Udyog Sanchetana (E) - Oct' 2022

Udyog Sanchetana, a FREE, monthly in HINDI since April 2014 aims at creating awareness of industry and Career Opportunities.?Enjoy the 103rd issue in at -?https://lnkd.in/esBHW8eG

?The 9th edition on LinkedIn platform for the month of October 2022 covers –

• Swachhata Startup CHALLENGE,
• Smart TOILETS,
• Career PLANNING

1.??Swachhata Startup Challenge

The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) in collaboration with AFD (Agence Fran?aise de Développement) launched the Swachhata Startup Challenge to nurture the evolving ecosystem of the Indian waste sector. The goal was to select and support 10 startups in 4 key fields for intervention

Labelled the Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban 2.0 (SBM-U 2.0), the Ministry announced Startup Challenge in March 2022. It had four thematic areas viz. (i) Social Inclusion, (ii) Zero Dump (iii) Plastic Waste and iv) Transparency. There were 244 entries from 23 States and Union Territories, including ?100 women-led startups.

The top 30 CLEANOVATION Startups made presentations in the final event held at the Dr. Ambedkar International Centre, New Delhi on September 20, 2022. Financial award of ?25 lakh each was offered to the top 10 startups from MoHUA-AFD alongside 1-year of personalized professional support.?

AWS offered up to 100,000 USD worth of credits and technology support in conducting pilots to each winner from Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Villgro , one of the implementation partners has summarised introduction to the 30 CLEANOVATION startups and offered up to INR 50 Lakh as follow-on investment to eligible startups. It also offered support for connections with municipalities to facilitate access to waste and experimental grounds

Social Inclusion

• Low-cost solutions for cleaning septic tanks and sewer lines (Manhole to machine hole)
• Efficient operation and maintenance of community and public toilets in a hygienic and sustainable manner
• Safe containment, evacuation, transportation, processing and disposal of used water and fecal sludge & septage
• Social innovations for improved waste collection and management in low-income settlements
• Innovation for an easier access for informal waste-pickers to waste resources
• Innovation to take plastic waste management from informal to formal economy

Zero Dump

• Innovative solutions for tracking segregated door to door collection solid waste
• Processing and recycling of all segregated fractions of Solid Waste. Low-cost portable solution for remediation of legacy dumpsites

Plastic Waste

• Solution of processing and recycling of plastic waste; minimize degradation of plastic during recycling.
• Plastic waste management in eco-sensitive regions; innovative methods for collection of multi layered plastic and its disposal; technology for disposal of plastic from legacy dumpsites
• Alternatives of single-use plastic; change consumer behaviour and raise awareness around plastic segregation and recycling practices

Transparency

Tech innovations on real-time monitoring of operations in waste management infrastructure; tracking flow of goods from manufacturer to the end of their life cycle or disposal and solutions to asses environmental, social and economic price of goods, especially plastics.

2.??Smart TOILET

Mayank Midha, an electronics and communication engineering (ECE) student at the Maharishi Dayanand University, had to join family business after untimely death of his father. At 19, he handled customer relations for the family business, while mother managed the operations side of business. This was his early learning on the job, while continuing college during the day.?

Campus placement landed him in TCS (2005), but within two years, he realised, it wasn’t his cup of tea. The desk job of coding and testing software was dull and frustrating. He wanted to be part of something on the ground and quit the job to join MBA at the Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA).

?This transition from coding to the social sector was a the result of his conversation with a TCS colleague, who was an alumnus of IRMA. IRMA gave him a window to the world, and he went to work in the social development sector for a few years on various World Bank projects.

By this time, the bug for entrepreneurship had bitten Mayank and he was keen to grow the family business ?as well. This got him off the job track. He thought of helping farmers with better products, but ?failed, because farmers preferred local fabricators. His next attempt was solar lamps that also didn’t work and he had to sell some of his assets to repay debts.

The Toilet Inspiration

Using a public toilet is rarely a life-changing moment, but it gave Mayank an inspiration in 2015 while using a toilet at Pragati Maidan in Delhi. He contemplated “Could there be better public toilets?” and he saw an opportunity in the problem.

He observed that despite huge expenditure on public toilets, under Swachh Bharat Mission since 2014, these became defunct within six to eight months, due to poor upkeep. So, he decided to design automatic toilets that worked with sensors, and didn’t require human intervention to clean and maintain. A year of prototyping followed.??

The technology enabled [IoT - Internet of Things + RFID] toilets are integrated with solar panels, battery packs, auto flush and cleaning technology. This gave birth to GARV Toilets in 2015; this was not only portable but easy to clean and use.

Mayank had earlier worked with Airtel and Telenor for some time, delivering telecom equipment like BTS (base transceiver station) cabinets, which resembled toilet cabinets and that motivated him to fabricate public toilet with stainless steel; because plastic or galvanised steel sheet structures were prone to vandalising and rusting.

The cost, however posed marketing challenge. It was frustrating, but then he started getting few awards (Sanitation Innovation Accelerator 2016) for the concept, and these international recognitions gave him courage to push through.

Ultimately, the pilot project kickstarted in 2017 through a CSR campaign. After a successful project in Pune, the company moved to Patna and Delhi where toilets were installed in government schools.?

3.??Career Planning (Book Review)

Each individual has talent. Education adds value, enhances ability to think and act. While the educated discuss career, the daily worker is concerned only about livelihood for the day. Workers, at times come out with novel innovations and business initiatives, whereas large majority of the educated, hankers for job and that’s the real root cause of Un-Employment.

Government makes policies, promotes investment, creates schemes to enhance skill and self-employment that reflects in the number of startups exceeding 70,000 and a Unicorn is born every week, but still people talk of growing Un-Employment.

Over the years the focus of Training & Placement function in institutions of higher learning has shifted to only placements, with high-level corporate relations personnel, but “Management by Training” could make difference.

The students of the day want to be knowledgeable before opting a branch of engineering and institution. There are young advisors on social media advising based on their personal experience. Reputed institutions do make difference in overall development, but…not everyone can get there, whether an IIT, NIT or IIM.

But let’ s not forget, Success in career has equal weightage for individual’s own effort; personal traits and situational factors, like economic scenario, technology, job market trends, etc. also matter. And involvement of the beneficiary is important.

i-Career, ?a book attempts to highlight the need for Self-Career planning, managing internship, networking with industry, and the role of MSME and Manufacturing. If each educated takes upon him/herself to be Atma Nirbhar to the extent possible, at least half the problem of Educated Unemployed will be solved.?