NextWealth–Distributed Incubation and a new outsourcing model with profound implications

On a recent trip to Bangalore to visit with Duron Energy, an Idealab company, I was fortunate enough to meet with Dr. Sridhar Mitta, the original Chief Technology Officer of Wipro, one of its earliest employees, and, as President of Wipro Global R&D, the key missionary of outsourced product development. He is the Founder and Managing Director of NextWealth, www.nextwealth.in.  After receiving his M. Tech. from IIT he went on to get a second Masters and his Doctorate at Oklahoma State University. (He did say it was nice to meet another “Okie.”) He returned to India and spent several years in the public sector before joining Wipro in its startup days. He retired in 2001 and subsequently has been involved in a number of technology companies. His career truly traces the development of the IT industry in India. But his primary focus now is NextWealth, which may represent another step along the IT path in India and possibly elsewhere.

NextWealth is a for-profit social enterprise that is taking advantage of a significant cost arbitrage between urban and rural India, but also, profoundly, makes use of and reinforces certain cultural and social aspects of the Indian society.

In addition to the famous network of IIT schools in most of the major urban locales, India has located many very good technical schools in rural areas in an effort to increase the number of college educated members of the workforce.  Many of these campuses have quite complete infrastructures including, importantly, sufficient primary and back-up power. The schools provide a college education to students in rural India who would not be able to move to urban areas because of the costs and the prospect of separation from their families at a young age. This particularly applies to the young women from the rural areas. The problem is that once they receive their degrees, the job opportunities are most likely elsewhere, not in the local community.  In India, culturally, family takes precedence, but the economic realities brought about by the demand for technically trained individuals in the large engineering complexes in the cities require difficult decisions for these graduates. NextWealth finds an entrepreneur or entrepreneurs either living in the rural areas, or more often working in urban areas, who would prefer to be nearer to home and family. NextWealth provides the start-up funds and other support to create a business that can scale locally. Dr. Mitta pointed out that in many ways it is a distributed Idealab concept. While Idealab incubates the companies at its facility on West Union in Pasadena and then moves them out, typically to a nearby location (Duron is an exception!), NextWealth starts the incubation where it knows the workforce will exist to sustain and grow the company. The willingness and ability of the US college-graduate workforce to locate almost anywhere allows for the Idealab model. NextWealth is to some extent capitalizing on the current state of the Indian infrastructure, but more so, the cultural phenomenon of the importance of geography and family.

The NextWealth model, itself, has some profound implications. We have all seen the articles and dissertations on the urbanization of populations globally. The pundits are predicting that, ultimately, 90% of the population will end up living in cities. It is hard to imagine what life will be like if that occurs. In many societies as the migration takes place the disruption to the concept of family is significant and is being resisted. That is certainly the case in India and is happening in China as well. Dr. Mitta is pragmatically taking advantage of the ties to family and geography in India. But in so doing, he is creating an alternative model to this inexorable march toward the mega-cities. In addition, Dr. Mitta told me that NextWealth’s companies are primarily employing educated women, where the pull from family is the strongest and the prospect of moving away to a single life in the city is remote. NextWealth is bringing many more women into the workforce in roles that provide higher incomes than they historically were able to receive and where they are actually making use of their education. The incomes are lower than they might earn if they moved to the city, but the cost of living is more than proportionately lower, while the quality of life and family interaction is higher. The empowerment of these women feeds on itself in the local area providing a model for other younger women to pursue an education without the prospect of it disrupting the pull of place and parents.

For this to work does require Tom Friedman’s Flat World. It requires global connectivity as well as the local infrastructure resulting from the creation of these rural educational facilities. It relates primarily to service businesses as opposed to manufacturing. It also requires acceptance by the customer that a reliable network and an educated workforce does exist in rural India.  Dr. Mitta says the selling process to the customer reminds him of the early days of Wipro, when the first response to the idea of outsourcing to India was “Where’s India? And how can they possibly speak and read English?”  He says the questions today are “Where’s Karnataka? And how can they possibly have that skill set?” Sounds like we still have a bit of work to do in the US educational system on Geography and Global History in addition to Math and Science.

This model won’t apply everywhere, but with some tinkering it might even work in the developed world. Dr. Mitta is exploring that possibility, starting with regional educational institutions in the US. One of the Indian businesses that has been funded is providing math tutoring for K-12 students in the US, www.tutorvista.com . Yes, that’s right. Educated individuals sitting in the town of Mallasamudram, in the state of Tamil Nadu, India, are helping US students improve their math skills. Dr. Mitta thinks there is an economic model that doesn’t require outsourcing the service all the way to India. He may be right, but in the meantime, the model is changing lives and bringing more of the world’s population into the global economy.

