Page 148 - MYM 2015

the next eight years, by replacing diesel with renewable energy from NextGen or anyone else!
WPP- Waste Plastic Pyrolysis - an amazing solution. In an age of plastics - bags, containers, toys et al, being also thrown carelessly on roadsides in cities, towns and now, even, villages in emerging markets- WPP can be a God-sent solution.
This small plant in Surat, India, Anjali Exim, converts easily available waste plastic into oil and gas- with 100% recycling and no churn left after the process. Anjali can recycle all soft plastic base material especially mill waste, cement bags and road waste plastic. With WPP reaching out to a wider audience, our roads should look much cleaner and greener – especially in emerging markets where civic sense has still to percolate through layers of society.
Waste to Biogas – Green Power systems. Two young entrepreneurs, Chakraborty and Sankar, now handle
I tonne of waste a day to produce biogas equivalent
to 4 cylinders of LPG. Its systems are installed in 10 processing units across the country. They aim to cross the $1 million mark in revenues, while keeping the team size to below 15!
This is good management and an example to top heavy large corporations, who claim to be ef cient!
Generating power from Rice husks – Pandey. Among the Indian entrepreneurs invited for a round
of table discussions with President Obama in Mumbai in 2010 was Gyanesh Pandey. Pandey, in his 30’s, an electrical engineer by profession, founded Husk Power Systems, which converts rice husk, which is otherwise wasted, into energy. They use the process of biomass gasi cation, where rice husk is burned in a controlled amount of oxygen to produce gas- which drives an internal combustion engine, which runs an alternator, to produce electricity. Pandey now has 60 mini power plants to provide electricity to more than 250 villages and bene t 150,000 people. Pandey has plans to set up over 2000 systems by 2015 , and provide electricity to 6500 villages!
Wireless capsule Endoscopy – NIMS Medicity. This is a new diagnostic tool developed by NIMS Medicity, in South India, for non invasive detection of small bowel diseases. D Jayakumar, Senior Gastroenterologist
says that the endoscopy would detect bleeding sites, tumours, ulcers in remote parts of the small intestines, even as a patient walks. “Capsule Endoscope” is a swallow-able capsule containing a tiny camera. It can take two pictures every second for eight hours!
And there are many, many more............such as
• a cheap paper test to discover cancer, replacing expensive CT Scan and Mamography- from Indian origin, Dr.Sangeeta Bhatia at Johns Hopkins, USA
• Bijli box – which stores solar energy and is rented to villagers at 10c a day, and replaced every day by company personnel. Children can now spend time studying after sunset and the whole family can have the luxury of a fan during the hot summer nights.
• Dr Devi Shetty’s hospitals using frugal innovation, where an open heart surgery can cost one fourth the price in a corporate hospital. 100 such hospitals are planned across India- saving costs by compact design, reduced empty spaces, and using prefabricated structures, reducing the
cost per bed to $20K from $100K , in corporate hospitals.
Why is Success So Limited? Can WMS Play a Role?
From the examples above, all of us will ask the same questions:
• Why are these innovative companies not any bigger? Why have they not been accepted with open arms? Why have they not been welcomed by the market - as they should have been? Why have these developments NOT been shared across,
at least all emerging markets, and the poorer economies ?
Because, surely, it would help to make this a better world !
Perhaps, we need to again ask those three important questions raised by Arthur Felton, many years ago.
Felton asked,
Is there a need, but no market?
Mrs. Banasinska, a Polish refugee during the Second World War, stayed in India and started a manufacturing unit for Montessori school equipment in Hyderabad, India. It was the rst and unique. Montessori schools were increasing in numbers. They accepted the Montessori system of teaching as excellent. But the equipment did not sell. They shut down after many years of struggle. There was a need – but no market, There was no will to buy the product at a fair price (schools felt the price was too high and therefore tried to do without it).
148 I October 2015