you thank you for having me on TED talks
many renowned speakers persons have
spoken on various podiums earlier and
shared their dreams for our country I’m
just a budding entrepreneur and a fellow
citizen like all of you present here I’m
here to share with you all that I have a
need not just a dream for my country for
my better tomorrow and the need is that
I want a country to be on top of the
world very soon and this need is not for
tomorrow of my children or grandchildren
but for my tomorrow I am very confident
as young working nation we will achieve
this very soon a Bapuji once said that
heart of India lies in her villages the
heart is strong and healthy the whole
body will naturally be so and guess what
this thought is relevant even after
decades our greatest philanthropist and
scientist Dr Abdullah öcalan ji shared
similar views he said that developed
India would be a network of prosperous
villages empowered with various
connectivities both physical and virtual
they bowed dreamt of making our village
is stronger and their dreams emerge out
of their lives experiences in trying to
make our country stronger we all know we
are the second largest populated country
in the world with 1.3 billion population
65% of our population is under 35 50
percent of our population is under 25
the average age of an Indian today is
between 26 to 28 while the average age
of most of the economically forward
countries is about 40 years the
International Labour Organization has
worked out numbers saying that we will
have 160 million people between the age
group of 20 to 24 by 2020 while China
the largest populated country will have
only 94 million at the same point in
time we are a young productive and
dynamic population but do we
the ability to take advantage of the
situation we have world’s largest
skilled resources available in India as
a country there’s a strong need to equip
these young population in order to
enable them to take advantage of the
situation in working together and
transforming our economy into world’s
best and I would like to bring to your
attention 70% of this workforce reside
in rural India 70% is a huge number
rural India is a land of abandoned home
run entrepreneurs you can find many
skilled and young entrepreneurs working
in various fields like handicrafts
agriculture etc they form the backbone
of our economy cottage industry is a way
of life for most of the rural people
most of our villages unlike people in
urban India where we work through the
organized businesses to earn a living
people in rural India earn their living
through self-employment cottage industry
is given huge economic independence for
there are various kinds of cottage
industries sari rule it oh they’re very
kind of an entrepreneurs one can find in
our villages for example individual
entrepreneurs where individuals do
businesses like agarbatti making
tailoring etc group entrepreneurs where
a group of people come together and work
in a small workplace like toy making
agriculture spices cluster
entrepreneurship where a skill is a
skill is developed depending on a
specific geography or area the best
example is death for these are
shivakashi toys from china Patna self
from Kanchipuram and the largest of all
this our cooperative societies where a
group of people come together make an
organization for doing specific job the
best examples for these would be the
bank cooperatives the milk cooperatives
etc what do these kind of
entrepreneurships do to our economy they
add value to
vital resources they create huge
employment opportunities
the helpers in retaining our artisanal
skills and most important they give us a
reach to the most remote tech and rustic
areas in a country cottage industry is a
huge boon for a Indian economy they’re
indispensable they contribute to 40% of
our gv8 or Indian economy I would like
to highlight the size of this industry
and the potentials that our villages
have Indian handicraft industry is a
hundred billion dollar industry and is
growing at a rate of 20% every year
compared to the worldwide rate growth
where it is only a 12% it is actively
employed more than 75 lakh for people
and is growing continuously in spite of
all these huge numbers that I have
shared with you I would like to bring to
your notice that villages still remain
to be the weakest point of our society
we often tend to forget that villages
are an integral part of her economy most
of the innovations and new businesses
are focused on urban requirements what
would happen if we had new innovations
or new businesses focused tapping rural
potentials there’s been few
organizations who have created an impact
to our economy through these rural
entrepreneurship I would like to take
Gandhiji Swadeshi movement is a
revolution of kadhi it’s not merely a
piece of cloth it’s a philosophy in
itself and a symbol of empowerment and
offspring of kadhi our Swadeshi movement
is kadhi India which is recorded or
sales of 500 million rupees last year
under this commission it has actively
employed more than 5600 institutions
30,000 odd cooperative societies and
more than 12 people are actively
employed on a daily cooperative of India
from Gujarat Anand is co-owned by 3.5
milk producers it spurred the white
revolution of a country which made India
the largest producer of milk and milk
products it has recorded a revenue of
380 billion rupees today a moulds
example has followed in every region of
her country and every region have their
own cooperative society doing remarkably
well mr. mother chandran an IT
professional from California quit as
fancy star job and started organic
Mundia to help the debt-ridden farmers
as an initial step he brought together
about 240 organic farmers and started a
chain of organic shops in less than four
months they generated a cruel revenue
and now they’re looking at bringing
together 10,000 families mr. Mustafa who
wanted to become an entrepreneur by
employing people from rural India
started led fresh idea fresh makes Italy
endorser butter in 2005 when they
started manufacturing they started
making 10 packs a day today the
manufacturer close to 50,000 kgs of
butter and the revenue that they have
recorded is 1 billion rupees now coming
to my own story article all of us have
this want to become an entrepreneur
beginners very very strongly and the bug
bites you really hard when one starts
climbing up the corporate ladder in a
well settled job but trust me if you
take a plunge into it it’ll drive you
straight down to the timeline where you
started hunting for your first job the
bug in me was socially deeper and it
wanted me to do something more radical I
wanted to start a business in an area
that was unexplored and also create an
impact to our economy I want you to come
up with various business models that can
be scaled from grassroot to large-scale
and where everyone involved in it grows
collectively as a designer our heart the
area that drove my passion was
handicraft toys the talent available
under handicrafts and toys is abundant
and these days there are many artisans
who are acquiring these skills and I’m a
strong believer in creating
an opportunity that can empower women
