The landscape study of Bharat startups studied 25 upcoming startups servicing low or middle-income customers in India. We spoke to a few founders and analysed their business and customer acquisition models. Thus, it appeared that these startups were solving problems by leveraging and building trust within the target segment. Trust is a dominating… Continue reading Bharat Startups: The Role of Trust
In India, the informal sector employs about 80% of the total population. These include people of the low and middle-income segments – employed as well as self-employed. In recent years, the segment Bharat – comprising the young, Indian customer characterized by the rapid adoption of mobile technology – has become very attractive to startups.… Continue reading Bharat Startups: An Introduction
Image by vectorjuice on FreePik When we started work on our fellowship, remote work was a niche concept. It has now become the norm in large organisations such as Stripe, Facebook and Airbnb. We used to think last-mile delivery personnel in the gig economy are not essential to the functioning of a society. However, with the… Continue reading Data Ownership and the Community Platform: Use Case
Image by Rinku Dua on ShutterStock A majority of the Indian Government’s recent efforts has laid emphasis on farmers’ well-being. In 2016, the government proposed the ambitious goal of doubling Indian farmers’ income by 2022. This requires engagement from multiple stakeholders — the government, the private sector and the civil society. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have been playing… Continue reading Leveraging NGOs to Disseminate Meso-Level Insurance
Image by Phonlamai Photo on Shutterstock Backed by billions of dollars globally, the advancement in surgical robots has come a long way [1]. Technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Augmented and Virtual Reality, together create an immense opportunity to improve the efficiency and turnaround time of any surgical procedure. With a lot of room for further… Continue reading Future of Guided Surgeries: The Robot Will See You Now
Image by KreativKolors on Shutterstock For my call today, my respondent is from Bihar. I have always carried the impression that Biharis are a studious and intelligent type, perhaps because I have always associated Bihar with Nalanda, one of the oldest universities in the world. A second reason was the preponderance of Bihari candidates… Continue reading People of Bharat: Vishal, Patna
We had previously written about the market access conundrum, and how market access is a daunting challenge that rural women have to face. To explore how this challenge was being addressed by the artisan community in Gujarat, we spoke to 60 artisans from six villages across Kutch earlier this month. Each village is home to… Continue reading Shrujan: Stitching Communities
Our year-long study on financial inclusion and FPOs (Farmer Producer Organisation) is reaching its conclusion. The study extensively researched 20 FPOs spanned across India through consented interviews of various stakeholders including the CEOs, BoDs (board of directors), member farmers and non-member farmers. This particular blog tries to take the reader through the lens of… Continue reading What’s in it for a farmer to be a member of FPO?
In 1998, astute interpreters of economic history and self-described provocateurs[1] Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore wrote the HBR article[2] that drew all eyes to the impending phenomenon of ‘the experience economy’- a natural successor to businesses progressively customising services to the extent of individualisation. A namesake book arrived a year later and… Continue reading Designing for Bharat: Towards Adoption of Digital Financial Services
Financial inclusion has been at the heart of the Indian Government’s economic policy for decades. In spite of this however, there continues to exist a very significant portion of this demographic which has been left unserved. In this, small and marginal farmers (SMF) are significant constituents. Data shows us that irrespective of the… Continue reading Financial Inclusion and a version of ‘space-time’ reality
Photo by Tricky_Shark A year back, we received our admission to the BIRF (Bharat Inclusion Research Fellowship). At that time, though there were rumours of the country going into lock-down, its suddenness and totality were unanticipated. So also did we not reckon with loss of jobs and technology zooming (forgive the pun) and making up… Continue reading Early Insights from A Survey of 4000 Individuals
Have you ever wondered why two people who are eating the same diet and living a similar lifestyle have different impacts on their body? How different foods affect your weight, skin and even sleep? Every individual’s body reacts to the same food differently. The food that we consume has an impact on our nutritional… Continue reading Precision Nutrition — Steering India towards a Healthy Lifestyle