Innovation and India

Innovation comes in many forms. Over the last 10 days in Bangalore, it’s been amazing to observe, learn and experience innovation in India at the grassroots level, through entrepreneurship, not-for-profit sector as well as large scale corporate innovation.??

With a population of 1.5bn people, India is a place of diversity and extremes. Every 100km is a different culture, language… It's like 22 countries in one. The ways that people here innovate on a daily as well as a larger scale will blow your mind. I’d love to share some of the ways below.?

Innovation in its many forms?

1. “Necessity is the mother of invention.” Jugaad innovation is an Indian way of life - a frugal, grassroots approach to innovation, it is about doing something with whatever you’ve got. It’s at times precarious, at times a little crazy, but it’s also genius, and it’s making the most of what life gives you.? One of my favorite examples is that of a street vendor using a washing machine to churn lassi during a heat wave… (I'd encourage you to look up more examples, it’s pretty fascinating!)

2. The entrepreneurial space is dynamic.? Seasoned investor Abishek Laxminarayan took us through examples of Indian startups that grew to multi-billion dollar companies in a number of years - e-commerce platforms that have gone broad in their approach as well as those that have focused on niches (e.g. beauty and wellness), food/beverage companies, edutech, fintech and more.? There've been massive success stories but there've also been stories of massive flops. The scale, the speed, the dynamism will get your blood pumping.?

I loved hearing about the support for women entrepreneurs, who often experience additional social/cultural challenges in starting their own business as compared to those of us in the West. We had the privilege of hearing from a group of women entrepreneurs that were supported by Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB)’s incubator NSRCEL to go through ideation to commercialization:?

• Anjana HS , founder of Toycel - quality toys manufactured in India to disrupt the foreign manufactured plastic toys she saw on the market?
• Kanchan Vaidya , founder of The Original Knit is rekindling needle and yarn crafts with her beautiful baby products
• Dr Kanika Sharma , founder of Hapchi is empowering young minds through a child safety digital platform.?

It was interesting to contrast the sources of funding for startups both here and back home in Australia.? In India, the majority of funding is private wealth - in many cases successful entrepreneurs pouring money back into the ecosystem to back the next big thing. In Australia, funding typically comes from angel investors and VCs/PE (whose underlying investors can include superannuation/pension funds as well as private capital).??

3. The hustle, passion and the way they innovate / solve problems in the social enterprise space is also worthy of note. We heard from young leaders from Mantra4Change and ShikshaLokam who eloquently shared their mission to build education leadership capacity in 1 million public schools in India to benefit 250 million school children. The way they think about scaling is notable - it’s about Collective Action, that is, partnering with other NGOs with similar focus (rather than viewing each other as “competition”), and working in parallel in order to amplify reach and impact.??

4. We visited a state-of-the-art sports facility (Padukone-Dravid Centre for Sports Excellence) which is enabling young sports players (cricket, badminton, soccer, swimming and more) to train and hone their skills. CEO of GoSports Foundation n Deepthi Bopaiah shared how they are unlocking India’s sports potential and #changingthescript about the potential and talent of Indians (including women and para-athletes) to achieve at the most elite levels.??

5. On the largest end of the scale, we were hosted by Shripad Shanbhag , VP of Delivery Cloud and Infrastructure Services at 印孚瑟斯 , and had the pleasure of a guided tour (on a golf buggy) around the Infosys main campus. It was amazing to learn about Infosys’ growth in the last 43 years to the c. $93bn public company it is worth today. They are at the forefront of technology / AI innovation, but also innovative in the benefits provided to the staff… looking around the campus, there are gyms, food courts, facilities, educational spaces, interest groups which would rival that of the big US tech company campuses…. Notably, I have been struck by how the Infosys founders have made it a point to give back to the community through investment in charities, education and even investment in infrastructure (e.g. the metro station that is being built next to the main campus). I appreciate the way that as they have grown, they have also sought to lift up those around them.?

An opportunity to innovate

And the final (recent) experience of true innovation that I will share is - we held an event called” Pitch the Night” for the 20 EMBA students in my cohort last Friday in Bangalore. It was meant to be a bit of fun amidst the intense program schedule, a great way to practice pitching/presenting, and a way to get some feedback/input on the random/serious ideas that we may have thought about for a while (or for a few hours). We had some “real life” experienced investors Lachlan Harris, Abishek Laxminarayan and Deepthi Bopaiah as judges too (with the prize being a coveted cricket t-shirt and some sweet candy).??

20 pitches x 5 minutes each. 20 interesting and novel ideas which, if all implemented, I think, can make a large difference in society.?

There were ideas which solve problems as wide ranging as access to clean water, production of magnets using innovative technology for EVs, idea that improves health system efficiencies by using technology to support patients in a daily manner, idea to solve your frustrations at food courts, ideas that will improve aboriginal health outcomes, simplify voting, address gender inequality issues, address loneliness, platforms that facilitate skill exchange, disrupt chatbots to provide better customer service, devices that keep you trim and slim, delicious beverages using native Aussie produce… and much more….

By the way, encouraged by the support of the cohort, one of the ideas from pitch night went from ideation to commercialization (with a website, sample products produced) in less than 24 hours...! anything is possible...!

Imagine - if we devoted more time and space for creativity and innovation, how many more societal problems would we solve?!

What are some innovative ideas that have inspired you? How have you led change and innovation in your context???

#innovation #emba #universityofsydneybusiness school #thinkdifferently #solveproblems #leadership?