No matter how successful your product or service is, pitching your social business to investors is always daunting. Fortunately, these seven small yet important steps by Shloka Nath will help you better represent your vision.

1. The art of storytelling

A pitch is at its heart, a story. Forget everything else you have ever been told about fundraising. Your success in raising capital for your idea, or your start-up, will depend on how good a story you can tell. Moreover, how you tell it, is just as important. So, get comfortable with talking about yourself, your beliefs and make sure you have a chronological narrative that investors can understand and be inspired by. Tell it with passion!

Technocrats will not save the world; change will be brought about by the people who have a vision and can communicate it well. So, embrace the poet, the artist, and the storyteller within.

Remember, it is your job to convince the investor.

2. Know your investor

The cardinal rule before every pitch meeting is: GOOGLE. Yes, seriously.

• Find out what investments the investors have made previously.
• Identify their areas of expertise and investment preferences.
• Speak to people who know them or are part of their existing portfolio.
• Establish a personal connection and build a rapport.

I remember the first time my partner and I presented our start-up to a room of potential investors. We made sure to find out the smallest details about them as well as the organisations they represented.

Our homework allowed us to strategise a more effective pitch, tailor-made to the people we were meeting, and it helped build a greater sense of trust because we were able to align our vision with their beliefs.

3. Your elevator pitch needs to be one minute

We do not always meet our potential investors in formal conference rooms; sometimes you may find your next donor or investor during small talk at a cocktail party or waiting to catch the next flight.

You have to be able to use the opportunity wherever it may arise, to make a compelling case for your start-up or investment idea in one minute. Any longer and your investor will lose interest and move on.

4. Your formal PowerPoint presentation is always 15 minutes long

• Fifteen minutes translates to about 12-15 slides.
• You must leave another 15 minutes to answer questions.
• Always be prepared to present your main business points with less time in hand.

5. Remember to listen

Investors will likely put you through a punishing process and ask you questions you have probably answered many times before. Here are some questions that I like to ask:

• How exactly are you planning to scale your current business?
• What are the main growth drivers?
• How are you going to use new resources (money, people, connections) to grow faster?

Experienced investors will also push you to consider changes in your technology platform or business model. View the process as an opportunity to explore potential new ways of thinking about or structuring your business.

Do not scupper the advice, because it is not necessarily in line with your own ideas; there may be merit to some of those suggestions that you can benefit your start-up later on.

Make sure you tell your investor when they can monetise their investment.

6. Exit, stage left.

As a social entrepreneur, you care about changing the world. An impact investor cares about changing the world and making a lot of money in a short to medium time frame (usually three to seven years).

Therefore, a crucial part of your presentation will have to include a mention of an exit strategy for your investor. Do not assume that will mean an IPO in five years and your becoming the CEO of a Fortune 500 company (very, very rare scenario!)

In all likelihood, exit will look like a licensing agreement with a big company, a strategic sale of the business to another larger company or the sale of your investor’s stake to a later-stage investor.

So, make sure you tell your investor when they can monetise their investment. It may be an unstated question in the meeting, but one you have to address, regardless.

7. Male vs. Female

Harvard Business Review recently published a study analysing VC conversations and how differently they talk about female entrepreneurs.

There is a gendered discourse around female entrepreneurs, HBR discovered. Apart from a few exceptions, the investors often assessed women as having qualities fundamentally opposed to those required for entrepreneurship. However, when assessing male entrepreneurs, the opposite was true. Unsurprisingly, these stereotypes played a role in who received funding.

One of the worst pitch sessions I ever experienced was when I was called in to mentor a panel of entrepreneurs and every male investor in the room called the female entrepreneurs out on their levels of commitment. “Do you think you will be able to give up your personal life to make this company grow as it needs to?” was a common question. No male entrepreneur was asked this.

Female entrepreneurs: the cards may feel stacked against you. Nevertheless, there is hope. Conversations such as these are making the gender bias more transparent.

Money needs to be invested in businesses that have the highest potential. Period. When you stand before your investor, at the next pitch meeting, remember that. Believe in yourselves and what you have to offer the world. That is part of the change you are here to create.

Adapted from an article originally published on the India Development Review website. Like what you read? Learn more about what’s happening in development in India. Have an idea? Tell us what you want to read.

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Even as India continues its rapid economic growth, women in the country struggle against discrimination and inequality.

Role of Women Social Entrepreneurs

A British Council study on the social enterprise landscape in India revealed that in comparision to male-led social enterprises, female-led social enterprises tend to focus on improving the lives of women and on education and literacy. They were also more likely than male-led social enterprises to address the needs of children and persons with disabilities. Many women led social enterprises work on empowering women and solving women specific issues.

Women Entrepreneurs in India

Women Entrepreneurs can not only contribute to the GDP, but can also play a key role in addressing societal challenges. However, the number of women entrepreneurs in India remains relatively low.

In India, a large percentage of women enterprises are micro enterprises that women undertake as a forced economic activity. These micro enterprises can be classified into farm and off-farm enterprises. They rarely achieve scale and serve only to barely sustain the women entrepreneurs and their families.

In rural India, traditionally, a lot of women primary producers can be classified as entrepreneurs. For instance, a dairy farmer who supplies milk to a nearby dairy or household is an entrepreneur. But family responsibilities, traditional social norms and the established patriarchal structure mean that these women entrepreneurs have limited exposure to the outside world. This restricts their mobility and makes them dependent on intermediaries to reach the market or achieve scale.

In many situations, the solutions are available and the main hindrance is the entrepreneur’s lack of knowledge and inability to access the solution. For instance, the StandUp India scheme, launched by the Govt. of India, aims to facilitate bank loans of Rs.10 lakh-Rs.1 crore to at least one Scheduled Caste (SC) or Scheduled Tribe (ST) and one-woman beneficiary per bank branch for setting up a greenfield enterprise in trading, services or manufacturing sector. But many women entrepreneurs, and even more so rural women entrepreneurs, are not able to access schemes like this, due to lack of awareness.

Challenges for Women Entrepreneurs

Across the world, the main deterrent to women entrepreneurship is the lack of confidence and skills and difficulty in accessing entrepreneurial knowledge. In India, there are four key reasons for women not choosing to become entrepreneurs:

Entrepreneurial Mindset: Many women prefer to get into salaried jobs, preferring the steady working hours, income and perks like health insurance and paid leaves. Entrepreneurship is still perceived as a riskier option, requiring longer work hours and lacking a fixed income every month. Most women entrepreneurs though attest that this is not true. They cite flexible working hours and being in control of their schedules as a key reason for becoming entrepreneurs.

Difficulty Accessing Resources:  Women have difficulty accessing funds and other resources due to several reasons: laws regulating the private sphere specifically regarding marriage, inheritance and land can hinder women’s access to assets that can be used as collateral to secure a loan; lack of awareness of schemes that are available to specifically support them; few platforms that specifically support women entrepreneurs.

Lack of Practical Experience: Apart from a few high profile female founders, women do not see too many entrepreneurs in their lives that they can look up to and learn from. Women entrepreneurs often know from experience how challenging it is to start up and establish an enterprise. So when women can reach out to and work with women entrepreneurs, they are more likely to start up.

Mentoring & Network

A mentor can play a key role in helping a women to make the decision to start up. However, unless women accidentally come across a mentor in the course of their work, there are very few structured mentorship programmes available to help them find a mentor who will guide them on their entrepreneurial journey.

Are you a woman who has the grit and passion to become a social entrepreneur? TII Fellowship is looking for you! To know more and apply, please visit: alcindia.org/tii

Featured images courtesy here.

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Vasant Rao Kale from Medhpar village of Bilaspur district, Chattisgarh, was a government employee all his life. When he retired from his job, he wanted to pursue his long-loved passion, which was farming. However the usual challenges faced by a farmer were quite enough to make him apprehensive.

Vasant’s grandson, Sachin, would often visit him at the village and was fascinated by the stories of farming told by his grandfather. However, like many middle class families in India, Sachin’s parents also wanted him to become an engineer or a doctor. Sachin loved studying too, so he fulfilled his parents’ wishes by completing his mechanical engineering course from REC, Nagpur (now called as VRCE) in2000. A profound learner, Sachin also finished his MBA (finance) course just after his engineering and he is also a law graduate.

Sachin started his career by working with a power plant and rapidly grew to the top of his career over the years.

Sachin Kale

In 2007, Sachin also started his PhD in developmental economics. This was when the spark of entrepreneurship ignited in his mind. Thoughts like why he was working for someone else and not for himself kept disturbing him while he was still climbing the ladder of success in his corporate life.

“While thinking about options for entrepreneurship, I came to the conclusion that the food industry is the most important yet the most ignored one by us. That is when I recalled the lessons given by my grandfather about farming,” says Sachin, while speaking to TBI from his farm.

