Investing in the sun
Fontana, the Taj Palace hotel’s coffee shop, has an array of frosted lamp shades on its celing lit by filament bulbs. Harish Hande looks at the ceiling with irritation. He’s just been declared ‘social entrepreneur of the year’ by the Schwab Foundation for spreading solar energy to villages in India. His company, Selco Solar Light Pvt Ltd, is worth some $ 4 million. “Why produce filament lamps? Why produce cars for one lakh? You have to be serious when you talk about climate change. If one of the most respected groups in the country does not get it how will anyone else?” he frets.
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Thorny bush is Ladakh’s goldmine
SEABUCKTHORN, a thorny bush growing in the wilds of Ladakh, is becoming a goldmine. Companies, entrepreneurs and small farmers are cashing in. This innocuous plant is being seen as a stepping tone to prosperity and a range of products have been invented. Mantra Ayurveda, a Faridabad-based company, is producing natural soap, shampoo, conditioner, body lotion and cream with seabuckthorn oil, leaves and seeds. The products are marketed through the Fabindia chain of stores.
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Captivating the minds of children
BALDEV Gulati could be just about any small businessman in Ghaziabad’s collapsing industrial estates. A few hands, modest turnover, low profits. But the truth is Gulati is a messiah in his own right. Visually challenged, he has started a spice business which employs 50 differently abled people like himself. The spices go by the name of NP Masale, the brand coming from Gulati’s company, Navprerna, which supplies spices to retailers, households in Ghaziabad and institutions like the India Habitat Centre and Hotel Broadway.
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The masala messiah
BALDEV Gulati could be just about any small businessman in Ghaziabad’s collapsing industrial estates. A few hands, modest turnover, low profits. But the truth is Gulati is a messiah in his own right. Visually challenged, he has started a spice business which employs 50 differently abled people like himself. The spices go by the name of NP Masale, the brand coming from Gulati’s company, Navprerna, which supplies spices to retailers, households in Ghaziabad and institutions like the India Habitat Centre and Hotel Broadway.
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‘The customer is in slums’
MEDICINE Shoppe was a frontrunner when the retail sector was liberalised in India. Its founder, Viraj Gandhi, was studying Economics at Babson College in the US when he heard of retail chains like Crossword and Shopper’s Stop opening in India. His family promoted pharma companies like Dolphin Laboratories and Gujarat Lyka. Viraj Gandhi worked on a project idea for a retail chain in the large but fragmented and inefficient pharmacy business.
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PVR hits the street for children
STREET children are ardent fans of Bollywood. You can see them congregating around movie halls, checking out shows with religious zeal. Serious talk takes place before a decision on which film they’d like to watch is arrived at. However the new cinema halls with their posh environs and expensive tickets have become inaccessible to street children. The children have remained but they can’t go to the movies like they used to.
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Helpline is 1, but VOICE is not shouting
A helpline set up by Consumer VOICE completed a full year on October 2 with little to celebrate, but nevertheless eager to build a more vigorous presence for itself. The helpline was set up at the urging of the Union ministry for chemicals and fertilisers. Ram Bilas Paswan, the minister, wanted to check profiteering in the prices of medicines. However, over this whole year the helpline has received only 3,719 complaints at its call centre and a mere 382 relate to medicines.
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Building herbal connections
IT was a cold and grey winter’s day in Delhi in December 2002. But if the weather outside was lousy, it was nowhere near being as bleak as Janak Rawal felt within as he squirmed in his chair before a senior officer of the National Medicinal Plants Board. The officer cursorily flipped through Rawal’s newly released Medherb Green Pages and then, with a dismissive arrogance that comes easily when in government, dropped the publication in the wastepaper basket near his table.
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Mesh gets artisans the right price
THE Mesh shop in Delhi’s Uday Park stocks some stylishly designed handicraft products from across India. It is a wide range: a stuffed elephant in a skirt, chic bead napkin rings, a beautifully hand-carved wooden chopping board, wooden lamps hanging from the ceiling and much more. The shop has been funded by IM Soir, a Swedish company, to conduct a four-year design and development project.
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Dr Reddy’s LABS goes global
IN 1999, Dr Reddy’s Foundation (DRF), the non-profit arm of Dr Reddy’s Laboratories, started a Livelihood Advancement Business school (LABS) with nine students in Hyderabad, India’s cyber capital. Over the years, the business school’s popularity has grown hugely. Today it has 120 centres across 11 states in India. More than 93,000 underprivileged students have learnt the basics of computerscience from its many centres and got decent jobs.
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Homes for the masses
MURALI Srinivas is an entrepreneur who has recently incorporated Tripod Housing, a company that will build houses for lower income groups (LIG) and the economically weak sections (EWS). Tripod will initially construct 400 sq ft apartments adjacent to industrial areas in Hyderabad and Dehradun. Srinivas is raising Rs 4 crore through equity for the project, and is investing Rs 25 lakh. Srinivas claims that he can give a 50 per cent return on the invested amount in two years. The housing projects will factor in economic and social concerns.
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The Formula One ambulance
DIAL 1298 from any phone in Mumbai and Ziqitza will track one of its nearest ambulances through the Global Positioning System (GPS) for you. A yellow air-conditioned ambulance with a broad green and yellow chequered band fitted with all emergency medical equipment will arrive and take you to any city hospital.
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Jobs for untaught youth, last chance
THOUGH several service sectors like tourism, retail, healthcare, hospitality and BPO are booming in India, they cannot find trained staff. The vocational training system has not kept up. On the other hand, a huge number of children and youth in the country coming from marginal and underprivileged backgrounds have no means of entering the new economy.
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The mobile AIDs game
SUBHI and Hilmi Quraishi are brothers who run an e-learning company called ZMQ Software. Named after the initials of their father, the company has a 27-member team and had a turnover of about Rs 7 crore this year. The Quraishis can now afford new offices at Manesar, a city on the Delhi-Jaipur Highway. They are busy moving their offices from Pitampura in Delhi to Manesar. Meanwhile, all meetings are being held in cafes. The Quraishis arrive at the United Coffee House in Connaught Place and Hilmi, the chief learning technology officer, is sporting a fine bead badge. It is white and has a red ribbon.
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Small is Big for SATIN
SATIN Creditcare is a financial institution on the fifth floor of a grey, unfashionable commercial complex in a rundown area of Delhi called Azadpur. A rickety lift clanks up to the company's office. The table in the conference room has deep scratches and the upholstery on the chairs has not been changed in a while. Clearly, not signs of a fast growing energetic business, you think.
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Biofuels are for Bharat
THE tiny village of Ranidhera in Chhattisgarh's Kabir Dham district has never known what it is to have electricity and has experienced no develop-ment. But when lights do go on in the huts of its 120 households at the end of February, Ranidhera will be catapulted into a world class league of users of renewable energy.
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Biometric ATM talks to all
BABYSITTERS, cooks, household cleaners, car cleaners, gardeners, vegetable sellers and drivers in our cities, who go to work early morning and return home late in the night, rarely find the time for their personal chores.
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‘Ethanol can replace petrol’
DR RS Kureel, director, National Oilseeds and Vegetable Oils Development Board (NOVOD), ministry of agriculture, has been working for over a decade on plants for biofuels. He spoke to Civil Society about the problems and prospects of growing oil bearing trees to meet India’s energy needs.
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