacting 3.1 million people.

Photographs courtesy Frontier Markets

Women First, Prosperity for All. I am happy that the global community, especially the American and Indian governments, has finally noticed that if we focus on bringing women to the center of the value chain, massive impact can happen for everyone.

I was happy to hear that we had the support of Amazon, Google, Dell and others. I am really looking forward to working with both governments and corporate partners to leverage their resources and expertise to make our work even more effective.

Where do you see Frontier Markets in the next five years?

Our philosophy of building last-mile retail for solar energy products is working. We started growing and, suddenly, I am no longer an entrepreneur, but the CEO [chief executive officer] of a company. We have a 2020 vision of reaching over 5,000 women entrepreneurs and impacting one million lives in multiple states of India. I hope to achieve that goal, with my leadership team driving that movement, and hope to integrate our learnings into toolkits to help start-ups achieve impact in other countries as well.

Natasa Milas is a freelance writer based in New York City.

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Top: Frontier Markets trains rural women to sell and service its solar products for a stipend and commission.

Above: Frontier Markets co-founder Ajaita Shah shares how the company is empowering women to teach their communities about the benefits of using solar products, at the Global Innovation through Science and Technology Catalyst pitch competition at the 2017 Global Entrepreneurship Summit.

Brake

Through By

By HILLARY HILLARY HOPPOCK HOPPOCK

Dhakka Brakes

HEMANT BHATNAGAR

improves cycle rickshaw pullers’ work and safety standards.

Above: Sanjeev Arjun Gaur (left), inventor of Dhakka Brakes, with Erik Azulay, director of Nexus Incubator, which supports the start-up.

Photographs courtesy Sanjeev Arjun Gaur

“ ”

The NGOs we are in touch with want to buy products from us and give to rickshaw pullers who are associated with them.

Top: The braking system invented by Sanjeev Arjun Gaur (sanjeev@dhakkabrakes.com) uses a spring wound on the Dhakka Brakes device that helps store the momentum of the cycle rickshaw while braking and pushes the vehicle forward upon release of the brakes.

Above: Installation of Gaur’s Dhakka Brakes device makes cycle rickshaws safer, as braking is done in the rear, which bears most of the weight.

8 MAY/JUNE 2018

HEMANT BHATNAGAR

http://dhakkabrakes.com

Nexus Incubator

B

y nature, entrepreneurs are a curious bunch, doggedly determined to find a solution when presented with a challenge.

As is the case of Sanjeev Arjun Gaur, who through his startup, Dhakka Brakes, has invented a regenerative brake system designed to reduce the effort needed to operate a cycle rickshaw. It stores the momentum of the rickshaw while braking and pushes the vehicle forward upon release of the brakes.

Problem and solution

The idea came about one day when Gaur’s car broke down and he had to take a cycle rickshaw through New Delhi’s crowded streets. He observed how often the cycle rickshaw puller needed to brake on congested roads and the tremendous amount of physical energy it took to restart after that. Gaur noticed the pullers went to great lengths to avoid braking.

Cycle rickshaw pullers have to often manually pull or walk the vehicle on congested roads after braking, which could be as frequent as every two minutes over a three- to fourkilometer stretch. Gaur spoke to many cycle rickshaw pullers and determined that it takes four to five times their energy and physical strength to restart the vehicle.

“It struck me that I could design a braking device with a spring that conserves the rickshaw’s energy, normally wasted during braking, to propel the rickshaw forward during restart,” recalls Gaur.

And he did. But, it took him seven years and six iterations to come up with this final cost-effective device. By replacing a bearing with a sprocket, he reduced the device cost by Rs. 500, for a total cost of Rs. 2,500 per device. Gaur also modified the design to reduce the sound and weight of the device. “The first prototype was around 22 kilograms and made a huge sound upon restarting, which we worked to change again and again—six times over a period of seven years. It took so much time to make the mechanical device right.” He thought of giving up due to the huge, self-borne cost. “I wondered if I should go further, as it was affecting my bread-and-butter work of fabricating products and exhibition stalls for advertising. But somehow, I kept at it.

And now, we have a device that is practical and just seven kilograms in weight.”

The mechanical braking system uses a spring wound on the

https://startupnexus.net/

Millennium Alliance

Go Online

Dhakka Brakes

www.millenniumalliance.in Dhakka Brakes device fitted to the rear axle. “Since cycle rickshaws presently use front-wheel brakes, the vehicles are unsafe and prone to overturning. Installation of the Dhakka Brakes makes the vehicles safer, as braking is done in the rear, which bears most of the weight,” explains Gaur.

Guidance and support Dhakka Brakes is supported by the Nexus Incubator startup hub at the American Center New Delhi, a collaboration with the IC2 Institute of The University of Texas at Austin.

Gaur participated in a 10-week training program by Nexus, which helped him with, “opening quite a lot of doors, gaining amazing knowledge and making contacts with manufacturers, distributors and micro-finance companies.” He was gratified for the support offered to him for “applying a good idea, as well as for the affirmation that ‘it can be done.’” The training also provided Gaur information on how to market his product and make it profitable.

The start-up has been awarded a grant of Rs. 10 lakhs by the Millennium Alliance, a platform to support innovators with services like seed funding and incubation, under the aegis of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, U.S. Agency for International Development, the Technology Development Board and other partners.

Thanks to this funding, Dhakka Brakes is poised to manufacture, install and test its devices on 100 cycle rickshaws in New Delhi.

Road ahead After installation and testing of his regenerative brake system through the grant, Gaur looks forward to starting the manufacturing and assembly of the product. He plans to produce more than 500 units, initially, for distribution in New Delhi. “The NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] we are in touch with want to buy products from us and give to rickshaw pullers who are associated with them,” he says. In the long run, Gaur hopes to expand Dhakka Brakes to markets across the country.

Hillary Hoppock is a freelance writer, former newspaper publisher and reporter based in Orinda, California.

MAY/JUNE 2018 9

W With Defendables, entrepreneur

Kristi Gorinas is making self-protection discreet and easy for women.

hen Kristi Gorinas founded Defendables, her company that makes wearable self-defense products like the one containing the strongest form of pepper spray available, her mission was personal.

“As a survivor of assault when I was 19, and now a mom of five girls, I wanted something for us to protect ourselves with,” she says.

Defendables come as small, wearable pods that can shoot pepper spray up to three to six feet away. They incorporate a dual-step trigger for releasing the spray, so that it does not get accidentally dispensed. The pods are discreet and can easily be clipped on to pants, shoes, bra straps, caps, bags or car visors.

Gorinas’ personal goal has now gone global, as she placed second in one of the divisions of the Global Innovation through Science and Technology (GIST) Catalyst competition at the 2017 Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES), held in Hyderabad. In addition to the exposure to investors the competition provided to her, Gorinas won $20,000 [Rs. 1,300,000 approximately] worth of Google Cloud credits, $5,000 [Rs. 325,000 approximately] in Amazon credits and a Dell laptop, in recognition of her work at Defendables.

The experience at the summit was “like no other,” says Gorinas. “The diversity and new languages I heard were amazing. India treated delegates from all countries like royalty and shared its culture in those few days. I’ve been to many conferences with investors and entrepreneurs, but GES was different in that the investors really sought out opportunities and there was real interest in helping every participant be successful.”

Gorinas happened upon the opportunity to

be a part of the summit by chance.

“I saw a Facebook post from [First Daughter] Ivanka Trump stating entrepreneurs should apply online to be chosen as a U.S. delegate to participate,” she says. “I believe there were over 15,000 applicants from the U.S. alone.”

While Defendables won recognition at the summit for its role in women’s safety, the product is designed to reach a much broader population.

“Assailants don’t discriminate, and young kids, teens and women seem to be the biggest targets,” says Gorinas. “However, men are also physically attacked and assaulted, and the elderly are a huge target too. So, my audience is any adult.” For kids, she’s planning to develop a self-defense product that does not include pepper spray.

