The BBC's Damian Grammaticas sees how poor Indian farmers are using business text messages to get better prices for their goods.

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At the Khandova temple in Jhejuri it's festival time. The harvest is just in and it's time to celebrate.

Thousands of farmers, dressed in white, come from across Maharashtra state to climb the steep hill up to the temple. With them are their wives wrapped in brightly coloured saris and children too.

Inside the temple handfuls of turmeric powder are showered over everything. People sing, dance, and pray for good fortune.

Two hundred and fifty million Indians rely on the land for their survival.But many live in real poverty. And in Maharashtra the suicide rate among farmers is high.

So the pressing question for India is how to improve farmers' livelihoods.

Ajit Singh, a farmer in the poor northern state of Uttar Pradesh, had never seen a computer until four years ago when ITC, the Indian agribusiness-to-hotels conglomerate, installed a PC in his village, Kurthia.

Now the thin 47-year-old farmer visits the ITC station, known as an "e-choupal" after the Hindi term for "gathering place", every day for online access to news-papers, crop prices, weather forecasts and farming techniques. As ITC's village manager, he passes on what he gleans to fellow farmers.

Knowing the fair market value of crops allows farmers to fetch better prices and circumvent local traders who used to dictate terms. Farmers can also sell wheat and other crops to ITC.

The result has been a big jump in crop productivity. Annual incomes in Kurthia have risen from Rs40,000- Rs50,000 ($1,000-$1,230) before e-choupal to Rs100,000- Rs120,000 now, says Mr Singh.
ITC has rolled out 6,400 e-choupals across India since 2000. The initiative has gained new relevance as New Delhi urgently tries to tackle threats to food security, the growing gap between rich and poor and stagnant agricultural growth that has added to soaring food prices,

India "needs another green revolution", the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (Unescap) recently urged. "Growth and productivity in agriculture are slowing, and the green revolution has bypassed millions."

By Anisha Motwani

Rural India seems to be the latest flavour in town. From finance ministers to corporate India across industries, everyone seems to be shifting focus to the bottom of the pyramid. All boardroom discussions are getting centred on finding ways and means to grab a share of this lucrative pie. Numbers look seductive with statistics and data giving enough evidence of volume potential... smaller ticket sizes but more buyers, making it eminent for most industries to ignore this segment at their own peril.

With near saturation and cut-throat competition in urban markets, there is almost no debate left on the potential of the rural population whose incomes are rising and mindsets are changing. While certain industries like FMCG have made an early entry, others are learning the ropes with each passing day. Most industries are trying to test the waters through various forms of pilots and test launches, with no clear indicators of gains in the short run. But there is no denying that the long term potential is vast, but so are the challenges.

Till recently, a large part of marketing was done targeting the urban consumer, and with most marketers having no prior exposure to the rural audience, they are applying the same rules to connect with this completely different segment. The mistake that most companies make while chalking their rural strategies is to treat the rural consumer as an extension of their urban counterpart.

By Preeti R Iyer & Aniruddha Ghosh

For all the noise that it has generated, usage of technology to achieve financial inclusion is still far from what is being desired.

Lenders such as Citi and GE Money have withdrawn from advancing small-ticket personal loans. Other banks are also going slow on such products, given the absence of contract enforcement and difficulty in following know-your-customer procedures.

Further, senior industry officials feel that much of the focus towards rural banking and financial inclusion has been generated by repeated statements made by the Union finance minister P Chidambaram and RBI governor YV Reddy.

In short, financial inclusion is seen in the same manner as priority sector lending - an obligation rather than an untapped opportunity. For banks, the bottom of the pyramid is clearly not an attraction. It continues to be unchartered territory involving experimentation and huge operational costs. Compare this with the telecom companies which are making money selling airtime to labourers in recharge packages for as low as Rs 10.

In the last one week, I have had the privilege of interacting with over 300 entrepreneurs from the small and medium enterprises segment. 70% of them have been in business for at least a decade; 40% have completed two decades. Yet they are still "small" - in revenues, profits, employees. 15% have global aspirations but do not know how to achieve that goal.

Small and medium enterprises account for 80% of Indian businesses (3 million small and medium enterprises and counting), produce over 8000 products, contribute 35% to industrial output, 40% to direct exports, and employ nearly 30 million people. And yet, they continue to remain small even after 20 or 30 years. Given a choice, they still want some form of protection. The forces of competition, rapid technological change and globalization mean very little to these otherwise successful enterprises.

What are the challenges faced by entrepreneurs in scaling up and making it to the big league? How much of this can be attributed to the external environment and how much to the entrepreneur's mindset itself? Based on the responses I have, here are the major constraints:

Treating the business like a family - almost literally: this might come as a surprise to those in the developed countries, but promoters of small businesses develop an emotional attachment to everything about the business, including the people. The leadership style is patriarchal. A significant majority have not fired anyone in their business. Performance orientation is lacking and a comfort with the status-quo is palpable.