I must admit that this post has very little to do with Climate Change, and probably belongs in a blog with a different URL. I guess the closest I could come is that the purpose of my trip to Bangalore was to visit Duron, www.duronenergy.com , which is providing solar home lighting to rural India. The original point of contact with Dr. Mitta was his interest in learning more about the company. When one has the opportunity to meet such a unique individual doing some unique and possibly profound work, sharing the story may stimulate others to think outside the box and come up with unique ideas of their own, whether it relates to climate change or other big issues confronting us over this century.

Light and Life in Rural India

We spent two days in villages in the District of Udupi in the State of Karnataka meeting with our sales agents and visiting homes where the Duron Solar Home System was in use.  We were there with three of our investors who had already spent a day in Bangalore at our headquarters reviewing the business and now wanted to see the system in use in the field. We chose Udupi, since it was “only” a ninety-minute plane ride to Mangalore and another ninety-minute drive to the town. Most of the installations were within 30 minutes of the town itself.

The State of Karnataka is reasonably well electrified. One has to travel deep into the rain forests to find an area without wiring.  Almost all of our systems in this state are in homes with electricity from the grid.  However, because of the uncertainty of when power is actually available and the cost, the villagers are interested in alternative power sources.

The grid in this area gets its power from both hydro and coal-fired utilities.

In the dry season the hydropower is less available because of low water levels.  What is available from whatever source gets diverted to the industrial sector. These are usually scheduled diversions that occur when the light is most needed, i.e., when it is dark. In the monsoon season, which is just beginning, the grid itself has more power delivered to it, but the violence of the storms causes unscheduled outages from lightning or power lines falling, which can sometimes produce two or three days without power.

The alternatives are kerosene lamps, diesel generators, inverters drawing power from the grid when it is available and storing it in batteries, or alternative energy sources, primarily solar, tied into a battery and lighting system of some sort. The Duron system is one of the latter. Cost, reliability, maintenance and simple knowledge of its availability are the primary factors determining which alternative is chosen.  Kerosene lamps are ever present as the ultimate fall back when all else fails.

The visit, while terrifying and certainly rugged for us Westerners, was exciting and gratifying. I say terrifying, because any time one is on the narrow roads with all forms of traffic moving in all directions, the near-death confrontations of two or more vehicles and an occasional animal seem continuous and only Providentially resulting in no accident.  The ruggedness comes from the climate, the accommodations and the rural nature of where the customers are, combined with the uncertainty of the ultimate outcome of drinking all the chai and eating the snacks offered by the owners of each of the homes we visited.

The excitement and gratification came from seeing the diverse ways in which the system is changing lives. A few examples:

A young tailor keeps the solar panel, the power pack and one of the three LED lights that come with the system at his small, unelectrified shop at the intersection of two roads near his village. He sits in front of a pedal-powered Singer sewing machine of uncertain vintage, making and repairing clothing for his neighbors. The single light is used to extend his workday by two or more hours, increasing his income. When he closes up his shop, he locks the solar panel inside and brings the portable power pack home where he has the other two lights mounted for use by his children to study and his wife to cook.  He is probably a customer for a second system when the income from his increased business and the cost savings from using solar as his power source allow a purchase.

A woman living far away from neighbors and help tends her very sick sister. The two of them are the only occupants of the home. She says simply that she needs light for her sister all night. Kerosene is not healthy for her sister and not easily available to someone with no ready form of transportation to replenish it.  And the grid is not there when she needs it.  It doesn’t hurt that the system also has a cell phone charger, which does mean, in an emergency she has a working phone to reach someone.

A large family, living in a quite beautiful and well-kept 150-year-old home, has the three lights each installed above a desk that is used for reading and study by the children and probably some of the adults. This is a traditional home with electric lighting but much of what seems a throwback to an earlier era. The kitchen has a wood cookstove and there are many other traditional elements as well. The family can clearly afford more amenities, but I would surmise that they are savers, not spenders.  The placement of the lights in specific reading areas may indicate that the saving relates to the children and their educational opportunities. Solar lighting eliminates most excuses for not studying as well as ultimately saving money. Here, we were offered and ate freshly cut jackfruit. It would have been pleasant to spend an afternoon with the family, understanding more about their history and their current lifestyle. Our sales person had another important visit she wanted us to make, though.

This was our best sales person in the region—a senior member of a local self-help group with a personality and an element of persuasiveness that made her a natural Dale Carnegie graduate without having taken the course.  We were an out-of-place group of three Americans, three Spaniards, and two other senior Indian executives of the company. She felt it was an auspicious occasion. Our visit was to her temple. She was feeling very happy about having us there and wanted to perform a Puja (look it up) in thanks for the good feelings and the success she was having. It was quite an honor for us and clearly very important to her. As recognition of her success it certainly beat the classic over the top celebrations for the best producers that I experienced in my years in the financial industry. I will participate in a Puja every time I visit the area if it is the motivator of success for our producers.

These producers are changing their neighbors’ lives. The selling process has a bit of a feel of Avon calling, but the product lights up faces in a different manner.  What a wonderful experience.