As the product line evolves, Gorinas plans to integrate a Global Positioning System (GPS) for locating and an emergency notification system that works without Bluetooth or pairing with a smart device. She cautions, however, that while this feature would notify loved ones of a person’s whereabouts, it is secondary to the pepper spray, which offers immediate protection from an attacker. The Defendables line will also eventually include a 120-decibel alarm, audible from more than 600 feet away, to help scare off attackers.

Gorinas has a long history of working as an entrepreneur. She started inventing baby products 10 years ago and continues to conceive of consumer goods she would herself use to “simplify life,” she says. She has also spoken at Disney Social Media Moms’ events, as well as on Capitol Hill, including four times

Wearable

By CARRIE LOEWENTHAL MASSEY

10 MAY/JUNE 2018

Go Online Defendables https://goo.gl/ H88tYD

2017 Global GIST Catalyst Entrepreneurship Pitch Summit Competition www.ges2017.org

https://goo.gl/ yUoaXH

Carrie Loewenthal Massey is a New York Citybased freelance writer.

Above right: Kristi Gorinas, founder and chief executive officer of Defendables, at the 2017 Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Hyderabad.

Below and below far right: Defendables sells small, wearable pods filled with pepper spray, to help defend against attackers.

To share articles go to https://span.state.gov MAY/JUNE 2018 11

Photographs courtesy Kristi Gorinas

to members of the U.S. Congress on the topics of entrepreneurship, inventing, licensing and patents.

Gorinas’ long-term goal with Defendables is to launch a home-party concept that will include an education session on the use of self-defense products and training on situational awareness and personal safety. The parties will provide a platform for selling the Defendables products, alongside home security systems by SABRE, the company that manufactures and distributes Defendables.

Gorinas is on track to realize her long-term vision for Defendables: providing the product for free to those “most in need—in shelters and colleges, and the homeless—and to educate on the necessity of being prepared to defend yourself 24/7.”

Methane to Green

Mango Materials transforms harmful methane gas into biopolymers that can compete with oil-based plastics and materials like polyester.

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I

Materials

By STEVE FOX

t’s the pioneers who ask questions like: “What if we could convert a greenhouse gas that’s damaging our planet into an environmentfriendly alternative to conventional plastic; something that could be used to make children’s toys and clothing?”

In this case, the gas is methane, which the Environmental Defense Fund estimates to be responsible for about one-quarter of man-made global warming. And the pioneer is Molly Morse, chief executive officer of Mango Materials, a San Francisco Bay Area-based company that has developed innovative technologies to convert methane into biopolymers, a competitor to conventional oil-based plastics.

The chemistry, based on the intellectual property from Morse’s Ph.D. research, is a bit complicated. The payoff, however, is straightforward. Instead of allowing methane from landfills, dairy farms and other sources to erode the ozone layer further, Mango Materials transforms the gas into biopolymers that can be used to manufacture children’s toys, shampoo bottles, electronics packaging, clothing and other products.

This win-win proposition arose from an inspiration she had as a young girl in a California elementary school, says Morse.

“My class went on a field trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. There was an exhibit showing a large fish tank full of Styrofoam clam shells used for fast food. It was the volume that was used every minute or hour or something like that. Whatever it was, I was completely floored—so much single-use, wasted material going to landfills! I decided right then that I was going to change it. And I am still working on that, three decades later.”

Mango Materials, whose name comes from Morse’s favorite fruit and was chosen to make the company seem approachable and ecofriendly, has made significant progress. Its pilot facility, located at a wastewater treatment plant in Redwood City, California, converts methane into biodegradable plastic substitutes. One version can become toys and packaging. Another, called polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs), can be spun into thread. Because PHAs are biological versions of polyester, clothing made from these fibers will biodegrade naturally, releasing new methane that can be recaptured and converted into PHAs again. Should clothing made from PHA fibers wind up in the ocean, marine organisms could digest it, unlike the Styrofoam that sparked Morse’s quest.

Morse, company co-founders Anne Schauer-

Go Online

Mango Materials

http://mangomaterials.com

2017 Global Entrepreneurship Summit

www.ges2017.org

Environmental Defense Fund

www.edf.org

National Science Foundation

www.nsf.gov

Right: Molly Morse, chief executive officer, Mango Materials.

Above: Mango Materials co-founders Anne SchauerGimenez (from left), Allison Pieja and Morse at the company’s pilot facility at a wastewater treatment plant in Redwood City, California.

Above left and below: PHA fibers, derived from the conversion of methane, at the facility, can be used to make biodegradable clothing.

Mango Materials has won a number of accolades, including a U.S. National Science Foundation grant. Morse won the Amazon “Women’s First” prize at the 2017 Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES), held in Hyderabad.

“I had a wonderful time in India and it was my first visit there on behalf of Mango Materials,” she says. “Winning the Women First award was an unexpected honor. It has been thrilling to be recognized so widely for all the effort we have put in to make this technology a reality. We still have a long way to go. But this accolade helps to remind myself and my team that what we are doing matters on a global scale.”

Photographs courtesy Molly Morse

Gimenez and Allison Pieja, and the Mango Materials team are working to make their products cost-competitive with existing plastic products, which are derived primarily from petroleum. It’s a difficult challenge, and Morse now spends much of her time spreading the word about the company’s mission.

“Mango Materials is going after an infrastructure-scale challenge. And our competitors—low-cost, high-volume, persistent, petroleum-based plastics—have many decades of head start and billions of dollars invested. Finding appropriate funding is definitely the biggest challenge.”

Mango Materials is on track for prototype projects, with larger-scale production of its polymers coming in about two years, says Morse. Achieving commercial volumes can level the playing field by making the company’s products a realistic alternative to existing plastics, which are currently cheaper but are harmful to the environment.

“The Mango Materials technology can be price-competitive when at full commercial scale. We just need to get there,” says Morse.

Success will be when the company is producing double-digit millions of pounds of its polymers and is cash flow positive, she adds.

Steve Fox is a freelance writer, former newspaper publisher and reporter based in Ventura, California.

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Riding the Skill Train Photographs courtesy SkillTrain

By TREVOR LAURENCE JOCKIMS

14 MAY/JUNE 2018

Fulbrighter Ganesh Balasubramanian’s SkillTrain provides technology-enabled vocational training on various skills to rural school dropouts and urban youth.

M

illions of children drop out of school every year in India. They fail to go for mainstream education for several reasons, including ineligibility, their family’s financial conditions and regulatory requirements. Regular vocational training is not an option for many of these dropouts not only because of financial barriers, but also because it often becomes difficult to reach people in remote areas.

The outcome is shortage of trained manpower and unemployment.

What if it were possible to combine the power of online, mobile learning with person-to-person training and official certification in a number of well-paying trades? And, what if this system could reach remote locations across India? All this has been made possible by SkillTrain, a technology-enabled vocational training organization.

To share articles go to https://span.state.gov MAY/JUNE 2018 15

Photographs courtesy SkillTrain

Clockwise from above right: SkillTrain offers training programs on vocational skills like repairing of mobile phones and computer hardware, and tailoring, at different centers in India.

16 MAY/JUNE 2018

SkillTrain uses a blended learning format of online and offline training to impart skills like repairing of mobiles, electronics, computers and electrical appliances as well as plumbing and masonry to rural school dropouts and urban youth. These skills enable them to become selfemployed or employable.

Established in 2013, the organization has developed video content on 13 of these skills in Hindi. These videos are offered for free on mobile phones and through online channels.

This is followed up by on-the-field practical training, evaluation, certification and employment support for successful learners.

SkillTrain has been founded by Fulbright Fellow Ganesh Balasubramanian, who acts as its chief executive officer. He is a social entrepreneur and has set up seven vocational training institutes across Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan.

Excerpts from an interview.

What would participants who have found employment after the successful completion of your program have done without SkillTrain?

Without SkillTrain, the candidates would have explored the possibility of doing a paid training program in a nearby city or town, if they could afford it. Otherwise, many of them would have worked as manual laborers or farmers. Some would have just remained unemployed or eked out a living through odd jobs.