Sachin’s grandfather would often tell him how one can survive without earning money at any given point but one cannot survive without food. So if you know the art of growing your own food, you can survive at any condition. He would also take Sachin to their 25-acre ancestral land and talk about how it was his dream to revive the entire land into a farm someday.

Among various lessons that his grandfather gave him, Sachin focused on this one issue: the availability of labor.

Photo Source – Wikimedia

“My grandfather would encourage me to take up farming but at the same time he would warn me that it was a risky business and the biggest problem was labor. ‘You won’t get labor unless you help them earn more than what they are already earning,’ he would say,” recalled Sachin, who lost his grandfather last month.

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Sachin started thinking about how he could benefit the farmers, but he knew that to become an agripreneur, he would have to first learn farming and set an example by drawing more profit.

In 2013, Sachin left his luxurious life in Gurgaon, where he was working as a manager for Punj Lloyd, getting a hefty salary of 24 lakh per annum, and shifted to Medhpar to become a farmer.

Sachin started tilling his land alone.

Talking about challenges, Sachin says: “Everything was a challenge, as I had absolutely no clue about farming. I had to learn everything from tilling the land to sowing the seeds.”

Sachin invested his entire provident fund of 15 years and decided that he would go back to the corporate life if he’s unsuccessful as he had a family that was dependent on him.

But his hard work, determination and skills paid off — he set up a model where his farm was useful all year round and gave maximum profit. Now the next target was to benefit the farmers from whatever he had learnt. He started researching about contract farming and was convinced that it could benefit the farmers with a sustainable source of earning.

Thus in 2014, Sachin launched his own company, Innovative Agrilife Solutions Pvt. Ltd., which helped farmers with the contract farming model of farming.

Sachin also hired consultants from the Agriculture College at Bilaspur to teach the farmers new technology and the right way of farming. The basic fundamentals of contract farming is very simple and profitable.

Contract farming involves agricultural production being carried out on the basis of an agreement between the buyer and farm producers. The buyer helps the farmers with funds and all means required for farming. The farmer in turn has to produce the crop suggested by the buyer and according to the buyer’s method. The minimum selling price is predefined and the buyer buys the entire crop on that price even if the market price is low. The farmer gets a share of the profit in case the prices are high in the market — a win-win situation for both the buyers and the farmers.

“It was difficult in the initial two years as no one trusted a young urban man telling a 70-year-old farmer about farming. But when I discussed the financials on papers, they started taking interest,” says the 36-year-old.

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Sachin also continued to grow paddy and seasonal vegetables in his own 24-acre land. In time, he found that the farmers there grew only paddy, which was a matter of three to four months and the land remained idle for the next eight months. He then introduced to them a farming model where after harvesting paddy, they grow seasonal vegetables all year round. The farmers were impressed by Sachin’s farming techniques and started partnering with him.

Today, Sachin’s company is helping 137 happy farmers working on 200 acres of land and drawing a turnover of approximately Rs. 2 crore.

Sachin works with the latest technologies at his farms.

“I don’t buy their land, that way they lose the ownership. I just buy their produce and directly sell it to the retailers, which gives a very good margin. I also share a part of the profit with them,” informs Sachin.

Sachin’s wife Kalyani, who has a Master’s degree in communication, takes care of the financial part of the company.

When asked if she misses the city life, she says, “Yes we do miss going to the mall and the metro ride sometimes but more than that we enjoy the time we spend together. When Sachin was in a corporate job he would travel for 20 days a month. Moreover, we love the fresh air here and know that we are eating absolutely healthy food unlike in the city.”

Sachin dreams of seeing his company at the Mumbai stock exchange some day and making farming and farmers a major part of the economy.

Sachin and Kalyani Kale.

If you wish to know more about Sachin’s venture you can call him at 9425530260 or mail him at infoagrilife@gmail.com

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Today, 62-year-old Usha Dalmia is well-known as the chef and founder of Tingle Your Taste Buds, a cookery website that offers a number of recipes and tips for food connoisseurs around the world. Till a few years back, Usha, my mother, was a housewife, the backbone of her family and a favourite among her friends.

This new dimension to my mother’s personality happened a bit by chance and a lot by hard work and persistence.

Home chef turned food blogger Usha Dalmia. Source: Facebook

Living in Vishakhapatnam, my mother is a very artistically inclined woman with immense talent in many art and craft forms. Her culinary skills were always appreciated by everyone, and she felt happy cooking meals for anyone. She always fostered the dream to open her own restaurant but like many women of her generation her dream remained unfulfilled.

She was a Hindi teacher at a school but left the job after my birth in 1982. I also have an older brother, now 40 who lives in the USA. My mother was content taking care of her family and giving her all to us.

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Once we grew up, I started sensing that my mother, in the process of ensuring a great life for us, never really got a chance to do anything for herself. I began to understand my mother’s passion for cooking, while my own passions were pulling me towards them.

I live in Hyderabad, and decided to quit my well-paying job at Infosys to pursue my own passions and help my mother pursue hers. I launched a venture with a friend and became a professional dance instructor/choreographer. I also began volunteering with an NGO and worked on rehabilitating those rescued from human trafficking victims.

Opening a restaurant for my mother was tough due to finance and logistical issues. So we began with a Facebook Page titled Tingle Your Taste Buds in April 2012.

A summer thandai from Tingle Your Taste Buds. Source: Facebook

My mother was not technology-savvy then; for her to enter into this sphere was a challenge. She was also worried that no one really has time today to cook meals and a bit jittery to start something new at this stage in her life. But we were all encouraging and supportive, and that helped her take the plunge.

However, we lived in different cities, and in the beginning it was a challenge to post recipes on the page. Through various discussions on phone and emails intermediated by my father, she communicated the content to me. I would then take care of all the technical aspects and marketing on the Facebook page.

We got good response from friends and family and that boosted my mother’s confidence. The next challenge was to increase the reach beyond friends and family. We wanted it to be organic and hence came up with many strategies to encourage people to visit the page like contests and other activities. Once someone would visit the page, in most cases they would start following it too.

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A year after the launch, we had thousands of followers which encouraged us to take this forward. The next step was to have our own website for greater reach and versatility, and to eventually make money from the venture through advertisements.

We wanted to completely own and be flexible with the website, and hence didn’t hire anyone to create it. Along with my husband, I spent months doing research and created and designed the website all by ourselves. However there are a number of cookery websites today and we knew we had to take a different approach.

In the meantime, my mother worked on her photography skills to ensure good quality photographs for the website.

We launched the portal on April 2014 to mark the second anniversary of the brand. There has been no looking back since.

Usha and Anupama, the mother-daughter duo who make cooking look easy

The strength of our brand lies is in the simplicity of the recipes without compromising on the taste. Our mission is to ease the process of cooking, because we believe there is a chef in everyone. What started as a small Facebook page is today a website with lakhs of visitors and a dedicated subscriber base. We also contribute to food websites and magazines, and were recently finalists in the “Best Food Blogger of the Year” category at the Orange Flower Awards.

Today, my mother has learnt a lot about technology and is dedicated to her work. Recently, when she sent her recipe to a website, they requested for an image with different resolution. By then, the dish was finished but my mother immediately made it again, in 15 minutes instead of buying more time, because she never misses a deadline. She is passionate about spreading joy through food and loves to personally read all the feedback.

She says, “I never thought I will be able to become an entrepreneur at this age. But thanks to the immense support of my family, especially my daughter who made this possible for me, I am what I wanted to be. I overcame all my fears to learn everything I thought I cannot. All you need is passion and dedication. I hope my story inspires everyone to not hesitate to pursue their passion at any age. Go for it!”

Over the next few years, we aim to widen our reach and have more collaborations. We are also planning to come up with a cookery book.

(Written by Anupama Dalmia-Barnwal)

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“Food for children in India looks almost medicinal, like that somehow has the doctor’s seal of approval. But why do we need to do that?” Shauravi Malik and Meghana Narayan found themselves wondering about the approach to children’s food as they struggled to find the perfect balance in taste and nutrition for their own kids. When their quest for healthy edibles turned up no satisfactory results, the duo turned mompreneurs with their own batch of nutritious treats.

Shauravi and Meghana are the co-founders of Slurrp Farm, a made-in-India organic food brand offering health and yummy treats for babies and kids.

Meghana and Shauravi showcasing Slurrp Farm products. Photo by Ashwani Nagpal

Before they plunged into the packaged food business, Meghana and Shauravi were super achievers in diverse fields. Armed with an MBA from Harvard Business School, Meghana—a computer science engineer by training and Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University—led the public health practise at McKinsey India. Shauravi, a St. Stephens and Cambridge University alumni—has worked for Sir Richard Branson’s Group Holding entity at the Virgin Group and JP Morgan in London.

