Big Idea : Nano Ganesh

Had read about Nano Ganesh a couple of days back in ET. The relevance and the desire to share the story got amplified post a telecom client mtg!

It's a story about the leap-frogging India. The other India(read rural)that is also growing exponentially in technology adoption and aspiration but often doesn't feature prominently on the radar of big media!

It's a story of innovation amongst farmers in Anand’s Sojitra, a village cluster, about 30 km east of Ahmedabad. On a sleepy summer afternoon in Sojitra one Bhavesh Patel makes a game changing call from his Nokia E-75, but says nothing and hangs up. “Will it come?” asks one of the villagers. They were all eagerly waiting for water to flow into their fields from a reservoir 10 km away. Patel had just activated the pump set at the site by making the call.

The inventor of this mobile-phone enabled gadget however named it Ganesh first and them prefixed it with ‘Nano’ after Tata Motors decided to relocate its Nano factory to Sanand, near Ahmedabad.

Santosh Ostwal, the Pune-based founder of Ossian Agro Automation has developed the gadget that’s revolutionising irrigation in farms across Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. Around 7,000 farmers are already using Nano Ganesh. Ostwal hopes his impending north India launch will take the number to one lakh in two years.

Ostwal is taking advantage of low mobile tariffs and handset prices. Among many of the USPs of the device are its price tag at $15 - 55 apiece, and ease of use.

The idea has its roots in Ostwal’s childhood when he spent time with his grandfather, a farmer who grew oranges. His village didn’t have a television set; even electricity was a luxury. The senior Ostwal had to walk deep into his orchard late at night, with a stick and a flickering oil lamp to water the trees. “He developed infections on his feet and had to lose one of his legs.

That set Ostwal thinking whether he could do something for farmers so that they wouldn’t have to walk into the fields to water the saplings or plants!

A good education helped him become an engineer and got him a job at Telco. He quit in the mid-eighties, and started working on his idea. 10 years later he had developed the 'Nano Ganesh'.

Ostwal’s simple application is already winning him accolades the world over. Nokia recognised his work at the All Innovators contest in Barcelona last year with a cash prize of $25,000 and promised to distribute his mobile application to consumers worldwide!!

Big Idea : From Jayanti Janta Express to Soleckshaw

The big breaking news on Brand Equity yesterday was the scam-ovation by Publicis. Anyone who had spare time for such inanities(and that includes me:-) would have read the article/ expose by Brand Equity written in a breathless adolescent tone!

Anyways this post is about a quiet and real innovation that I found tucked as a story in the newly launched India edition of Technology Review - the MIT's magazine on innovation!

The story was about a solar powered rickshaw - perhaps the only non-polluting commercial vehicle in India and the sole means of earning a livelihood for over 5 million people!

After 100 years of the rickshaw era, scientists at the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research(CSIR) New Delhi have found a pollution-free solution to end the bane of this large population by developing the Soleckshaw.(All this rickshaw talk reminded me of the rickshaw that used to ferry me to play-school - it was branded Jayanti Janta Express branded on the train that ran between Howrah and Delhi passing through Patna!!)

Soleckshaw is driven partly by pedal and partly by electric power supplied by a battery that is charged from solar energy. The initiative has come as a small step towards improving the life of 800 million people who are living below the poverty line, including 5 mn rickshaw pullers.

Though the good ole 'autos'(driven on fossil fuel)are also an economical means of transport and used by millions, Soleckshaw with its zero carbon footprint promises cleaner environmentproviding quality of life for rickshaw-pullers without any reliance on fuel...

Hope the Soleckshaw happens. Hope it gets the requisite push by the govt. And some corporate good Samaritan also takes up the cause...

And hope the conversations in big media are a little more about game-changing innovations and a lot less about scam-ovations!!

P.S. A piece of trivia - this is the chaar sau beeswan post of Indiadrant:-)

Being Digital

Many years ago, I was sitting in the engineering college library. Dejected. I had just flunked in a digital related subject. (By the way, I have a Computer Engineering degree:-)

I felt getting into engineering was the worst decision I had ever made...I was reasonably good at theory but when it came to practicals and problem solving, my brain never worked!

I had reached the conclusion that engineering, computers and any thing digital was not my cup of tea!

And then I remember I read an inspiring article about/ on Microsoft(Back then Google and Apple were not the heroes!!) And I decided to give digital one last shot. Put in some rigorous hours. Slogged my butt off.

The results were mixed. I still managed some very average marks but scraped a distinction in the last semester!

But at least I had gotten over my fears of computers/ digital. I wisely decided to do course correction. Did an MBA and then quietly plugged into the analog world of advertising. But gradually over the years I kept my interest alive in things new media and digital.

I still have more interest in human psychology than plain technology. But the persistence gradually paid off. Recently, I got some additional responsibility to look after new media and digital in the group...

Actually on Saturday picked up this Nicholas Negroponte classic - 'Being Digital'(a must read for anybody interested in digital) and got swamped by this flood of old memories amidst the swelling Mithi...

Some Negroponte nuggets from Being Digital and elsewhere...
1. Computing is not about computers any more. It is about living.
2. Incrementalism is innovation’s worst enemy
3. Learning to program is a way of thinking about thinking, and when young people get into it, that way of thinking about thinking can change their perspective.
4. “I’m not interesting in training. Training is what we do for dogs, I’m more interested in teaching people to learn”.

Re-reading 'Being Digital' is actually turning out to be far more interesting than I had thot:-) Even after 12 years( first published in '95), it's quite mind-bending and lays a friendly road-map for surviving and prospering in the digital present and future!