Could you give us an idea about the income level of a successful graduate of SkillTrain?

Typically, a successful graduate from SkillTrain can earn between Rs. 4,000 and Rs. 5,000 per month once they complete any of our basic courses. However, if they come back and finish higher-level courses, their income levels can go up to anything between Rs. 15,000 and Rs. 18,000 per month.

“

The Fulbright Fellowship was the seed that helped me build SkillTrain. My research during my Fulbright Fellowship was on using technology to enable mass vocational education.

Photographs courtesy SkillTrain

”

Clockwise from top: SkillTrain participants get training in beauty and wellness, home appliance repairing and

audio dubbing. The organization offers its courses on a blended learning format—audio and video learning

combined with practical training at its certified training centers.

MAY/JUNE 2018

17

Above: SkillTrain members counsel a local resident in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, where it offers practical training support.

Below: The SkillTrain app helps users learn new skills or upgrade their existing ones.

Go Online

SkillTrain www.skilltrain.in

Ganesh Balasubramanian https://goo.gl/ecLTCW

Fulbright-Nehru Fellowships

Photographs courtesy SkillTrain

https://goo.gl/iBg5xQ

18 MAY/JUNE 2018

Shankar Prasad (center), Union minister of electronics & information technology, in 2015.

How has the SkillTrain app helped you reach more youth?

We launched the app on February 14, 2017.

It has been over a year and more than 15,000 students have registered through the app and are pursuing various courses.

Above: Ganesh Balasubramanian, founder of SkillTrain, receives a NASSCOM Social Innovation Forum’s Catalytic Grant from Ravi

How has your experience as a Fulbright scholar contributed to your success with SkillTrain?

The Fulbright Fellowship was the seed that helped me build SkillTrain. My research during my Fulbright Fellowship was on using technology to enable mass vocational education. During my research, I visited a number of institutions in the U.S., including the U.S. Department of Defense training center, Harvard Graduate School of Education and several community colleges to understand how technology is being used to deliver vocational training on a large scale.

on a sustained basis.

We have already launched the app in Kenya and are exploring possibilities of scaling it up to other countries.

What aspects do you consider most vital to the continued success of SkillTrain?

SkillTrain’s success hinges on the following three key aspects: First, the ability to create new content and courses in varied languages on newer skills; second, the ability to build new partnerships to help scale SkillTrain’s reach; and third, the ability to enable impact

Are there any success stories of participants you would like to share?

There are many such success stories. One of our learners, Naresh Kumar, in the town of Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh, was a school dropout and did not have any skills. He completed the course in three months and wanted to become an entrepreneur. One of the mentors from SkillTrain gave him directions on how to open a repairing shop. With this help, he started his own repairing shop in his village, Patan.

Similarly, a farmer, Ramgopal Dhakad, from Ratlam in Madhya Pradesh, registered for a SkillTrain basic electrical training course after he continuously faced problems in repairing the submersible motor pump used in his fields to water the crops. Within a month, he learned the basics of electrical repairing and was able to repair his motor pump by himself. He was so successful that his neighboring farmers and other villagers started calling him for electrical repair work in their houses and fields. This new skill has started giving him additional income to tide over low-income months, while giving him a lot more respect in his village.

Trevor Laurence Jockims teaches writing, literature and contemporary culture at New York University.

Courtesy Smart Kidz Club

Smart Kidz Club The

online portal offers illustrated and interactive e-books and resources to make learning fun for children.

EducationMeets

Engagement ABU HASAN AHMAD/iStock/Thinkstock

By BURTON BOLLAG

Above right: Surinder Sharma, co-founder and chief executive officer of Smart Kidz Club.

W

orld over, parents struggle to get their children off computer screens and video game consoles. As a mother of two, who had moved to Delaware from New Delhi, Surinder Sharma decided it was important to get them to read as she strongly felt that reading is a good alternative to video games.

But books are expensive, which can deter many people from buying them. And thus was born a business idea: creating and marketing children’s educational e-books. Since the books would not be printed, they would cost much less to produce, and distribution would be done entirely over the Internet.

Launched in 2013, Sharma’s U.S.-based company, Smart Kidz Club, Inc., has an online library of over 1,000 original e-books and other resources like e-flash cards. New content is added each week, produced by a network of more than 15

authors. The books are categorized by grade, age and reading level, for children between 1 and 11 years of age.

All the resources are intended to be educational and have a “read-along” option, which turns them into audio books at a mere click. The books also have interactive activities and comprehension quizzes, the answers for which are scored and the mistakes corrected.

Resources are divided into more than 35 categories, including Countries of the World, Amazing Earth, Religions of the World and Famous People of the World.

One interesting category is Character Building, with themes like honesty, selfesteem and bullying. Recently, Smart Kidz Club started adding content to teach mathematics. In all, 80 percent of the books and other products are nonfiction and 20 percent are fiction.

The books are colorful, with many

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“ ”

Photographs courtesy Smart Kidz Club

Right: Surinder Sharma (front left) with other participants at the 2017 Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Hyderabad.

Below and bottom: Screenshots from two e-books—“Festivals Around the World” and “Cooking with Cathy and Cody - Super Sandwiches”—available on the Smart Kidz Club website.

We offer curated, original content that enhances vocabulary and comprehension, while educating children about the world.

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20 MAY/JUNE 2018

illustrations, and quite short—the time to read each ranges from 5 to 15 minutes. Access to the whole collection is priced at $100 (Rs. 6,500 approximately) per year, or $10 (Rs. 650 approximately) per month, in the United States and Rs. 10,000 per year in India.

“We offer curated, original content that enhances vocabulary and comprehension, while educating children about the world,” says Sharma. She adds that while some children’s books are available for free online, many have no interactive features, and require considerable time and energy to find.

With Smart Kidz Club, Sharma says, “parents don’t have to worry about searching the Internet for appropriate materials.” It also has a free app for iOS, Android and Amazon platforms.

Based on her work, Sharma was selected to participate in the 2017 Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES), held in Hyderabad. The event, hosted by the United States and India, brought together emerging entrepreneurs and investors from around the globe. She was also a semifinalist in the Global Innovation through Science and Technology (GIST) Catalyst pitch competition, held on the sidelines of the summit.

The biggest benefit of attending the summit, says Sharma, was “networking with other entrepreneurs from around the world.” No matter where they hail from, “you can see they all face similar challenges.”

Currently, the company’s biggest clients are three private international schools in India. It also has a few individual subscribers in the United States, Australia and several other English-speaking countries. “Until now, we have been building the platform, finding resellers and adjusting the product for each market,” says Sharma.

She has begun marketing the service in anglophone East Africa. Her company has translated about 20 of the titles into Spanish and begun exploring the possibility of sales in the Spanishspeaking regions as well. “We think our business has a huge potential,” says Sharma.

Although all the content is educational, Smart Kidz Club tries to make its books and other products colorful and engaging, appealing to the innate curiosity that all children possess. “We make learning enchanting and fun,” says Sharma.

Burton Bollag is a freelance journalist living in Washington, D.C.

Smart Kidz Club

Amazing Earth

https://smartkidzclub.com/

https://smartkidzclub.com/ category/list/id/113

2017 Global Entrepreneurship Summit www.ges2017.org

Flash cards https://smartkidzclub.com/ news/index/id/226

BALL ALBANESE

Courtesy Rohini Dey/Vermilion

For renowned chef and entrepreneur Rohini Dey, innovative cooking is just the beginning.

Above: Caldeirada de Peixe, a Brazilian fusion seafood dish served at Rohini Dey’s (below) Vermilion, which melds Indian influences like fenugreek, garam masala and coconut milk.

Focus and Fusion

By MICHAEL GALLANT

To share articles go to https://span.state.gov MAY/JUNE 2018 21

R

coconut and curry flavors, earned the USA Today newspaper’s rank of the top dish worldwide, a mere two weeks after the restaurant opened. Magazines like Esquire and Bon Appétit also quickly fell in love with Vermilion, adding it to their “Best Restaurants” list.

