Sonali Srivastava: Breaking the Barriers

Life is unpredictable and you never know when the opportunities would knock your doors. You can’t be judgmental as you are unaware of the future, but one thing is for sure that the knock made on the door for an opportunity is something you have attracted by your imagination the ‘Law of Attraction’. This law worked for me also and I got a call to be part of a prestigious programme in Rajasthan. At first, I had mixed feeling, I was continuously thinking whether I should give the confirmation or not; and then I thought to ask my colleagues (co-founder) and my parents about the same and as expected they encouraged to go for it as the programme was going to bring the best talents from around the world. Taking the suggestion I went ahead with conforming to the institute.

A month passed and finally, the day arrived I was in a new city with new people and completely different weather from Bangalore. For a couple of months, this city was my new home. It was a one hour journey from Airport to the Institute and there were too many things going in my mind as ‘Who is going to be my roommate?’ ‘Who all are going to be my team?’ ‘Will the programme serve any of my motive of coming?’ and more. Finally, I reached to institute and now was the time for me to check-in. I did my formalities and headed to my room in the dormitory. I have left all my thought at the main gate itself, I didn’t want to think much about it anymore.

The first day of the programme and all were in their respective places in the classroom. Followed by the intro the lecture resumed and information was shared as to how the programme would be taken forward weekly in a full swing. All groups were supposed to visit a village and do need assessment and come out with a proposal to solve the un-served need of the community. After a couple of weeks fieldwork, class lectures, and guest lectures we and other team were done with the need assessment and now it was time for all of us to work on the proposal. A proposal that would be directly associated with the need assessment of the community. With time the final day arrived and every team hard work was reflecting in the presentation. I have successfully accomplished my programme but, what was my take away?

My motive to come to the programme was to at least get the feel of the huge market which is un-touched and understand how can a start-up tap that market and this programme gave an insight which we really don’t get by sitting before our system. My actual learning overcame my expectation. Rural India is full of problems like education, basic infrastructure, lack of livelihood opportunity, lack of information, etc but as per rules of entrepreneurship where there is a problem/ pain point, the entrepreneur has the opportunity to come out with a solution. I found out that there are few start-ups with incredible works but either those are not just covering the urban market thou they have the potential opportunity or they have actually entered the market looking at the size of it but they would survive for very long as their product is not designed keeping in mind the long-term benefit of the villagers.

Here are few such observations:

1. Organic Farming- I found out that villages have started to slowly move towards organic farming but still they are not very convinced to adapt it even thou revenue would be more because yield/ output in the case of organic is very low. Farmers who generally do farming use a portion of the output for their own consumption, so if the output is less he/ she would not be left with a surplus to sell. There is a district in named Mandya in Karnataka which today is known by a brand name Organic Mandya generates revenue more than crores. But village outside Karnataka hardly knows about this. In such a situation experience of Organic Mandya can be considered to improve the condition of other villages.

2. Agriculture- A farmer whatever he/ she grows generally sell those to the intermediaries or in the nearest market at, whatever rate offered by the purchaser. This is because they lack access to the market they are unaware of startups like Agrostar and Farmtaza. These startups can help farmers to get the best deal for his/ her hard work.

3. Sanitary Napkin- With the release of the movie Padman number of startups started with a motive to provide disposable pad at the lowest price. But they ignored the very important fact that a village hardly have a waste disposable system and in that case, the only solution one would apply is to burn it or else bury it in the ground and in both the case you will pollute the environment. There are few NGOs like ecofemme who are working on reusable cloth pads and that can be the best solution to the problem.

Create a solution for a problem and you will never need to worry about the revenue. If you know about any such start-ups who are working in the urban market but they can scale in the rural market do comment and let us know.