because if you empower a woman in
benefits her family in turn benefits the
entire community empowering women isn’t
for women it’s for the world I think he
started with a passion to design and
manufacture sustainable natural products
made from India and our vision is to
create a platform that can bring all the
artisans together and enable them to
grow their businesses from micro to
large-scale our today’s an outcome all
the thought processes I’ve shared with
you till now of wanting to contribute to
all of us have those big dreams and big
aspirations and start new ventures of
wanting to make really big but reality
bites challenges bring you back to
reality our challenges propped up in
various levels in various geographies
and in an area that we had no clue where
we were going power cut an
infrastructural issue is one of the
biggest challenge we still face I Drive
about 200 kilometers to an artisanal
village to check the progression of our
production after reaching there I
realized there’s no power till evening
and I end up buying mangoes outages like
these disrupt scheduled production and
it’s extremely difficult to implement
any new technologies as in new
technologies invariably need power it is
very surprising that there are many
areas today in a rural India that is
inaccessible to modern career services
treated fumigated quality wood from
sustainable sources is a huge challenge
artisans these days are seeking
alternate job opportunities in small
towns or cities like becoming a master
chef
people like to spend more on eating out
rather than buying handicrafts these
days we tend to lose the quality
artisans to these alternate kind of jobs
due to lack of sustain businesses over a
period of time the artisans have become
extremely casual and laid-back
they have no commitment to complete a
job taken in spite of giving advances
their inclination to implement concepts
like standardization of production or
performance management is very very
limited they at one point of time we
were unable to take any large orders
because we were unable to meet the
corporate and export obligations the
minute we design a product launch it in
the market one could find its replica
developed at a lower grade and lower
materials in the local market can’t
copyright the control over the
copyrights and control over designs is
expose an extremely difficult task
multinationals use their marketing
strength through televisions cartoons
advertisements TV channels to promote
their branded toys one can find the
replica in market many replicas of them
in the market which is plastic toxic
cheap it’s extremely difficult for us
the in-house people to compete against
such strategies and also introduce a
product which has a large impact to get
large-scale business and traditional
products are extremely price sensitive
people because of two reasons the
proximity and familiarity
people still expect to pay what the
grandparents paid ages ago and Indians
love to bargain at one point in time I
was totally lost I did not know which
aspect to focus on but one has to swirl
to survive if you have decided to jump
in the water so I simply embraced the
glorious mess I wasn’t I had to call it
quits or turn around the odds my
corporate approach built over years has
taught with me to approach the
challenges by looking at them in various
angles and breaking them into smaller
aspects as a first step we through the
marketing understanding the marketing
need through a marketing research we
came up with you to your toy designs
based on the artisanal skills and the
raw materials available we then set up a
sales and marketing platform by
partnering with various online
retailers than carpets and any export
job opportunities that may come up all
our products are sold with a guidance or
new sage and the educational value it
has so this facilitated a customer to
justify the prices that they were paying
we then monitored at all our production
processes very closely and during this
process we educated our artisans with
the quality standards that needs to be
followed to reach out for international
orders we then gave all our home run
units advances for them to stock up the
raw materials based on our quality
specifications we also specified the
dimensions of the product and the
materials to be used like wood paint etc
we partnered with the modern Career
Services and optimized arts supply chain
requirement we introduced the concept of
testing of the product in credited labs
which facilitated international orders
we are then convinced our artisans to be
very flexible with it work timing and
work during the night as outages
normally happen during the day now
whenever we have large orders and
artisans prefer to work in the night as
production happens faster and they can
focus better the regions that we focused
initially was China Patna do to the
proximity it acaba and Sarang / – all my
young friends here I would like to point
out that hard work always pays results
come only over a period of time not
overnight with all the hard work that
we’ve put together till now we are very
happy to share with you all that this
venture has held more than 50 artisans
with sustain businesses and now we have
international quality production I am
very proud to claim that we have sold
thousands of products and the defect
rate of these products are less than 1%
we are shortlisted by a few large
international brand
for online bidding which is a huge thing
for us and we hope to grow globally very
soon this venture in its own little way
as health in retaining artisanal skills
our workers and artisans today have a
huge pride in the products created by
them because they can see this in every
portal that they log in or somebody
would come back and tell them I saw this
product online or in this shop so they
have the pride and dignity for the
product and they’ve created and most
importantly which all of us whoever’s
working love to have is an opportunity
to work from home artisans today work
from home and the living while meeting
their personal needs and aspirations I
would like to repeat and reiterate that
India has no valid option but to protect
the interests of our villages we all
know that 70% of a population reside in
rural India we may think that they may
be urban migration over a period of time
but the reports say that the migration
is for a very small percentile that
would be maximum or 5% the seventy
percent penetration may maximum reduce
to 65 percent if we have to protect our
future sustainability there is no option
other than making our villages
economically and culturally viable while
the new India is focused on the IT
startups the call centers Bollywood
start consumer and customer glitz
working towards better managed urban
requirement I would urge you all to
reduce this obsession let’s work to
words and creating rural
entrepreneurship and making our
country’s economy in turn making our
country’s economy grow stronger let’s
work towards better managed rural
ecosystem let our religious be as
aspirational as rest of India making
India aspirational for rest of the world
thank you very much for your patience
and hearing me out
any questions thank you
you [Applause]