Such early, meteoric success was no guarantee though, and Dey now wryly describes her decision to found a restaurant as “stupid and reckless in hindsight, especially as an outsider” to the restaurant world. It was a long-held love for Indian food, coupled with a desire to be an ambassador for Indian cuisine at a unique moment in time, that made her take the entrepreneurial plunge.

“I had spent over 15 years as a consultant, eating out compulsively on an expense

Photographs courtesy Rohini Dey/Vermilion

ohini Dey earned a Ph.D. in management science, worked for years at the World Bank in Washington, D.C., and traveled the world as a consultant for McKinsey & Company management consulting firm. But in 2004, she turned her back on this high-profile business career to do something completely different: start a restaurant.

Dey is the creator of Vermilion, a widelyacclaimed eatery in Chicago, Illinois, which fuses the cuisines of India and Latin America into unique and delicious results. Take for instance the Tandoori Skirt Steak, a favorite dish of Dey’s, which combines traditional Argentinian cuts of beef with Indian flavors like cumin, coriander, yogurt and garam masala. The restaurant’s Lobster Portuguese, a dish which melds succulent seafood with

Above left: Rohini Dey, who chose to fuse Indian and Latin American flavors in Vermilion partly because the culinary traditions share many common ingredients.

Above: The 3C spiced sangria, Vermilion’s signature herb and spice cocktail. The 3C stands for a clove, cinnamon and cardamom infusion.

22 MAY/JUNE 2018

Above far right: Peruvian ceviche, spiced with cumin and ginger.

Above right: Lobster Portuguese, a signature entrée at Vermilion.

Right: Many of Vermilion’s Indian entrées are served in a traditional tiffin-carrier.

Photographs courtesy Rohini Dey/Vermilion

“ ”

Our fusion of cuisines was unique and a lot of people asked about it. We stood out from the pack.

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account, and saw that new frontiers were booming,” says Dey. “There was a growing awareness of global cuisines like Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese food. My zealousness was to create the same awareness for Indian cuisine.”

In founding Vermilion, Dey chose to fuse Indian and Latin American influences partly because the culinary traditions share many common ingredients. It also reflects the blending of cultures that the cross-migration of Portuguese, Persian, Moorish and Spanish populations sparked across both regions. “I also wanted to do something provocative,” she says. “Our fusion of cuisines was unique and a lot of people asked about it. We stood out from the pack.”

Today, Dey not only leads Vermilion, but shares her business wisdom with students via her role as an entrepreneur-in-residence at several American universities. “First and foremost, if students want to be chefs or found restaurants, I try to dissuade them,” she says, with a laugh. “Ninety percent of restaurants fail, and it’s a very fickle business with high capital intensity and huge liabilities. People seem to have this misconception that you enter, suddenly become a celebrity chef and

24 MAY/JUNE 2018

Michael Gallant is the founder and chief executive officer of Gallant Music. He lives in New York City.

BARRY BRECHEISEN © AP Images/Invision

women be only 21 percent of the United States Senate or 3 percent of the top 100 CEO’s [chief executive officers] is not enough,” she says. “In my industry, the statistics are far worse, and it’s something we’re striving to change with concrete action.” Current prowomen cultural movements in the United States, like Time’s Up and me too., are variations on the same theme, and she hopes that the growing momentum will collectively help women across all industries.

As Dey continues to innovate in the kitchen, boardroom and classroom, one of her key goals is to encourage women not just to speak and be heard, but to, in her words, lead and own. “I fundamentally believe that empowerment comes from ownership of your own enterprise,” she says.

“To grow Vermilion further would be phenomenal,” says Dey, explaining that she dreams of expanding her unique culinary brand “directly or through partnership, not just in Chicago, but in other locations around the United States, back in India and elsewhere around the globe.”

Photographs courtesy Rohini Dey/Vermilion

roll in the dough,” she continues. “The reality is very different.”

Dey describes grueling work and low pay as norms when pursuing culinary greatness.

“Kitchens are mostly grimy, competitive, hot, with physical, repetitive labor, and completely without glamour,” she says. But if students still express interest, Dey encourages them to intern at a restaurant such as hers.

Beyond hands-on experience, Dey says, right training is key to success. “Aspiring chefs or restaurateurs should invest in themselves, and take business and financial courses,” she advises. “You’re regularly working with more than 60 food, beverage and maintenance vendors, as well as investors, and for legal permits. So, if you can’t understand numbers, profit and loss, and how to raise money, you’re going to fail quickly.”

Dey’s mentorship efforts include her work as the co-founder of the Women in Culinary Leadership program for the James Beard Foundation, a New York City-based nonprofit culinary arts organization, where she also serves as a trustee. The initiative is a vehicle through which Dey strives to increase female leadership within the restaurant industry. “For years now, I’ve been talking about how having

Go Online Vermilion

www.thevermilion restaurant.com

Rohini Dey https://twitter.com/ rohinivermilion

James Beard Foundation www.jamesbeard.org

Above left: Rohini Dey (second from right) participates in a panel discussion for International Women’s Day in 2017.

Far left: Dey (first from left) speaks at the 2017 Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Hyderabad.

Left: Dey (fourth from right) hosts an event promoting unconventional women, at Vermilion in Chicago.

Above right: Dey and her husband, Sajal Kohli, walk the red carpet during the 2015 James Beard Awards in Chicago.

Right: Dey and her mentor, former James Beard Foundation president Susan Ungaro. They co-founded the James Beard Foundation Women in Culinary Leadership program.

MAY/JUNE 2018 25

Growing Naturally

K

Ancient Living

produces organic Ayurvedic skin and hair care products and creates sustainable livelihoods, especially for rural women.

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alyani Gongi, founder of Ancient Living, an organic wellness product company, grew up in the lap of nature. Her lineage goes back to four generations of farmers in the state of Telangana.

“I was surrounded by rich and bountiful nature, which made me ecologically sensitive,” says Gongi. “My father [B.N. Rao] spent many years growing different species of medicinal herbs and aromatic plants. I, thus, gathered valuable knowledge about the healing qualities of these plants.”

This inspired her to establish Ancient Living in 2010 to cater to eco-conscious customers who value organic products, made of farmfresh herbs and essential oils.

The first batch of skin and hair care products were made mostly from the herbs grown in its own farm. Later, as the manufacturing unit expanded, the company started sourcing raw materials from other sustainable organic farms as well.

To ensure quality, the raw materials are collected only from certified farms. “We take pride in ethical buying and selling practices.

The in-house R&D [research and development] team also inspects and tests the raw materials that are procured. We are a GMP [Good Manufacturing Practice]-certified company,” says Gongi.

Ancient Living www.ancientliving.in

Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women Photographs courtesy Kalyani Gongi

https://goo.gl/OtGECD

Fortune/U.S. Department of State Global Women’s Mentoring Partnership https://goo.gl/eacpUw 26 MAY/JUNE 2018

By RANJITA BISWAS

How are Ancient Living products different from other Ayurvedic products flooding the market today? “Our vision is to enrich consumers’ lives with premium organic wellness products that are safe and ecofriendly, with a superior level of value and quality, based on India’s age-old Ayurveda principles,” says Gongi. “Our products are free from synthetic dyes, perfumes, additives, parabens, phthalates and sulfates. They are also crueltyfree. All our products are wrapped in earthfriendly craft paper and are biodegradable.”

Gongi feels that people are more conscious about their health and environment nowadays.

“They are looking for alternate lifestyle wellness products that are chemical-free, organic and ecofriendly. Today’s consumers are willing to pay a little extra over chemicalbased products,” she says.

Creating sustainable livelihoods for all stakeholders—farmers, artisans, suppliers, wholesalers, retailers and customers—is a philosophy Ancient Living believes in.

