When corporate affairs minister Salman Khurshid recently flagged off a Keggfarms poultry consignment to Ethiopia, it was not just another export order. Gurgaon-based Keggfarms, which leverages its rural household poultry-keeping model to double as a change agent to empower rural women by helping them in income generation, was executing an order from US-based fund Flow Equity and three Americans to replicate its success story in the African country.
“We have turned an incidental domestic chore like poultry keeping into a life-changing remunerative activity to empower rural women on a national scale, and still make profits ourselves,” says Keggfarms Group chairman VS Kapur.
Keggfarms has genetically bred and developed Kuroiler, a super chicken, which grows on household waste to more than double the weight and lays three to four times more eggs than the conventional stock. Last year, Keggfarms sold 20 million chickens, which went on to generate an estimated income of Rs 400 crore by selling meat and eggs for 10 lakh rural households in 11 states. The value chain comprises nurseries managed by micro-entrepreneurs, vendors engaged in bird transportation and housewives growing chicks to their optimum size and harvesting eggs from hens.
The Keggfarms success story, which has been documented by the Harvard Business School and studied by the London School of Economics and the Stern School of Business, has also aroused interest amongst researchers at the Biodesign Institute of Arizona State University. They are conducting tests to assess the feasibility of farming Kuroilers in other parts of Africa and Latin America. Uganda is likely to be the next destination, having conducted the initial tests successfully.
Keggfarms is not the only Indian social enterprise making a foray abroad. After making a mark at home, affordable hospital chain Aravind Eye Hospitals and solar lighting company D Light Design have also tapped opportunities abroad.
Aravind has been involved in capacity building in about 30 countries, including undertaking turnkey projects for two hospitals in Bogra and Barisal in Bangladesh for Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus Grameen Group. The assignments didnt include raising finances. Says RD Thulasiraj, executive director, Aravind Eye Hospitals, We are undertaking such assignments to eliminate needless blindness the world over, which is our aim. Their costs are usually underwritten. They dont seek to make money in such initiatives. If need be, they also raise funds from donors for engaging in such cases.
For the GC Eye Care Hospital in Bogra, which was set up with the help of money raised by social business pop singers Milla Sunde and Tom Bevan of The Green Children, the first batch of three ophthalmologists and 18 ophthalmic personnel underwent induction for one year at Aravind in Madurai. A team from Aravind also camped at the Bogra hospital for three months to do hand-holding of the local staff. Besides, workshops were conducted for a larger group to lay down vision and mission statements, size up unmet needs, set targets, work out capacity utilisation, think through strategies, develop systems and protocols, and formulate organisational practices and policies.
Modelled as a social business, the hospital is eventually expected to conduct 50,000 and 10,000 cataract operations yearly. Though patients will be charged based on their means, all of them will get the same quality treatment.
D Light Design has gone a step ahead. Using India as one of its bases (D Light is incorporated in the US, and registered in India), the company has now shifted its corporate headquarters to Hong Kong.
The company designs, manufactures and sells low-cost solar power lighting products in more than 40 countries from Asia to Africa. The company claims to have reached more than 20 lakh people worldwide.
If the current customers use the products over their lifetime, it would help them save $60 million (Rs 300 crore) over costlier kerosene, claims the company.
Besides, increased productivity due to better lighting is expected to contribute another $60 million (Rs 300 crore) to poor families. Managing director Mandeep Singh says, D Light is not only bringing affordable lighting to poor people, but also saving on carbon emissions. D Light claims to have cut down 82,600 tonne carbon emissions with the help of products sold so far, which is equivalent to the emissions generated by making 9,283 trips around the globe.
Seeing its potential, D Light has got investors like social enterprise funds Omidyar Network, Acumen Fund and Gray Matters Capital and venture capital firms like Nexus India Capital, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and the Mahindra Group.
Now, it is aiming to reach people without access to reliable electricity all over the world. Evidently, pre-determined locations are no more an end. In fact, foreign forays are a further testimony to the success of such social enterprises, proving their replicability and scalability.
Source: The Financial Express
Published on 23 December 2010