A lot of affordable housing work in developing nations like India is handled by the government. Government of India is not exactly known for its taste in architecture and design. An interesting story that I read in the Knowledge Wharton blog goes like this – the Tamil Nadu government built low income housing for milkmen who were squatters and without housing. Once the houses were ready and the milkmen moved in, they came to a realization that the buffaloes gave a lot more milk when they were housed in the quarters and were cosy and comfortable which meant that the milkmen went back to being homeless and the buffaloes lived in the low income housing. Not the scenario the government had envisioned while cutting the ribbon on this not so cheap housing project.

The government is trying to build upon public private partnerships by getting partners to deliver affordable housing units after repeated failure to understand this sector. Some huge Indian corporations like TATA are getting into the mix and proposing affordable housing as well. Inspite of all these initiatives, there is still no talk of design and the needs of the community that these houses are being built for.

Here is where the Micro Home Solutions comes in. mHS is a for profit social enterprise that wants to use an interdisciplinary approach to create affordable housing for the 62 million people in India who either live in slums or are without homes. It was started by a husband wife duo – Rakhi Mehra and Marco Ferrario in August 2009. Their organization links together architecture, finance and community to create a housing approach for the urban poor. The two projects they are working on as per a recent article on mHS in fastcompany is a sanitary shelter for India’s homeless and poor and an inter-disciplinary collaborative approach that would allow slum dwellers to organize and plan their homes.

Recently, the Bhartiya Samruddhi Finance Limited (BSFL), the flagship company of the BASIX group entered into a strategic partnership with micro Home Solutions. BASIX will act as the microcredit arm for the mHS wherein it will be providing financial and technical assistance to compliment its housing loan products for the low income/informal sector households. The housing and urban development corporation (HUDCO) had disbursed millions of dollars in loans to the poor of the country. This initiative was fraught with corruption and inefficiencies. Microfinance institutions have an advantage in this area because they know their customers and how much credit risk they are. This alliance shows how mHS is leveraging partnerships to deliver the most efficient product and services to the low-income households.

Affordability should not compromise design. The low income housing being developed for the poor comprises their sense of community, space and social life. A lot of such housing is given out to rent by its owners and the inhabitants go back to living in slums. The housing solutions that mHS provides are affordable, viable and scalable and their portfolio is diversified according to the need to family. As stated in their website – they want to bring about basic changes like better lighting, ventilation and efficient use of space. Their aim is to bring design where it is needed most : to India’s low income urban communities. The idea is to work on strategic ways to allocate resources and bring about better living conditions. The solution is not just one pit stop where the government gives out lower income housing to the poor for cheap but creates a tiered system of affordable self selection options from rentals to dormitories to buying a house. Multiple housing options with and strategic partnerships with housing boards, developers and associations can bring about a flexible plan that will benefit everyone and save government funds as well as bring about a slum free future for India.

mHS blog

Babajob.com is a Bangalore-based start-up that uses the web and mobile technology to connect employers and bottom-of-the-pyramid (BOP) informal sector workers (i.e. maids, cooks, drivers, etc.) with the goal of creating a scalable, replicable and profitable solution to combat poverty. Babajob aims to do this by creating greater market efficiency in the informal sector through voice and web features such as SMS, USSD, automated voice systems, and operator manned call centers, enabling employers and job seekers to find each other. The simple premises, upon which it built itself and continues to grow on, are –

• Everyone deserves to get a better job, no matter what their income or skill level, and
• Technology can enhance our ability to both hire more efficiently, and better communicate with those we care about.

While at Microsoft Research India in 2005, CEO Sean Blagsvedt co-ran the Advanced Development and Prototyping Team and worked very closely with the Technology for Emerging Markets research group, whose aim was to study and invent new ways that technology could be used to positively impact the social and economic development of the world’s poorest 4 billion people. Sean’s first thought was “Great – all they need is the village version of LinkedIn.com!” In reality however, in order to make such a system work, one has to overcome the problem that most low-income workers of the world may not be literate, nor own a mobile phone and rarely own or have ready access to an Internet-connected PC. Most people in India find jobs through people they know – namely their extended social network – and most employers – particularly when hiring employees that work in the home – would like to hire a person who someone they trust can vouch for. Another important factor with the increase of travel time (owing to the increase in the number of vehicles on the roads) and often-unreliable public transport has resulted in people looking for jobs closer to home, in their neighborhoods. More often than not, it’s the simply not-knowing that causes people to miss out on better-suited opportunities. Babajob.com is an attempt to digitize this process and information to efficiently “get the word out” and importantly provide an incentive for the folks in between an employer and employee to connect people together.

By leveraging web and mobile technology, Babajob scales and engages a wider audience creating greater efficiency for employers and further deepens the social impact on job seekers. Employers can conveniently browse job seeker profiles based on salary, location, languages, employment background, skills and references. Babajob offers several fee-based services to help in the matching and hiring of seekers.

With services available for all major cities in the country, Babajob is currently testing out a new voice application that will help communicate the necessary information into various regional languages. With a likely tie up with a mobile handset maker – the goal is to transcend, once again, the language and literacy barrier, to broaden the scope of Babajob’s services.

Babajob serves as a fine example of complex system design for a country that is socially and linguistically diverse; and where literacy is a major point of consideration, while attempting to make information accessible.  With a constantly evolving set of parameters and a strong belief in the transformative power of software on society, Babajob is social entrepreneurship at its best. By tapping into informal social interactions and streams of information, and using a blended value business model that combines a revenue generating business with a social-value-generating component, it provides us with a glimpse of the paradigm shift that is brewing with regards to businesses in emerging economies.

The ChotuKool is like no other fridge. It does not have a compressor. It runs on a battery. Utensils and bottles need to be loaded into this 43-litre cool box from the top. It weighs only 7.8 kg and costs only Rs 3,200. A product of Godrej & Boyce, the fridge was co-created with the woman of Osamabad, a small town tucked away in the Marathwada region of Maharashtra. This project has another service design component which is extremely interesting – the retailers who go from house to house selling the Chotokools. They belong to the self-help group created and run by Swayam Shikshan Prayog, an NGO microfinance institution (MFI). The number of women retailers approximate 101 in 77 villages. They sell nano refrigerators among other products, in Osmanabad, Maharashtra. and earn Rs 3,000 a month as commission. The MFI also sells Hindustan Unilever water purifiers and BP Energy India cooking stoves. It accounts for 60,000 of the 200,000 Oorja stoves sold across the country by BP Energy.

Outlook Business cover story on India’s New Retailers

dhanaX is an online-offline person-to-person lending platform that allows Indians to lend and borrow money from each other. For a lender looking for a social investment, or a borrower seeking an affordable loan, dhanaX  provides and option by facilitating lending or borrowing of small capital using scientific, credible methods. dhanaX works in partnership with a network of carefully selected, well-established agents who represent the borrower you choose. dhanaX targets unbanked Indian population whose annual income is between $1500 and $4500. dhanaX aims to enhance their hopes of availing easy credit from the fellow Indians.

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