There is also a conscious move at Ancient Living to employ women from economically weaker sections of the society, so that they can be empowered. “We have started VIDYA, a women empowerment program,” says Gongi.

“We believe women are key agents for

Photographs courtesy Kalyani Gongi

achieving socioeconomic and environmental changes that are required for sustainable development in society. We provide training to women, enabling them to polish their skills and add value to our products.”

Ancient Living takes a threefold approach to retailing of its products. “One, customers can buy from our exclusive experience stores and e-commerce portal (www.ancientliving.in).

Two, our products are available in more than 200 organic stores across India. And three, our products can be purchased globally from leading e-commerce sites,” says Gongi.

She shares that the process of establishing the company entailed some difficulties in the beginning, particularly as a woman entrepreneur. She came across people who believed that women are not suited for the business arena. But Gongi took everything in her stride. “Challenges are everywhere; in any business. But, if you make a world-class product and provide the right services, the product will sell. My focus is to make worldclass organic, luxury products, and this is where all my energies are focused. My consumer is my investor, and I do my very best to provide best value for this investment.”

Gongi was a part of the Goldman Sachsfunded 10,000 Women initiative, an

entrepreneurship program of the U.S. State Department, as well as the FORTUNE/U.S. State Department Global Women’s Mentoring Partnership in 2016. She also participated in the 2017 Global Entrepreneurship Summit held in Hyderabad.

“I have benefitted both on personal and professional levels,” says Gongi about these programs. “Mentoring and leadership sessions, and sharing of ideas and experiences motivated and inspired me to create a larger impact in my community. They gave me the opportunity to learn, share and grow with other women leaders from various parts of the globe. I realized that all of us have a common desire to contribute to our communities.”

Above left: Kalyani Gongi, founder of Ancient Living.

Above: Ancient Living provides employment opportunities to rural women, for instance, in its packaging units and for collection of herbs and other raw materials from certified farms (below).

Left: Along with premium organic products, the company offers traditional handmade games and ethnic products.

Below left: Gongi at the Fortune/U.S. State Department Global Women’s Mentoring Partnership program in 2016.

Ranjita Biswas is a Kolkata-based journalist. She also translates fiction and writes short stories.

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P

By PAROMITA PAIN

GyanDhan

lanning to pursue higher education? The opportunity could be exciting, but also quite expensive. One option for prospective students is to avail education loans. The process, however, is not easy. From finding a bank that understands students’ interests and deems them viable enough to invest in to completing the documentation, the entire loan process can be a complicated and daunting task.

Here’s where GyanDhan enters the picture.

It is an education-focused financing platform which has positioned itself as a provider of comprehensive solutions.

The online portal was launched in April 2016 by Ankit Mehra and Jainesh Sinha, alumni of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur and Delhi, respectively. Over Rs. 160 crores has already been sanctioned as education loans.

GyanDhan is not about advising students on studying abroad, though it does have certain services related to reviewing statements of purpose to help students. As Sinha says, “There are others in the market who do this.

Our core competency is loans.”

Based on its role in supporting students to pursue higher education, GyanDhan was shortlisted for the final round of the Global Innovation through Science and Technology (GIST) Catalyst pitch competition at the 2017 Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES), held in Hyderabad. “It was very exciting to be a part of the 2017 Global Entrepreneurship Summit,” says Sinha. “This was a fantastic opportunity for networking and sharing of ideas.”

provides prospective students cost-free services and solutions to help fund their education through loans.

GyanDhan www.gyandhan.com

GIST Catalyst Pitch Competition https://goo.gl/YUg9kL

28 MAY/JUNE 2018

Photographs courtesy Jainesh Sinha

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Below right: Ankit Mehra, co-founder and chief executive officer of GyanDhan.

Below far right: GyanDhan co-founder Jainesh Sinha talks about the start-up at the Global Innovation through Science and Technology Catalyst pitch competition at the 2017 Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Hyderabad, which was attended

by First Daughter and Adviser to the U.S. President Ivanka Trump (right) and U.S. Ambassador to India Kenneth I. Juster (second from right).

Wealth for Data-based strategy Mehra and Sinha have over five years of experience shaping credit strategies for Capital One, one of the largest banks in the United States. Sinha, an alumnus of the Super 30 educational program for underprivileged meritorious students in Bihar, saw how a lack of resources could be a huge hurdle in pursuing educational dreams. He was determined to ensure that even students without collateral could access bank loans. “I earned enough to have a stable base,” he says. “My parents were worried about my decision to leave a wellpaying job and start GyanDhan, but I managed to convince them.” Sinha was not hesitant about being a first-time entrepreneur. “If this did not work out, I would have just lost my pay for a few years,” he says. “In the larger scheme, it did not matter.”

At Capital One, Sinha understood the power of data. Capital One could provide credit cards to those from the lower socioeconomic strata because it was able to use data to gauge their ability to pay and check if they had been defaulters. “We saw how smart people from the IITs and other institutions were being rejected because, essentially, the education loan system in the country [India] is broken,” says Sinha.

“In India, loans are given mainly against property, serving as collateral security.”

Democratizing loans GyanDhan has developed a model to predict the future incomes of students. “We work with banks to restructure their education loan

Knowledge This is, again, based on its database of over 100,000 students. It also has a scholarship base that is updated regularly.

GyanDhan’s future plans include expanding to the United States and setting up an entity to help students from both countries.

Paromita Pain is a journalist based in Austin, Texas.

NosUA/iStock/Thinkstock

policies and products, so that they are guided by the students’ ability to pay and less by the parents’ earnings or ability to provide collateral,” says Sinha. “In the process, we make the bank loan system more democratic.”

It’s never easy convincing banks. But their continued connections with seniors from Capital One and the Indian Institutes of Technology help. Also, their data-based model quantitatively shows the borrowers’ history and educational background, ensuring that loans get repaid. The high employability of students is also emphasized. “We show banks where data could have predicted their past defaulters,” says Sinha.

Students register on the website and get an instant quote on their loan eligibility. Then, a loan counselor from the GyanDhan team contacts them and guides them through the next steps that partner lenders require. The organization works with Axis Bank and State Bank of India. In five cities, GyanDhan loan counselors take the documents from students and act as liaisons with the banks. Students give them their documents and then it’s their job to ensure the loans go through.

GyanDhan’s revenue comes from the banks and, thus, the entire service is free for students.

“Banks value us because we are a business generator for them,” says Sinha. GyanDhan also has dedicated conflict resolution cells.

Reaching out GyanDhan conducts a lot of outreach programs across India, talking about its work and the issues students face in pursuing international higher education.

Besides, the GyanDhan website has tools like the “Admission Predictor” which help students make choices about institutions based on their grade point averages and interests.

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Smart

Diagnosis

Courtesy Rahul Pathri

T

Nexus-supported start-up

Docturnal

oceandigital/iStock/Thinkstock

provides screening and diagnostics for various diseases through smartphone apps.

Above: Rahul Pathri, founder and chief executive officer of Docturnal.

Top far right: Docturnal was one of the 10 Indian start-ups invited to San Francisco by Uber under the UberEXCHANGE start-up mentorship program, announced at the 2017 Global Entrepreneurship Summit.

Above right, above far right, right and far right: TimBre, a TB screening app by Docturnal, uses the sound of cough of individuals, along with their demographic, clinical and socioeconomic variables, to detect whether the cough is TB positive or negative.

30 MAY/JUNE 2018

By JASON CHIANG

uberculosis (TB) is one of the most severe public health issues faced by India. The country has over 25 percent of the total TB and multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) cases in the world. In 2016, approximately 2.8 million people suffered from TB and 435,000 died from the disease. There are also an estimated 850,000 cases of TB each year that go either undetected and untreated, or diagnosed and treated with potentially substandard drugs and treatment regimens. Such drugs and treatments, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), not only fail to fully eliminate the TB bacteria, but they also contribute to an increasing incidence of drugresistant TB. In this scenario, Rahul Pathri saw a need for better TB diagnostic tests and, in 2016, founded Docturnal to make the detection of TB and other diseases easier, accessible and affordable.

