Comments (0) After months of struggle in designing the social network for IdeaConnect, we’re now beginning to start on custom development. We already have a working functional social network, but are now adding the necessary features to make this network targeted towards its primary audience – entrepreneurs. As part of this process, we are working on several pertinent areas…
August 10th marked the culmination of two weeks in India, 2 weeks with Sarvajal, and my first day in the field visiting water entrepreneurs dedicated to delivering water to their community. We visited 7 of our more than 68 local Sarvajal franchises. All of these were located within a 40 km radius of the city of Idar, Gujarat.
A typical family of 4 consumes 10 L of water a day. Our franchisees are usually in villages of more than 5000. In order for us, Sarvajal, to define a franchisee as a well performing business, we expect the franchisee to sell over 1,400 L of clean drinking water per day.
Our first visit was both a surprise to us and the franchisee. We were expecting to only visit 6 villages on this day, 3 underperforming franchises, and 3 well performing franchises. Since we were in the area of a 4th underperforming franchise it made sense to visit this one as well. When we got out the shop was closed. The shop was only open from the hours of 7-9am and 4-6pm, an operating hour that I would soon begin to find common place. We approached a nearby farmer in the field next to the water station to open up the store front for us. He complied and let us look at the Reverse Osmosis machine. Soon after, an elderly man stopped at the closed shop to fill a 20 L jug for his family. There was no one to help this fellow out. While inspecting the machine, we noticed that the sealed off piping that our maintenance teams had installed and been bypassed so prevent accurate measurement of liters provided to the community, a necessary measurement both from a financial as well as social standpoint. The machine was also left running while there was no one there to monitor its activity. Soon, the franchisee and his operator came to the store front to help us understand their fledgling business. The franchisee was a well dressed man, who had some understanding of English and was already the current owner of a jewelry business. This enterprising fellow helped bring to light many things that people in the rural communities desire. The people want clean water for their health. A hundred meters away was a large community well that people can retrieve water freely. Instead, many patrons were lining up to pay for clean drinking water. They preferred water that was clean, clear and had a much lower total dissolved solid (TDS) level. Although not a complete form of measuring clean drinking water, many people in the rural communities perceive a lower TDS level as a measurement of cleaner drinking water. The lower the TDS level the greater the perception of clean water.
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