The two met when one of Shauravi’s friends asked her to go for Meghana’s Diwali dinner. Their meeting turned into a long friendship, as the two women bonded over food, laughter and fun business ideas. As mothers, Shauravi and Meghana felt invested in raising awareness for healthy eating among children. They also wanted busy parents, like themselves, to find readymade options which are as nutritious—and delicious—as homemade food.

“We decided to make the baby cereals organic because we feel at that age group it’s critical to ensure that children eat organic,” they say. “We want to build and educate a sizeable group of parents in terms of eating organic and healthy, and then look at more varieties of shorter shelf life and seasonal snacking stuff, once our own customer base grows.”

To expand their kitchen adventures into a business was no cakewalk. Meghana and Shauravi invested time and energy into extensive R&D and understanding the nuances of what went behind conventional packaged food production and what Slurrp Farm could do differently. The two have spent their last three years sourcing on organic sourcing from various parts of India, interacting with experts in the field and also learning from their mistakes.

Following a long process of trial-and-errors, success and failures, including a batch of apple puree and palm sugar cookies that turned out to be neither affordable nor durable, Meghana and Shauravi emerged with Slurrp Farm a small but thoughtful kids food label.

Slurrp Farm presently offers cereals for babies and cookies for children, made from organic ingredients.

Slurrp Farm’s wholewheat ragi and chocolate cookies and wholewheat, maize, rice, mango and banana with milk-cooked cereals

The recipes are delicious enough to make even grown-ups drool—ragi and oats-based cereals are elevated with apples, bananas, honey, tomatoes and dried spinach while wholewheat cookies pack an extra punch with cheese, chocolate or fruits and nuts.

The sugar used in the products is organic brown sugar and the maida content is minimal to none. Emphasizing on a clean mix of ingredients, the team has stayed away from transfats (dalda, edible vegetable oils or hydrogenated fats), palm oil, invert/golden syrup and high fructose corn syrup, ingredients that have become a staple in regular packaged products.

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The products are adapted from family recipes, and the team finalises the proportion of ingredients in consultation with industry specialists, nutritionists and paediatricians. In developing the cookies, the team sought help from Mandakini Gupta, owner and chef of Smitten Bakery, who edited and narrowed down the range to seven recipes.

For final testing, Shauravi and Meghana headed to a playschool where 200 children tasted the products and helped them zero on the final three flavours. Incidentally, the founders’ favourite cookies was turned down by the children.

The brand has also relied on using vibrant colours, original characters and storytelling narratives to appeal to children (and those who are kids at heart).

Cookies from Slurrp Farm are made from natural ingredients

One of the biggest challenges for the brand has been to reach out to customers, without an extravagant marketing budget. Social media and word-of-mouth recommendations have helped them create brand awareness and receive real-time feedback.

The team also undertakes sampling activities and interactive sessions in schools and organises Slurrp Farm picnics with lots of kids. “There is simply no substitute for meeting in real life, forming real bonds and understanding our customers,” they say.

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The brand is currently available in stores across New Delhi and uses online platform to reach customers around India. They hope to launch in other metros in coming months.

Meghana and Shauravi have learnt from their own experiences that once children develop the habit of healthy eating, they take it forward themselves. Case in point: their own children are addicted to the brand’s chocolate ragi cookies. So are other kids—a recent picnic, resulted in a jostling match among the kids for the ragi cookie box. “We were so happy!” gush the founders.

Between expanding the scope of their products, Meghana and Shauravi are constantly engaged in researching and developing newer products.

Shauravi and Meghana with their kids

Interacting with other mothers have enabled Meghana and Shauravi to focus their effort on breakfast and snack items for future products. They also plan to create products for prenatal and postnatal women and the elderly. The two are of the firm belief that taking a slow-and-steady approach will help their business ethos in the long run.

The duo admits that costing makes their work hard and sometimes compels compromise. For instance, they used real butter for the cookies as sourcing organic butter would make the supply erratic and also raise the prices.

“The thing is, people need to ask why is junk food SO cheap, not why is good food seemingly expensive,” they say. “We are convinced that with time people will change their mindset wherein they are happy to pay the doctor for a disease down the road, but not eat well and prioritise their health.”

Not just for children, Meghana and Shauravi believe that everyone must change the way they eat, at a fundamental level. These two mompreneurs aim to change the game by showing that healthy food need not come at the cost of taste. As they say, “Food should be about fun, and stories, and colourful things. And we want to bring that back!!”

For more information on Slurrp Farm, head to the official website.

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Every night, Charu Shah steps out to feed dozens of stray animals in her vicinity. The Mumbai resident is devoted to animals, and it was her love for animals that set her on a singular journey as an eco-friendly entrepreneur. “I had a paralysed kitten, and he would drag himself on the floor. I was very worried that he would end up licking the chemical-based floor cleaners,” she says. “So I started making my own natural substitutes.”

From that humble floor-cleaner, Charu has broadened her horizons to make an array of natural, fragrance-free and vegan products for her label Saattvikaa.

Before she made her foray into natural home and skin products, Charu led a wholly different life. An architect by training, she spent years building homes in Mumbai. “I realised that unfortunately, far too many people chose luxury over being eco-friendly,” she says. “While on one hand I loved trees, on the other hand I’d cut them down to make big homes. It was leaving me a little upset.”

Her wish to do something more sustainable and conscious combined with her worry for the kitten led Charu to work on using essential oils for her household needs.

“I used to always read up and try herbal products for myself. But I’d never thought about making them on a larger scale. I took help from friends who work with essential oils, read up extensively, used social media groups for discussions and joined webinars to learn more. I started with a natural floor cleaner, using hydrosol instead of essential oil.”

Beginning with her own needs, Charu expanded her skills as requests poured in from family members, friends and acquaintances and established Saattvikaa around May 2016.

Today, almost a year later, Charu has developed close to 30 products, from multi-purpose cleaning liquids to sunblocks for babies.

All the products are homemade and Charu takes care of every detail, from conceptualising the product to packaging and dispatching. She makes sure that each of the Saattvikaa products are made only on order and is happy to research and develop new products based on request.

“Most of my products are based on my own needs or request from others,” she says. “For instance, I made an eczema cream for myself. When I tried it and saw it worked, I gave it to friends and users to try out. Each time I make a product, I try it first on myself.”

The line of products developed by Charu includes soaps, toothpaste, hair and body oils, talcum powder, cleaning agents, insect repellents, shampoos and conditioners and pet products. Her latest creation is an aloe vera-based sunblock that’s suitable for both adults and babies.

In keeping with her love for animals, all the products from Saattvikaa are cruelty-free.

Charu says, “There are a lot of natural and organic brands but they are not vegan. We have very few options, and imported vegan brands can be very expensive.” She also emphasizes on keeping baby products fragrance-free, using cold-pressed oils, organic herbs, natural clays and organic essential oils and hydrosol (distilled floral water).

“It’s interesting to learn about new things while making my products,” she says, adding how creating the sunblocks helped her learn about the harmful effects of titanium oxide conventionally used in sunscreen. For her product, she opted to add the SPF with non-nano uncoated zinc oxide.

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Some of the ingredients like hibiscus, lemongrass and curry leaves come from her herb garden, a patch filled with plants and beautiful birds. Incidentally, though she can’t afford discounts, Charu offers to plant a tree for customers on placing big orders and sends them a certificate for it.

“I’ve worked with an organisation called Grow Trees, and I choose new places each time. I sometimes work with farmers, others in forest; I recently planted a lot of trees in Sundarbans. When my clients ask for a discount, I suggest this concept and most of them love it,” she says.

With increasing takers for Saattvikaa, Charu hopes to continue her work and enjoy learning new things in the process of new product development.

An independent brand owner, Charu tackles a number of obstacles from sourcing the right ingredients to keeping prices affordable. She sources from organic companies, but not everything is accessible. She says “I know about great ingredients that are not available in India. I ask friends and acquaintances to carry the ingredients for me, and they have been very sweet about it.”

Keeping prices in check can be a huge challenge, especially for products like the sunblock. “I had to source the ingredients from abroad and that made the product costly,” she says. She is conscious about price tags, and shares specific reasons for her more expensive products on her page.

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Currently selling through her Facebook page and stalls at Mumbai’s monthly farmers market, Charu hopes that she will be able to develop a website for her products in the next year. She also wants to expand her herb garden and take greater control of her ingredients.

Her endeavour, Charu hopes will not only encourage people to try eco-friendly products but also be comfortable in their own skin.”Unfortunately, I get too many requests for fairness products. I wish that people would learn to accept themselves for who they are and realise that a little effort can go a long way when it comes to your skin,” she says.

