Innovative India : Enable the Innovators

A start-up is business entity essentially ‘working towards innovation, development or improvement of products or processes or services’ with a scalable business model. Bharat has many such start-up icons who have created their own space by taking technology to the masses through innovation and made the difference in social life. In the backdrop of National Science Day, Organiser presents their success stories, their struggle and impact to inspire others

Sandeep Singh

Today everyone knows about Padman, the movie and its successful hero, but still very few know who is Arunachalam Muruganantham. He is the inventor of a low-cost sanitary pad-making machine and the movie is based on his struggle to make low cost sanitary napkin an option for poor women across the country. Arunachalam Muruganantham represents Bharateeya grass roots innovator and his resilience. Bharat has so many Arunachalam Muruganantham, a systematic approach is needed to create Padman out of them minus the avoidable struggle.
Bharat is the oldest living civilisation. Many factors are behind this, innovation being one of them. Bharat has a strong culture of innovation which continues till date. Honeybee Network, National Innovation Foundation have huge listing of the grass root innovations and innovators, Indiainnovates lists high end innovation. Besides this there are CSIR and other government laboratories, organisations like ISRO who are innovating in different fields which contribute to well being of common man directly as well as help in defence requirement of the country. There are many more such platforms which list innovations in Bharat.
Each of these innovations has potential to make the life of human kind better as well as generate wealth and employment in Bharat. Till few years back most of these innovations, instead of getting respect and support were laughed out as Juggad. It was another colonial mindset to scoff at anything which is Bharateeya.
 Since the time Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led NDA Government has come to power, it has taken many remarkable steps to take innovations in India to next logical step. Some of the steps that immediately come to mind are Startup India, Standup India, Make in India, Atal Innovation Mission etc. Most of these schemes on the face of it might look like about generating employment and business opportunity but they also help innovation in a big way. Lot of meaningful work is being carried out under these schemes. Till the BJP Government came to power, innovation was not a word one could hear in government corridors. Today’s government has taken lot of positive initiatives to promote and support innovation at every stage.
An innovation needs government support mainly in following three fields
I.    Finance for research, for branding and marketing, for making them commercially viable
II.    Protective rules and regulation to survive in a globalised world
III.    Recognition through awards to boost self-esteem.
All of these are equally important pillars to make an innovation and innovator to grow to its optimum level.
Different schemes listed above take care of the finance part to an extent. Let’s look at the other two.
Protectionism
Why, despite Bharat having a thriving democracy, an open economy, more English speaking population and a young population compared to China, is China producing bigger and higher number of entrepreneurs/startups than Bharat? Bharat has not seen organisations like Alibaba, Baidu, Xiaomi etc. The answer is simple, in modern age, only a protective economy like China can produce such huge organisations. (It is important to note that, it is not China alone, but even USA and UK are following the path of protectionism.)
Vivek Wadhwa Distinguished Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University, correctly writes, “India needs to learn from China, which used every trick in the book to close off its markets and create barriers to foreign companies. Doing so, let local technology companies gain in size and power and learn to innovate. China, very smartly, opened its doors at first to Silicon Valley companies, letting them bring their ideas there to train its entrepreneurs. Then it abruptly locked them out so that local startups could thrive. It realised that Silicon Valley had such a monetary advantage that local entrepreneurs could never compete.” (The Economic Times)
The fear of Vivek Wadhwa is being experienced by Vijay Sekhar Sharma. “Facebook is openly colonising our payment system and is customising UPI to their benefit. UPI was built as an India Stack; now some American monopoly arm-twists UPI for customer implementation,” Sharma told The Economic Times.
It is not Paytm which is at the losing end alone (Alibaba, the Chinese company has stake in Paytm), but even BHIM is losing. As per reports, BHIM launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in December 2016 and emerging as a popular aggregator app for UPI transactions —has seen volumes of dip after Tez’s arrival. From a 40 per cent share in terms of volumes during January— August 2017, BHIM’s share crashed to 6 per cent in December 2017. (The Economic Times)
In the current atmosphere, issues are not about market share alone but also about data through which one can decipher the behavioural pattern of the users and then attempt to influence them politically as well. One of the most talked about investigations in USA today, is about how Russia influenced Presidential election using social media platforms like Facebook. This could very well be a reality in Bharat also.