Docturnal’s flagship products include TimBre and retiNNapp smartphone apps to screen TB and diabetic retinopathy, respectively, using artificial intelligence non-invasively.

Docturnal is supported by the Nexus Incubator start-up hub at the American Center New Delhi, a collaboration with the IC2 Institute of The University of Texas at Austin.

The company was one of the winners of the UberEXCHANGE start-up mentorship program, announced at the 2017 Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Hyderabad.

Excerpts from an interview with Pathri.

What is the story behind Docturnal’s origin?

I experienced the journey of undergoing TB tests, like IGRA [Interferon Gamma Release Assay] and Mantoux. The cumbersomeness and inaccuracy of the tests were a starting point for

“

me to bring a change.

My first big break was in 2014-15 at the Grand Challenges in TB Control initiative in Bengaluru, where I made a presentation about my idea, even before TimBre was a reality.

After that, I was able to connect with a team of like-minded people that believed in the aural or acoustic nature of cough. And that was the genesis of Docturnal.

What led you to target TB? What opportunities did you see to improve its diagnosis and treatment?

Some close family members and friends had been diagnosed with TB. I realized that the current TB diagnostic methods have many of the same issues. First, the tests are not fast. Some tests take several days to process, and the patient has to make multiple trips to the diagnostic lab.

Second, many TB tests lead to results that are either inconclusive or subjective, making it difficult to get an accurate diagnosis. Last, many of these tests require resources to allow access to the proper technicians and medical infrastructure. With Docturnal, we wanted to address all of these issues by creating a solution that is accessible, affordable and accurate.

When I worked in the U.S. for seven years, I gained exposure to bioinformatics, which helped me understand the statistics behind developing a possible prediction algorithm. We also had remarkable success with our deep learning solution for diabetic retinopathy, which paved the way for implementing a deep neural net on a spectrogram of a cough file with TimBre. Could you briefly explain how TimBre works? How accurate is it and how are you working to improve it?

TimBre basically does a spectral analysis of a

TimBre basically does a spectral analysis of a recorded sound file of a patient’s cough.

Courtesy Rahul Pathri

Docturnal Grand Challenges

www.docturnal.com in TB Control www.gc-tbc.com

Nexus Incubator

https://startupnexus.net UberEXCHANGE /incubator winners 2017 Global https://goo.gl/2FWqCB www.ges2017.org

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recorded sound file of a patient’s cough. The app then uses our algorithms to classify the cough pattern. Then, when considered in conjunction with clinical data, like the patient’s pre-existing health conditions and demographic data, the app can help determine if the user is at risk of TB. Currently, the accuracy of our app is about 85 percent. We are working with Gandhi Medical College & Hospital in Hyderabad as well as Revised National Tuberculosis Control Program and World Vision to collect data and pilot our app further. When the accuracy levels reach 90 percent, we will file for approval.

What feedback have you received from doctors and patients about TimBre? So far, TimBre has been endorsed by the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad; AIRmaker and AIM Smart City [accelerators]; Nexus [incubator]; and the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council. After piloting the app in Hyderabad, we plan for our products to be implemented in the hospitals in the city of Taj [Agra]. Our hope is to pilot our products in 50 hospitals within the next six months.

Are there any new projects Docturnal is currently working on?

Docturnal has been working on expanding its algorithms to detect other lung-based diseases like COPD [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease], bronchitis, respiratory syncytial virus, whooping cough and asthma. We also want to develop the app in more Indian and global languages. The aim is to expand TimBre to countries such as Indonesia, China and Russia, where TB rates are also high.

Jason Chiang is a freelance writer based in Silver Lake, Los Angeles.

Photographs courtesy Docturnal

Entrepreneurship Summit

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Building With

Bamboo

By RANJITA BISWAS

Photographs courtesy Bamboo House India

IVLP alumna Aruna Kappagantula’s Bamboo House India promotes an ecofriendly substitute to traditional building materials, and serves rural and tribal communities.

Top: Aruna Kappagantula, co-founder of Bamboo House India.

Above: Recycled bicycle furniture

by Bamboo House India.

Right: A bamboo bicycle, launched

by Bamboo House India in 2017 as a substitute for the metal ones.

32 MAY/JUNE 2018

A

t a time when concrete and mortar seem to be the favored materials for building houses, Aruna Kappagantula and her husband, Prashant Lingam, have put their faith in the humble bamboo. They have established Bamboo House India, a social enterprise promoting bamboo as an ecofriendly substitute to wood, steel, iron and plastic. It also utilizes bamboo as an economic driver for providing sustainable livelihood opportunities to rural and tribal communities.

Search for substitutes The couple’s journey with bamboo began almost accidentally. As Kappagantula recounts, “We went searching for an ecofriendly sofa set for our new home, absolutely sure that it would not be of steel, plastic or an imported one.

Eventually, we landed up in Tripura, the landlocked state at the Indo-Bangladesh border.”

This is where the couple got introduced to the fascinating world of bamboo and met the people who have depended on it for household needs for generations.

By her own admission, Kappagantula had no idea about the potential of bamboo at that time.

Building houses with bamboo and nurturing social entrepreneurship around it were farthest from her thoughts. Once convinced about the benefits of this substitute for conventional building materials, the duo researched and found that while other countries were utilizing bamboo for modern and unique applications, in India it was mostly restricted to small handicrafts, scaffoldings, ladders, construction of temporary houses and so on. This led to the establishment of Bamboo House India in Hyderabad in 2008.

Kappagantula says they never had any technological or knowledge support. “We learnt everything from scratch and developed solutions to suit the market demand.”

In 2013, Kappagantula participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program, the

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Courtesy Bamboo House India

“

At least 50 percent of the workforce comprise women who are involved in making bamboo mats, which are converted to boards to be used as walls, floors and the roofs of the houses.

”

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Above: A bamboo house by Bamboo House India. The cost of such houses depend on factors like the design, size and number of rooms.

Bamboo House India

www.bamboohouseindia.org

International Visitor Leadership Program https://eca.state.gov/ivlp 34 MAY/JUNE 2018

U.S. Department of State’s exchange program for professionals. “It was both enriching and enlightening. There was a lot of curiosity about our work. The best parts of the exposure were meeting and interacting with entrepreneurs and people from other social enterprises, getting to know about their work, their practices and their problem-solving approaches,” she says. “I have implemented some of these in my enterprise too. And, of course, the lifelong alumni network is of immense value.”

Why bamboo Over 7.5 million hectares of forests are lost each year worldwide to deforestation, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

Bamboo’s versatility as a substitute for hardwood offers protection against the depleting forest cover. Kappagantula points out that depending on the species, bamboo can be harvested in just one to five years as compared to 10 to 50 years for most softwoods and hardwoods. It grows in a variety of conditions, from low wetlands to hilly regions, and even in arid zones. There’s also less wastage because almost every part of the plant can be used to make a wide variety of products.

“Bamboo houses are common across the country in tribal, rural and forest areas, but only as temporary dwelling units,” says Kappagantula. “We are trying to build an image of bamboo as a permanent building material.”

Bamboo houses Are bamboo houses viable for long-term use? “Global statistics say that more than a

billion people live in bamboo houses. I can affirm that the bamboo houses we build can last for more than 30 years. They use engineered bamboo boards or bamboo ply,” says Kappagantula. However, people may find it hard to accept the feasibility of using bamboo over traditional building materials.

“Even in India, it will take a long time to be accepted, but bamboo is viable for regular use just like other building materials,” she adds.

Kappagantula admits that houses made completely of bamboo “might not be practical to address the housing shortage issue in India.

But, mixing bamboo with other building materials would be a viable solution given the multi-layer benefits bamboo has to offer, apart from cost.”

Bamboo House India has a complex working model geared to suit market demands.

