DARE - Because Entrepreneurs Do

When it comes to visiting Rajasthan, you are reminded of historic forts and fortresses, cities painted pink and blue, towns from where people buy marble, famous fairs of Pushkar and of course legends related to Prithvi Raj Chauhan. The curious ad of Fevicol where you saw more than 50 people huddled on a tempo dangerously crawling along, the saffron color and the style of turbans of occupants remind you of Rajasthan. But for me, it was something else last month.

I remember visiting Rajasthan in 1995 with a school trip when we visited various attractions like Amer Fort, Jantar Mantar, Zoo in Jaipur, and shrine of Khwaja Sharif in Ajmer. However, this time, it was different as I visited a village near Ajmer named Tilonia.

Yes, I am talking about Tata Jagriti Yatra that carried me from Delhi to Tilonia. The train sped fast during night and we reached Tilonia at around 7:00 in the morning. The PAS (Personal Announcement System) in the train announced an hour earlier that the temperature outside might be around 2 degree Celcius, which of course sent freezing vibes to all the Yatris (participants of this journey).

I remember I was sitting on my system accessing internet when I heard a sound coming from a small gathering of people at the platform—musical sound of drums, cymbals and a brass wind instrument almost similar to a Trumpet in shape but longer than that. We had reached Tilonia and villagers were welcoming us in a traditional way. There were life-size puppets welcoming us in a colorful manner. What else a troupe of youth requires? Music, morning and Masti—almost everybody jumped out of the train as it came to a halt and gathered around those musicians. Cameras came out and so did people—groups were formed and they started dancing. I remember how I also could not resist taking those cymbals from the hands of that musician and started showing my skills! It was literally exhilarating.

The procession moved towards the campus of Barefoot College, an example of social entrepreneurship where villagers work together to make the life better. The name college had a certain impression in my mind but when I entered the place, I noticed that it was more sort of a remote hamlet that houses workshops, labs, units and rooms to stay. However, the ambience and the peaceful atmosphere bound me to it. I remember how I felt a flashback in my mind: the village where I spent my childhood days resurfaced before my eyes.

The denizens of Barefoot College were smart—they knew how to speak in front of a large gathering and how to answer questions of people called “media”. It was the old campus of the college and workshop workers showcased their products and lots of Yatris bought the items.

Later we moved to the new campus where we were treated with a puppet show. Not to wonder that this was the time when we had tete-a-tete with the founder of this college—Sanjit Bunker Roy. He, in his own style, answered almost all the questions posed by the audience. The essence of this session focused on how even villagers could be roped in to work on technical projects and how native wisdom could be used to solve issues and matters.

Till now, I was not sure about what social entrepreneurship was all about. While returning back to Ajmer, where I was supposed to take leave from the Yatra, I discussed this matter with one of the organizers of this journey. He answered that social entrepreneurship has to have an economic model apart from simply being a charity organization.

So, if a company offers jobs to the society, does it make the company a social enterprise? No. Social enterprise does not simply offer jobs to people; it makes people able to take up jobs. This could include education, training, vocation courses, and exposure to technology.

Indeed, it was one-of-its-kinds experience for me to visit this place not because it was doing wonders in terms of lightening up rural life with solar energy but because it was simple. It was easy and non-confusing. It is vindicating in its spirit that rural India could also have its share in the sustenance of growth that the country is looking forward to.

Do you have an opinion on social entrepreneurship? Have you visited any such place? Share with us what you think about it.

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It was in 2000 when I got my first email ID. Of course, I was very happy about it and went gaga about it telling my family members that I communicate online now.

It was on something called “chequemail.com”, which was supposed to send money as you get more and more emails.(!) A sort of attractive bait for newcomers, indeed! Soon, we shifted to hotmail.com where we got permanent addresses that are still there. Then of course Yahoo! followed suit and finally in 2004, I landed on Gmail (officially called Google Mail in England and Germany).