Buy Saattvika products on the brand’s Facebook page. To get in touch with Charu, click here.

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Meet the 22-year-old who is popularising traditional, ethnic Assamese food through his food startup, while also creating jobs for rural youth in Assam.

“My goal is to impact the lives of rural people; to improve their livelihoods and to uplift the rural economy,” says Hironmoy Gogoi, a 22-year-old resident of Sivasagar town in Assam.

With this mission and lots of ideas in mind, he founded Gaon Ka Khana (GKK) – a food startup that takes online orders from urban areas in the state and delivers ethnic food made by rural women.

The inspiration behind Gaon Ka Khana was born in the year 2012 after Hironmoy lost his mother at the age of 18. “For several months after that fateful day, I felt completely blind in life,” he says. He didn’t know what to do, what next steps to take, or where to go. This was the time when he was giving a lot of thought to the kind of bonding there is between mothers and sons. And from that grief was born the thought that he should treat other moms in his village as his own mother, and work for their welfare.

“I promised myself that all the women of Assam who are deprived of basic needs will be like my mother. I find my mom in them and I want to do something to empower them financially,” he says. That’s how the concept of GKK was born.

Hironmoy had three major ideas behind the startup – to sell authentic Assamese food, to popularise healthy food habits, and to help farmers by procuring raw materials from them.

After conceptualising the idea and completing market research, he started GKK with four of his friends in June 2016 from his own kitchen with a single stove.

Today, GKK is operating in four districts of Assam. It has an office with a kitchen in Sivasagar where 10 women work full time as cooks. When the team gets bulk orders from corporate clients, it outsources the orders to women living in rural areas. GKK has about 300 women working on an order-to-order basis. The women are provided with the raw materials and use their own kitchens to complete orders whenever they get one.

GKK gives 70% priority to ethnic food, but the remaining 30% is given to western cuisines to attract customers from the age group of 18-25. They get 100-150 home delivery orders in a day along with bulk orders. “The significant point is that the price of food is very less so everyone can afford it,” says Hironmoy who has had a long journey of struggles before he reached this point in life.

An undergraduate from Delhi Public School, Nazira, he wanted to join some reputed university for higher studies, but because of certain domestic issues in his family, his father could not afford to pay for his education.

“I started thinking out-of-the-box because I wanted to see places other than my small village. I did a lot of research online to find if there is any way to go to other countries,” he says. Based on that knowledge he joined the Merchant Navy and after completing his training in Mumbai, worked in Malaysia for two months. He then quit his job and went back to Assam to work on his dream startup.

GKK has two more wings called GKK Naturals and GKK Mondita Snack.

Through GKK Naturals the team is supporting small-scale vegetable producers belonging to rural areas who “can’t even go to the commercial markets to sell their produce.” GKK is supporting them by purchasing their produce and selling it online. GKK never uses vegetables procured from the commercial market even in its day-to-day recipes so that the rural producers can earn a living. The team goes door to door to collect the produce and pays 30% higher prices than what is offered in the local market.

GKK Mondita Snack has been named after Hironmoy’s mother, and as a part of this wing he has initiated the formation of self-help groups in Sivasagar.

He encourages women to produce eatables that will be productive for their self-development and will also help them earn. For this, he organised many campaigns to help people understand the importance of starting SHGs and how they can be made productive. Today, those women are producing Assamese traditional food items.

GKK was completely bootstrapped by Hironmoy. He says, “I have often heard people in my village say that there are no employment opportunities here, or that we cannot start something new because we don’t have the funds or we don’t belong to an influential family. GKK conveys the message that money is not the only thing we need to start a business. It can also be about getting the right idea and addressing the right market at the right timing. Thanks to social media, we have many resources at hand.”

Before beginning to take online orders, Hironmoy launched a Facebook page and started a marketing campaign for GKK, which turned out to be very useful. Prior to that he also worked in the BPO sector in Kolkata for a year so he would be able to save funds and invest in the company.

Eventually, he started getting orders and reached a better financial situation to be able to hire people.

In the future, GKK plans to reach the international markets, which will in turn help them hire more people for production. Hironmoy wants to create at least 3,000 jobs for rural youth in the next five years.

“I am doing this to make mom proud. If I can do something for people who are deprived of basic needs in life – I think that is the biggest thing,” concludes Hironmoy, adding that he has noticed a change in mentality in his village with respect to entrepreneurship now that people know about his work being appreciated.

Know more about Gaon Ka Khana and contact the team here.

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A lover of music, trekker, avid foodie and spiritually inclined. Meet Vinayak Gajendragad, the man with a multifaceted personality, who urges you to think, “Of all corrupt things around you, is your food corrupt too?”

The idea is certainly worth more than a passing thought. Vinayak says, “It’s time to rethink what we eat, where it is produced and how. It’s time to treat our soil, our farmers and our food with the respect they deserve. It’s time we collectively did something to save native foods and farming practices. I believe in the Vedic philosophy that says, ‘We are what we eat.’”

A mechanical engineer, Vinayak worked for corporate giants like L&T and spent a long time abroad. In 2014, he quit his job at the peak of his career as director of Sicoma Mixers India Pvt Ltd, a company he helped set up from scratch.

Vinayak wanted to follow his true calling—producing healthy food for healthy living.

“India is the diabetes capital of the world, or at least the vested interests say so. Why is this happening? The changing food habit in the country is a worrying trend, and so is the alarming rise of diseases among the youth.”

During the time Vinayak was engaged in this introspection about food and its relation to life, he happened to visit his friend’s farm in his native Ramdurg, a small town in Belgaum district, Karnataka. As he later ventured into the conventional way of farming with his friend, Praveen, and realised the difficulties that every farmer faces, and how the so-called support system for a farmer is just a vicious circle of dependency on agents/middlemen for fertilisers, pesticides, weedicides and more.

“I was aghast when I came to know that the use of fertilisers leads to the growth of weeds, and that the farmer is compelled to buy the weedicide to kill weeds. The use of chemicals has not just destroyed the quality of food, but also that of the soil.”

As Vinayak researched and read more on the subject, he came to know about the lectures of Dr Khader Valli, a homeopath and unique farmer who is known for his extensive research on millets and their benefits to health. His introduction to Subash Palekar, who practices and preaches Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF), further intensified his conviction that growing healthy food in a healthy manner is indeed possible.

Adopting natural methods of farming in his land near Malavalli, Vinayak started selling the naturally-grown agricultural produce from his farm at his apartment complex.

“We transported the natural vegetables from my farm and sold it without any margin for 10 months at our apartment complex. Initially people hesitated, but later they started queuing up before my car filled with vegetables arrived,” added Vinayak with a smile.

When neighbours and fellow apartment dwellers appreciated his efforts and asked for regular supply, he conducted a survey among his customers to know their requirements and specifications. Based on their responses, he opened the first natural outlet, with his friend and partner Sakalesh, of Astitva Naturals in Bengaluru.

You might also like: This Duo Left Behind Lucrative Careers to Help You Know Your Farmers & See How Your Food Is Grown

Customers flocked to the store off Bannerghatta Road, and it became evident that there was a need for outlets that made quality food available to discerning consumers. Vinayak went on to start Ishta Café with another friend and partner Asmita, where a fusion of traditional and contemporary foods are prepared with naturally-grown ingredients.

“We serve modern foods like pizza and burger in a traditional and healthier way, thus suiting all age groups, especially the older generation, who don’t have palatability for the fast food served elsewhere”, Vinayak says.

The re-inventions of falafel, quesadilla, and others with millet as their base are a delight to the health-conscious foodie.

Combining health with taste has worked to the advantage of Ishta Café, now a busy eatery tucked away in a suburban neighbourhood.

“Orders for birthday parties and family gatherings are gaining momentum these days. We have revived traditional food like sangeetha, navane dosa, and puddu, along with other re-imagined versions of continental cuisine. These are flying off the shelves in no time,” said a confident Vinayak.

You might also like: This Mumbai Ecopreneur Has Been Turning City Dwellers Into Urban Farmers for Over Half a Decade

Vinayak has also built a thatch house next door to Astitiva Naturals and named it Kośa. The space offers a platform for events and conduct workshops to create awareness about various social and health-related issues. This initiative further underlines the importance Vinayak attributes to the value of good food.

Thrilled at the response he has received, Vinayak looks forward to taking Astitva Naturals and Ishta Café to the next level. He wants to reach out to more people by opening such stores and café models in different parts of Bengaluru. He is confident that with the right intent and effort, it is possible to turn every dream into a reality. “If I can contribute to better living and add value to natural farming, I am satisfied,” he signs off.

Find more details on Astitva Naturals and Ishta Café on Facebook, or call 09972314007.

