rural

Hewlett Packard India has signed Shahrukh Khan, for its mega promotion, "Yeh Hui Na Baat". Shahrukh will be featuring in the promotion for Compaq Presario range of notebooks and desktops, which is scheduled for a national kick off on 1 March. Compaq Presario's aggressive 360 degrees marketing campaign covering print, electronic media, radio, outdoor, sales promotion and merchandising will reach out to consumers across the country with Shahrukh.

At the press conference, I asked him at what age do you think Parents should encourage their children to learn computers, and he was quick to mention that at the same age as they encourage them to watch TV.

In first part of this 2 part blog, (Click to read Part-1) I wrote more about Ajanta and Samay, the unique technology venture that is rural by nature and its influence on me. In this part I would be drawing reference between Amul Milk Cooperative and Samooha Business Software Cooperative.

While in Ajanta, I had the opportunity to closely observe and understand another movement that was on then in Gujarat which is even today known as Amul. The long journey, Amul went through, the early setbacks faced by the cooperative and its drive for innovation to sustain and thrive in the market are great pointers for any IT entrepreneur in India who would like to make a niche with product or process innovation.

I wanted to write this for long but there is no better time than now to sit down to express this.

This would be first in a two part blog entries related to this topic very close to my heart.

In early 90s I served in Ajanta Clocks in the remote town of Morbi near Rajkot. It was one of the best experiences of my experiments with life. I had two offers at a time while taking up the position at Ajanta. I chose Ajanta to manage their Tool Room than being a Junior Technical Officer at VIP Industries at Nasik in a hierarchical structure.

Ajanta was a family run business and there were 8 brothers or cousins from 3 families managing the show. The most influential, then, amongst them was Shri. Pravin Bhai Bhalodia. He could be termed the Managing Director and was actually called back from his second year in BE as the founder Shri. Odhavji Bhai R Patel and the family needed many working hands to run the operations. Shri Odhavji Bhai himself was a teacher cum entrepreneur who made those age old mechanical clocks which I remember to be winding until the coil spring broke!

REECODE (REmodel ECOnomic DEvelopment of India)

- Over 65 per cent of India's population is in rural areas.
- All marketeers have failed/have had tough time selling to the rural mass.
- Cities are choking.
- Development is too polarised, with opportunities/wealth getting concentrated in urban areas.
- There is an urgent need to significantly improve the purchasin power of the rural population.

***** - Here, I see a business opportunity worth Rs 60,000 crore per annum, i.e. about US $ 13 Billion per annum (in sales, not just market value of IPO paper).

Power point presentation on the project as well as inital study reports in the urban and rural areas of Ujjain District of Madhya Pradesh state are available on request.