Directly or indirectly, at least 100 man days are created for every 300-square-foot house it makes. “At least 50 percent of the workforce comprise women who are involved in making bamboo mats, which are converted to boards to be used as walls, floors and the roofs of the houses,” says Kappagantula. The people employed belong mainly to marginalized communities.

“On a personal level, we are confident that the future holds a lot of promise for bamboo as a building material, with market perception slowly changing and acceptance increasing for such initiatives and materials,” says Kappagantula. She emphasizes that all that is required is support from stakeholders and entry of more entrepreneurs to make the ecofriendly building material sector economically viable.

Ranjita Biswas is a Kolkata-based journalist. She also translates fiction and writes short stories.

Weaving Worldwide Connections

By PAROMITA PAIN

helps weavers and artisans sell their handloom products directly to customers around the world through its website.

Photographs courtesy Weavesmart

Weavesmart Above: A collection of handloom products made by weavers and artisans from across India, available on the Weavesmart website.

Left: Nishita Manne, co-founder and chief executive officer of Weavesmart.

To share articles go to https://span.state.gov MAY/JUNE 2018 35

N Below right: Nishita Manne (right) and Shilpi Singh (left), co-founders of Weavesmart, talk to weavers about their website and its benefits.

Below far right: Manne (left) with Union Minister of Textiles Smriti Zubin Irani, on National Handloom Day in Varanasi in 2016. Weavesmart was recognized as one of the most promising start-ups in the handloom sector.

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Weavesmart

www.weavesmart.com

India Handloom Brand https://goo.gl/iuYV5f

2017 Global Entrepreneurship Summit

36 MAY/JUNE 2018

Photographs courtesy Weavesmart

www.ges2017.org

ishita Manne is a qualified chartered accountant, but she always knew she would do well as an entrepreneur. In 2015, she co-founded Weavesmart, an online aggregator platform for weavers and artisans to make handloom products like sarees and accessories available to customers around the world. Unlike other online stores selling handloom products, Weavesmart ensures that the very people who make the products are at the forefront of the sales process. The makers display and sell their wares through the Weavesmart website (www.weavesmart.com), setting the prices for their products themselves. It has been one of the highestselling handloom e-commerce websites for the last two years.

Starting with just one handloom cluster, the company now works in 10 clusters in five states, and more than 25,000 different handloom products are advertised on the website. Each cluster has a group of weavers working on one kind of weave; for example, Pochampally handloom.

Weavesmart is the e-marketing partner for the Government of India’s Ministry of Textiles for promoting India Handloom Brand and handloom products. Manne, who also participated in the 2017 Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES), organized

by the governments of the United States and India in Hyderabad, says such meets are a great opportunity for networking, expanding the site, as well as getting business insights.

Marketing handlooms Manne realized at the initial stage of her foray into the world of textiles that while artisans knew the craft and had the expertise to make world-class products, they lacked marketing skills. Also, they had no one to turn to for advice. “It’s hard for them to move from the traditional channels of displaying and selling their work,” she says. “That’s where I thought I could help.”

Manne wanted her project to have a social angle as well. “I could see that people love handlooms, and hand-woven and handmade products,” she says.

“But a lack of time makes them shop online, and they don’t always get the best deals. Besides, weavers, too, need to get the best deals for their products.”

Direct sourcing Weavesmart does not work on an inventory model.

Each weaver who displays his or her products on the website is visited either by Manne or her trained staff

members, who check the items and help put them online. “We provide an alternative selling platform,” explains Manne. “The weavers put their products online. We only provide support.”

The products remain with the weavers. When an order is placed through the website, they send the products directly to the customers. Weavesmart charges weavers a small margin to recover its expenses. In the process, it eliminates middlemen and helps artisans make a rightful profit; often, 40 percent more. Since the products are produced in small batches and remain with the makers, few items on the website are ever repeated.

“Each product is unique,” says Manne. “We sell only what the weaver has at that point.” There are many weavers on the website and a similar product might be priced differently because each maker sets the price for his or her product.

Challenges faced Weavers registered with Weavesmart are free to sell their products outside the portal as well. This makes Manne’s work complex. “We need to constantly check if the product advertised is still available with the weaver,” she says. “The inventory model is an easier one to work with since

it’s a one-time investment. You buy the product in bulk and store it.”

Getting weavers accustomed to the idea of selling their products online under their own name is another challenge. “The weavers are extremely skilled, but they are mostly uneducated and the industry is very unorganized,” says Manne.

“Explaining how the website and customer support work is extremely labor-intensive.” For instance, Weavesmart teaches the craftspeople how to take photos of their products to be uploaded on the website, and how to keep track of the products, when they are done and ready to be shipped.

Road ahead Future plans involve expanding Weavesmart’s product range and ensuring wider reach, among weavers as well as customers. Running this business involves a lot of travel, but Manne enjoys it. “Women are a natural part of the ecosystem of weaving,” she says. “Being a woman has no particular advantage in business, in general. But in this particular field, I think, our critical eye for and sense of fashion are a great help.”

Paromita Pain is a journalist based in Austin, Texas.

“ ”

Each product is unique. We sell only what the weaver has at that point.

MAY/JUNE 2018 37

The Cookstove

Greenway Grameen Infra provides

Start-Up

rural Indians groundbreaking solutions for clean cooking.

By MICHAEL GALLANT

38 MAY/JUNE 2018

Photographs courtesy Greenway Grameen Infra

Above far right: Ankit Mathur (from right) and Neha Juneja, co-founders of Greenway Grameen Infra, with Shoeb Kazi, the company’s vice president of technology.

Above: Rural women and children watch a demonstration of Greenway Smart and Jumbo stoves.

Right: Greenway stoves use less fuel and burn it efficiently, thus saving time and money, and minimizing health risks.

Below: Greenway stoves are designed to be safe, clean and highly portable.

T

he traditional mud stove, or chulha, is an integral part of the daily life of millions of people in India, but it’s also a dangerous one. The simple act of cooking with chulhas leads to pollution, deforestation, economic loss and over a million deaths per year, says Mumbai-based engineer and entrepreneur Ankit Mathur. Solving these problems is the core mission of his start-up company, Greenway Grameen Infra.

Co-founded in 2011 by Mathur and fellow engineer Neha Juneja, Greenway produces safer, healthier and more efficient cooking solutions for the rural families which lack access to clean energy. The company’s products include the Greenway Smart Stove and Jumbo Stove, robust and portable appliances that still burn biomass fuels like wood or crop waste, but reduce fuel consumption by 65 percent and smoke by 70 percent.

This helps minimize health risks, economic loss and environmental damage.

The first spark Mathur and Juneja came up with the concept behind Greenway while working together as consultants for rural projects focused on the environment, like renewable energy and carbon credits. “One of the recurring issues that we saw was a complete lack of clean energy options for cooking,” says Mathur. It was a deficiency, he discovered, that could lead to an array of problems.

For instance, cooking with a chulha for an hour is equivalent to smoking 20 cigarettes, states the Greenway website, and can also cause eye and skin irritation. The inefficiencies of chulhas contribute to deforestation, as rural families must search for large amounts of burnable fuel; increased greenhouse emissions is a result of the cooking process itself. From an economic standpoint, gathering or purchasing fuel for inefficient cookstoves costs rural families effort and money that they cannot spare. The time spent laboriously gathering fuel also translates into less time for education and other productive activities, particularly for women and girls.

To share articles go to https://span.state.gov MAY/JUNE 2018 39

Photographs courtesy Greenway Grameen Infra

Left: Greenway has employed several female workers at its factory’s assembly line.

Below left: Greenway’s

operations cover everything from designing and manufacturing to distribution and customer service.

products, but it was difficult to sustain the quality and desired cost for our products,” says Mathur. In 2014, the company opened its own factory and production of cookstoves began early the following year. Once Greenway’s products were placed on sale, they gained quick and widespread popularity, selling thousands of units per month just half a year after product introduction. The company is now one of the largest cookstove makers in India.

Cooking success

“We, as engineers, saw all of this as a big problem,” says Mathur, “but one that could be solved in an economic manner with a product intervention.”