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According to statistics from the World Bank, a total of 270 million people in India live below the poverty line. That amounts to an astounding 22% of the population. With millions struggling to make ends meet, how can the government as well as the society come together to help those who are in dire need of support and aid?

While a lot of charity focuses on providing relief that is often short-term,empowering people with the right platform and the skill setensures long-term success.

But there are still many obstacles for those who battle with tragic circumstances. The worst of them of all being the fact that if someone wants to start a business of their own,they may not even be able to secure the loan they need. Millions are turned away from traditional banks because they either don’t have any collateral or even a bank account to beginwith.

The story of Rupesh Bhalerao, a 33-year-old differently-abled man is no different. At 11, he contracted polio and was rendered bedridden. Coming from a poor family, his parents were unable to take care of him and thrust him to his grandparents for care.

But given their advanced age, they too found it difficult to provide the care he needed.

Whilst his life has been a constant struggle, he never let it defeat him. He took up a job at a printing press upon growing up and equipped himself with the know-how of becoming an entrepreneur.

However, despite his dreams, it would still be next to impossible for him to put together enough funds to pay the high interests rates that traditional banks impose.

Similarly, Swati Pagare also dreams of starting her own business some day.

Her goal is to start a shop that exclusively sells various kinds of fabric for women. However, she too struggles with not having enough money to make it happen. She was raised in extreme poverty wherein she had to drop out of school because her parents could no longer afford her studies. She was then married off a young age to a man who would later lose his job.

You may also like: Small Loans Make Big Entrepreneurs out of 10 Women in the Heartland of UP

It came down to her to support her family, which is what she did by selling different kinds of spices. But when business was floundering because of her limited technical knowledge, she did her best to learn all that was needed to become a successful entrepreneur. With an understanding now on how business works, all that’s standing in her way is getting the funding.

While a loan from a commercial bank may be something beyond the reaches of people like Rupesh and Swati, they can hope to get the help through schemes like Tata Capital’s Salaam Loan. Unlike normal banks, this scheme aims at providing loan to deserving individuals by letting people vote for the stories shared by the nominees and give them their #LoanKaHaq. Salaam loans is giving public the power to vote for a story and help the deserving kick start their dreams making this a unique initiative as it is fuelled by public support or as they term it, ‘Public ke support pe milne wala loan.’

In order to avail the scheme, all anyone has to do is nominate someone they deem worthy of securing funding. This can be done either through a written letter or through a video testimonial. Those selected, will then get a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to chase their dreams.

You may also like: TBI Blogs: Here’s How One Man Brought Development to Manipur Through Small, Life-Changing Loans

It’s that simple.

To know more, click here

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“I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth, literally. My dresses and footwear were made with silver and gold borders. I was my father’s favourite child. I was not supposed to be, since I was the third daughter, but I was his lucky charm. After my birth, his business of silk sarees reached unimaginable heights. Till I was 8 years old, our shop in Devji Sarya ni Pol was doing wonderful business, and so we were very very prosperous,” says Ansuya Shah, entrepreneur.

Drive straight down from Jodhpur Char Rasta and halt at a society with three-storied white-washed buildings. On the ground floor, behind the SBI ATM, a modest cozy home is where Ansuya trades her products.

A mixed scent of powdered masalas, packaged condiments, and raw spices hits the nostrils at the door of the shop, which is the living room of her home.

Wearing a simple pink cotton saree, Ansuyaben welcomes everyone with a broad smile.

The living room is an interesting setting, with the sofas becoming customer seating, the swing being a display zone-counter, and the space below the sofa and the TV storage unit turned into temporary storage spaces. There are a lot of products stacked in the shelves, and plenty of commotion in the living room between Ansuya’s customers, her husband, and herself, but there is an absence of chaos and a presence of immense love and passion that emanates from her.

Ansuyaben was born in 1950, after one brother and two sisters. Her initial childhood years were extremely adventurous, since she was naughty and stubborn, celebrating her academic failure in Class II with ice cream, and ruining a room full of fresh guavas to be gifted to Brahmins with a bite taken out of each. Ansuyaben was brought up in an an affluent but spiritual family.

“We had certain rules. Every year, we would watch at least one spiritual movie, and visit our family priest in Dakor and spend the summer vacations there. So till I was 20, I frankly had no idea about love and life. There was no inlet for it in my growing years. My family experienced great prosperity till I was 8 years old. In 1958, my father’s saree shop caught fire and burned to ashes. The story of our overnight journey from riches to rags was published in the newspapers.” Ansuyaben remembers that.

“During that time, we started selling samosas worth 3 paisa at the same shop where we had sold sarees worth ₹5,000!”

From then on, the entrepreneur sense in her was ignited. “In my family we expose our children to business at a very young age. The child is allowed to sit through all ‘adult’ discussions regarding money, deals, and other matters. With one condition, of course – the mouth should be shut, but the eyes and ears are to be kept open. So I would assist my brother in his catering business.”

“From a very young age, entrepreneurship interested me. I have always had good management skills, and an inclination to keep busy all the time. One thing was clearly etched in my thoughts – to always be the ‘alpha’ in whatever I do. I think all of this has helped me in my life to be a success,” Ansuya says modestly.

After fire destroyed the saree business, the financial crisis her family had to face, and her keen interest in business, pushed Ansuyaben to attend college and hold the full-fledged job of ‘punch operator’ in the Gujarat Technical Board of Education, along with helping her brother.

“But I wanted to do more, to be at a higher post on the technical board. After some enquiries, I realised that I had to give exams to reach that post, and the result statistics of those were very low, worse than even CA examinations. There was another hitch – there was no reference material available in any bookstore or library for these exams. It was just general knowledge from office tables and areas that I did not understand.”

“Once, while travelling to Gandhinagar to find out more about the exam, a co-traveller offered to help me with a supply of reference material, but on one condition – I had to return the books on the date he specified. In those days, there were no photocopy machines or computers. I had to study before the date he demanded.”

“I worked very hard for the exams. Waking up at 3 AM, I would study from the books, help my sister- in-law with chores, help my brother with catering orders, attend college, and then go to the office. Slowly, I managed to clear all the six papers, and reached a very high post on the technical board, along with a degree in commerce. My brother’s catering business also took off to such profit levels that he could restart our saree business. Of course, we were very famous caterers too!” Ansuyaben is very proud.

Hard work has always been her route to success. But there are three major ingredients in her life – love for business, love for God, and love for humanity. Ansuya never starts or ends anything without a prayer. She strongly believes in the idea of karma, and loves her husband totally.

The story of how she decided to marry a differently-abled person is as inspiring as her entrepreneurial qualities.

Ansuyaben’s husband is polio-affected. He now helps her do odd jobs like filling masala packets, pricing them, keeping accounts, talking and inspiring customers to buy their products, attending Amway meetings, inspiring other people to join the Amway business, and more.

She recollects, “Being of marriageable age and yet being unmarried was a big taboo in those times. But I was not bothered by these ideas.”

“I was always very spiritual and compassionate. I would take a bus to my workplace from home. On the way from home to the bus stop, there was a school for the blind. I would always help a needy person or two cross the street. While doing so, a friend teased me, saying, ‘Instead of holding hands and helping random men cross the street, why don’t you marry one?’ It was very hurtful, but I took it in a positive spirit. I ignored her stupidity, but that thought stuck – to marry someone in whose life my presence makes a difference forever.

“That is how I thought I should marry a differently-abled man and be his support. I met my husband, got engaged, and then married him in a few months. Till today, I do not know which of his legs is polio-affected. It did not bother me then, and does not matter to me even today. After marriage, we moved to Kanpur with my husband’s family, where they had a textile agency. Till the birth of my first daughter, everything was very good. There was love, happiness and prosperity,” she recollects.

For the full story, read ‘People Called Ahmedabad’. Do you know stories of people that will help map your city better? Find out how you can contribute to The People Place Project here.

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No matter how successful your product or service is, pitching your social business to investors is always daunting. Fortunately, these seven small yet important steps by Shloka Nath will help you better represent your vision.

1. The art of storytelling

A pitch is at its heart, a story. Forget everything else you have ever been told about fundraising. Your success in raising capital for your idea, or your start-up, will depend on how good a story you can tell. Moreover, how you tell it, is just as important. So, get comfortable with talking about yourself, your beliefs and make sure you have a chronological narrative that investors can understand and be inspired by. Tell it with passion!

Technocrats will not save the world; change will be brought about by the people who have a vision and can communicate it well. So, embrace the poet, the artist, and the storyteller within.

Remember, it is your job to convince the investor.

2. Know your investor

The cardinal rule before every pitch meeting is: GOOGLE. Yes, seriously.

• Find out what investments the investors have made previously.
• Identify their areas of expertise and investment preferences.
• Speak to people who know them or are part of their existing portfolio.
• Establish a personal connection and build a rapport.