Hence a protective law is needed not only for the survival of the Bhrteeya innovators/ start-ups but also for the nation’s security. Government has been taking some steps regularly but lot more needs to be done, especially keeping innovations and start-ups in mind.
Recognition
Recognition is important not only for self-esteem but also to motivate others. The Padma awards have seen change since the Narendra Modi-led Government came to power and it should also include innovators from all walks of life.
Way Forward
The only good quality that one can see in Bharteeya film industry is that some of them look around the country to come with real good stories. Movies like Padman, Airlift, Pan Singh Tomar are such examples, and these movies have contributed positively to the society.
The Government needs to pick up this very quality which can scout for such innovations and promote them. This will help Bharat get many more Padmans. There should be a scheme to reach out to innovators.
The operational procedure of various government schemes is about innovator approaching the Government. It is here that the Government needs to bring in change. There should be a Government body which should reach out to innovators. There are portals (some mentioned above) which list such innovations and there are innovations beyond these portals too. Following is a list of four such initiatives which are unique in their own way and will contribute massively to the process of nation building if backed properly.
1. Why is it that Bharteeyas compute in English? Ganesh Arnaal, a successful investment banker has been haunted by such questions. He went ahead and has put together a complete Office Productivity Suite in Hindi, using the Open Office open source software called BBS Hindi Office. BBS stands for Bharat Bhasha Sanganan.
The package offers, Letters [like Word], MaX [like Excel], and Show [like PowerPoint]. BBS Hindi Office comes with several popular fonts in Unicode, unlike MS Office which offers just two Unicode options. Hindi users of computers still use proprietary font systems like Krutidev which do not conform to Unicode. Therefore, even today in 2018, most of the content in Hindi is non digital. Now with BBS Hindi Office, Hindi users can express themselves in many Unicode fonts. BBS Hindi Office offers Spreadsheet MaX, which allows one to write over 450+ functions and formulas in Hindi. Further the beauty of this feature is that it is interoperable with MS Excel.
2. CloverGurukul: A Digital Interactive Education Platform developed by Cloverbridge Technologies Pvt Ltd enables the trainer and learner to use the latest technologies for education while ensuring the traditional education method of teacher-student interactions with continuous assessment. Institutions and trainers can use the platform to upload digital training content, which can be used by their learners through any device and learn as directed by the institution. This is completely private and content is completely owned by institutions and can be updated and uploaded as and when required. This is cloud based and virtually no capital investment is required to start using this platform.
K Phani Kumar, started this company in 2015 after spending more than 30 years working with large software MNCs and has delivered complex projects for several fortune 500 global companies. Upon conceptualising the product he approached several banks for loan but his efforts were futile.
3. Shakthivel Associates, founded in the year 1981 by a team of enterprising and well qualified engineers with years of experience in design and manufacture of Communication Products, has now carved a niche market for itself by providing Handsets & Headsets for tactical communication in military applications. Shakthivel exports headsets and handsets to customers in several countries around the world. Shaktivel has decades of expertise in the production of the acoustic products for use in tactical communication like Handsets and Headsets, Summer and Winter headsets for use in Military Tanks, Bone Conduction Headsets with Throat Microphones, Headsets with Active Noise Reduction facility (Developed for the 1st time in Bharat), Headsets for bullet proof helmets, Headsets with Voice Operated Switch (VOX), Fist microphones with/without speaker, Quick Discharge Coupling used in aircrafts (Developed for the 1st time in Bharat).
4. Banks usually have a Bank Guarantee/Letter of Credit Module in the Core Banking System (CBS) they may be using for automation, but a CBS is limited to the process of issuing the instrument for the host bank. There are four major different parties involved in any Trade Finance product like Bank Guarantee or Letter of Credit, i) Buyer ii) Seller iii) Buyers Bank iv) Sellers Bank. Hence, the Tracking and Management process becomes very critical. Furthermore, there is a blackout period when the bills and goods are in transit. Although the banks have the physical documents and other credentials of the customers, they have no clue of the corresponding bank and the party at the other end with whom the bank does not have any direct interaction. This is where the risk of frauds arises.
Quadwave has built ConnectPlus to address this very need. Quadwave offers Block Chain based Smart Contracts to make sure that the transactions are secure and maintained end-to-end without any chance of hacks or frauds in between. Undoubtedly all the four initiatives mentioned above have huge potential, and they are just examples.
With proper support in terms of law, finance and a bit of handholding Bharat can see many more Padmans. Unicorns as well as Padman are important for Bharteeya economy. Unicorn will grow out of Padmans. Let’s create more Padmans.
(The writer is a Mumbai based management expert and founder of www.swastik.net.in )