Evolving design Driven and inspired to make a difference, the Greenway team began designing its cookstoves in 2010.

The creation of prototype models began the following year, as Mathur and Juneja simultaneously evolved their business operation from a consulting firm to one dedicated to product creation and distribution.

Although Greenway’s products may look simple, they are meticulously engineered—the result of an intense research and development process. “We prototyped about 12 designs over a period of more than one year and took them to the field,” says Mathur. The Greenway team interacted with rural households across five states in India, trying to understand exactly how its new cookstoves would be used, how to make sure that rural families would, in fact, want to use them, in order to perfect their product for customer needs. The team also worked closely with sheet metal manufacturers to better understand what it would mean to mass produce any of their cookstove models.

“Initially, we worked with vendors to manufacture the

Go Online Greenway Grameen Infra

www.greenwayappliances.com 40

Greenway’s efforts have gained attention from media outlets around the world. Business Today magazine named Juneja one of 2017’s “most powerful women in business,” while Mathur received The Economic Times 40 Under Forty award in 2016. CNN covered Greenway in 2017, citing the company’s impressive sales of over $9 million [over Rs. 58 crores] and its plans to sell solarpowered lamps and create affordable television antennae for rural use, among other innovations. Both these products are now available in the market.

Like many successful start-ups, Greenway turned to venture capital firms for investment, in order to develop its products and reach markets. In addition to funding from the nonprofit organization Acumen Fund and the venture capital firm Asha Impact, Greenway received a grant from the Millennium Alliance, a partnership between the governments of the United States and India which provides support to innovators. “Millennium Alliance helped us by facilitating a grant for design of the Power Stove, a thermoelectric product that produces electricity from a biomass-burning cookstove, while women cook on the stove,” describes Mathur. The product solves two problems at once for Greenway’s rural customers, allowing them to cook cleanly while powering or charging other appliances.

For Mathur, Greenway’s work has just started. The company plans to launch several new products this year, with more in the works in the coming years. Over the next decade, “our goal is to have a reach of over 10 million units sold, with at least 15 to 20 products that are specifically designed for mass market,” says Mathur. “We hope to expand our operations from India to all of the developing world in the next 10 years.”

Michael Gallant is the founder and chief executive officer of Gallant Music. He lives in New York City.

Millennium Alliance

www.millenniumalliance.in

Acumen

Asha Impact

https://acumen.org http://ashaimpact.com

GreenhouseIn-A-Box

By JASON CHIANG

Photographs courtesy Kheyti

Kheyti’s modular and Right: Saumya, cofounder of Kheyti.

Above: Saumya (center) and other members of Kheyti work inside one of its greenhouses.

affordable greenhouses offer a chance for small-scale farmers in India to weather-proof their produce.

MAY/JUNE 2018 41

M “ ”

illions of small-scale farmers in India face an age-old problem: their crops and, thus, their livelihoods depend on the vagaries of nature.

And climate change is increasing the risk factor manifolds.

A Hyderabad-based start-up, Kheyti, has found a weather-proof way to help small-scale farmers grow their crops and turn them into smart farmers. Kheyti, whose name means farming in Hindi, provides 2,500-square-foot, modular greenhouses to them at an affordable cost, bundled with end-to-end services like training, financing and market linkage. Dubbed “Greenhouse-in-a-Box,” these can be used by farmers with small amounts of land—0.2 to 2 hectares—to grow faster-producing crops with greater protection from climate risk.

Kheyti has been co-founded by Saumya, an alumna of Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, in Illinois. She has won a number of accolades for her work at Kheyti and was a participant at the 2017 Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES), held in Hyderabad.

Excerpts from an interview.

How did the idea and team behind Kheyti come together?

Greenhouses

multiply yields

42 MAY/JUNE 2018

Courtesy Kheyti

up to seven times, using only 10 percent water as compared to open farming.

All of us have been working on farmers’ issues for a long time. We met in the inaugural cohort of Acumen India Fellows, a regional leadership program. The four of us connected over our passion for changing the lives of small farmers and our dissatisfaction that we weren’t doing enough. We started Kheyti by resetting our understanding of the problem. We spoke to almost 1,000 farmers over six months and realized that most of them were struggling with income variability due to climate risk.

What led Kheyti to develop the Greenhouse -in-a-Box solution?

We heard the same stories many times— farmers worked hard all year long, but had their incomes wiped out due to excessive heat, unseasonal rain or a pest attack. Greenhouses have existed for decades and are known to reduce the impact of external environmental risks on crops. Greenhouses multiply yields up to seven times, using only 10 percent water as compared to open farming.

However, we soon realized greenhouses were very expensive for small farmers to invest in.

That’s when we decided to design an affordable greenhouse suited to small farmers’ needs.

We also realized that technology alone

Courtesy PIB, India

Go Online

2017 Global Entrepreneurship Summit www.ges2017.org Kellogg School of Management www.kellogg.northwestern.edu

wasn’t enough. Small farmers face roadblocks at every step, which makes technology a failure for them. This is why we added services like financing, training, inputs and market linkages, so farmers can succeed in greenhouse farming. We are the only company giving small farmers a one-stop-shop to get into greenhouse farming in India.

How is the implementation of your solution going?

We are just finishing our proof of concept with 50 farmers in the state of Telangana and adding 100 more farmers in Andhra Pradesh this year. The pilot was quite successful. Our farmers are earning steady, dependable monthly incomes and protecting themselves from environmental risks. Our biggest success metric was that 14 of our first 15 farmers wanted a second greenhouse from us.

What were your biggest takeaways from the 2017 Global Entrepreneurship Summit?

I was amazed with the scale of GES and its ability to attract people from over 140 countries to Hyderabad. As an entrepreneur, it was a delight to have so many funders, entrepreneurs and policymakers under one roof for three days.

The “Womenpreneur” section was special for Courtesy Saumya

Above: Kheyti co-founder Saumya (third from right) with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and First Daughter and Adviser to the U.S. President Ivanka Trump, at the 2017 Global Entrepreneurship Summit.

Below left: By using Kheyti’s Greenhouse-in-a-Box, farmers can get a steady income by growing more crops using less water than open farming.

Below: Saumya (third from left) and other Kheyti team members meet farmers to get feedback on their solution and services.

Kheyti http://kheyti.com

me, as it helped attendees appreciate the role women entrepreneurs play in building the startup ecosystem.

For Kheyti, getting a photo-op with Prime Minister Narendra Modi was a big highlight.

Following GES, we were invited to make a presentation to him on policies that will help double farmers’ income.

Are there any emerging agriculture technologies that excite you?

There’s definitely a lot of buzz around agriculture these days. There’s always a temptation to include advanced technologies like hydroponics and sensors in our greenhouse, which could increase yields further and also reduce human error and manual labor needed in farming.

However, we have to recognize the huge change in behavior that farmers will have to undergo before adopting such technologies, considering even greenhouse farming is very new to them. With time, we hope to make these technologies more affordable and easy to use for all types of farmers.

Do you have any advice for people who are interested in getting involved in such grassroots solutions for their communities?

Our ability to listen to the voices of farmers has been our biggest strength. Some of the best feedback we have got on our model have come from them, and we are immensely proud to have created a product that is truly suited to the needs of the farmers we work with.

Apart from listening to the end-user, my advice to individuals and organizations wanting to get involved at the grassroots level is to start acting. We spend too much time in perfecting the solution and miss out on the learnings we get during implementation. Even if it’s imperfect, roll out that pilot. You will be surprised at the depth of feedback you can get by putting yourself out there.

Jason Chiang is a freelance writer based in Silver Lake, Los Angeles.

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Registered under RNI-6586/60

Courtesy Kheyti Courtesy Saumya

Left: A farmer works inside Kheyti’s modular and affordable “Greenhouse-in-a-Box.”

Above: Sathya (from left), Saumya, Kaushik and Ayush, founders of Kheyti.