Inability to prioritize: entrepreneurs engaged in small businesses are in a perennial "fire-fighting" mode. Everything appears to be a crisis. Considerable time and effort is expended on trivial matters often at the expense of growth, creativity and innovation. Strategy is conspicuous by its absence. Not surprisingly, the business remains small.

By Jena McGregor

How GE Healthcare engineers combined technology and creativity to develop the MAC 400, a portable ECG machine suitable for the Indian market

GE Healthcare engineer Davy Hwang's marching orders were straightforward. Take a 15-lb. electrocardiograph machine that cost $5.4 million and took three and a half years to develop. Squeeze the same technology into a portable device that weighs less than three pounds and can be held with one hand. Oh, and develop it in 18 months for just 60% of its wholesale cost. "He thought I was crazy," says Hwang's boss, Omar Ishrak, CEO of GE Healthcare's clinical systems unit, based in Wauwatosa, Wis.Crazy or not, Hwang pulled it off. Like many teams facing tight development budgets, his engineers combined their technical know-how with creative tweaks of off-the-shelf parts. The result: The new MAC 400, GE's first portable ECG designed in India for the fast-growing local market.

By FRANCE 24

Microcredit changed Shobi Rani's life. An impoverished yoghurt seller, Rani travels across her region in northern Bangladesh on a cycle rickshaw, selling her dairy produce. She is a beneficiary of microcredit, the much touted development scheme to help eradicate poverty.

Three months ago, Rani received a loan for 500 euros from the Grameen Bank to start her little dairy enterprise. Every week, a bank official carefully checks how her business is going.

The brainchild of Rani's fellow countryman Mohammed Yunus, who won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, the Grameen Bank has been hailed for executing the microcredit mantra: giving the poor a helping hand, not a handout.Called "the banker of the poor," Grameen has been attracting big businesses such as Danone, the French food giant, who supplies the yoghurt to Rani and thousands of other women in the area involved in similar projects.

But the situation is far from rosy in Kalihati, one of the first Bangladeshi villages to benefit from Grameen's low interest credit scheme. The villagers here who have taken a loan are unable to reimburse their credit, and claim to be harassed by Grameen Bank representatives. Korshed Alom, a former debt collector, was put into early retirement for having questioned the Grameen Bank's methods: "Their technique is to scare borrowers and insult them. We tell them to sell their clothes, that they have no other choice. I'm not proud of myself, but several times, I had even been obliged to say ‘sell your children.'"

PUNE, India, is one of the world's most techie cities. Wireless internet pumps out across the city, students from its top-ranked universities jam the streets on motorbikes and on graduation vie for jobs at many of the West's biggest high-tech companies.

The city is a model of the tech-led renaissance of the subconti-nent's economy - and is also, as chance would have it, home to Tata Motors, the new owner of Jaguar and Land Rover, two of Britain's most famous car companies.

An hour's drive away, past encampments of grinding poverty and urban sprawl is a very different world but one that may just be starting to see the benefits of what the government has dubbed "India Shining".

Standing in an onion field in a village outside Pune, Chandra Kant can check weather reports, get crop spraying information and find out how much onions are fetching at the local market, all on his mobile phone, for 175 rupees (£2.19) a quarter. The service is being offered by Reuters, better known for offering news and financial information to City workers for whom £2 would not cover a run to Starbucks.

AFP, 31 March 2008 - Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus on Monday unveiled a deal between his pioneering Grameen bank and French group Veolia Environment to provide clean water to poor rural communities in Bangladesh.

The Bangladeshi economist also sought support from President Nicolas Sarkozy for creating more microcredit schemes to fight poverty, particularly in Africa.

"I wanted to make him understand how effective a tool microcredit is in helping the poor people, particularly the poor women, to take control of their own lives and pull themselves out of the problems and benefit the children," Yunus told reporters after his meeting at the Elysee palace.

After meeting with Sarkozy, Yunus sat down with top business leaders at the Elysee including billionaire Vincent Bollore and announced the creation of the new joint company with Veolia Environment.

Called Grameen-Veolia Water, the company will operate several water treatment plants in Bangladeshi villages, with the goal of bringing clean water to 100,000 people.

The announcement in January by Tata Motors of its newest car, the Nano, was revealing on many levels. The announcement generated extensive coverage and commentary, but just about everyone missed the Nano's real significance, which goes far beyond the car itself.