I remember the first time my partner and I presented our start-up to a room of potential investors. We made sure to find out the smallest details about them as well as the organisations they represented.

Our homework allowed us to strategise a more effective pitch, tailor-made to the people we were meeting, and it helped build a greater sense of trust because we were able to align our vision with their beliefs.

3. Your elevator pitch needs to be one minute

We do not always meet our potential investors in formal conference rooms; sometimes you may find your next donor or investor during small talk at a cocktail party or waiting to catch the next flight.

You have to be able to use the opportunity wherever it may arise, to make a compelling case for your start-up or investment idea in one minute. Any longer and your investor will lose interest and move on.

4. Your formal PowerPoint presentation is always 15 minutes long

• Fifteen minutes translates to about 12-15 slides.
• You must leave another 15 minutes to answer questions.
• Always be prepared to present your main business points with less time in hand.

5. Remember to listen

Investors will likely put you through a punishing process and ask you questions you have probably answered many times before. Here are some questions that I like to ask:

• How exactly are you planning to scale your current business?
• What are the main growth drivers?
• How are you going to use new resources (money, people, connections) to grow faster?

Experienced investors will also push you to consider changes in your technology platform or business model. View the process as an opportunity to explore potential new ways of thinking about or structuring your business.

Do not scupper the advice, because it is not necessarily in line with your own ideas; there may be merit to some of those suggestions that you can benefit your start-up later on.

Make sure you tell your investor when they can monetise their investment.

6. Exit, stage left.

As a social entrepreneur, you care about changing the world. An impact investor cares about changing the world and making a lot of money in a short to medium time frame (usually three to seven years).

Therefore, a crucial part of your presentation will have to include a mention of an exit strategy for your investor. Do not assume that will mean an IPO in five years and your becoming the CEO of a Fortune 500 company (very, very rare scenario!)

In all likelihood, exit will look like a licensing agreement with a big company, a strategic sale of the business to another larger company or the sale of your investor’s stake to a later-stage investor.

So, make sure you tell your investor when they can monetise their investment. It may be an unstated question in the meeting, but one you have to address, regardless.

7. Male vs. Female

Harvard Business Review recently published a study analysing VC conversations and how differently they talk about female entrepreneurs.

There is a gendered discourse around female entrepreneurs, HBR discovered. Apart from a few exceptions, the investors often assessed women as having qualities fundamentally opposed to those required for entrepreneurship. However, when assessing male entrepreneurs, the opposite was true. Unsurprisingly, these stereotypes played a role in who received funding.

One of the worst pitch sessions I ever experienced was when I was called in to mentor a panel of entrepreneurs and every male investor in the room called the female entrepreneurs out on their levels of commitment. “Do you think you will be able to give up your personal life to make this company grow as it needs to?” was a common question. No male entrepreneur was asked this.

Female entrepreneurs: the cards may feel stacked against you. Nevertheless, there is hope. Conversations such as these are making the gender bias more transparent.

Money needs to be invested in businesses that have the highest potential. Period. When you stand before your investor, at the next pitch meeting, remember that. Believe in yourselves and what you have to offer the world. That is part of the change you are here to create.

Adapted from an article originally published on the India Development Review website. Like what you read? Learn more about what’s happening in development in India. Have an idea? Tell us what you want to read.

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Even as India continues its rapid economic growth, women in the country struggle against discrimination and inequality.

Role of Women Social Entrepreneurs

A British Council study on the social enterprise landscape in India revealed that in comparision to male-led social enterprises, female-led social enterprises tend to focus on improving the lives of women and on education and literacy. They were also more likely than male-led social enterprises to address the needs of children and persons with disabilities. Many women led social enterprises work on empowering women and solving women specific issues.

Women Entrepreneurs in India

Women Entrepreneurs can not only contribute to the GDP, but can also play a key role in addressing societal challenges. However, the number of women entrepreneurs in India remains relatively low.

In India, a large percentage of women enterprises are micro enterprises that women undertake as a forced economic activity. These micro enterprises can be classified into farm and off-farm enterprises. They rarely achieve scale and serve only to barely sustain the women entrepreneurs and their families.

In rural India, traditionally, a lot of women primary producers can be classified as entrepreneurs. For instance, a dairy farmer who supplies milk to a nearby dairy or household is an entrepreneur. But family responsibilities, traditional social norms and the established patriarchal structure mean that these women entrepreneurs have limited exposure to the outside world. This restricts their mobility and makes them dependent on intermediaries to reach the market or achieve scale.

In many situations, the solutions are available and the main hindrance is the entrepreneur’s lack of knowledge and inability to access the solution. For instance, the StandUp India scheme, launched by the Govt. of India, aims to facilitate bank loans of Rs.10 lakh-Rs.1 crore to at least one Scheduled Caste (SC) or Scheduled Tribe (ST) and one-woman beneficiary per bank branch for setting up a greenfield enterprise in trading, services or manufacturing sector. But many women entrepreneurs, and even more so rural women entrepreneurs, are not able to access schemes like this, due to lack of awareness.

Challenges for Women Entrepreneurs

Across the world, the main deterrent to women entrepreneurship is the lack of confidence and skills and difficulty in accessing entrepreneurial knowledge. In India, there are four key reasons for women not choosing to become entrepreneurs:

Entrepreneurial Mindset: Many women prefer to get into salaried jobs, preferring the steady working hours, income and perks like health insurance and paid leaves. Entrepreneurship is still perceived as a riskier option, requiring longer work hours and lacking a fixed income every month. Most women entrepreneurs though attest that this is not true. They cite flexible working hours and being in control of their schedules as a key reason for becoming entrepreneurs.

Difficulty Accessing Resources:  Women have difficulty accessing funds and other resources due to several reasons: laws regulating the private sphere specifically regarding marriage, inheritance and land can hinder women’s access to assets that can be used as collateral to secure a loan; lack of awareness of schemes that are available to specifically support them; few platforms that specifically support women entrepreneurs.

Lack of Practical Experience: Apart from a few high profile female founders, women do not see too many entrepreneurs in their lives that they can look up to and learn from. Women entrepreneurs often know from experience how challenging it is to start up and establish an enterprise. So when women can reach out to and work with women entrepreneurs, they are more likely to start up.

Mentoring & Network

A mentor can play a key role in helping a women to make the decision to start up. However, unless women accidentally come across a mentor in the course of their work, there are very few structured mentorship programmes available to help them find a mentor who will guide them on their entrepreneurial journey.

Are you a woman who has the grit and passion to become a social entrepreneur? TII Fellowship is looking for you! To know more and apply, please visit: alcindia.org/tii

Featured images courtesy here.

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There’s an idiom in English, “knowing your onions”. If someone holds expertise in a field, practice or trade, they are said to be knowing their onions. While it’s always used in a figurative sense, like all idioms are, it applies to a Haryana farmer quite literally.

Balwan Singh, 58, from Bhiwani, is credited with developing a high-quality variety of onion that fetches a premium in the market.

In the mid-80s, he procured some good quality onion seeds.

Then on, from every harvest, he started choosing the best onion bulbs to get his seeds from. He paid close attention to parameters such as size, evenness of the shape and tightness of the bulbs.

Choosing the best of the best, crop after crop, he was finally able to stabilise the characteristics of these onions.

It took him 17 years to develop this variety, but the effort was worth it. For one, the yield of his onions – which are now named after him, Balwan Pyaaz – is higher than the regular variety. Secondly, it fetches a higher price in the market. Further, it needs minimal chemical fertiliser and more of organic manure. Also, it requires less water to grow.

Hailing from Alakhpura village in Haryana’s Bhiwani district, Balwan told 101Reporters that he earns about ₹3 lakh a year from selling onion seeds alone.

He earns a similar amount from cultivating onions on the less than two acres of land he owns.

He sells his crop directly at the vegetable market in the neighbouring village of Hansi.

When it all began

In the mid-1980s, Balwan began looking for good-quality onion seeds. On the advice of his village elders, he enquired in the neighbouring villages of Bawani Khera, Hansi and Bhiwani and stumbled upon the variety known as Desi Pyaaz.

The size, even shape and tightness of these onion bulbs impressed him. He said he bought a few kilogram of seeds of this variety instantly.

He said he took great care in their sowing, irrigation and weeding and found the first crop phenomenal. Realising this variety could be refined further, he started using the best of the onions for getting seeds. He said he wanted seeds that would give him even, healthy onion bulbs. He would keep a record of the crop output from every batch of seeds and the price it would fetch him.

He said that when he started getting good-quality onion crop in 1989-1990, he reaped a premium of 25% for the quality product.

His produce would sell for ₹125 per quintal, whereas the onion crop of others would sell at ₹100 per quintal.