It is interesting to note how the evaluation of mail accounts moved. Gmail was the first email application that used AJAX technology where you are not refreshing the whole page but the element in question. It made things move faster than normal. In the beginning, it was extremely fascinating to notice how things could go fast with this technology.

Initially, I disliked the concept of grouping of sent mails and replies, but as I went on to use it more and more, I grew habitual to it.

As the popularity of Gmail grew and the space offered to store your mails being a big attraction, almost every second professional had an email account on Gmail. Invitations were sent to friends and colleagues to share this common platform. According to the entry on Wikipedia, Gmail has around 146 million users per month.

During the Q&A session with Sanjit Bunker Roy in Tilonia, I noticed a “slip of tongue” and thought to write about this. While replying to one question, he was offering to give the email ID of the person in question. However, while saying that “her email ID is…”, he said “her Gmail ID is…”. He went on to correct it but it generated this blog in my mind.

Can email be synonymous to Gmail? What are your thoughts? Share!

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Recently concluded Tata Jagriti Yatra, a journey through various cities of India to promote awareness about entrepreneurship, took me through a very revealing story, though I joined it for a very short period of length—from Delhi to Tilonia, near Ajmer. The story was about the importance of a “piece of cloth”. As you read about it, you will come to know why I decided to write about it.

As I was coordinating with the media person on board about what time they might reach Safdarjung Railway Station, we decided that I should get going early in the morning as they might reach there at around 8. However, the person warned me that the train could get late. Being a person who is terrible in waiting, I first got up at 2:30 in night just to check the time; then at 3:30; then 4:45; and then finally at 5—the time I had set to get up. It is kind of a strange habit that I don’t use alarm in my mobile phone to make things easier! Right from the start, I had a habit of getting up on my own. Okay, enough of this personal stuff.

I took the cab and headed towards the railway station but got information that the train might be late by around 6 hours and it might reach at around 2:00 PM. I made it there and the train came at around 4:00.

Now, it was not easy for me to keep waiting given that it was a dry, cold weather without anybody to talk around at that deserted looking railway station. But when the train came, I felt a rush of excitement in me because I could see around 400 young people bubbling with joy and enthusiasm. This again, to get a bit personal, reminded me of my college days. At the same time, it underscored the theme of the journey—to excite that spirit to do something. It is better if it is excited when you are young. But apart from being excited, the day had a revelation in store.

There was a planned visit to an NGO called Goonj, which was about to be shelved but taken later on. I would say that it was worth going there and come to know how people in India suffer differently from a common need called “piece of cloth”.

Anshu Gupta, told a telling tale of how he came to know about the need of “piece of cloth” while he was searching for some journalistic stories in Old Delhi. He came across a person who used to transport dead bodies in his rickshaw cart from police. He told Anshu that during winters, his business doubles as he had to carry around 12-13 dead bodies per day as compared to 6-7 during summers.

Later, Anshu Gupta met somebody who said that he/she (I forgot the gender) hugs a dead body to avoid feeling cold. The person went on to say: “laash na tang karti hai, na karvat leti hai--लाश न तंग करती है न करवट लेती है। (the dead body neither troubles nor takes a turn)”. I remember how the group of 400 people was stunned into silence. As the stories continued, people stopped taking pictures or doing extra stuff—they started listening.

As he moved to the subject of sanitation napkins, he mentioned that a woman died because she used the blouse of an old, tattered sari and the hook of that blouse got inside her. There are areas where ladies were advised to get their uterus removed owing to the reason that there could be an infection because they did not have that “piece of cloth” to use as sanitation napkin.

There were more stunning stories about this newly found buzz-word: "piece of cloth".

What is the value of a “piece of a cloth”? For people who can afford it, it is just minimal or even unworthy of consideration. For those who can’t, it can save them hugging a dead body to save them from cold.