But, OK, let's start with the car itself - particularly the price. At about $2,500 retail, the Nano is the most inexpensive car in the world. Its closest competitor, the Maruti 800, made in India by Maruti Udyog, sells for roughly twice as much. To put this in perspective, the price of the entire Nano car is roughly equivalent to the price of a DVD player option in a luxury Western car. The low price point has left other auto companies scrambling to catch up.

Thinking outside the patent box

How could Tata Motors make a car so inexpensively? It started by looking at everything from scratch, applying what some analysts have described as 'Gandhian engineering' principles - deep frugality with a willingness to challenge conventional wisdom. A lot of features that Western consumers take for granted - air conditioning, power brakes, radios, etc - are missing from the entry-level model.

More fundamentally, the engineers worked to do more with less. The car is smaller in overall dimensions than the Maruti, but it offers about 20 per cent more seating capacity as a result of design choices such as putting the wheels at the extreme edges of the car.

D. Murali and G. Padmanaban

Chennai: Much has been talked about ‘fortune at the bottom of the pyramid'. But do we find big corporates discovering the ‘fortune'? Does it make good economics for the companies?

"At the very bottom of the pyramid there are no fortunes to be made because purchasing power is so low," says Mr Paul Collier, Professor of Economics and Director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies at Oxford University.

"Further up the pyramid, however, there is huge scope for introducing such things as brands," he adds. "Brands are essentially mechanisms for enabling consumers to know the quality of the goods they purchase because companies with brands are investing in building reputation," elaborates Mr Collier.

So, some of the features of a market economy that superficially look utterly wasteful - such as advertising - actually have the potential to perform an important function for poor people, he argues, in an e-mail interaction with Business Line.

The Hyderabad round of the Global Social Venture Competition was, writes Kamalika Bhattacharya, all about using expertise to innovative for the greater social good.

The Global Social Venture Competition is an unprecedented partnership that brings together the academic and financial worlds to support the creation of sustainable social ventures. The GSVC awards go to business plans or models that represent the highest, most integrated financial and social returns.

Each year, teams from around the world compete for over $45,000 in cash and travel prizes. Last year, Revolution Foods from the USA, which raised $600,000 from the JP Morgan Bay Area Equity Fund, won first place. After winning, the company - which provides healthy, low-cost, organic meals for Bay Area schools - secured its own kitchen and tripled its customers. In second place was Verdacure from Thailand, which developed an innovative chewing gum that treats and prevents periodontal disease.

This year, the grand prize of $25,000 will be awarded to the plan that achieves both the best economic and social returns. The Asia round of the GSVC, hosted by the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, on 8-9 March 2008 aspired to encourage and support teams from around the region. Two top teams from Asia were selected for the global finals that will be held at the Haas School of Business in Berkeley, USA, on 17-18 April this year.

PARIS: It looks a bit like a child's toy, a walkie-talkie circa 1975, a cheap plastic throwback to the good old days when telephones were made for talking.

But to Spice Ltd., a telecommunications company in the world's fastest-growing phone market, this new product embodies the latest, greatest innovation in cellphone technology today: a handset priced at less than $20.

Spice, which is based in Noida, India, unveiled what it is branding "the People's Phone" at a wireless industry conference in Barcelona last month. The handset is an anomaly among mobile phones today: The number keys are big and bold. It is chunky and has no color screen - in fact, it has no screen at all. Nothing about it flips, folds or slides. It is, as Spice's chairman, Bhupendra Kumar Modi, described it, "just a phone."

The Indian telco plans a system of 3,000 base stations to deliver limited or full broadband service to 110 cities.

Tata Communications is planning the world's largest commercial Wimax rollout, with full coverage in 15 cities across India.

The Indian telco has contracted US vendor Telsima to build the network, which it expects to capture 200,000 retail customers in 2009.
The network of 3000 base stations will provide limited coverage for enterprises in 110 cities and full retail coverage in 15 major cities. The first phase will cover Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Cochin, Chandigarh, and Kolkata.

At the recent annual World Economic Forum, Davos, the redoubtable Bill Gates spoke of “creative capitalism”—an approach where governments, businesses, and nonprofits work together to stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or gain recognition, doing work that eases the world's inequities. There is an increasing recognition and acceptance of this new and more complex definition of business. And at a different level, it could be the harbinger of a new way of building sustainable brands and corporations.

Unilever group has a tool called ‘Brand Imprint’ that essentially requires the company to qualify and quantify the impact that its brands have – emotionally, socially, physically, spiritually, intellectually and environmentally. It’s like a tool to figure out if there is a holistic contribution towards bettering of the communities being served. This recognition is not based on a sense of charity alone, it could actually mean reaching out to a new market that was largely untapped, but has much potential. More often than not, market forces fail to make an impact in many segments not because there's no demand, or because money is lacking, but because not enough time, effort and resources, are spent studying the needs and limits of those markets.