As recognition and awards for his onions exposed him to the world beyond his fields, he learnt about the demand for organic produce and began using homemade manure and reducing the use of chemical fertilizers.

He made the transition with the guidance of experts from Haryana Agriculture University (HAU), Hisar. The onions he thus grew had a longer shelf life and were bigger.

Accolades

Balwan said his Balwan Pyaaz started winning first prizes in state-level competitions organised by Haryana horticulture department. He said he remained the unanimous winner from 1990 to 1999 in this category. In 2008, his efforts won him the sixth National Grassroots Innovation Awards of National Innovation Foundation (NIF). Four years later, he was honoured with President’s Award at a function in New Delhi.

As word began to spread about these high-quality onions, farmers began visiting Balwan to buy seeds from him. To exploit this demand, some opportunists began selling spurious seeds under the name of Balwan Pyaaz. Balwan said when the NIF was researching the quality of Balwan Pyaaz seeds, they came across eight types of seeds that were being sold under his name.

NIF director Hardev Chaudhary told 101Reporters that Balwan has done a wonderful job by grading and developing a variety within his limited means. He said the HAU tested his seeds and adopted it after getting positive results.

He said Balwan’s onion seeds are now sold to farmers across the country.

Dr RK Singh, a scientist at Central Soil Salinity Research Institute, Karnal, said the institute cultivated Balwan Pyaaz on an experimental basis on less than half an acre of land.

He said they found the onion’s shelf life was much longer and its size was also bigger than the regular onion. He confirmed that the yield of Balwan Singh’s onions is 25% higher than of other varieties. He said they had suggested some sowing techniques to Balwan to refine this variety further.

Inspiring figure

Most farmers in the region grow traditional crops like wheat and sugarcane, but farms around Balwan’s have been growing vegetables of late. Unlike him, they rely solely on chemical fertilizers to boost their yield.

Dharambir Singh of Bawani Khera village said he has been growing Balwan Pyaaz on his one-acre farmland for some time now. He confirmed that the new onions take less water and minimal fertilizer, yet give better output. He said when farmers buy seeds from Balwan, he advises them to use a mix of neem leaves, cow dung and cow urine to spray on the plants.

Randhir Tyagi, another farmer from Bhiwani, said water scarcity is an issue that limits what can grow on their fields. Balwan Pyaaz, by the virtue of requiring less water, fits the bill.

He said he grows these onions on half an acre and makes Rs 2.5-3 lakh every year. This year, he harvested about 240 quintals on half an acre, a bumper crop by any standards.

Balwan said while the innovation earned him respect from within and outside the farming community, its monetary benefits saw him overcoming all his debts. Earlier, he was limited to his fields like a frog in a well, but today he travels across the country to give talks about innovation in farming.

The humble farmer said he never knew his efforts would one day invite buyers from across the country and would be promoted by an agency such as the NIF. He has two sons who work with a private company in Hisar but help him in the fields on weekends. Balwan is living a fulfilling and content life. “I find working with seed varieties more satisfying than anything else in the world,” he said with a smile on his face.

(Written by Sat Singh with inputs from Indervesh Duhan. Sat Singh and Indervesh Duhan are Rohtak based freelance writers and members of 101Reporters.com, a pan-India network of grassroots reporters.)

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Over 1 million Indians turn 18 each month, meaning that a population greater than half the size of the United States will join the workforce over the next 15 years. However, in 2015, the top 8 sectors only created 1,35,000 jobs. The situation is even worse in rural states like Bihar, where 25% of college graduates unemployed leading to the widespread belief that the more educated you are, the more likely you are to be unemployed. These young people are stuck in an impossible situation — they are unwilling to do manual work or farming, and yet, there are no jobs (1.5% of industries are in the state versus 7.55% of the population). Entrepreneurship is also not encouraged, and therefore, there are very few role models to guide the youth on this path.

In such a situation, where there just are not enough jobs, the only option is for the youth to employ themselves by becoming job creators. Towards this end, the Udhyam Learning Foundation is democratising entrepreneurship — making it a dignified and fulfilling choice for youth across India. Mekin Maheshwari, the founder of Udhyam, says “Udhyam aims to challenge mindsets and create ecosystems to democratise entrepreneurship.”

The organisation’s experiential curriculum seeks to awaken latent qualities in youth like confidence, self-awareness, grit, introspection and motivation — which can be a life-changing addition to the formal education they have received.

The actual curriculum has an in-house component, which seeks to bring out these qualities in participants, followed by an experiential business module in which groups are given a loan of ₹10,000 to start a business. It is through this process that youth get to apply the mindset they have learned to the process of entrepreneurship.

They get to build prototypes, gain customer feedback, and iterate. Additionally, they also learn how to deal with failure, develop the confidence to speak to strangers, and often become passionate about a particular business idea. With several successful pilots, Udhyam has found that the program is working to increase participant confidence, business knowledge, and preparedness to work in different ways and with different people.

While traditionally, concepts like ‘mindset’ have been avoided in favour of teaching business basics like accounting and marketing, which are easier to measure, research has begun to show that it is a better predictor of entrepreneurial success. For example, a recent randomised control trial in Togo run by the World Bank and the National University of Singapore tested the impact of training in areas like self-starting behaviour and overcoming obstacles, and found that it was more successful than traditional business training. In particular, female business owners who received training in personal training saw a 40% increase in profits versus 5% for those who receive traditional business training.

Looking at these results and at Udhyam’s curriculum, Project Potential, an organisation that works to solve the crisis of unemployment, has partnered with Udhyam to run a pilot in Kishanganj, Bihar.

Zubin Sharma, the founder of Project Potential, says that the organisation “seeks to provide an alternative path for these youth so that they can apply their creativity to create innovative businesses that generate employment and solve local problems.”

The organisation also plans to launch an incubator in Kishanganj in early 2018 to help these youth move forward with their businesses via access to finance, training, and mentorship.

The Udhyam-Project Potential pilot was launched on 10th November in Kishanganj town with a batch of 20 youngsters and will soon move to other parts of the district to test the program with different groups.

While organisations in the social sector often struggle to collaborate, Udhyam and Project Potential hope that this pilot will become a model for how organisations can come together with their individual strengths to multiply impact. They also hope that the program will not only help young people in meeting their basic needs through the creation of employment but also allow them to fulfil their broader, inner potential.

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Hyderabad is currently hosting the Global Entrepreneurship Summit 2017. Over 1500 entrepreneurs, investors, educators, government officials, and business representatives are expected to attend the global event addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi with the US delegation led by Ivanka Trump. The Summit will highlight India’s support ecosystem for innovation and entrepreneurship along with its efforts in ease of doing business, eliminating unnecessary regulations, and supporting startups.

This year’s theme is ‘women first, prosperity for all.’

A part of the event that has caught attention is the Product Showcase Wall put up at the Hyderabad International Convention Centre by the Indian government. Different startups and entrepreneurs have displayed their products for delegates to see and appreciate.

One of them is the country’s first smart electric scooter — a model of the S340 — developed by Bengaluru-based techie Tarun Mehta, co-founder of Ather Energy. It costs around ₹1 lakh and will be available in the market by the middle of next year. The scooter runs on a lithium-ion battery pack design, with a touchscreen dashboard and a speed of up to 72 km/h.

It can travel up to 60km on a single charge and can be driven in flood-affected areas as well.

When partially submerged, you can ride it for up to 30 mins. It also has an inbuilt global positioning system, reports Deccan Chronicle.

Another product that has grabbed attention is the AmbuPod, which is a three-wheeled solar-powered micro-ambulance developed by a Pune-based startup. The AmbuPod will help solve the issue of patients in need of emergency medical help getting stuck in traffic. It can act as a 24-hour ambulance accommodating one patient on a single stretcher and can be attached to a two-wheeler for navigating through crowded roads.

There are seats for medical attendants as well.

The vehicle is weatherproof and has a makeshift tent kit for pregnant women in case of an urgent delivery. It is charged with solar power. The AmbuPod is still waiting to hit the market.

Ethereal Machine’s Halo, a 5D Printer was also on display at the Summit. According to its co-founder, the machine can be used in the defence, aerospace, and, healthcare sectors, Deccan Chronicle reported. In the defence sector, it will be able to manufacture small parts of heavy-duty vehicles. In the healthcare sector, it will be able to make moulds for syringes and medical equipment. The 5D printer has already arrived in the market.

Other products displayed at the wall included a palm-sized micro drone by Drona Aviation, a smart sleep and wellness tracking baby monitor, the MiRCam from Cardiac Design Labs and an iBreastExam device that helps bring cancer detection and other health services closer to those who need it.

(Featured image creadit: NITI Aayog)

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In a quest towards self-sufficiency, Delhi-based central university Jamia Millia Islamia is not only planning to grow food material on the premises but is also set to put up factory outlets for uniforms and bottled water!

