The Last 500 FeetVishy KurugantiJanuary 12, 20138 mins[Editor’s Note: Paul Polak, social entrepreneur and author of Out of Poverty, wrote this highly informative narrative of the problems (and some proposed solutions) in the rural transportation area…
Intuit Fasal quietly disrupting the farm market intelligence spaceVishy KurugantiOctober 10, 20124 minsA happy Fasal farmer (Pic courtesy intuit.com) What happens when you breed JustDial and ZipDial with a Nasdaq 100 software company in the Indian rural countryside? You get Intuit Fasal – a powerful…
Is Rangsutra the only recent Social Enterprise exit?Vishy KurugantiJune 18, 20122 minsSumita Ghose (Rangsutra’s Founder/CEO) Put an impact investor on a panel at a social enterprise conference and you can be assured of at least two quotes. “There just aren’t enough quality social…
A second white revolution in India: it's not what you think!Vishy KurugantiSeptember 30, 20114 mins[Editor’s Note: A decade ago, if a soothsayer had predicted that I’d someday write about female sanitary napkins, I might have reacted violently. But this story is much more than that – it’s a story…
ITC's e-Choupal model to increase farmer revenue and its own bottom-lineVishy KurugantiSeptember 20, 20114 mins[Editor’s Note: Last month, I met with Sivakumar Surampudi, a 22 year ITC veteran, architect of e-Choupal, and head of their Agro Business Division (ABD) at his office in Hyderabad. This post is based…
FarmsNFarmers – a full-service approach to maximizing farmers profitsVishy KurugantiSeptember 05, 20113 minsFarms n Farmers co-founders: Shashank Kumar (left) and Manish Kumar (right) [Editor’s Note: A few weeks ago, I had an engaging conversation with Shashank Kumar, co-founder of Farms N Farmers, an end…
Establishing commodity cooperatives – role of promoting organizationsVishy KurugantiAugust 25, 20113 mins[Editor’s Note: This is the final part of a 7-part series on commodity cooperatives in drought prone regions, originally authored as a pre-published paper by Dr. Trilochan Sastry (Academic Dean, IIM…
Establishing commodity cooperatives – promoter philosophy, leadership and cooperative rulesVishy KurugantiAugust 19, 20114 mins[Editor’s Note: This is part 6 of a 7-part series on commodity cooperatives in drought prone regions, originally authored as a pre-published paper by Dr. Trilochan Sastry (Academic Dean, IIM-Bangalore…
Greenway Smart Stove: A cleaner smarter stove for 150 million BOP householdsVishy KurugantiAugust 18, 20114 mins[Editor’s Note: I briefly met Neha Juneja, co-founder of Mumbai-based Greenway Grameen Infra, on the sidelines of Sankalp Forum (covered here). I followed up with a phone conversation with her last…
The mud chulhas of IndiaVishy KurugantiAugust 17, 20111 minsI’m still halfway through my post on Greenway Grameen Infrastructure (published here). The Greenway Grameen Infra crew has done a fair amount of market research and have amassed a veritable photo…
