Kawal Kumar Grover, a Delhi-based footwear businessman, was holidaying with his family in a typically bubbly marketplace in Jaisalmer, lost in a dizzy riot of colours, when suddenly he was distracted by the shrill cry of a bell that wouldn’t stop ringing. When he turned around to check what the racket was about, he saw a young lad riding a cart from one doorstep to another and collecting packets of various shapes and sizes. “These bags have leftover food, Sir, and I collect them every morning to feed the cows,” the lad declared triumphantly. “The bell is to announce my arrival!”
 |
Right there and then the 64 year-old Grover knew how he was going to use most of his out-of-business hours through the rest of his life. He would, he decided, organize whole-scale community efforts to feed cows with food people otherwise junked, as a unique social enterprise!
Now, Grover’s is by no means a billionaire business driven by robust revenue models and supply chains—as a starter, this service does not make any money for him, nor does he expect it to. Yet by linking man, beast, food and fodder into a unique organization of shared values and mutual profit, his simple idea, bummed of a lad in Jaisalmer, is unleashing change through large and expanding communities around the northern districts of Delhi: from Shalimar Bagh, where it all started, to Ashok Vihar, Rohini, Pitampura and beyond.
Certainly the cows are smacking their lips with relish and for sumptuous reasons! Instead of foraging on plastic, paper and a mélange of other rubbish in garbage dumps they now get to feast on home-made food - that too at their sheds, on time. Not surprisingly, the output of milk has changed out-of-sight, both in terms of quantity and quality, which means more liquidity for the cattle farmers--literally. Equally, with households now producing less garbage, the environment is smiling too.
 |
| “With the incomes of the cattle owners rising I knew that they wouldn’t mind paying for the service, at least to cover the expense.” - Kawal Kumar
|
But what about the funding? Who pays for the salaries to the rickshaw-wallahs, employed by Grover to peddle the food? At first, for many months, Grover funded his initiative all by himself; but obviously this was not a sustainable model. Says Grover: “With the incomes of the cattle owners rising on account of the improved diet that was being made available to their animals, I knew that they wouldn’t mind paying for the service, at least to cover the expense.”
That gut feel turned into a belief when for a few days the service became erratic. “My phone never stopped ringing,” says Grover. “The milkmen wanted to know why the food packets were not arriving on time,” To Grover this was proof that the idea was working. “I went to the goushalas (cattle sheds) and milkmen and bluntly told them that if they wanted the food for the cows then they would at least have to pay for the wages of the delivery boys, the rickshaw drivers!” They agreed readily.
So, supported by a growing number of house-wives, their kitchens and a motley bunch of rickshaw pullers, Grover has set up a self-sustaining community venture that could serve as a template for future entrepreneurs looking for viable business opportunities in the social terrain. However, unusual as Grover’s enterprise might be, the basic thought behind its success, surprisingly enough, reads like a lesson straight out of a B-School copy book: the key to building a successful business is to identify and fulfill real needs in the marketplace efficiently and at the lowest possible cost.
Equally, it is important to keep it simple: Grover did not need complex SCM software or extensive market research to get housewives to donate leftover food to the cause of serving hungry cows, which in the Hindu belief quite literally, enjoy a holy status and are often referred to as gou (cow) mata (mother). It wasn’t easy, but making the right noises at the right places backed by a few hundred simply worded pamphlets, did the job nicely! 'Isn’t it horrid to see the goumatas eating rubbish at garbage dumps?' Yeah, it’s awful, an insult to our religion. 'How would it be if we could feed them with food we generally throw away at our homes?' Sure. Let’s do it. Sometimes, it was that simple for Grover.
However, while selling the idea to his neighbours was relatively easy (the message spread rapidly by word of mouth), executing it on the road was quite another thing. The first headache for Grover was finding rickshaw-wallahs who could be relied upon to collect and deliver the food every day, without fail. Then there was the problem of ensuring that they would do the job honestly. “What if they sold some of the food on the way to supplement their incomes or asked people for money as donation for cows?”
But, clearly, Grover had not come this far, to back out and so with some help from his friends and neighbours each of the problems was sorted out, “We displayed clear messages on the back of the rickshaws asking people to not give any cash to the rickshaw-wallahs,” says Grover. Then to give them a distinct look and make them easily identifiable, all the rickshaws were painted in bright yellow. The service took off in February 2008, initially covering 10 blocks of his neighbourhood in Shalimar Bagh.
| ELEMENTS - HOW IT WORKS |
|
Modified rickshaws painted in yellow carrying six steel drums and printed information, moves around the colonies from 8 am to 1 pm, their bells ringing. Each drum is for a different kind of food:rotis, vegetable peels, hay and so on. People who have leftovers to contribute come out of their homes on hearing the bell and put the items in the relevant drums. Once the rickshaw-wallah has covered the area, he ferries the food to the milkmen |
Alongside, Grover approached two major cow shelters (goushalas) on the outskirts of the city entrusted with the task of tending to 6000 aged cows. Although these shelters receive some daily government allowance per cow to feed the animals, it was never easy for them to find fresh food for such a large number of cattle-heads. So, Grover’s idea was like godsend. “They happily agreed to pay the salaries of the rickshaw-wallahs,” says Grover.
From its humble beginnings, Grover’s unique social welfare enterprise has now spread across an ever widening circle of colonies in Delhi, involving more than 100 rickshaws, about 8000 kgs of food per day, innumerable families and thousands of cows. Sure, Grover, the man who started it all, does not make money from the venture, but it has helped poor rickshaw-wallahs find regular income and milk-men enhance their earnings. Most importantly, it has provided many people an unusual way to atone for their prodigal sins in a land where cows are god.
Subscribe to this comment's feed
written by Cartier , March 18, 2011
| < Prev |
|---|