The University has a self-funded ‘Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship’ that initiated the self-sufficiency programme under the name, ‘Aspire’, which functions under MSME ministry.

These factory outlets aim to help the university become self-dependent and also provide employment opportunities for school dropouts.

Director Zishan Khan told TOI that the intent of these programmes is “to provide entrepreneurship training to the economically weaker sections, school dropouts, and help university students earn a livelihood through training.”

The University has a bakery, a bottling plant, and a tailoring and machine embroidery system.

These workshops are not operated by amateurs, but by students and dropouts trained by experts.

In the bakery, for example, the students have been training under Shamshad Ahmed, a baker, to work the machinery that bakes bread, cookies, cakes, muffins etc. Ahmed, who has been a baker for nine years now, says, “There are currently three batches of students with around 30 in each who have shown great enthusiasm as many of them want to open their own units.”

Jamia also has a tailoring unit where girls who have dropped out of school learn appropriate skills under the guidance of a professional. The girls are charged a small fee of ₹3000 to enrol for the training.

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Khan believes that the university is a vast market for sales in all units. The canteen and students’ hostels generate good demand for baked products, clothes, and other food items. They are also planning to set up kiosks apart from these ‘markets.’

“We will be providing these products and the mineral water at cheaper rates. This is being done only for the benefit of the students, and providing them with hygienic and accessible products. We want to make the centre self-sustainable when we start generating revenue,” Khan told the TOI.

The water produced at the bottling plant has been sent for testing, and they plan on rolling out the operations on a large scale by next week.

Khan also added that the initiative was the brainchild of the VC of Jamia, and the vision was for it to become “much like many international universities that have their own companies and manage their own funds.”

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Dendrocalamus giganteus, also known as dragon bamboo, is a giant tropical and subtropical, dense-clumping species native to Southeast Asia. It is one of the largest bamboo species in the world and typically grows to a height of 33 metres.

Bamboo, which comes from the Kannada word Bambu, and considered as the wise man’s timber, is the planet’s most massive grass typically reaching full height and width within the first 12 months of its life.

On a November evening, we met Anand Patki, the owner of the nursery in Dongroli village, a journey of 152 km from Mumbai. The 14-acre nursery sits on a hillock and is home to 24 varieties of ‘green gold’, as many call it. Surrounded by a deciduous forest, the weather in Dongroli, 10 kms from the State Highway 97, is suitable for bamboo cultivation as rainwater does not stagnate despite its neighbourhood logging nearly 2000 mm of rainfall every year.

Also Read: How Bamboo Schools Are Helping Students Continue Their Education in Maoist-Affected Bastar

The hill on the nursery’s south and west side arrests heavy rain showers and wind acting as a protecting wall to the mother plants. “Google maps helped me to decide and choose the nursery site,” says Patki, a landscape artist, who found that most nurseries were either unaware of the species they had or lacked knowledge of fundamental issues related to bamboo cultivation.

Asked why he set up a nursery instead of a plantation, Patki responds by saying that he was deeply inspired by veteran bamboo promoter Ajit Thakur (who also happens to be his father-in-law) and he wanted to make quality planting material available.

Though the nursery is home to 24 varieties, Patki has selected seven commercially essential bamboo species which yield good returns. The selection of bamboo species is crucial before planning a plantation as bamboo flowers once in its life cycle, and depending upon the species, it can be 40 or 60 years. Once bamboo flowers the mother plant dies, making it necessary that the right one is selected for cultivation.

Setting up a nursery in such a remote location was no easy task. “It took me almost a year just to demarcate the plot for it was not farmed for a couple of decades. Then I had to set up the polyhouses, shade net and build a pond to store rainwater. It had to be fenced too because cattle belonging to the locals had a field day feeding on the saplings and then were incidences of the locals stealing away my farm equipment,” Patki informs us.

A bamboo plant can survive harsh climatic conditions, but if provided with enough water and organic fertigation it is likely to give a good yield.

“It takes around three years to have mature shoots to pop out and ready to be harvested. After six years one can start harvesting timber bamboo each year,” says Patki.

According to the India State of Forest Report 2011, the total bamboo bearing area in the country is 13.96 million hectares. On a conservative estimate, it constitutes about 12.8% of the total area under forests is under bamboo in India. The annual production of bamboo in India is about 4.6 million tonnes, of which about 1.9 million tonnes is used by the pulp industries. The annual yield of bamboo per hectare in India varies between 0.2 and 0.4 tonnes with an average of 0.33 tonnes per hectare, depending upon the intensity of stocking and biotic interferences.

Arunachal Pradesh leads with  16,083 sq kms  under bamboo bearing area followed by Madhya Pradesh (13,059 sq km) Maharashtra (11,465 sq km) and Chattisgarh (11,368 sq. km). Under the National Agro-forestry & Bamboo Mission  (NABM), the Central government has established 108 markets closer to villages providing marketing avenues to bamboo growers as well as finished products.

Also Read:Two Brothers Wanting Power For Their Farms Invented A Bamboo Windmill That Is 10 Times Cheaper!

Additionally, efforts are being made to popularise bamboo products through participation in trade fairs. Assistance is also provided to farmers/bamboo growers for nursery establishment, plantations in the non-forest area, imparting training for preparation of nurseries and bamboo plantations, establishing of bamboo markets for farmer products, etc. A total of Rs 1689.36 lakh was released for the entire country under the NABM during 2016-2017, of which Rs 993.48 lakh was allocated to the eight states in Northeast India.

The commercial varieties available at the Dongroli nursery are Dendrocalamus brandisii, Dendrocalamus giganteus, Dendrocalamus longispathus, Bambusa tulda and Thyrsostachys oliveri.

Elaborating the economics behind commercial bamboo cultivation Patki says, for instance, 350 clumps of Dendrocalamus brandisii planted on an acre is likely to produce six new shoots each year, meaning one ends up with 2100 bamboos. With each bamboo weighing around 120 kg, it is 2,52,000 kg of timber. “The flowering cycle of this species is 66 years that means timber can be harvested for 60 long years,” says Patki.

Patki is proud of the Bambusa cacharensis variety which he acquired from the Northeast. “I acquired this important bamboo species after consistent trials for three long years. I managed to bring some 100 rhizome offsets, of which only 13 have survived.”

His efforts are laudable as bamboo holds a lot of promise for the country’s agriculture sector both by providing livelihood to farmers and artisans who make baskets and other products. Sunil Joshi, the Chairman of Bamboo Society of India, Maharashtra chapter, says, “We require many more people like Anand Patki to make the bamboo movement a people’s movement.”

(This article was written by Hiren Kumar Bose)

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The typical fashion-forward individual might walk into a branded apparel store, and spend thousands of rupees on clothes stitched from cotton and other fabrics. Spending your hard-earned money on designer fabrics is one thing, but what if you could look great, without destroying the environment?

The Bombay Hemp Company or Boheco as its known, is an agro-based enterprise which plans to take hemp, the 9000-year-old wonder crop of the Himalayas, and weave its magic closely into agriculture, technology and medicine, bringing together a community to create impact and value.

Avnish Pandya, Chirag Tekchandaney, Delzaad Deolaliwala, Jahan Peston Jamas, Sanvar Oberoi, Sumit Shah and Yash P. Kotak are the collective force behind this sustainable, green and environmental-conscious initiative.

While the team is looking at a wide array of uses for hemp, it already sells a range of pure hemp and hemp blend textiles.

Hemp fabric boasts some incredible properties. It is the most durable natural fibre on the planet, 98% UV resistant, and repels bacteria and dust.

Additionally, a new technology can turn hemp from a scratchy, stiff fibre into one as soft as cotton.

B Label, Boheco‘s clothing line, caters to the well-informed and eco-conscious individual and its range of clothes include stoles, shirts and dresses, for both men and women, in soft, pleasing colours. The objective of the venture is to propagate the use of hemp fibres and bring the clothes they make to the right people. The brand hopes to be able to make strategic tie-ups, to further its cause of providing a sustainable, green and clean alternative to popular fashion trends.

In addition, there is the B Label Handloom collection of wool and hemp blend stoles, which are woven by the Mandakini Women Weavers Co-operative in the Kedarnath valley of Uttarakhand. About 60 people are supported by B Label Handloom, including local men who harvest the wild hemp. B Label Handlooms aims to bring these indigenous products to the global marketplace.

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B Label pop-up stores can be seen at niche events, like the Kala Ghoda arts festival, and other flea markets.

Boheco wishes for a wholesome, credible solution to alleviate poverty and uplift society. Via its clothing line, Boheco aims to employ artisans, craftsman and tailors, bringing back the revenue from the cottage industries to those who need it.

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