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You have heard about the "dew factor" in Cricket, which plays a pivotal role in a team's performance whenever there is a day-and-night match. Let's discuss something that sounds similar but has different implications.

Here are some irrelevant but true facts that you would like:

1. Pt. Ravi Shankar (teacher) and Pt. Vishwa Mohan Bhatt (disciple) make the only duo in Indian classical music history to win Grammy Awards as Guru-Shishya. It remains history.

2. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (won Nobel Prize in 1983) and his students T.D. Lee and C.N. Yang (won Nobel Prize in 1957) make the only duo of teacher-student scientists where the teacher won the Nobel Prize after its students won it. It remains history.

3. Two New Zealand's bowlers playing county Cricket from Nottinghamshire, Chris Cairns and -----(I don't remember the name of the second one), make the only duo of bowlers who bowled the batsmen when they ducked thinking the ball to be a bouncer. This is sometimes known as Notts Affair. It remains history.

4. Marie Curie and her husband Pierre Curie, her daughter Irène Joliot-Curie and her husband Jean Frédéric Joliot make the only duo of wife-husband in a family who won Nobel Prizes. It remains history.

5. Two superstars of Bollywood—Amitabh Bachchan and Rajesh Khanna—make the only duo of superstars who worked together in only two movies—Anand and Namak Haram—and one of them had to die in both of them. As the scripts had it, Rajesh Khanna had to die in both the movies. It remains history.

Now, why you and I are making the only duo who are talking and discussing these totally irrelevant facts, while they seem to do nothing about entrepreneurship and business.

Recently, I attended TiE Entrepreneurial Summit '09 in Mumbai. I was attending a Gurukul session by Captain G. R. Gopinath, who was the managing director of Air Deccan. He mentioned how an entrepreneur needs to keep working with his idea unconcerned about what other might say. He mentioned a quote by Thomas Alva Eddison: “I have not failed. I've found 10,000 ways that wont work.”

It becomes pretty much important to keep pursuing your idea if you feel that it got potential. In the beginning, others might say a lots of things there might be issues that would result in your failure; the right approach towards keep working might ensure “you and your idea make the only duo that did wonders...it remains history”.

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Banks are always coming up with new ideas and offers that could engage their customers—one of the areas where banks like to focus is to ease the processing of transactions. However, lots of technology and back-end support is needed to ensure that the money itself remains safe from frauds. 

ATM cards have been one of the most successful offers that banks have made in the recent past. Credit cards are also there but lots of users feel skeptic about their security. Let’s discuss an option that resembled ATM cards and was used in old times. 

If you have read something in historical books, there is a mention of a system or an item called ‘hundi’, where ‘d’ is not soft when it is pronounced. This ‘hundi’ worked like an ATM card of contemporary times. Just like an ATM card, ‘hundi’ eliminated the need to carry cash. Cash could have been debited from a person in far off place in whose name it was written—just like an ATM card works that can be used to debit money from a machine in other places.

In old times, whenever somebody wanted to visit another city or a faraway place, a ‘hundi’ was made against the deposit of cash and written in the name of the person who would encash that ‘hundi’ when presented. ATMs cards offer the same option whereby a person can deposit money in one bank and can avail the cash at another place by using this ATM card. 

However, there were some issues that limited the usage of ‘hundi’ just like an ATM:

1. It could be operated in one far-off place for which it had been addressed.
2. The money could be gotten from the person only who had been addressed. If the issuing person has collaborations with some other people in those other places, they won't encash that 'hundi'.
3. Working during night was not available—because the person who could provide cash against the ‘hundi’ might have closed the shop.
4. There were no passwords to secure it.
5. It was for SINGLE use only and could not be used repeatedly.

There are more differences than similarities but the main working principle of a 'hundi' and an ATM card is one same lines. 

At the end, it can be postulated that some of the old concepts still hold good admitting that advancement and enhancement of processes can’t not be spared for the usage of these concepts in modern times.

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